OK, this is going to get some people pissed, but it is my honest opinion and I am not doing this to troll. There are a lot of scientific areas that are promoted to get peoples careers going. In fact, they are largely vaporware. Here are some examples:
1. Robotics. Most of academic robotics is pretty lame. The good people go into industry. Consider for example Michael Raibert and Big Dog. (Look on youtube.) This guy is a true genius, so he left MIT. Most robotics that you see in the media are really bad. Like Alan Alda talking to a robot that "has emotions".
2. Wavelets. First of all, was invented a long time ago. Its just another choice of basis. Not clear if they are the best for compression or denoising. Look closely and you will see that classical harmonic analysis provides a good competing answer. Jpeg2000 may be better than jpg but not clear if it is due to the use of wavelets, or because of the fact that they had like 40 people working on the lossless coding scheme, which is an ad hoc heuristic. And besides, how many of us are using jpg2000 ? Finally, people I know that work in it say "I just use the haar basis". Haar found this basis in something like 1912.
3. Chaos. By definition hard to appy to experimental science. As mention the mathematical theory is super hard. McMullen won a Fields medal for it. Work by Sullivan and Duordy is awesome, but they aren't claiming to connect it to experiments.
4. Catastrophe theory. This was the 60s and 70s version of wavelets. Hardly mentioned in the media anyone, and mostly the people who work on it are pure mathematicians.
5. Artificial intelligence. Goedel Escher Bach had our hopes up. But nothing ever happened. It' too hard. People claim breakthoughs all the time, but wheres the beef ?
6. Computer vision. A total mess. They don't even read each others papers and are busy reproducing each other's work, with tends to be some hacks that work only in limited conditions. Remember the MIT face recognition program after 9/11 that was at the Statue of Liberty ? They failed it!
Its controversial that he was the first. A lot of people worked on this area. In fact, it is controversial that chaos will ever contribute to science in any way. The pure mathematical theory is very hard. See the work by Curt McMullen for example. Many people I know are very skeptical, and there are a lot of bad papers purporting to use chaos theory.
I've remember that. How about someone killed by one of these ground based robots in combat ? (Aside from developments accidents - wasn't there one of those recently ? Although not with a mobile robot though I think...)
Can you have signs in English anywhere in Quebec ? (Business, private, whatever) An honest question - I am just wondering if it is an urban legend that you can't.
they will release it, but it will just be a repackaged version of xp. They probably want to switch back to it without anyone really knowing. It like the "new coke"
I used to look forward to reading what he had to say - in the 1990's. Now when I see these articles about what the almightly Bruce Schneier says I cringe. He did some decent work, but I think the main reason for his high profile comes from a book which was essentially a derivative of several other classic tomes in cryptography, like Stinson. For me, he has become the Dvorak of security.
I agree. I don't get the Beatles thing at all. I agree with Michael Stipe of REM, who referred to their music as "elevator music". Maybe it was ground breaking at the time, but it doesn't hold up.
In classical music there is the phenomenon that often when new styles began, the composers doing the new style were not so hot. After the style matured, the music got better. Early Baroque, classical and romantic music are examples. Although I guess Beethoven was a pretty damn good bridge between classical and romantic style.
I am not sure if you are joking, but I think that in the mid 90s this was essentially the case in the beginning of the "e-commerce" boom. And it is probably the biggest reason pressure for increased bandwidth.
Actually, no, unless he means to include AAA, for example. He only means RIAA and MPAA, so one proper expression (there are different conventions) would be {RI, MP}AA.
Given that, I want to use this opportunity to implore all slashdotters to use {uni,linu}x, instead of *nix. This is a serious problem!
Europe is an interesting mixture of what in the US would be called left and right. For example, France, which is general considered quite to the left (Sarkozy aside for the moment) requires that a certain fixed percentage of all music played on the radio be in French. So you couldn't have an all Arabic music station. Americans would flip out if something like that was tried in the US because of the constitution.
1. The government is asking you what religion you are on your tax forms at all, and that they will be the instrument of collection for the "official" churches of Germany.
2. That if you are a Catholic, but don't want to pay the tax, you have to lie to the government and say you aren't. In which case you are "removed" from the church and can't have a church wedding.
3. That you have to tell the government when you move (police station, town hall, whatever) ?
4. Assigned an official religion by the state, based on what you parent were/are ? This in itself might be the worst of all of it!
I was told that by a German friend. (My advisor actually.) He left Germany in part because he found it very stifling, especially academically. If it has changed, perhaps some readers can tell us about this. But it certainly was this way until recently.
He complained about a lot of things like this. He was really angry when he went back for a visit with his kids and a restaurant wouldn't let him eat there if he brought them in. This is the kind of paternal attitude that he didn't like in general about the culture. OK, admittedly, that isn't about wiretapping....
Not really. When you move to a new neighborhood you have to register with the local police station. And the Catholic church by default gets money out of your paycheck. You have to request otherwise.
Yes, I remember well my youth, reading Goedel Escher Bach and Winograd, etc., thinking that the next scientific revolution was coming. Things never got any better than Eliza. Now as a hard scientist, I strongly feel that the problem is far far off.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, this is going to get some people pissed, but it is my honest opinion and I am not doing this to troll. There are a lot of scientific areas that are promoted to get peoples careers going. In fact, they are largely vaporware. Here are some examples:
1. Robotics. Most of academic robotics is pretty lame. The good people go into industry. Consider for example Michael Raibert and Big Dog. (Look on youtube.) This guy is a true genius, so he left MIT. Most robotics that you see in the media are really bad. Like Alan Alda talking to a robot that "has emotions".
2. Wavelets. First of all, was invented a long time ago. Its just another choice of basis. Not clear if they are the best for compression or denoising. Look closely and you will see that classical harmonic analysis provides a good competing answer. Jpeg2000 may be better than jpg but not clear if it is due to the use of wavelets, or because of the fact that they had like 40 people working on the lossless coding scheme, which is an ad hoc heuristic. And besides, how many of us are using jpg2000 ? Finally, people I know that work in it say "I just use the haar basis". Haar found this basis in something like 1912.
3. Chaos. By definition hard to appy to experimental science. As mention the mathematical theory is super hard. McMullen won a Fields medal for it. Work by Sullivan and Duordy is awesome, but they aren't claiming to connect it to experiments.
4. Catastrophe theory. This was the 60s and 70s version of wavelets. Hardly mentioned in the media anyone, and mostly the people who work on it are pure mathematicians.
5. Artificial intelligence. Goedel Escher Bach had our hopes up. But nothing ever happened. It' too hard. People claim breakthoughs all the time, but wheres the beef ?
6. Computer vision. A total mess. They don't even read each others papers and are busy reproducing each other's work, with tends to be some hacks that work only in limited conditions. Remember the MIT face recognition program after 9/11 that was at the Statue of Liberty ? They failed it!
Its controversial that he was the first. A lot of people worked on this area. In fact, it is controversial that chaos will ever contribute to science in any way. The pure mathematical theory is very hard. See the work by Curt McMullen for example. Many people I know are very skeptical, and there are a lot of bad papers purporting to use chaos theory.
that we totally defeat the Bikini Atoll in a nuclear war!! Woo go USA
It was silly though, back when US sentiment was so against Bikini Atoll, that everyone decided to change the name "Bikini" to "Freedom suit."
I've remember that. How about someone killed by one of these ground based robots in combat ? (Aside from developments accidents - wasn't there one of those recently ? Although not with a mobile robot though I think...)
Has one of them ever killed someone ?
Can you have signs in English anywhere in Quebec ? (Business, private, whatever) An honest question - I am just wondering if it is an urban legend that you can't.
I am going to wait at least 2 years. DVD's are fine for me. Maybe a drive for storage though.
they will release it, but it will just be a repackaged version of xp. They probably want to switch back to it without anyone really knowing. It like the "new coke"
I predict many conspiracy theories in the future regarding the maintainers of this site. Assasinations, bribes, etc.
I used to look forward to reading what he had to say - in the 1990's. Now when I see these articles about what the almightly Bruce Schneier says I cringe. He did some decent work, but I think the main reason for his high profile comes from a book which was essentially a derivative of several other classic tomes in cryptography, like Stinson. For me, he has become the Dvorak of security.
Yes, it is good to keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer.
Actually, if you look at the SIlmarillion, the Lord of the Rings is described in about 2 pages.
It doesn't bother me at all. Not sure why. Just personal preference I guess.
SMOKE MARLBORO
I agree. I don't get the Beatles thing at all. I agree with Michael Stipe of REM, who referred to their music as "elevator music". Maybe it was ground breaking at the time, but it doesn't hold up.
In classical music there is the phenomenon that often when new styles began, the composers doing the new style were not so hot. After the style matured, the music got better. Early Baroque, classical and romantic music are examples. Although I guess Beethoven was a pretty damn good bridge between classical and romantic style.
I am not sure if you are joking, but I think that in the mid 90s this was essentially the case in the beginning of the "e-commerce" boom. And it is probably the biggest reason pressure for increased bandwidth.
Actually, no, unless he means to include AAA, for example. He only means RIAA and MPAA, so one proper expression (there are different conventions) would be {RI, MP}AA.
Given that, I want to use this opportunity to implore all slashdotters to use {uni,linu}x, instead of *nix. This is a serious problem!
It doesn't stand for zero. It stands for the epsilon string, or "more". It's called the Kleene closure.
Europe is an interesting mixture of what in the US would be called left and right. For example, France, which is general considered quite to the left (Sarkozy aside for the moment) requires that a certain fixed percentage of all music played on the radio be in French. So you couldn't have an all Arabic music station. Americans would flip out if something like that was tried in the US because of the constitution.
But don't you find it crazy that
1. The government is asking you what religion you are on your tax forms at all, and that they will be the instrument of collection for the "official" churches of Germany.
2. That if you are a Catholic, but don't want to pay the tax, you have to lie to the government and say you aren't. In which case you are "removed" from the church and can't have a church wedding.
3. That you have to tell the government when you move (police station, town hall, whatever) ?
4. Assigned an official religion by the state, based on what you parent were/are ? This in itself might be the worst of all of it!
I was told that by a German friend. (My advisor actually.) He left Germany in part because he found it very stifling, especially academically. If it has changed, perhaps some readers can tell us about this. But it certainly was this way until recently.
He complained about a lot of things like this. He was really angry when he went back for a visit with his kids and a restaurant wouldn't let him eat there if he brought them in. This is the kind of paternal attitude that he didn't like in general about the culture. OK, admittedly, that isn't about wiretapping....
Not really. When you move to a new neighborhood you have to register with the local police station. And the Catholic church by default gets money out of your paycheck. You have to request otherwise.
Yes, I remember well my youth, reading Goedel Escher Bach and Winograd, etc., thinking that the next scientific revolution was coming. Things never got any better than Eliza. Now as a hard scientist, I strongly feel that the problem is far far off.
Definitely true when it comes to food.
It will be the Japanese buying Rockefellar center all over again. They'll lose and it will throw us into a worse economic state.
OK here is Cory Doctorow discussing it.