Would there be a chance to maintain the comments created in the hose? Granted, we should be using the hose comments to discuss modding the story... but, hey, this is Slashdot. What happens if the article is crap, but firehose users don't want to lose a particular comment thread?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
From the wikipedia article:
In Katz v. United States,[7] Justice Harlan issued a concurring opinion articulating the two-part test later adopted by the Court as the definition of a search for Fourth Amendment purposes: (1) governmental action must contravene an individual's actual, subjective expectation of privacy; (2) and that expectation of privacy must be reasonable, in the sense that society in general would recognize it as such.
As society at large has a reasonable expectation of privacy in sealed communications (i.e. letters), the contents of such are constitutionally protected.
Logic is a foundational part of mathematics and has been formalized (several ways) very carefully in terms that are more like mathematics than most anything else.
Once again, however, I do not claim that Logic is independent of mathematics, just that they are not equal. Several aspects of Logic are, at best, superfluous to mathematics. Take, for instance, the fallacies of argument. While many of them can be described mathematically, others cannot. As I said in the linked post, Mathematics may well be a subset of logic, but logic is not a subset of mathematics.
For instance, take the process of induction. Mathematics provides tools that can be used to analyze a set, be it statistics, set theory, combinatorics, etc. However, mathematics ignores many aspects of induction, including its appropriate use, what is acceptable as inductive evidence, and if inductive reasoning is a valid mode of inference at all. Mathematics is involved merely with the formalization and process of induction. Thus, logically, mathematics doesn't encompass the discipline.
My argument is that the description may stem from the human perspective. Your use of language supports this, as it implicitly refers to Mathematics as a tool to describe--to model--the universe, rather than the universe as an application of mathematics.
I'm also at a loss to imagine an organism that can manipulate its environment consciously that is unable to come up with basic geometry. I realize that proof through incredulity is no proof at all, but please elaborate.
Consider, for the sake of argument, the Formic perspective. While the Formics come from a fictional world, they don't hold logic as a fundamental building block of the universe. They lack a distinction between truth and falsehood. Instead, they consider everything that has happened truth, and 'forget' anything that turns out to be false. Ender notes this specifically in one of the later books (I can't recall which), and how it increases the difficulty of communication with the Hive Queen. Indeed, the three invasions described by the first book were due to a miscommunication between our race and theirs--Formics didn't understand individuality before they met humanity.
Another perspective, this time using your bee example: While bees create hexagonal structures, we have no evidence that they do this consciously, nor do we have evidence that an alien culture would manipulate their world consciously. Instead, either could "just know" the solution, and thus have no use for geometry. Humans, meanwhile, see these hexagons and say "See! Math is fundamental, even animal's use it!" However, far from being a fundamental concept of the universe, the human is merely applying his world-view (which includes the form and function of a hexagon) to the beehive.
Sure, you might be able to build a neural net and train it without understanding mathematics. But you wouldn't understand how it worked; when you explored that, you'd find mathematics whether you liked it or not.
The philosophical question underlying this is which perspective defines the other? On the one hand, mathematics could underlie the entirety of the universe. If this is the case, then we could, theoretically, find the truth of it. Unfortunately, if mathematics is hard-wired into the brain--if the basic axioms of mathematics are assumptions made by the human mind as a means of interpreting the world--we couldn't see past those assumptions. Every attempt to do so would necessarily rely upon them, creating a circular argument or self-fulfilling world view, so to speak.
A, perhaps, interesting analogy*: Imagine you view the world through emerald lenses. Everything you see would be tinted green, but, having perceived the world this way for the entirety of your life, you would be none the wiser, unless someone or something showed you otherwise. Even then, you would be flabbergasted, possibly to the point of denial, if someone were to show you evidence of non-tinted vision. Now, consider the glasses to be mathematics. The eyes are analogous to your brain, and the assumptions fundamental to mathematics are the tint of the glasses. Can you say you'd be any the wiser? **
This logical paradox, of sorts, prevents us from knowing the truth of the universe. In fact, an entire branch of philosophy--epistemology--is dedicated toward investigating what constitutes knowledge & truth. Those philosophers have concluded, at the time of this writing, that mathematics is only true because it is defined independently of our universe. Furthermore, any attempt to apply pure mathematical reasoning to the world at large creates incredible complexity. Consider quantum mechanics, string theory, astrophysics, and other such sciences. Each of these, while functional, sacrifices a great deal of the elegance of mathematics due to an intersection of pure reason with the real world.
Good luck on doing a kernel, file system, network stack,
Interestingly enough, most kernel-level tasks don't use mathematics in their construction. I was surprised to find that the only means we can use to determine kernel-level efficiency is empirical, because kernels exhibit non-deterministic behavior. (Note that mathematics can be used to construct these things, but any assumptions one could make about performance based on the math is thrown out the window, because processors are interrupt-driven).
Mathematics is structured deductive reasoning, which builds up from a solid starting point (axioms) and serves to represent, communicate and help with the construction of ideas.
Mathematics (colloquially, maths or math), is the body of knowledge centered on concepts such as quantity, structure, space, and change, and also the academic discipline that studies them.
Both deductive and inductive reasoning are facets of Logic, a discipline of philosophy. Stated mathematically, "Mathematics is a subset of Logic, but Logic is not a subset of Mathematics". I suspect, however, that even this description is untrue. (There is likely a portion of mathematics that lies outside of the purview of logic. As I am not a mathematician, I don't know what it would be.)
Statements like this make a sweeping assumption: that the fundamental theorems of mathematics are not the formalization of concepts hard-wired into the brain. For instance, the existence of prime numbers wouldn't be obvious to an organism that never used integers. Similarly, it may be possible to discover alien life that never had a use for the Pythagorean Theorem (perhaps they don't perceive space?).
Thus, I believe that your statement is incomplete. Some classes of problems, particularly algorithms, use math by their nature. However, had the discipline branched off of, say, psychology, those classes of problems could be as atrophied as human computer interaction was a few years ago. It is reasonable to assume that CS as a whole would be vastly different. Would architectures resemble the brain? Would they be chemical rather than electrical? Programming languages may be easier to use, but chances are they would lack orthogonality, closure, etc. What would be more entertaining is a computer programmed like Pavlov's Dog...
In an extreme formulation of this idea, certain elements of computer science may not even exist--imagine algorithm development with my latter example. To consider something a bit closer to home, what if the base discipline of computer science was linguistics?
It's still a far cry from actually running anything important. My take is that Senator just isn't that important.
It's a pity that so many people think this way. My off-the-cuff analysis is that our legislative branch doesn't spend enough time doing their job to look important. That said, I also believe that Vice Presidents, as far as I have studied them, have been traditionally weak, but first I must digress to the House. Traditionally, the House was full of "young" and fickle legislators. Because their term length was so short (2 years), they had to spend more time talking with the people & campaigning. Thus, like the body politic, their opinions changed with the times. Furthermore, the requirements to become a Representative were far less strict than the senators. Because each politician is out to make a name for themselves, they try to get as much done as possible, to keep their constituents happy.
Meanwhile, the power of the US Senate stems from an affordance of more time to deliberate & discuss things. Six year terms, more stringent requirements, and (originally) ties with the state legislature made them more "aloof", so to speak. They didn't need to worry much about campaigning, as their audience consisted of merely hundreds of state legislators, rather than (roughly) millions of constituents. Furthermore, six-year terms made them the second-most stable federal office, shifting their focus from a short to a long-term agenda. The Vice President, as President of the Senate, controls the floor of the Senate, and thus may determine procedure and the agenda. However, due to political backlash, Vice Presidents don't exercise this power effectively.
These abilities of the Vice President have become diluted as the Senate became more beholden to its constituents, particularly with the passage of the 17th amendment of the USC. The 17th Amendment switched indirectly-elected Senators with directly-elected Senators. Because Senators represent at least an order of magnitude more constituents than Representatives do, they must spend much more time campaigning. And, thus, spend much less time deliberating. Because Senators have effectively the same role as Representatives these days--with arguably less power, given the excessive amount of time they spend campaigning--it's easy to come to your conclusion.
Interestingly enough, the solution to this debacle may well be a strong Vice President. By investigating and subsequently using various powers vested to the position by the USC and floor procedures (for instance, demanding a quorum be present), and by using the resources of the Executive to create framework legislation for electoral reform (via law or amendment), the Vice President may be able to instill vigor into the Senate once again. In either case, the stir would definitely stir up some long-needed debate in the public sphere.
My concern for this, however, is that the framework legislation will be shuffled through the process in the same manner as everything else. Little deliberation or discussion with party interests dominating the agenda. In this environment, our hypothetical strong Vice President could attempt shenanigans and power-grabs, which could spell disaster for the system at large. For this reason, I refer to it as "framework legislation", something build upon, rather than something ready to be shuffled into law. But for now, I'll stop rambling.
I think the type of experience is a big factor here and my take is that the Republicans just ran more experienced candidates in both 2000 and 2004.
My interpretation of the elections of 2000 and 2004 is that the GOP knows how to manage the media far better than the Democrats. That, and the size of Kerry's head scares the bejeezus out of me. I didn't like either candidate, though, and voted third-party.
We have a secrete ballot for a reason. Putting someone outside the polls to ask you to give up this secrecy is idiotic.
We have a secret ballot so that individuals' feel secure enough to vote their opinion--without political pressure, I know. However, exit polls don't pressure you to vote the opposite way--they couldn't, even if they tried. By definition, they ask you after you've cast your vote, when you exit. Furthermore (at least in my experience, which isn't saying much) they don't hound you for an answer. Politely declining is enough to get them to shove off. In other words, it's no skin off your back to decline to answer.
On the other hand, as has been noted elsewhere, the statistics collected at exit polls can be useful. Not only do they track an election, but if the statistics collected at various locations don't correlate with the ballots collected, it may be presented as evidence of ballot tampering.
Honestly, though, I don't even know why I'm complaining. Statistically, the error created by these tactics cancels--the only elections where it would have an effect are those where the margin of error is large enough that the statistics are useless anyway.:)
My memory just isn't what it used to be... I can recall at least one of the Presidential candidates in the 2000 election having served as Vice President for 8 years, a Senator for 8 years, and a representative for 8 as well--and being a just Senator is quite an accomplishment these days too;)
The reason we have an FBI to begin with is that organized crime doesn't respect state lines. It doesn't matter how "effective" your home state's law enforcement is when your new neighbor's many arrest warrants are in another state that's too inept to get the information out to the other 49.
The European Union may possess insight on how to do this effectively.
Granted, attorney-client privilege is extremely protected, but is that necessarily true in the case of a conversation with a foreign national who is a terror suspect?
IMHO, attorney-client privilege should be protected for all classes of people, terrorists or not. (Of course, this comes with the usual constraints of attorney-client privilege, namely that you weren't conspiring with them to commit a crime.) Even excepting that, however, the key word in your statement is suspect.
After all, if the courts said they were within their rights, how could congress actually impeach or convict for that?
A ruling of innocence in one trial may not be used as evidence of innocence in another. Furthermore, the burden of proof may be different for each set of proceedings. However, evidence and precedence from past trials may be used in the next. If this occurs, it is judged independently of the previous case. Finally, this doesn't constitute double jeopardy, because neither trial is held in a criminal court. The trial mentioned in the article is civil, and Impeachment is just the means used to remove a public official from their office.
Another facet that you don't consider is multiple charges. Even if illegal wiretapping fails, there's still plenty of ammo that Congress could use to punt the executive, if they only had the political wherewithal to do so.
When you say that you "won't give the truth out of spite", do you mean that you lie or that you decline to answer? I can understand not wanting to disclose who you voted for, but not lying to do so.
With global warming at our heels, we cannot afford to toss out ideas.
Global warming is definitely problematic, but an even better reason to not toss new energy techniques (whether perpetual or not) is solving the Peak Oildilemma. Granted, solving that problem may still throw the world into an economic depression, but it beats the collapse of modern civilization.
You can get it from a changing magnetic field, however, and the Earth's magnetic field is changing; but it's doing so over a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years, so the energy you'd get would be very, very small.
Doesn't the magnitude of the field multiply those small changes, in effect creating a shit-ton of energy?
Of course every product is a trade-off, but every criticism of the iPhone I hear seems to be a lot of anger about missing features that I, personally, don't really have a use for.
Granted, I have yet to get one, but I agree for all complaints thus far, except 2:
GPS support in Google Maps (using cell tower triangulation, most likely). This may come around through software, but I'd rather have seen the iPhone debut with it instead of YouTube.
Multiple calendar support in the calendar app (also fixable through software updates). I'm not asking for a monsterous number of calendars, but at least separate business and personal activities...
Neither of these are show stoppers for me, but each would be absolutely wonderful to have out of the box.
I believe he's referring to the PADD. My past is tinted by rose-colored glasses, unfortunately. I remember them looking far cooler than in those pictures. While it can be argued (and is presented on the linked site) that a PADD is like a PDA, the iPhone's interface seems more in-line with the way they were portrayed in the show. This could be my memory failing me though.
Slashdot Mirror
Would there be a chance to maintain the comments created in the hose? Granted, we should be using the hose comments to discuss modding the story... but, hey, this is Slashdot. What happens if the article is crap, but firehose users don't want to lose a particular comment thread?
Eh, teflon should fix that right up!
As society at large has a reasonable expectation of privacy in sealed communications (i.e. letters), the contents of such are constitutionally protected.
Once again, however, I do not claim that Logic is independent of mathematics, just that they are not equal. Several aspects of Logic are, at best, superfluous to mathematics. Take, for instance, the fallacies of argument. While many of them can be described mathematically, others cannot. As I said in the linked post, Mathematics may well be a subset of logic, but logic is not a subset of mathematics.
For instance, take the process of induction. Mathematics provides tools that can be used to analyze a set, be it statistics, set theory, combinatorics, etc. However, mathematics ignores many aspects of induction, including its appropriate use, what is acceptable as inductive evidence, and if inductive reasoning is a valid mode of inference at all. Mathematics is involved merely with the formalization and process of induction. Thus, logically, mathematics doesn't encompass the discipline.
My argument is that the description may stem from the human perspective. Your use of language supports this, as it implicitly refers to Mathematics as a tool to describe--to model--the universe, rather than the universe as an application of mathematics.
Consider, for the sake of argument, the Formic perspective. While the Formics come from a fictional world, they don't hold logic as a fundamental building block of the universe. They lack a distinction between truth and falsehood. Instead, they consider everything that has happened truth, and 'forget' anything that turns out to be false. Ender notes this specifically in one of the later books (I can't recall which), and how it increases the difficulty of communication with the Hive Queen. Indeed, the three invasions described by the first book were due to a miscommunication between our race and theirs--Formics didn't understand individuality before they met humanity.
Another perspective, this time using your bee example: While bees create hexagonal structures, we have no evidence that they do this consciously, nor do we have evidence that an alien culture would manipulate their world consciously. Instead, either could "just know" the solution, and thus have no use for geometry. Humans, meanwhile, see these hexagons and say "See! Math is fundamental, even animal's use it!" However, far from being a fundamental concept of the universe, the human is merely applying his world-view (which includes the form and function of a hexagon) to the beehive.
The philosophical question underlying this is which perspective defines the other? On the one hand, mathematics could underlie the entirety of the universe. If this is the case, then we could, theoretically, find the truth of it. Unfortunately, if mathematics is hard-wired into the brain--if the basic axioms of mathematics are assumptions made by the human mind as a means of interpreting the world--we couldn't see past those assumptions. Every attempt to do so would necessarily rely upon them, creating a circular argument or self-fulfilling world view, so to speak.
A, perhaps, interesting analogy*: Imagine you view the world through emerald lenses. Everything you see would be tinted green, but, having perceived the world this way for the entirety of your life, you would be none the wiser, unless someone or something showed you otherwise. Even then, you would be flabbergasted, possibly to the point of denial, if someone were to show you evidence of non-tinted vision. Now, consider the glasses to be mathematics. The eyes are analogous to your brain, and the assumptions fundamental to mathematics are the tint of the glasses. Can you say you'd be any the wiser? **
This logical paradox, of sorts, prevents us from knowing the truth of the universe. In fact, an entire branch of philosophy--epistemology--is dedicated toward investigating what constitutes knowledge & truth. Those philosophers have concluded, at the time of this writing, that mathematics is only true because it is defined independently of our universe. Furthermore, any attempt to apply pure mathematical reasoning to the world at large creates incredible complexity. Consider quantum mechanics, string theory, astrophysics, and other such sciences. Each of these, while functional, sacrifices a great deal of the elegance of mathematics due to an intersection of pure reason with the real world.
I hate to break it to you, but you are wrong.
I would surely hope not. Well-trained software faeries know to check their crypto libraries into source control.
Interestingly enough, most kernel-level tasks don't use mathematics in their construction. I was surprised to find that the only means we can use to determine kernel-level efficiency is empirical, because kernels exhibit non-deterministic behavior. (Note that mathematics can be used to construct these things, but any assumptions one could make about performance based on the math is thrown out the window, because processors are interrupt-driven).
Both deductive and inductive reasoning are facets of Logic, a discipline of philosophy. Stated mathematically, "Mathematics is a subset of Logic, but Logic is not a subset of Mathematics". I suspect, however, that even this description is untrue. (There is likely a portion of mathematics that lies outside of the purview of logic. As I am not a mathematician, I don't know what it would be.)
Statements like this make a sweeping assumption: that the fundamental theorems of mathematics are not the formalization of concepts hard-wired into the brain. For instance, the existence of prime numbers wouldn't be obvious to an organism that never used integers. Similarly, it may be possible to discover alien life that never had a use for the Pythagorean Theorem (perhaps they don't perceive space?).
Thus, I believe that your statement is incomplete. Some classes of problems, particularly algorithms, use math by their nature. However, had the discipline branched off of, say, psychology, those classes of problems could be as atrophied as human computer interaction was a few years ago. It is reasonable to assume that CS as a whole would be vastly different. Would architectures resemble the brain? Would they be chemical rather than electrical? Programming languages may be easier to use, but chances are they would lack orthogonality, closure, etc. What would be more entertaining is a computer programmed like Pavlov's Dog...
In an extreme formulation of this idea, certain elements of computer science may not even exist--imagine algorithm development with my latter example. To consider something a bit closer to home, what if the base discipline of computer science was linguistics?
It's a pity that so many people think this way. My off-the-cuff analysis is that our legislative branch doesn't spend enough time doing their job to look important. That said, I also believe that Vice Presidents, as far as I have studied them, have been traditionally weak, but first I must digress to the House. Traditionally, the House was full of "young" and fickle legislators. Because their term length was so short (2 years), they had to spend more time talking with the people & campaigning. Thus, like the body politic, their opinions changed with the times. Furthermore, the requirements to become a Representative were far less strict than the senators. Because each politician is out to make a name for themselves, they try to get as much done as possible, to keep their constituents happy.
Meanwhile, the power of the US Senate stems from an affordance of more time to deliberate & discuss things. Six year terms, more stringent requirements, and (originally) ties with the state legislature made them more "aloof", so to speak. They didn't need to worry much about campaigning, as their audience consisted of merely hundreds of state legislators, rather than (roughly) millions of constituents. Furthermore, six-year terms made them the second-most stable federal office, shifting their focus from a short to a long-term agenda. The Vice President, as President of the Senate, controls the floor of the Senate, and thus may determine procedure and the agenda. However, due to political backlash, Vice Presidents don't exercise this power effectively.
These abilities of the Vice President have become diluted as the Senate became more beholden to its constituents, particularly with the passage of the 17th amendment of the USC. The 17th Amendment switched indirectly-elected Senators with directly-elected Senators. Because Senators represent at least an order of magnitude more constituents than Representatives do, they must spend much more time campaigning. And, thus, spend much less time deliberating. Because Senators have effectively the same role as Representatives these days--with arguably less power, given the excessive amount of time they spend campaigning--it's easy to come to your conclusion.
Interestingly enough, the solution to this debacle may well be a strong Vice President. By investigating and subsequently using various powers vested to the position by the USC and floor procedures (for instance, demanding a quorum be present), and by using the resources of the Executive to create framework legislation for electoral reform (via law or amendment), the Vice President may be able to instill vigor into the Senate once again. In either case, the stir would definitely stir up some long-needed debate in the public sphere.
My concern for this, however, is that the framework legislation will be shuffled through the process in the same manner as everything else. Little deliberation or discussion with party interests dominating the agenda. In this environment, our hypothetical strong Vice President could attempt shenanigans and power-grabs, which could spell disaster for the system at large. For this reason, I refer to it as "framework legislation", something build upon, rather than something ready to be shuffled into law. But for now, I'll stop rambling.
My interpretation of the elections of 2000 and 2004 is that the GOP knows how to manage the media far better than the Democrats. That, and the size of Kerry's head scares the bejeezus out of me. I didn't like either candidate, though, and voted third-party.
We have a secret ballot so that individuals' feel secure enough to vote their opinion--without political pressure, I know. However, exit polls don't pressure you to vote the opposite way--they couldn't, even if they tried. By definition, they ask you after you've cast your vote, when you exit. Furthermore (at least in my experience, which isn't saying much) they don't hound you for an answer. Politely declining is enough to get them to shove off. In other words, it's no skin off your back to decline to answer.
On the other hand, as has been noted elsewhere, the statistics collected at exit polls can be useful. Not only do they track an election, but if the statistics collected at various locations don't correlate with the ballots collected, it may be presented as evidence of ballot tampering.
Honestly, though, I don't even know why I'm complaining. Statistically, the error created by these tactics cancels--the only elections where it would have an effect are those where the margin of error is large enough that the statistics are useless anyway. :)
My memory just isn't what it used to be... I can recall at least one of the Presidential candidates in the 2000 election having served as Vice President for 8 years, a Senator for 8 years, and a representative for 8 as well--and being a just Senator is quite an accomplishment these days too ;)
The European Union may possess insight on how to do this effectively.
IMHO, attorney-client privilege should be protected for all classes of people, terrorists or not. (Of course, this comes with the usual constraints of attorney-client privilege, namely that you weren't conspiring with them to commit a crime.) Even excepting that, however, the key word in your statement is suspect.
Note: IANAL.
A ruling of innocence in one trial may not be used as evidence of innocence in another. Furthermore, the burden of proof may be different for each set of proceedings. However, evidence and precedence from past trials may be used in the next. If this occurs, it is judged independently of the previous case. Finally, this doesn't constitute double jeopardy, because neither trial is held in a criminal court. The trial mentioned in the article is civil, and Impeachment is just the means used to remove a public official from their office.
Another facet that you don't consider is multiple charges. Even if illegal wiretapping fails, there's still plenty of ammo that Congress could use to punt the executive, if they only had the political wherewithal to do so.
When you say that you "won't give the truth out of spite", do you mean that you lie or that you decline to answer? I can understand not wanting to disclose who you voted for, but not lying to do so.
$post[19784759] =~ s/enjoy/prefer/;
Personally, I enjoy the smell of dairy air.
Global warming is definitely problematic, but an even better reason to not toss new energy techniques (whether perpetual or not) is solving the Peak Oildilemma. Granted, solving that problem may still throw the world into an economic depression, but it beats the collapse of modern civilization.
Note: use the vernacular for creating. e.g. I mean "collecting" "moving" etc.
Doesn't the magnitude of the field multiply those small changes, in effect creating a shit-ton of energy?
Since when does dominance have anything to do with beating your wife? Statements like yours aren't funny, they're disgusting.
Granted, I have yet to get one, but I agree for all complaints thus far, except 2:
Neither of these are show stoppers for me, but each would be absolutely wonderful to have out of the box.
I believe he's referring to the PADD. My past is tinted by rose-colored glasses, unfortunately. I remember them looking far cooler than in those pictures. While it can be argued (and is presented on the linked site) that a PADD is like a PDA, the iPhone's interface seems more in-line with the way they were portrayed in the show. This could be my memory failing me though.