RMS' idea sounds kind of neat, but it suffers from a fatal problem: All that happens when you force crazy high taxes onto big companies is that they leave the US. This is exactly what's happening in France right now, with their recent tax reforms.
The correct solution, as others have already pointed out, is to simply let these companies fail. Funnily, the "experts" who said "if we let Citibank/MorganStanley/etc fail society will turn into a Mad Maxian nightmare where we'll all be forced into cannibalism" are the exact same people who would have lost a lot of money without a bailout.
The reason companies like Google give priority to people with degrees is because a degree is a signal that you're the kind of person that can complete a hard task (finishing college, in this case.)
They care less about the knowledge you attained at school.
The reason geeks look down on college is because the vast majority of colleges/universities set their bar too low. College professors and students are insulated from market forces and over time this has eroded the system.
BTW, I worked 40 hours a week as a video game developer in college, and still pulled out an A- average at my crappy school (USF) for a Biology degree, even though I skipped most of the classes to go to work.
I think I learned about 10x from my job, where we had to deliver a marketable product on a tight deadline, than I ever learned at my college. Wish I would have skipped that colossal waste of time.
Agreed. It's important to note as well that he's planning on staying on as CEO during the leave, involved in strategic decisions. He's _probably_ expecting to be in pretty good shape during the leave- If he was getting another transplant or some other serious surgery I think the statement describing the leave would _probably_ be worded differently.
Re:Thanks, was able to buy and read right now
on
Land of Lisp
·
· Score: 4, Informative
My understanding is you'll be able to download the mobi/epub versions for free when they become available if you buy the PDF now.
Re:Hi- I'm the Author
on
Land of Lisp
·
· Score: 3, Informative
For some reason, mopi and epub files take a couple extra weeks to make. They should be appearing on nostarch.com and amazon in a couple of weeks.
Re:Hi- I'm the Author
on
Land of Lisp
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I'd be glad to give you some pointers:)
Hi- I'm the Author
on
Land of Lisp
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Pay no attention to my user name- I promise to respectfully answer any questions you may have, about Lisp or the book!
IT and Medicine are a Bad Fit
on
IT and Health Care
·
· Score: 5, Informative
One thing everyone seems to be missing here (including the author of the article) is that medical data is an odd duck that just doesn't fit easily into a digital record. (I'm an MD, a medical informatics guy and CTO at a medical software company)
If you're running a McDonalds you can easily computerize everything: You have a fixed menu your customers can choose from, and every purchase can easily be stuffed into a relational table. Medicine isn't like that.
Trying to enter a patient encounter into a contemporary medical record system is an extremely unsatisfying experience: Humans are just weird and idiosyncratic and every time you treat someone there will be parts of the patient visit you can't represent symbolically in a piece of software. This is still largely an unsolved problem- If you read the literature on Description Logics you'll see that even PhD logicians have a hard time symbolically storing this kind of abstract data into a piece of software, let alone a doc with little computer training.
Because of this, most current record systems use a lot of "free text" for storing medical info, which is a pretty ugly hack and everyone realizes this.
I think this is a major reason for the problems people have with digital records: They don't work very well right now for fully capturing a patient encounter in a rigorous, symbolic fashion.
There's certain advantages to having (A) the GPU functionality integrated in the CPU (cost, certain performance aspects, others) and some to having it (B) in a separate GPU (more easily upgraded, more real estate, less heat problems)...
Every once in a while an unrelated tech innovation comes around that benefits (A) or (B) in some indirect fashion. It could be faster bus speeds, more sophisticated GPU instruction sets, etc etc etc. Doesn't really matter what they are, but they happen all the time and each may benefit (A) or (B) more than the other.
So currently we are at a time when (B) is the standard design- GPU and CPU remain separate. Whenever an innovation has come along that benefits (B) more it has been integrated into the latest NVIDIA or ATI design. Whenever something that benefits (A) has come along it has been ignored in the last few years... this probably includes things such as the balooning costs of the GPUs, difficulty in getting GPUs into now popular laptop form factors, texture latency, etc. etc....so finally the innovations for design (A) are reaching a critical mass... all those innovations that recently couldn't be pounced upon because of the separation of GPU/CPU are now making (A) looking pretty damn nice again.
This CPU/GPU cycle happens every few years... We've been in an (A) cycle many times before- Remember what MMX was originally for? It was because we didn't have GPUs and couldn't do efficient block operations for video at the time... Remember the IBM PCjr? That was arguably another (A) cycle because IBM wanted to save money on circuitry/memory for the video subsystem, which is arguably just a primitive form of a GPU.
This GPU->CPU oscillation has been, and will continue to be, going on forever.
> Real world intelligence is not lossless. The algorithms only have to be right most of the time to be effective.
Right- then all you need to do is run the data through the AI system and make a list of the few times it is wrong- This would be a small list. Then add this list to the end of the compressed data- If the AI is any good then you should still have fantastic compression.
...so now you've taken intelligence that is "lossy" and made it "lossless" in a highly efficient manner.
...I can't see how your argument disproves the central premise...
> Taking data that is not a document, mangling it into a document and serving it up is a bad idea.
If you asynchronously fetch data (ala XML) and format it onto the screen as a document with Javascript using AJAX this is clearly a danger. But "serve up data, not documents" is definitely a philosphy behind AJAX.
AJAX is actually made up of a bunch of separate ideas from the last five years, each of them too small to penetrate the fog of internet... But the term AJAX just triggered all of these ideas as a group into a "Cognitive Avalanche" (to possibly coin a new term:-)
The ideas are as follows:
Javascript, despite what people used to think, is actually quite powerful and well designed
Google and their employees are super smart- Maybe if you look at their source code you can capture some of their magic
Humans are kind of primitive- If you make your program do something flashy while fetching its data (as opposed to just freezing up the browser for a few seconds as a page loads) the humans think your software isn't as slow as it actually is.
You know, browsers have this thing called DOM that allows for ultra-powerful tweaking of web pages
Standard web forms are slower and more tedious than you think
The web used to serve up documents- That is a bad idea: Serving up data would is a better idea
In an ideal world, all the world's software/data/operatingsystems/etc would just live on the web
None of these ideas were really important enough to push through to the web developer consiousness and have just kind of quietly developing while no one was noticing- Then some dude calls this stuff AJAX and BAM! the web 2-dot-whatever avalanche begins in earnest.
> as (then) [Nu] of a cone [Kappa][Theta] where from the height of [Nu] of the cone (thus) the circle [Nu] to the diameter around the circle [Beta][Zeta]...
Thanks for hunting that down- I think that's great! I just wish they would work that fragment into the introductory section of the website- Anyone who's ever had geometry in high school can gleem all kinds of useful things about this fragment:
1. It shows without much doubt to anyone that they have achieved success, by a direct example.
2. The text they found really does cover meaty (by ancient greek standards) mathematical concepts- It's not just Archimedes talking about something that that he was less of an authority in and therefore potentially less interesting (like whether god is a "trinity" or a "quadrinity" or some other equivalently esoteric thing ancient scientists often worried about)
3. They were able to read enough info to deduce entire sentences, not just words
4. Since similar things (circles, cones) are discussed in school to this day, it shows a seemingly direct link between modern mathematics and Archimedal mathematics
5. Archimedes clearly thought about some incredibly abstract things- His far more well known law of bouyancy wasn't just a lucky accident.
Slashdot Mirror
RMS' idea sounds kind of neat, but it suffers from a fatal problem: All that happens when you force crazy high taxes onto big companies is that they leave the US. This is exactly what's happening in France right now, with their recent tax reforms.
The correct solution, as others have already pointed out, is to simply let these companies fail. Funnily, the "experts" who said "if we let Citibank/MorganStanley/etc fail society will turn into a Mad Maxian nightmare where we'll all be forced into cannibalism" are the exact same people who would have lost a lot of money without a bailout.
The bureaucratic bullshit _is_ the hard task :-)
No, I think going to an elite school, assuming it is affordable to you, may be worth it. I don't know, because I didn't have that opportunity.
Fair enough- I meant that colleges are insulated from the kind of market forces that lead to high achievement.
Instead, they are affected by market forces filled with perverse incentives that have little to do with achievement.
The reason companies like Google give priority to people with degrees is because a degree is a signal that you're the kind of person that can complete a hard task (finishing college, in this case.)
They care less about the knowledge you attained at school.
I disagree. I think colleges are under pressure to give the _appearance_ of "teaching skills that will get students jobs".
I think my mistake was the school I went to, not the major.
The reason geeks look down on college is because the vast majority of colleges/universities set their bar too low. College professors and students are insulated from market forces and over time this has eroded the system.
BTW, I worked 40 hours a week as a video game developer in college, and still pulled out an A- average at my crappy school (USF) for a Biology degree, even though I skipped most of the classes to go to work.
I think I learned about 10x from my job, where we had to deliver a marketable product on a tight deadline, than I ever learned at my college. Wish I would have skipped that colossal waste of time.
Agreed. It's important to note as well that he's planning on staying on as CEO during the leave, involved in strategic decisions. He's _probably_ expecting to be in pretty good shape during the leave- If he was getting another transplant or some other serious surgery I think the statement describing the leave would _probably_ be worded differently.
It's down about 10% now in Frankfurt- This seems like too much to me. Steve's health issues are already priced into the stock.
I bet it will be down more around ~6% when the US stock opens. I'm tempted to buy some stock on the Frankfurt market.
i also love clojure. rich hickey is an amazing designer.
i've used that name for a long time- Not sure who was first.
i think it's from the "jargon file".
It's a lot of work to write a book. I'm a big fan of Scheme, but this isn't in the cards at this very moment.
Actually, it looks like the mobi & epub just became available!
http://nostarch.com/lisp.htm
My understanding is you'll be able to download the mobi/epub versions for free when they become available if you buy the PDF now.
For some reason, mopi and epub files take a couple extra weeks to make. They should be appearing on nostarch.com and amazon in a couple of weeks.
I'd be glad to give you some pointers :)
Pay no attention to my user name- I promise to respectfully answer any questions you may have, about Lisp or the book!
One thing everyone seems to be missing here (including the author of the article) is that medical data is an odd duck that just doesn't fit easily into a digital record. (I'm an MD, a medical informatics guy and CTO at a medical software company)
If you're running a McDonalds you can easily computerize everything: You have a fixed menu your customers can choose from, and every purchase can easily be stuffed into a relational table. Medicine isn't like that.
Trying to enter a patient encounter into a contemporary medical record system is an extremely unsatisfying experience: Humans are just weird and idiosyncratic and every time you treat someone there will be parts of the patient visit you can't represent symbolically in a piece of software. This is still largely an unsolved problem- If you read the literature on Description Logics you'll see that even PhD logicians have a hard time symbolically storing this kind of abstract data into a piece of software, let alone a doc with little computer training.
Because of this, most current record systems use a lot of "free text" for storing medical info, which is a pretty ugly hack and everyone realizes this.
I think this is a major reason for the problems people have with digital records: They don't work very well right now for fully capturing a patient encounter in a rigorous, symbolic fashion.
Obama wasn't part of MLK's dream...
There's certain advantages to having (A) the GPU functionality integrated in the CPU (cost, certain performance aspects, others) and some to having it (B) in a separate GPU (more easily upgraded, more real estate, less heat problems)...
...so finally the innovations for design (A) are reaching a critical mass... all those innovations that recently couldn't be pounced upon because of the separation of GPU/CPU are now making (A) looking pretty damn nice again.
Every once in a while an unrelated tech innovation comes around that benefits (A) or (B) in some indirect fashion. It could be faster bus speeds, more sophisticated GPU instruction sets, etc etc etc. Doesn't really matter what they are, but they happen all the time and each may benefit (A) or (B) more than the other.
So currently we are at a time when (B) is the standard design- GPU and CPU remain separate. Whenever an innovation has come along that benefits (B) more it has been integrated into the latest NVIDIA or ATI design. Whenever something that benefits (A) has come along it has been ignored in the last few years... this probably includes things such as the balooning costs of the GPUs, difficulty in getting GPUs into now popular laptop form factors, texture latency, etc. etc.
This CPU/GPU cycle happens every few years... We've been in an (A) cycle many times before- Remember what MMX was originally for? It was because we didn't have GPUs and couldn't do efficient block operations for video at the time... Remember the IBM PCjr? That was arguably another (A) cycle because IBM wanted to save money on circuitry/memory for the video subsystem, which is arguably just a primitive form of a GPU.
This GPU->CPU oscillation has been, and will continue to be, going on forever.
> Real world intelligence is not lossless. The algorithms only have to be right most of the time to be effective.
...so now you've taken intelligence that is "lossy" and made it "lossless" in a highly efficient manner.
...I can't see how your argument disproves the central premise...
Right- then all you need to do is run the data through the AI system and make a list of the few times it is wrong- This would be a small list. Then add this list to the end of the compressed data- If the AI is any good then you should still have fantastic compression.
> Taking data that is not a document, mangling it into a document and serving it up is a bad idea.
If you asynchronously fetch data (ala XML) and format it onto the screen as a document with Javascript using AJAX this is clearly a danger. But "serve up data, not documents" is definitely a philosphy behind AJAX.
The ideas are as follows:
None of these ideas were really important enough to push through to the web developer consiousness and have just kind of quietly developing while no one was noticing- Then some dude calls this stuff AJAX and BAM! the web 2-dot-whatever avalanche begins in earnest.
> as (then) [Nu] of a cone [Kappa][Theta] where from the height of [Nu] of the cone (thus) the circle [Nu] to the diameter around the circle [Beta][Zeta]...
Thanks for hunting that down- I think that's great! I just wish they would work that fragment into the introductory section of the website- Anyone who's ever had geometry in high school can gleem all kinds of useful things about this fragment:
1. It shows without much doubt to anyone that they have achieved success, by a direct example.
2. The text they found really does cover meaty (by ancient greek standards) mathematical concepts- It's not just Archimedes talking about something that that he was less of an authority in and therefore potentially less interesting (like whether god is a "trinity" or a "quadrinity" or some other equivalently esoteric thing ancient scientists often worried about)
3. They were able to read enough info to deduce entire sentences, not just words
4. Since similar things (circles, cones) are discussed in school to this day, it shows a seemingly direct link between modern mathematics and Archimedal mathematics
5. Archimedes clearly thought about some incredibly abstract things- His far more well known law of bouyancy wasn't just a lucky accident.