Depends how hot you cut the record. The louder a record is, the more you have to cut back on the bass. But the quieter it is, the higher the noise floor is. There's usually a happy medium, and it's a mastering engineer's job to find it.
No, Logo teaches them to push a turtle around the screen. It doesn't really convey a sense to young children that they're "programming" a computer.... All we're doing with these new languages is giving them the CompSci version of "New Math". And all that "New Math" ever accomplished was to generally confuse children, and ensure that they never take up higher maths.
Logo is a Lisp dialect. Everything you said about Basic can be said for Logo too, with the exception that Logo avoids teaching poor programming practices to begin with.
And with apologies to the kids who didn't take higher mathematics, higher mathematics really aren't for everyone. Or even most. I do think anyone can learn up to a certain level, but it won't be any fun for most. I say this after tutoring my juniors in college. Math is a constant challenge, and if a kid doesn't have fun with it, it's not worth them learning past calculus (or even arithmetic).
On the other hand, I'm now a mathematician, and I wish I had been introduced to abstract mathematical concepts much sooner.
To be bright enough to be seen in daylight, a single LED will end up being bright enough to illuminate a dark room.
Not necessarily, especially if colors contrasting the surrounding case are used. For instance, I'm sitting about 15 feet away from my monitor (don't ask). It has a tiny green/amber LED assembly in the power button. I can clearly see that the LED is green from here. But it's certainly not bright enough to illuminate a dark room. Indeed, it almost looks like a green bit of plastic, not like a source of light.
I can understand why some people who dont understand the usefulness of gadget/electronic feedback. Nothing bothers me more than something without some kind of blinking status light that lets me know from a distance if it is functioning or not.
On the other hand, they don't have to be bright enough to illuminate a dark room. Just bright enough to be seen in indoor daylight.
As whiny as TFA's point was, it is a point, and there's room for compromise.
You don't have to know if I'm "real" to evaluate the content of my arguments. Indeed, my arguments are all you have access to anyway, whether I'm real or not.
But you're probably right. Continuing would just be a waste of time. Philosophy, like mathematics, is about more than just saying you disagree and being unrefinedly flippant. That's easy to do. Finding flaws in others' arguments is harder. Deciding which group of arguments is least flawed is hardest.
No, I didn't say there is no truth, full stop. I said there are propositions that have no truth value. They are neither true nor false.
There are clearly some truths. I know that when look outside my window and see patterns of color that look like the sky, I'm looking at something that looks like the sky. I'll even call it the sky. But I don't and can't know "where" those patterns come from. Is there a "real" sky out there? Am I in the matrix? Is it just my imagination?
The proposition that the external world is "real" (in a non-Matrix, non-imagination sense) is undecidable. It is neither true nor false. The word "real" can't do the kind of work a philosophical realist would like it to. This motivates a new interpretation of the old definition. I would say that the only things that are "real" are the things I can access, through my senses, thoughts, intuitions, etc. Everything else is (at least) suspect.
This position is a variant on solipsism, though it is even more agnostic than the version outlined in wikipedia. If you are actually interested, I suggest you read the section titled "Solipsism in relation to other ideas", especially the portions on materialism and idealism, falsifiability, minimalism, and Buddhism.
Call it a very strong form of "seeing is believing".
They're already paid for. Thanks for your concern. (Terrible "retort", by the way. Your rhythm was way off)
Seriously, do you have any objection to what I've said? Are you too dense to follow? Or are you simply so short sighted that no rational argument will convince you? It's sad what Ayn Rand can do to people.
You call it scary, but the unknown and unknowable are just facts of life.
In any event, objective truth requires some form of Platonic realism, a very philosophically untidy position, positing entities humans have no access to.
The idealist school of thought simply requires the commitment to acknowledge that we do not have access to anything but our sensations and thoughts. The "source", if there is any, is unimportant. Many commit themselves to the idea that the "source" is the mind. This is not an entirely untrue position. Even a realist must agree that parts of the mind act as intermediaries between our sensations and the rest of the mind. This has been verified empirically, by the way.
Science has done much to show that there really is no fact of the matter to many questions. So has mathematics.
The mathematics case is interesting, because it highlights the role of language and subjectivity. Mathematics can clearly be thought of as a language. But while it is very precise (in syntax and semantics), it is somewhat ambiguous. When describing the "counting numbers" axiomatically, we end up describing infinitely many other classes of objects as well. Classes with very different properties, meaning that some predicates expressible mathematically are true of some of these classes and not of others.
(This was a brief description of a theorem equivalent to Godel's Incompleteness theorem, derived from incompleteness using the Soundness theorem for FOL and Godel's Completeness theorem. The "classes" I mentioned are to be taken as models in the logical sense.)
I take it you have some internal representation of the counting numbers. And I'll assume they satisfy the axioms I mentioned. In virtue of that assumption, your representation can legitimately be called a representation of the natural numbers. But so can mine, and I assure you that they are different.
What is ironic is that the realist mathematician is committed to the literal, independent existence of all these weird number-like things. And are thus committed to accepting that there really isn't a fact of the matter about some mathematical questions. The idealist mathematician, however, is not committed to the literal existence of these classes, and can therefore move on to say that there is a fact of the matter about those mathematical questions, using their internal representation of the natural numbers (weird as it might be) as the measuring rod for truth.
You mean plastics are made by living organisms? Sorry to break it to you, but outside of a few exceptions, most plastics are synthetic. Same with gasoline, diesel, and insecticides.
Oh, you mean plastics fall in the realm of organic chemistry. Only an autistic person would confuse the two concepts (relating to organisms versus the chemistry of hydrocarbons).
Why should the wolves suffer for the sheep's sake? This sort of naturalistic argument doesn't inspire any confidence in your position. The wolves should eat the sheep.
To come back to actual human voting, why should two suffer so one might not? Mind you, I think the government should protect all subject's natural rights (rights along the lines of those outlined in the Constitution), so cannibalism is a non-issue.
As far as your speed-of-sound problems, you've just disproved the existence of rock concerts and movie theaters with surround sound speakers. I don't know how they get away with it, but the fact that they exist obviously shows that your objection can be overcome.
Yes, because movie theaters and rock bands have the same goals in mind as the Ask Slashdotter. He specifically said he wanted no "echo", not that he wanted to drown it out with loud music/sound effects.
Which is why America is a Representative Republic and NOT a Democracy. With Democracies, you end up with the tyranny of the majority, regardless of whether the minority opinion is the correct one.
Yes, a tyranny of the minority is clearly better.
Hint: The only correct opinion regarding the state is the will of its subjects.
1-3 ms comes to constructive and destructive interference at 333Hz - 1kHz. You'll get flanging as the latency changes. Yey!
In any event, this sort of system is a bad idea. Sound travels at 343 m/s (as opposed to c within the network), so propagation delay introduces latencies that swamp the network's. Even if you synchronize, the system will only be synchronized for a particular spot. If you move from it, you'll get major flanging.
The question that your statement begs is if the law is being violated by the majority, is it a just law?
The law is supposed to represent the will of its subjects. If the letter of the law is being violated by the majority, it is an illegitimate law and should be repealed.
From your explanation, I would gather that the Mac OS X "bsod" does not display an error message indicating what went wrong. With Windows, you get the error code, which means you can Google the error right away. With Mac OS X, how do you find out what's wrong if your machine won't boot back up?
There are actually two different Mac OS X BSoD. The first is the graphical one described above. But there's also a stack trace showing which kernel thread failed. I believe there is a keyboard shortcut that turns the graphical one into the stack trace. I'm sure there's an OpenFirmware/EFI directive to force the stack trace to show. And in any event, you can always fire the machine up in "Firewire Target Disk Mode" and read the crash log from another machine. There is also the option to send the kernel's core dump to a remote machine via TCP/IP.
Since this was a misunderstanding, I apologize for calling you an asshole. I thought your comparison between the Internet and the USPS was insightful, so I was kind of surprised when you accused me of having an agenda -- especially since I tried to follow along with your unbiased analogy with relevant and (as far as I can tell) unbiased information.
Of course, I do have an agenda. But I'm not sure what it is yet. There are good technical and bad political reasons for strong QoS. The cynic in me tells me that the political problems will override the technical benefits. But I would certainly be open to schemes where that is prevented.
I wouldn't go with NearlyFreeSpeech.net. I had a very bad experience with the owner (Jeff) involving sudden cancellation of every account I had ever worked on.
I was a web developer and recommended NFS to many clients because of the pricing structure and Catalyst support. All those accounts were cancelled in an attempt to discredit me professionally. He went as far as to email my then current client to insult me. Of course, I have a hard copy of our email conversation. All my clients moved to DreamHost at my recommendation.
Petty and rigid. In my opinion, the man is autistic. Or at least a Libertarian (though these are synonymous, no?)
You are choosing the analogy to fit the agenda, not trying to explain facts and then letting people decide. We have a word for what results: propaganda.
That's a petty accusation. Please show me where my analogy fails.
Keep in mind that third and fourth class mail (the so-called "Standard Mail") are used by businesses doing mass mailings. The sorts of things that are not latency bound (akin to bit torrent traffic, say). There is no connotation of sub-standard service.
I could have compared Priority mail and first class mail, but don't think it's a good analogy since they use different distribution systems. (Priority Mail is flown around, first class is trucked, mostly.) That's an obvious disanalogy to ISP mandated QoS, especially since high priority packets aren't going to arrive (much) faster than low priority packets.
You should try to keep an open mind and carefully evaluate a person's analogy or argument before accusing them of arguing in bad faith. There's a word for people who don't do that: Asshole.
As the term 'internet' was used in 1995, Encarta was right. An internet is just a collection of interconnected networks. There were many internets then. Even now we have the Internet, and a bunch of smaller ones (Internet2, many darknets)
Slashdot Mirror
Depends how hot you cut the record. The louder a record is, the more you have to cut back on the bass. But the quieter it is, the higher the noise floor is. There's usually a happy medium, and it's a mastering engineer's job to find it.
No, Logo teaches them to push a turtle around the screen. It doesn't really convey a sense to young children that they're "programming" a computer. ...
All we're doing with these new languages is giving them the CompSci version of "New Math". And all that "New Math" ever accomplished was to generally confuse children, and ensure that they never take up higher maths.
Logo is a Lisp dialect. Everything you said about Basic can be said for Logo too, with the exception that Logo avoids teaching poor programming practices to begin with.
And with apologies to the kids who didn't take higher mathematics, higher mathematics really aren't for everyone. Or even most. I do think anyone can learn up to a certain level, but it won't be any fun for most. I say this after tutoring my juniors in college. Math is a constant challenge, and if a kid doesn't have fun with it, it's not worth them learning past calculus (or even arithmetic).
On the other hand, I'm now a mathematician, and I wish I had been introduced to abstract mathematical concepts much sooner.
Is there a buck in it? I'm in the market.
To be bright enough to be seen in daylight, a single LED will end up being bright enough to illuminate a dark room.
Not necessarily, especially if colors contrasting the surrounding case are used. For instance, I'm sitting about 15 feet away from my monitor (don't ask). It has a tiny green/amber LED assembly in the power button. I can clearly see that the LED is green from here. But it's certainly not bright enough to illuminate a dark room. Indeed, it almost looks like a green bit of plastic, not like a source of light.
I like your idea about light meters though.
I can understand why some people who dont understand the usefulness of gadget/electronic feedback. Nothing bothers me more than something without some kind of blinking status light that lets me know from a distance if it is functioning or not.
On the other hand, they don't have to be bright enough to illuminate a dark room. Just bright enough to be seen in indoor daylight.
As whiny as TFA's point was, it is a point, and there's room for compromise.
You don't have to know if I'm "real" to evaluate the content of my arguments. Indeed, my arguments are all you have access to anyway, whether I'm real or not.
But you're probably right. Continuing would just be a waste of time. Philosophy, like mathematics, is about more than just saying you disagree and being unrefinedly flippant. That's easy to do. Finding flaws in others' arguments is harder. Deciding which group of arguments is least flawed is hardest.
*psst* The answer is Lynx.
No, I didn't say there is no truth, full stop. I said there are propositions that have no truth value. They are neither true nor false.
There are clearly some truths. I know that when look outside my window and see patterns of color that look like the sky, I'm looking at something that looks like the sky. I'll even call it the sky. But I don't and can't know "where" those patterns come from. Is there a "real" sky out there? Am I in the matrix? Is it just my imagination?
The proposition that the external world is "real" (in a non-Matrix, non-imagination sense) is undecidable. It is neither true nor false. The word "real" can't do the kind of work a philosophical realist would like it to. This motivates a new interpretation of the old definition. I would say that the only things that are "real" are the things I can access, through my senses, thoughts, intuitions, etc. Everything else is (at least) suspect.
This position is a variant on solipsism, though it is even more agnostic than the version outlined in wikipedia. If you are actually interested, I suggest you read the section titled "Solipsism in relation to other ideas", especially the portions on materialism and idealism, falsifiability, minimalism, and Buddhism.
Call it a very strong form of "seeing is believing".
They're already paid for. Thanks for your concern. (Terrible "retort", by the way. Your rhythm was way off)
Seriously, do you have any objection to what I've said? Are you too dense to follow? Or are you simply so short sighted that no rational argument will convince you? It's sad what Ayn Rand can do to people.
You call it scary, but the unknown and unknowable are just facts of life.
Nice ad hominem.
In any event, objective truth requires some form of Platonic realism, a very philosophically untidy position, positing entities humans have no access to.
The idealist school of thought simply requires the commitment to acknowledge that we do not have access to anything but our sensations and thoughts. The "source", if there is any, is unimportant. Many commit themselves to the idea that the "source" is the mind. This is not an entirely untrue position. Even a realist must agree that parts of the mind act as intermediaries between our sensations and the rest of the mind. This has been verified empirically, by the way.
Science has done much to show that there really is no fact of the matter to many questions. So has mathematics.
The mathematics case is interesting, because it highlights the role of language and subjectivity. Mathematics can clearly be thought of as a language. But while it is very precise (in syntax and semantics), it is somewhat ambiguous. When describing the "counting numbers" axiomatically, we end up describing infinitely many other classes of objects as well. Classes with very different properties, meaning that some predicates expressible mathematically are true of some of these classes and not of others.
(This was a brief description of a theorem equivalent to Godel's Incompleteness theorem, derived from incompleteness using the Soundness theorem for FOL and Godel's Completeness theorem. The "classes" I mentioned are to be taken as models in the logical sense.)
I take it you have some internal representation of the counting numbers. And I'll assume they satisfy the axioms I mentioned. In virtue of that assumption, your representation can legitimately be called a representation of the natural numbers. But so can mine, and I assure you that they are different.
What is ironic is that the realist mathematician is committed to the literal, independent existence of all these weird number-like things. And are thus committed to accepting that there really isn't a fact of the matter about some mathematical questions. The idealist mathematician, however, is not committed to the literal existence of these classes, and can therefore move on to say that there is a fact of the matter about those mathematical questions, using their internal representation of the natural numbers (weird as it might be) as the measuring rod for truth.
Leave philosophy to the educated.
You mean plastics are made by living organisms? Sorry to break it to you, but outside of a few exceptions, most plastics are synthetic. Same with gasoline, diesel, and insecticides.
Oh, you mean plastics fall in the realm of organic chemistry. Only an autistic person would confuse the two concepts (relating to organisms versus the chemistry of hydrocarbons).
Why should the wolves suffer for the sheep's sake? This sort of naturalistic argument doesn't inspire any confidence in your position. The wolves should eat the sheep.
To come back to actual human voting, why should two suffer so one might not? Mind you, I think the government should protect all subject's natural rights (rights along the lines of those outlined in the Constitution), so cannibalism is a non-issue.
As far as your speed-of-sound problems, you've just disproved the existence of rock concerts and movie theaters with surround sound speakers. I don't know how they get away with it, but the fact that they exist obviously shows that your objection can be overcome.
Yes, because movie theaters and rock bands have the same goals in mind as the Ask Slashdotter. He specifically said he wanted no "echo", not that he wanted to drown it out with loud music/sound effects.
Which is why America is a Representative Republic and NOT a Democracy.
With Democracies, you end up with the tyranny of the majority, regardless of whether the minority opinion is the correct one.
Yes, a tyranny of the minority is clearly better.
Hint: The only correct opinion regarding the state is the will of its subjects.
1-3 ms comes to constructive and destructive interference at 333Hz - 1kHz. You'll get flanging as the latency changes. Yey!
In any event, this sort of system is a bad idea. Sound travels at 343 m/s (as opposed to c within the network), so propagation delay introduces latencies that swamp the network's. Even if you synchronize, the system will only be synchronized for a particular spot. If you move from it, you'll get major flanging.
The question that your statement begs is if the law is being violated by the majority, is it a just law?
The law is supposed to represent the will of its subjects. If the letter of the law is being violated by the majority, it is an illegitimate law and should be repealed.
See http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=233189&cid =18964697
From your explanation, I would gather that the Mac OS X "bsod" does not display an error message indicating what went wrong. With Windows, you get the error code, which means you can Google the error right away. With Mac OS X, how do you find out what's wrong if your machine won't boot back up?
There are actually two different Mac OS X BSoD. The first is the graphical one described above. But there's also a stack trace showing which kernel thread failed. I believe there is a keyboard shortcut that turns the graphical one into the stack trace. I'm sure there's an OpenFirmware/EFI directive to force the stack trace to show. And in any event, you can always fire the machine up in "Firewire Target Disk Mode" and read the crash log from another machine. There is also the option to send the kernel's core dump to a remote machine via TCP/IP.
Since this was a misunderstanding, I apologize for calling you an asshole. I thought your comparison between the Internet and the USPS was insightful, so I was kind of surprised when you accused me of having an agenda -- especially since I tried to follow along with your unbiased analogy with relevant and (as far as I can tell) unbiased information.
Of course, I do have an agenda. But I'm not sure what it is yet. There are good technical and bad political reasons for strong QoS. The cynic in me tells me that the political problems will override the technical benefits. But I would certainly be open to schemes where that is prevented.
No hard feelings, eh?
I wouldn't go with NearlyFreeSpeech.net. I had a very bad experience with the owner (Jeff) involving sudden cancellation of every account I had ever worked on.
I was a web developer and recommended NFS to many clients because of the pricing structure and Catalyst support. All those accounts were cancelled in an attempt to discredit me professionally. He went as far as to email my then current client to insult me. Of course, I have a hard copy of our email conversation. All my clients moved to DreamHost at my recommendation.
Petty and rigid. In my opinion, the man is autistic. Or at least a Libertarian (though these are synonymous, no?)
You are choosing the analogy to fit the agenda, not trying to explain facts and then letting people decide. We have a word for what results: propaganda.
That's a petty accusation. Please show me where my analogy fails.
Keep in mind that third and fourth class mail (the so-called "Standard Mail") are used by businesses doing mass mailings. The sorts of things that are not latency bound (akin to bit torrent traffic, say). There is no connotation of sub-standard service.
I could have compared Priority mail and first class mail, but don't think it's a good analogy since they use different distribution systems. (Priority Mail is flown around, first class is trucked, mostly.) That's an obvious disanalogy to ISP mandated QoS, especially since high priority packets aren't going to arrive (much) faster than low priority packets.
You should try to keep an open mind and carefully evaluate a person's analogy or argument before accusing them of arguing in bad faith. There's a word for people who don't do that: Asshole.
GOMU GOMU NO ROCKETO!!!!!!!!
Which isn't bad. The postal service is a great metaphor for the internet. A better one than tubes, even. But they're both clear.
As the term 'internet' was used in 1995, Encarta was right. An internet is just a collection of interconnected networks. There were many internets then. Even now we have the Internet, and a bunch of smaller ones (Internet2, many darknets)
free() kills Dumbledore!