Let be honest folks, this is just the next step in the information war. It has nothing to do with telling the "real" story or giving us any understanding of the issues wikileaks revealed. Instead it is just an attempt to make a circus sideshow out of a non-issue. Meanwhile the foot soldiers throw their potshots as evidenced on the replys at slashdot and around the web. Worse yet, if it becomes a box office bomb (which i easily envision) it becomes a "who cares about assange" issue. The free-market will have spoken on what is more important in the information war....
I cant say it helped me grow in terms of conceptual reasoning skills but it definitely breathed brand new life into my computing knowledge.
I am late to the party myself, I first ran into Linux about 2001 at the University of Florida in the astrophysics lab I worked at. The lab was making parts for the LIGO project which I was really happy to be a part of. They were using a version of SuSe (german lab manager:/) at the command line to calculate prorogation of laser modes through different lenses, etc.
I wasn't that into it.
About a year later a roommate of mine installed Mandrake on our hub computer to route the home network and since I was in-between computers at the time I used that terminal as my main computer. Thats when I started really getting into Linux.
About two years after that (after finishing school and having the time I wanted to commit to learning it) I tried my first install and as a glutton for punishment but thinking that Gentoo was the most suited distro for my liking (which it is) I picked up Gentoo 2004.0. I couldnt figure out that install for about four months. When I finally learned gentoo which really taught me a lot about computing and Linux in general I was hooked and I have been an avid Gentoo user since. This is really how Linux expanded my understanding of computing to the next level.
And no I am not Asian. And yes, I think Gentoo is the most underrated and underappreciated distro out there.
Since then I have tried about every distro but I also come home to Gentoo (altho my netbook these days has ubuntu on it for simplicity sake).
you have a very rigid way of thinking? Why do you think the problems that repeat have the same solution every century? We are in different times and so different solutions are needed. You could have said the same thing about Clinton coming into office actually, and he turned around an economy and provided needed services to our country. Obama could easily repeat that success; the question is can he come up with positive solutions, or use the same tired thinking that got us into the mess of the last eight years? My money is on he can do it.
On the point of streaming radio, some of us broadcasters are struggling to meet the regulations, you can hear our listener-supported, progressive radio station at the listen live link at the top of the page for WTUL New Orleans
But, numbers are so _disposable_! I want to see a Linux v1,000,000 one day, which would only be like Linux 4.20.436-r2 in the current numbering scheme. Think of all the unused numbers out there in the interim!
Re:Ah but does it run Linux?!?
on
Linux 2.6.26 Out
·
· Score: 5, Funny
These changes will now make 2008, THE year for the linux desktop!
First of all, shouldnt this be on idle.slashdot.org... since its a time-waster and all?
That said, I don't have to worry about leaving laptops since I rarely take one home. However, being a government contractor, I do use a CAC which allows me access to my laptop. Leaving that at the house is effectively like leaving my laptop at the house. There have been numerous occasions where I have left my card at the house and had to the "drive of shame". Within the last two or three months, though, I have been riding to work, so in that case I have to do the "ride of shame".
For number 4), probably your best choice is Steven Weinberg's books: The Quantum Theory of Fields. It is a three volume set, and can be pretty pricey, but its a gold standard for sure. Many of the studies of Cosmology and Astrophysics are these days bound with QED and QM because quite often you are looking for undiscovered particles hanging out in space. Beyond that, the mathematical systems that explain quanta of fields for instance obviously extrapolate to vast expanses by way of symmetry! Get this book and understand it, you will thank me later!
I think the poster was trying to point out SCOTUS, which in the end of any lawsuit involving this will be the final naysayer to free use. Although, there was a different time...
Well, Dog, I agree with your premise... but unfortunately you _do_ have a web premise. At the very least, you have a presence on/. at the very least. Yes, I do not have facebook/myspace other, but I am on other sites all over the web. If you search for DogDude and slashdot for instance, you may be surprised what pops up.
That said, you are right, just having a web presence doesn't protect you from this sort of thing, actually, it may hardly insulate you. If a page generator puts your name in some combination amongst fifty goats.cx terms, well all its going to do is pop it up next to your registration with catholic.org
Ensuring a web presence only makes you more searchable on the web. It would be like expecting becoming famous in the movie industry would somehow protect you from scandal if a tabloid printed a story you were cheating on your wife. Gee, no one in the public would ever believe THAT!
You create a false dichotomy between dealing with this problem and dealing with the others. Fact is, we don't deal with any of the problems to any significant extent. I say we tackle all these problems simultaneously why choose one then the other, etc. And to boot, this article suggests a practical option that exists now, which is switching the way we produce fireworks today!
Great idea to avoid exposure, except that it doesnt address the issue pointed out IN THE SUMMARY, that says the endocrine disrupters are getting into THE WATER SUPPLY. If you go swimming in that lake they shoot your fireworks over even a week after the event, you are being exposed to very high doses! Unless of course you live in a county where your environmental regulator has said it is not acceptable use as recreational water source, which is evidence of the symptom itself. Also, many of the drinking water supplies come from some of these water supplies, as a result, we may be consuming some of these chemicals. Sure, water treatment may address some of them, but then there is the problem of disinfection by-products which is a problem all in itself. All in all, the point is, many of the activities we partake in, are ruining the health of surroundings, and as a result, is ruining the health of our species...
Stepping down to your "one-way" metaphor as an example. Originally TV was broadcast over the air as-is by forcing it with high wattage. Now it is transmitted through wiring that allows one to access it with interfaces that change content delivery, etc. It certainly makes it harder to index cable television compared to a fixed content schedule, but it is still done. Also, I dont think anyone would say its no longer TV, its just not your parents TV.
This is my concern; corporations are now in the business of making it sexy to make your life as public as possible. As a recent post I made questioned if this is fair or even a good idea for the general public was modded to obscurity. But this is exactly what I was trying to say. Granted these are public internet (and thus virtual...) spaces, but the result as we slide down the slippery slope government and corporations are greasing up for us is that we then are stuck with the "fact" that "its nobody but our own faults".
But seriously, I appreciate the majority of/.'ers who seem to champion privacy rights and issues, but whats the point of fighting for these rights if we are just going to turn around and voluntary post descriptions of our activities, locations of these activities, and photographic evidence with it? Sort of flys in the face of that mentality. Not to say that those who support our privacy rights are doing it, but it certainly undermines the fight...
We are getting measures mixed up here; they are not measuring the number of atoms for the kilogram, as that is not a measure of mass. They are measuring the number of atoms to make Avogardo's constant exact and tying it to the kilogram! They will define a specific number of atoms in a certain amount of the substance then saying that the kilogram is defined as the mass contained in X number of atoms!
In fact, this change in the kilogram is coupled with a change in avogadro's constant to make one immutable and the other exact!
Well, the problem comes from some changes in definition of SI Units. Most notably between relative changes in mass from the standard kilogram which introduces uncertainty to any measurement. Also, this change can tie Avogadro's constant to the kilogram as a result! Currently it is a measure of atoms/molecules in a gram of substance (with units of inverse mol), and as a result is not exact. By making it unitless as tying it to a count of the kilogram atoms the measure can now be exact!
You seem to be missing a fundamental flaw in the argument. No matter how many parameters you account for a) you can never account for ALL parameters of this system we call life (if for no other reason, there may well be some we dont know about yet!), and b) most importantly, even if you DO have all the parameters and the results show a correlation, there is no logical jump one can make that says it is the cause of the observed behavior.
Truly what yesterday's article was saying is that causation or correlation is meaningless if you have a mimic of the real world in the form of a collection of data. You don't need a model that is accurate or valid or anything. You just need to run the data in the exact replica of reality. This is the simulacrum. The first problem is that data does not just run itself. At the least it needs an algorithm to be processed to a result. Thats the model, without its just useless data, which has been mentioned already yesterday in comments. But second, the problem with even ATTEMPTING such an idea is that you lead yourself into a situation where you "predict" the future and then operate to become that future thus destroying the creative nature of humanity and become the self-fulling prophecy of machine code!
Keep in mind i speak mostly of social sciences that try to pattern human behavior. For hard sciences, etc., all you have done is created a simulation of reality, but it tells you nothing about the reality. It merely mimics it. There is no insight into creating a map the size of the United States, at best it is a work of art.
Truly, the whole reason someone like Mr. Anderson could claim the end of science because of data is that he is a writer, a thinker, and large part businessman. Businessmen do not think about Science and how to use it to come with a method that produces a conclusion. He uses information to come up with ways to illicit a reaction in people. So to him data is more important than science because he uses it for his purposes. That is marketing, and the "science" of marketing has almost always been that way.
Mr. Anderson was not prescient in any way, he was just speaking his perspective. The only thing is we must be careful to even consider his proposition as a valid reality worth pursuing. Not for true scientists, but from a social perspective, or it will truly be the end of science. There are some in power as it is already attempting to make this happen.
That said, I almost consider responding to yesterday's article as falling for the argument. But, since it hit the/. this article is as cogent a rebuttal as one can make.
Anyone who has read any work by Lyotard, Baudrillard, or Derrida has seen this interpretation of reality coming for years. This is basically the consequence of the Post-modernist/Post-structuralist mentality.
In a sense, what the article is proposing is the "simulation" of reality in a computer system based on the available "data". This simulation as i will suppose in a moment is merely a flawed model since the data being related must in some sense be based on an algorithm which inherently MIMICS reality and is not a substitution for it (no matter how, "accurate" agreement). But nonetheless, the result of this as Baudrillard observed is not a simulation but a simulacrum of reality and eventually will take the place of reality. The implication is that reality is not created or manufactured by the interaction of people in a "real" sense but is actually lead by the operation of the simulacrum!
Nonetheless, the fact is there is no possible way to store ALL the data of the entire world (since some data is not recordable by a binary machine, and no a "quantum" computer is the solution to say it can be); however, the problem is this fact does not mean we cannot be mislead by the simulacrum and be lead into a future where human interaction is as I would call inhuman, but as some who have (in some cases unknowingly) fallen for the post-modern myth would call it merely an evolutionary result of human-interaction.
In the future the storage of data, the usage of data, and the power of data will have a huge impact on our humanity as the past twenty years should already be evidence of. I am not an apocalyptic fear-monger, but the proof is in the pudding. For further reading, I recommend a highly prescient book written in 1990 by a Mr. Mark Poster called the Mode of Information which talks about some of these implications which are in the process of becoming as we speak
I have been waiting since i read the novels to see how they would pull off a God Emperor of Dune movie. I have always been in doubt they would ever attempt such a feat. The effects needed alone to pull off the first movie only recently hit its stride. In that case, to have the main character of your movie be a 1,000-foot long worm is probably pretty difficult.
That being said, the Children of Dune mini-series was a remarkably close approximation to how I see God Emperor of Dune. If they took that as a model then took it to the next level in terms of sets and effects, you might be able to have a blockbuster on your hands.
Quite frankly though, there is no ability to put these books into a movie form unless you commit the money and resources to create an epic on the scale of LOTR. Even if they did, there is a high risk that it wouldn't even gross half of what LOTR did.
Slashdot Mirror
Let be honest folks, this is just the next step in the information war. It has nothing to do with telling the "real" story or giving us any understanding of the issues wikileaks revealed. Instead it is just an attempt to make a circus sideshow out of a non-issue. Meanwhile the foot soldiers throw their potshots as evidenced on the replys at slashdot and around the web. Worse yet, if it becomes a box office bomb (which i easily envision) it becomes a "who cares about assange" issue. The free-market will have spoken on what is more important in the information war....
I cant say it helped me grow in terms of conceptual reasoning skills but it definitely breathed brand new life into my computing knowledge.
:/) at the command line to calculate prorogation of laser modes through different lenses, etc.
I am late to the party myself, I first ran into Linux about 2001 at the University of Florida in the astrophysics lab I worked at. The lab was making parts for the LIGO project which I was really happy to be a part of. They were using a version of SuSe (german lab manager
I wasn't that into it.
About a year later a roommate of mine installed Mandrake on our hub computer to route the home network and since I was in-between computers at the time I used that terminal as my main computer. Thats when I started really getting into Linux.
About two years after that (after finishing school and having the time I wanted to commit to learning it) I tried my first install and as a glutton for punishment but thinking that Gentoo was the most suited distro for my liking (which it is) I picked up Gentoo 2004.0. I couldnt figure out that install for about four months. When I finally learned gentoo which really taught me a lot about computing and Linux in general I was hooked and I have been an avid Gentoo user since. This is really how Linux expanded my understanding of computing to the next level.
And no I am not Asian. And yes, I think Gentoo is the most underrated and underappreciated distro out there.
Since then I have tried about every distro but I also come home to Gentoo (altho my netbook these days has ubuntu on it for simplicity sake).
VIVA LINUX!
Kings edict things; Obama is setting policy for a free and open democratic society. Bush edicted things.
you have a very rigid way of thinking? Why do you think the problems that repeat have the same solution every century? We are in different times and so different solutions are needed. You could have said the same thing about Clinton coming into office actually, and he turned around an economy and provided needed services to our country. Obama could easily repeat that success; the question is can he come up with positive solutions, or use the same tired thinking that got us into the mess of the last eight years? My money is on he can do it.
On the point of streaming radio, some of us broadcasters are struggling to meet the regulations, you can hear our listener-supported, progressive radio station at the listen live link at the top of the page for WTUL New Orleans
But, numbers are so _disposable_! I want to see a Linux v1,000,000 one day, which would only be like Linux 4.20.436-r2 in the current numbering scheme. Think of all the unused numbers out there in the interim!
These changes will now make 2008, THE year for the linux desktop!
First of all, shouldnt this be on idle.slashdot.org... since its a time-waster and all?
That said, I don't have to worry about leaving laptops since I rarely take one home. However, being a government contractor, I do use a CAC which allows me access to my laptop. Leaving that at the house is effectively like leaving my laptop at the house. There have been numerous occasions where I have left my card at the house and had to the "drive of shame". Within the last two or three months, though, I have been riding to work, so in that case I have to do the "ride of shame".
For number 4), probably your best choice is Steven Weinberg's books: The Quantum Theory of Fields. It is a three volume set, and can be pretty pricey, but its a gold standard for sure. Many of the studies of Cosmology and Astrophysics are these days bound with QED and QM because quite often you are looking for undiscovered particles hanging out in space. Beyond that, the mathematical systems that explain quanta of fields for instance obviously extrapolate to vast expanses by way of symmetry! Get this book and understand it, you will thank me later!
It is very embiggening of you to make this comment!
I think the poster was trying to point out SCOTUS, which in the end of any lawsuit involving this will be the final naysayer to free use. Although, there was a different time...
Well, Dog, I agree with your premise... but unfortunately you _do_ have a web premise. At the very least, you have a presence on /. at the very least. Yes, I do not have facebook/myspace other, but I am on other sites all over the web. If you search for DogDude and slashdot for instance, you may be surprised what pops up.
That said, you are right, just having a web presence doesn't protect you from this sort of thing, actually, it may hardly insulate you. If a page generator puts your name in some combination amongst fifty goats.cx terms, well all its going to do is pop it up next to your registration with catholic.org
Ensuring a web presence only makes you more searchable on the web. It would be like expecting becoming famous in the movie industry would somehow protect you from scandal if a tabloid printed a story you were cheating on your wife. Gee, no one in the public would ever believe THAT!
You create a false dichotomy between dealing with this problem and dealing with the others. Fact is, we don't deal with any of the problems to any significant extent. I say we tackle all these problems simultaneously why choose one then the other, etc. And to boot, this article suggests a practical option that exists now, which is switching the way we produce fireworks today!
Great idea to avoid exposure, except that it doesnt address the issue pointed out IN THE SUMMARY, that says the endocrine disrupters are getting into THE WATER SUPPLY. If you go swimming in that lake they shoot your fireworks over even a week after the event, you are being exposed to very high doses! Unless of course you live in a county where your environmental regulator has said it is not acceptable use as recreational water source, which is evidence of the symptom itself. Also, many of the drinking water supplies come from some of these water supplies, as a result, we may be consuming some of these chemicals. Sure, water treatment may address some of them, but then there is the problem of disinfection by-products which is a problem all in itself. All in all, the point is, many of the activities we partake in, are ruining the health of surroundings, and as a result, is ruining the health of our species...
Good Point! Marshall is that you?
Stepping down to your "one-way" metaphor as an example. Originally TV was broadcast over the air as-is by forcing it with high wattage. Now it is transmitted through wiring that allows one to access it with interfaces that change content delivery, etc. It certainly makes it harder to index cable television compared to a fixed content schedule, but it is still done. Also, I dont think anyone would say its no longer TV, its just not your parents TV.
No, everybody knows, the INTERNET is for porn!
This is my concern; corporations are now in the business of making it sexy to make your life as public as possible. As a recent post I made questioned if this is fair or even a good idea for the general public was modded to obscurity. But this is exactly what I was trying to say. Granted these are public internet (and thus virtual...) spaces, but the result as we slide down the slippery slope government and corporations are greasing up for us is that we then are stuck with the "fact" that "its nobody but our own faults".
Buzzword, q.e.d.
/.'ers who seem to champion privacy rights and issues, but whats the point of fighting for these rights if we are just going to turn around and voluntary post descriptions of our activities, locations of these activities, and photographic evidence with it? Sort of flys in the face of that mentality. Not to say that those who support our privacy rights are doing it, but it certainly undermines the fight...
But seriously, I appreciate the majority of
We are getting measures mixed up here; they are not measuring the number of atoms for the kilogram, as that is not a measure of mass. They are measuring the number of atoms to make Avogardo's constant exact and tying it to the kilogram! They will define a specific number of atoms in a certain amount of the substance then saying that the kilogram is defined as the mass contained in X number of atoms!
In fact, this change in the kilogram is coupled with a change in avogadro's constant to make one immutable and the other exact!
Well, the problem comes from some changes in definition of SI Units. Most notably between relative changes in mass from the standard kilogram which introduces uncertainty to any measurement. Also, this change can tie Avogadro's constant to the kilogram as a result! Currently it is a measure of atoms/molecules in a gram of substance (with units of inverse mol), and as a result is not exact. By making it unitless as tying it to a count of the kilogram atoms the measure can now be exact!
No. You must not have mercy on a failing opponent. You have to go for the kill to win. Otherwise they come back bigger and stronger than before.
You seem to be missing a fundamental flaw in the argument. No matter how many parameters you account for a) you can never account for ALL parameters of this system we call life (if for no other reason, there may well be some we dont know about yet!), and b) most importantly, even if you DO have all the parameters and the results show a correlation, there is no logical jump one can make that says it is the cause of the observed behavior.
Truly what yesterday's article was saying is that causation or correlation is meaningless if you have a mimic of the real world in the form of a collection of data. You don't need a model that is accurate or valid or anything. You just need to run the data in the exact replica of reality. This is the simulacrum. The first problem is that data does not just run itself. At the least it needs an algorithm to be processed to a result. Thats the model, without its just useless data, which has been mentioned already yesterday in comments. But second, the problem with even ATTEMPTING such an idea is that you lead yourself into a situation where you "predict" the future and then operate to become that future thus destroying the creative nature of humanity and become the self-fulling prophecy of machine code!
Keep in mind i speak mostly of social sciences that try to pattern human behavior. For hard sciences, etc., all you have done is created a simulation of reality, but it tells you nothing about the reality. It merely mimics it. There is no insight into creating a map the size of the United States, at best it is a work of art.
Truly, the whole reason someone like Mr. Anderson could claim the end of science because of data is that he is a writer, a thinker, and large part businessman. Businessmen do not think about Science and how to use it to come with a method that produces a conclusion. He uses information to come up with ways to illicit a reaction in people. So to him data is more important than science because he uses it for his purposes. That is marketing, and the "science" of marketing has almost always been that way.
/. this article is as cogent a rebuttal as one can make.
Mr. Anderson was not prescient in any way, he was just speaking his perspective. The only thing is we must be careful to even consider his proposition as a valid reality worth pursuing. Not for true scientists, but from a social perspective, or it will truly be the end of science. There are some in power as it is already attempting to make this happen.
That said, I almost consider responding to yesterday's article as falling for the argument. But, since it hit the
Anyone who has read any work by Lyotard, Baudrillard, or Derrida has seen this interpretation of reality coming for years. This is basically the consequence of the Post-modernist/Post-structuralist mentality.
In a sense, what the article is proposing is the "simulation" of reality in a computer system based on the available "data". This simulation as i will suppose in a moment is merely a flawed model since the data being related must in some sense be based on an algorithm which inherently MIMICS reality and is not a substitution for it (no matter how, "accurate" agreement). But nonetheless, the result of this as Baudrillard observed is not a simulation but a simulacrum of reality and eventually will take the place of reality. The implication is that reality is not created or manufactured by the interaction of people in a "real" sense but is actually lead by the operation of the simulacrum!
Nonetheless, the fact is there is no possible way to store ALL the data of the entire world (since some data is not recordable by a binary machine, and no a "quantum" computer is the solution to say it can be); however, the problem is this fact does not mean we cannot be mislead by the simulacrum and be lead into a future where human interaction is as I would call inhuman, but as some who have (in some cases unknowingly) fallen for the post-modern myth would call it merely an evolutionary result of human-interaction.
In the future the storage of data, the usage of data, and the power of data will have a huge impact on our humanity as the past twenty years should already be evidence of. I am not an apocalyptic fear-monger, but the proof is in the pudding. For further reading, I recommend a highly prescient book written in 1990 by a Mr. Mark Poster called the Mode of Information which talks about some of these implications which are in the process of becoming as we speak
I have been waiting since i read the novels to see how they would pull off a God Emperor of Dune movie. I have always been in doubt they would ever attempt such a feat. The effects needed alone to pull off the first movie only recently hit its stride. In that case, to have the main character of your movie be a 1,000-foot long worm is probably pretty difficult.
That being said, the Children of Dune mini-series was a remarkably close approximation to how I see God Emperor of Dune. If they took that as a model then took it to the next level in terms of sets and effects, you might be able to have a blockbuster on your hands.
Quite frankly though, there is no ability to put these books into a movie form unless you commit the money and resources to create an epic on the scale of LOTR. Even if they did, there is a high risk that it wouldn't even gross half of what LOTR did.