There is a common logical error being made here; even if it is true that violent groups have an over-representation of engineers, it doesn't follow that engineers are more likely to support violence.
Incidentally, since one of the prime drivers behind terrorism is the (flawed) principle that 'the end justifies the means', is it any surprise that those with expertise in the means (the engineers) would have a role to play?
I guess the problem is that people think that garbage collection prevents all out-of-memory problems. Memory leaks are just one cause of runaway memory use; a common one to be sure (just like stack underflow and overflow were common before we went from assembler to procedural languages). So I agree, I think it was a bit unfair to blame C# (much as I am irritated by the philosophy of that particular language).
Well, if we degrade everything to economics (and I'm not saying we should), then votes are worth what the government spends in its three/four year term. Perhaps in the ballpark of 50 thousand dollars per voter (depends on your country, obviously). You could argue that not all that spending is discretionary (ie, changing your vote would not change some of the expenditure), but I would suggest that even the economic value of a vote is underestimated.
so someone who would prefer a 48 hour reinstall than a command line repair, have drivers that occasionally cause blue screens, and learn new interface gimmicks... would definitely have to go for Vista.
and those who would prefer a GUI just to find out their IP, have no drivers and only one choice of software, and have a pastel designer interface... would have to go for OS X.
> after 1 hour of browsing, no start menu or task bar, and no desktop
Another feature! The browser automatically switches to full screen mode after 1 hour, and perfectly displays those websites with the black font on the black background. They should charge extra for this...
I refer you to the Definitions (part 6) of the Australian Constitution:
"The States" shall mean such of the colonies of New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia, including the northern territory of South Australia, as for the time being are parts of the Commonwealth, and such colonies or territories as may be admitted into or established by the Commonwealth as States; and each of such parts of the Commonwealth shall be called "a State."
What the blog refers to is an alternative to row based databases, not just a database catering to a niche part of the market. The author plays up the 'faster' bit too much (it turns into an advertisement).
However, the more important reason that relation databases fail to meet many application requirements is the lack of query flexibility (only noted in passing in the blog).
I don't think it is controversial to say that when one designs a relational database, you need to have an idea of what queries are likely to be made on that data. If the data is highly orthogonal, the queries don't matter much; there is only one way to factor the data. But in real life, collections of data are often not orthogonal, and the information being gathered may change over time. In a relational database, this means prophetic planning. Or refactoring the database every few years, a painful process for everyone concerned.
I would suggest that novel database architectures can be widely relevant even if they are not faster than the relational databases of our youth... Twenty years ago the relational database was necessary because of the slow speed of the hardware; now that speed has become a niche requirement, it is time for new architectures.
The real problem was that Lundis Energi rang up Microsoft to report a problem, got put on hold for 30 minutes, and were then told they would be charged for each minute of the phone call...
(and no, that wasn't in the article)
How about a top 10 list of computer skills we'd like to see die?
1. Mass marketing (also known by the fuzzy name 'spam'). 2. Ability to piss someone off with an email that was meant to be friendly. 3. Documenting with the text "someone needs to fill this bit out". 4. Finding the Caps-Lock; wasted brainspace for a useless key. 5. Coding of Flash advertising. 6. Writing bubblesorts... and inline. 7. Industrial design that puts the reset button near one's knee. 8. Being able to press the Ctrl-Alt-Key without thinking. 9. Internal cable engineering that enables leads to be plugged in reverse. 10. COBOL; because it is the vampire that needs a stake through the heart.
There are multiple reasons for having a legal structure along the lines of 'copyright'.
If works are purely seen as economic objects, then a permanent copyright serves to make them more 'object-like'. However, as many people point out, there are philosophical problems with treating artistic works in this way: many cost virtually nothing to replicate (which makes the demand/supply curve meaningless unless there is a copyright enforced monopoly); and their value can be lost almost accidentally (because the copyright holder is no longer willing to supply copies for whatever reasons). In a capitalist system, copyright law is highly interventionist, which just demonstrates that the marketing corporations and their supporters are not as laissez-faire as they like to believe.
However, there are other reasons for copyright, such as preserving the attribution of works. Unfortunately this is not the intention of copyright law; so in (for example) the academic world, plagiarism is primarily countered by public opinion rather than legal process. So called 'copyleft' (eg GPL) attempts to subvert the copyright system to force attribution of code (and to break the artificial monopolisation of code); unfortunately copyright is a blunt instrument here (though I applaud the attempt). If this were the prime purpose of copyright, it would be reasonable to argue for indefinite copyright.
Sadly we think primarily in terms of economics rather than in terms of the social value of the copyrighted work. Sometimes copyright works (for example, reference works with only short-term currency), when people will only pay what the work is worth to them, and the income just happens to correlate well with what the work cost to research and produce. But all too often, there is a clash between public interest and corporate economics, and it can only get worse if copyright periods are extended. There are too many cases where either the author receives insufficient recompense for their effort, or the publisher receives too much recompense (for any reasonable definition of 'insufficient' and 'too much'); sometimes even both!
I do not know the solution to this, but I don't think it lies in increasing copyright periods. This will break the clumsy structure altogether. But perhaps that is a good thing...
> Humans didn't grow up pressing below what they want.
Yet we have learned to deal with a mouse, with a mousepad 10 inches away from the cursor that it is controlling (admittedly not an easy task for children to learn).
Fine grained control of a cursor using a finger on a screen is more to do with consistency (precision) than with the absolute relationship (accuracy) between the cursor and the finger.
You know you are too old when you remember playing coffee table space invaders and now people want to patent the idea because it hasn't been thought of before...
PatriotSearch has been accused, again, of providing information to U.S. authorities that resulted in the imprisonment of an American journalist. PatriotSearch apparently provided U.S. police with internet activity information in a case that resulted in the arrest of John Doe. His crime - trying to join the dissident Friends of Hamas. PatriotSearch says it simply responds to requests from the authorities and was just complying to local laws. A Reporters Without Borders post reported that PatriotSearch certainly knew it was helping to arrest political dissidents and journalists, not just ordinary criminals.
One could ask if there is a difference between 'thought process' and 'learned response'... Guess it depends on your model of human cognition. Still, I think you make a valid point.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a suggestion that language categories determine perception; as you point out for this experiment, it is hard to disentangle cultural context and language in any test of this hypothesis.
However, my feeling is that people overreact to the hypothesis. Indeed, there are obvious areas where language does not affect perception (for example, solving a Rubik's cube is an analytical process, but does not necessarily involve language at all). Like any hypothesis, one makes a very strong claim in order to counter the prevailing assumption (that language is an invented response to the world). Most linguists are aware that reality is somewhere in between. But experiments like this are an important way of refining our knowledge of the relationship between language and perception.
The hypothesis is an interesting one because it turns common-sense upside down. It remains interesting even if it is only 10% true.
It is interesting to note that in my limited experience it seems that the more nuclear bombs a culture has, the more words for colors they invent or co-opt...
Slashdot Mirror
I looked at the photo, but I couldn't see the fish.
There is a common logical error being made here; even if it is true that violent groups have an over-representation of engineers, it doesn't follow that engineers are more likely to support violence.
Incidentally, since one of the prime drivers behind terrorism is the (flawed) principle that 'the end justifies the means', is it any surprise that those with expertise in the means (the engineers) would have a role to play?
There's no such thing as an ethical war. or a just war, or a holy war. Changing the adjective doesn't make it rational.
And the lab conversation went something like this:
"Stuff Asimov."
"Yeah, Let's see if we can evolve robot politicians instead."
I looked these up on google, and they directed me to some slashdot page...
I guess the problem is that people think that garbage collection prevents all out-of-memory problems. Memory leaks are just one cause of runaway memory use; a common one to be sure (just like stack underflow and overflow were common before we went from assembler to procedural languages). So I agree, I think it was a bit unfair to blame C# (much as I am irritated by the philosophy of that particular language).
Well, if we degrade everything to economics (and I'm not saying we should), then votes are worth what the government spends in its three/four year term. Perhaps in the ballpark of 50 thousand dollars per voter (depends on your country, obviously). You could argue that not all that spending is discretionary (ie, changing your vote would not change some of the expenditure), but I would suggest that even the economic value of a vote is underestimated.
Dammit, we bankrupted the wrong one...
About time we forked the hurd kernel too, so that someone can get one of the branches finished...
(yeah, yeah, who am I to make cheap shots, I haven't contributed any code)
so someone who would prefer a 48 hour reinstall than a command line repair, have drivers that occasionally cause blue screens, and learn new interface gimmicks... would definitely have to go for Vista.
and those who would prefer a GUI just to find out their IP, have no drivers and only one choice of software, and have a pastel designer interface... would have to go for OS X.
> after 1 hour of browsing, no start menu or task bar, and no desktop Another feature! The browser automatically switches to full screen mode after 1 hour, and perfectly displays those websites with the black font on the black background. They should charge extra for this...
Personally I would have put in a vote for CSIRAC, which is the oldest digital computer still in existence.
I refer you to the Definitions (part 6) of the Australian Constitution:
"The States" shall mean such of the colonies of New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia, including the northern territory of South Australia, as for the time being are parts of the Commonwealth, and such colonies or territories as may be admitted into or established by the Commonwealth as States; and each of such parts of the Commonwealth shall be called "a State."
not yet...
What the blog refers to is an alternative to row based databases, not just a database catering to a niche part of the market. The author plays up the 'faster' bit too much (it turns into an advertisement).
However, the more important reason that relation databases fail to meet many application requirements is the lack of query flexibility (only noted in passing in the blog).
I don't think it is controversial to say that when one designs a relational database, you need to have an idea of what queries are likely to be made on that data. If the data is highly orthogonal, the queries don't matter much; there is only one way to factor the data. But in real life, collections of data are often not orthogonal, and the information being gathered may change over time. In a relational database, this means prophetic planning. Or refactoring the database every few years, a painful process for everyone concerned.
I would suggest that novel database architectures can be widely relevant even if they are not faster than the relational databases of our youth... Twenty years ago the relational database was necessary because of the slow speed of the hardware; now that speed has become a niche requirement, it is time for new architectures.
The real problem was that Lundis Energi rang up Microsoft to report a problem, got put on hold for 30 minutes, and were then told they would be charged for each minute of the phone call... (and no, that wasn't in the article)
have you any idea how much damage this bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll right over you?
How about a top 10 list of computer skills we'd like to see die?
1. Mass marketing (also known by the fuzzy name 'spam').
2. Ability to piss someone off with an email that was meant to be friendly.
3. Documenting with the text "someone needs to fill this bit out".
4. Finding the Caps-Lock; wasted brainspace for a useless key.
5. Coding of Flash advertising.
6. Writing bubblesorts... and inline.
7. Industrial design that puts the reset button near one's knee.
8. Being able to press the Ctrl-Alt-Key without thinking.
9. Internal cable engineering that enables leads to be plugged in reverse.
10. COBOL; because it is the vampire that needs a stake through the heart.
Flip, why stop there. Lets go for the top 100.
There are multiple reasons for having a legal structure along the lines of 'copyright'.
If works are purely seen as economic objects, then a permanent copyright serves to make them more 'object-like'. However, as many people point out, there are philosophical problems with treating artistic works in this way: many cost virtually nothing to replicate (which makes the demand/supply curve meaningless unless there is a copyright enforced monopoly); and their value can be lost almost accidentally (because the copyright holder is no longer willing to supply copies for whatever reasons). In a capitalist system, copyright law is highly interventionist, which just demonstrates that the marketing corporations and their supporters are not as laissez-faire as they like to believe.
However, there are other reasons for copyright, such as preserving the attribution of works. Unfortunately this is not the intention of copyright law; so in (for example) the academic world, plagiarism is primarily countered by public opinion rather than legal process. So called 'copyleft' (eg GPL) attempts to subvert the copyright system to force attribution of code (and to break the artificial monopolisation of code); unfortunately copyright is a blunt instrument here (though I applaud the attempt). If this were the prime purpose of copyright, it would be reasonable to argue for indefinite copyright.
Sadly we think primarily in terms of economics rather than in terms of the social value of the copyrighted work. Sometimes copyright works (for example, reference works with only short-term currency), when people will only pay what the work is worth to them, and the income just happens to correlate well with what the work cost to research and produce. But all too often, there is a clash between public interest and corporate economics, and it can only get worse if copyright periods are extended. There are too many cases where either the author receives insufficient recompense for their effort, or the publisher receives too much recompense (for any reasonable definition of 'insufficient' and 'too much'); sometimes even both!
I do not know the solution to this, but I don't think it lies in increasing copyright periods. This will break the clumsy structure altogether. But perhaps that is a good thing...
> Humans didn't grow up pressing below what they want.
Yet we have learned to deal with a mouse, with a mousepad 10 inches away from the cursor that it is controlling (admittedly not an easy task for children to learn).
Fine grained control of a cursor using a finger on a screen is more to do with consistency (precision) than with the absolute relationship (accuracy) between the cursor and the finger.
Just ignore him and he will go away...
But wasn't the last Debian release about 15 years ago too?
(Sorry. Couldn't resist that...)
You know you are too old when you remember playing coffee table space invaders and now people want to patent the idea because it hasn't been thought of before...
PatriotSearch has been accused, again, of providing information to U.S. authorities that resulted in the imprisonment of an American journalist. PatriotSearch apparently provided U.S. police with internet activity information in a case that resulted in the arrest of John Doe. His crime - trying to join the dissident Friends of Hamas. PatriotSearch says it simply responds to requests from the authorities and was just complying to local laws. A Reporters Without Borders post reported that PatriotSearch certainly knew it was helping to arrest political dissidents and journalists, not just ordinary criminals.
One could ask if there is a difference between 'thought process' and 'learned response'... Guess it depends on your model of human cognition. Still, I think you make a valid point.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a suggestion that language categories determine perception; as you point out for this experiment, it is hard to disentangle cultural context and language in any test of this hypothesis.
However, my feeling is that people overreact to the hypothesis. Indeed, there are obvious areas where language does not affect perception (for example, solving a Rubik's cube is an analytical process, but does not necessarily involve language at all). Like any hypothesis, one makes a very strong claim in order to counter the prevailing assumption (that language is an invented response to the world). Most linguists are aware that reality is somewhere in between. But experiments like this are an important way of refining our knowledge of the relationship between language and perception.
The hypothesis is an interesting one because it turns common-sense upside down. It remains interesting even if it is only 10% true.
It is interesting to note that in my limited experience it seems that the more nuclear bombs a culture has, the more words for colors they invent or co-opt...