Not necessarily. Quantum computing is a technique that is potentially very useful for operations that are highly parallelizable, and less so for operations that tend to be inherently sequential.
More complex algorithms for encryption do not necessarily mean more security. If factoring, for example, is only linearly hard in the number of digits of the large pseudoprime, then you could theoretically generate absolutely massive pseudoprimes, but at some point the method becomes useless.
The problem is that our notion of "hard" and "one-way" problems is all based on the concept of NP-completeness. This concept is broken by quantum computation. We would need to find new problems that are QC-complete, in other words, problems that are hard (exponential time and # qubits) even with quantum computation, and base new encryption methods around such problems.
I'm not up to date on the literature of computational complexity, but I'm fairly sure such problems should be possible to find, a class of harder problems than NP-complete problems. But since functional QC is so far off, this is not really a practical issue yet, but I'm sure it's of theoretical interest to many.
The point is obvious brainiac. On the surface of the earth, elemental molecular hydrogen (H_2) is hard to come by. The other hydrocarbon compounds you mention are easy to come by as they are more stable.
To make hydrogen gas may even take more energy than you get back from it (if for example you hydrolize it from water, then use it in a fuel cell, you have a net loss of energy unless your processes are all 100% efficient).
That's why hydrogen is commonly considered a storage medium rather than energy source on planet earth.
If you happen to be a large, high pressure ball of gas in outer space with a superheated, ultradense cloud of hydrogen as one of your primary components, then yes, hydrogen makes a fine source of energy via high temperature fusion. Hydrogen may also be harvestable elsewhere in the solar system, but we were really just talking about planet earth here.
Speaking of which, did anybody ever establish beyond a reasonable doubt whether Message From Kabul was a hoax, embellished truth, or just a really strange set of circumstances that were mostly true?
I remember at the time arguing that it was almost definitely bogus and wondering whether Katz was trolling us or whether Katz had in fact been trolled himself.
Not an urban legend. Even though it has made it on to joke pages, the jokes are all based on a real event. The one sketchy thing about this telling is the part about "machines digesting for me" (there's no such thing I've ever seen, and I've seen several major gastrological surgeries).
The guy's name is Michael Mazur and he was at WPI. Here was the original story from WPI. Also there are other similar incidents on record, so the injuries are accurately described.
I hate to say it, but have you tried the IE theme available at DeskMod for Mozilla 1.0? It's located here.
Though it's not perfect in feel, the look it pretty darn close. I find it much more comfortable to work in the IE skin on Windows and I barely _notice_ that I'm not browsing using IE (at least in Windows 2k... when I'm in XP, alas, I notice, but barely).
Then again, platform emulation will just never be perfect with XUL, it's such a kludgey tool. I HATE non-native widgets thrown all over the place on my platform of choice.
The issue is, WHY is something very similar to this skin the default for Mozilla on Windows?
I see responses that fall into several categories here: 1) XP/Pair Programming! 2) Push it up the PHB food chain to your boss or his/her boss, etc. 3) Take responsibility, you aren't just a coder, you are a manager now, give them some mentoring and monitor them carefully 4) Get them fired.
These are all not unreasonable suggestions in certain scenarios. A lot of it has to do with the tradeoffs involved in your deadline. I'll tell you this: you undoubtedly need to meet with your manager at some point in time. Lay it out calmly and cooly and explain whether, in your judgement, the team has potential or is beyond hope. Discuss how you can still meet the deadline, or explain that you need to push this deadline a bit because there's going to be ramp-up time associated with getting this team up to speed.
You can be a team leader without being a full-time manager. In fact, you should be, in my opinion. A lead developer for a team needs to be concerned with project design, deadlines/scope clarification (from the technical side at least, though you don't have to spend all your time in MS Project to represent the tech team in this regard). It's better that the lead developer not be directly responsible for HR concerns, schedule reporting, and shouldn't have to be the primary negotiator with the business/requirements side.
That aside, firing people who are continually nonproductive is reasonable - but I'd push that decision up to your manager and let him/her decide that - and generally, unless this is a small startup, people get more than one chance to screw up. Personally, I think they should get two, not five or six. And they should be told that they've been screwing up - ASSUMING that they are supposed to be mid-level or more experienced developers. If these guys are junior, or this is their first job out of school, they need to be cut some slack, and your manager shouldn't have given you a team with four new kids as your first gig as a development lead.
So this leaves pair programming and mentoring. I don't think there's much of a difference, but I'll say this - pair programming is helpful even if two junior/dumb/mediocre programmers are working together. And if you are working with each of them in turn (swapping out) they WILL improve over time, unless they are ROCK stupid. I can't judge whether these fellows are rock stupid, or just inexperienced, or not good at thinking in the logical manner that programming dictates. I have seen people improve in certain ways, but I've never seen a revelation in which a shitty programmer became a key contributer.
If their egos get in the way of effective pair programming (or mentoring - well, hell I think you'll need to be doing rounds and mentoring as well as practicing pair programming as much as possible), then you will need to exercise a bit of leadership skills, and make clear to them that they are partially responsible for the team falling behind and that you all need to work together to get things up to speed. If they still resist, take them aside and explain that they are blocking progress, and you'll have to push that up the management chain.
As for the rest of extreme programming methodology - well, I agree with posters who suggest you might want to try instituting pair programming first, and seeing how that works. If you feel comfortable with that, then instituting the rest of XP for future projects might be a good idea (though I don't know how adaptable some of the methodology is to embedded systems development - it is really geared toward end user app development, IMHO). For other ideas and perspectives check out the book Rapid Development from Microsoft Press (I know, we all hate Microsoft, but there have been some good ideas for software team organization and development methodology to come out of their shop). Plus, it's definitely easier to sell management on organizational ideas from Microsoft than something like XP (though you can certainly find XP success stories out there as well).
Thank you. I appreciate the good sense from another/.er. The submission is nutty. The article's author (Jennifer Lee) writes lots of excellent, pro-technology pieces for the Times Circuits section that generally focus on the human aspects and social consequences of technology. By no means are these pieces alarmist or anti-technology - for example, she wrote the Spam piece that was posted to Slashdot a week or two back, and several others that have received Slashdot mention.
Sometimes the/. crowd is just up for a good flamefest - and they like to perceive that they are being victimized by the mass media. So eager to jump the gun and strike back, they read the Slashdot posting as if it were an honest description of the contents of a linked-to article. It's not. We should encourage journalists who generally write interesting, generally well-researched pieces for the popular press. That being said, I think sometimes the editors do force things to be jiggled around a bit to make the piece more catchy and interesting, but that's the nature of print media.
I'd like to just save myself time and post once. First of all, I'd like to clarify that the subject of some bashing here (Camberley Crick) is my girlfriend, and an occasional Slashdot reader. References to her "getting her panties in a bunch" and so forth are not appreciated - I assure you that's not the case at all. She was approached by an acquiantance about an article and shared her experiences with people digging up information on her using search engines, that's all.
It is amazing seeing how the slashbots really come out and rip on somebody based on a cursory reading (or none at all) of an article. Camberley was a CS major in college. She isn't an idiot - she knows that you can request to have pages removed from the Google cache (if you were the original author of said work - not just if your name is used).
She also isn't "shocked" to discover that information put on the web is effectively public information. But like all of us who've had web presences dating back many years now, we were less concerned what we put online 5-6 years ago when the Internet felt like a smaller more tightly knit community. Furthermore, I didn't consider when I was 14-15 years old that my Usenet postings and strange online rants might still be around to haunt me 8-10 years later as a businessman engaged in a moderately serious attempt at a career.
I think we all know that Google and the Google cache does us a great service by keeping information around even after hosting fees have stop being paid or frustrated maintainers of web sites get sick of the responsibility. And that it's great that we can find information about ourselves on Google, and thereby know what others are likely to think about us as a first web-based impression.
But the common person (non-geek) doesn't necessarily realize the persistence and easy accessibility of informatiion on the web - hell, most people I see don't really know how to properly use a search engine, including many of the professional programmers that have worked on my teams (and they are amazed when I'm able to rapidly dig up tons of information).
In no way did this article read like a condemnation of search engines to me, just a piece pointing out the human interest aspect of how search engines can change first impressions, a warning to the non-uber-geeks to be wary of what they place on the web and the persistence of web-based information.
Raster isn't wrong - it is the apps that matter to end users. I think we always knew that. He's also not wrong about the GPL, though I think it's not for the reasons he states (technically the license of the OS/desktop environment shouldn't matter as long as commercial entities can develop apps for it, but in marketing/PR/perception terms, it does matter).
However, I find his defeatist attitude annoying. I think the reason for it is simple: he seems to be a pure technologist, and therefore upon observing that the technically superior OS loses on the desktop, he gives up hope, embracing the idea that making the coolest, whiz-bangest WM for the ultra-31337 geeks is the best course of action (and while at it, take pot shots at the KDE and GNOME dudes).
What we need is more people who know how to market Linux to software companies so that the damned applications will get developed. This is not a technical problem, it's a business problem: there are too few desktop Linux users, thus a relatively small business imperative for software companies to incur the overhead of porting applications. Furthermore, the fear of free clones of your application and the culture of imitation in the Free Software world scare companies aware from producing commercial products for Linux (note that I think this fear is unfounded: a sufficiently complex, powerful application takes an awful lot of effort to clone. Your work should stand on its own quality).
The reality is that we need to find more ways to entice companies to develop commercial, closed source software for Linux if we want it to succeed on the desktop, for the masses. Don't say it's already there, we all know it's not. And we need to remember that the solutions to business problems are usually not found by technical means.
We need both. The only way to counteract the DMCA is by legislative means - and a law like this will supercede at least some of the worst parts of the DMCA. But it sure will be nice to have Fair Use codified in the law, rather than just residing in common law judicial decisions where it was before the most ill-conceived piece of legislation ever knocked it out of the water.
Obviously - my point is simple. If the new employer wants the employee to work on a project that puts that employee in a potentially legally questionable situation, they will have to offer a guarantee of legal protection should the employee get sued. Otherwise why should the employee work on that project? Of course, they could just threaten their employee that they'd can him/her, but that will a) alienate lots of employees and b) possibly break employment laws by strongarming/firing an employee for refusing to break intellectual property laws -- this will surely result in a counter suit against the new employer.
If you are going to ask your employees to do questionable stuff, you'd better be willing to go to bat for them - just common sense here, nothing legally binding about it (since obviously, as you mentioned, contracts aren't legally binding on third parties, but neither can a third party try to coerce you into breaking a contract by threatening to fire you from your job). It definitely falls into common business understanding that you can't ask employees to divulge trade secrets that belong to previous employers on threat of firing them - and if you want to convince yourself of this, ask a lawyer.:)
Ehhh.... you are correct, but you are missing "trade secrets". This a broad and fuzzy area. IANAL, of course, so I don't know how enforceable the provisions are, but an awful lot of employment contracts _and_ contract gigs state that you will not disclose "trade secrets" which exclude common knowledge to practitioners of "the trade" but can claim to include a hell of a lot of other stuff.
I'm sure there must be some precedent for including these provisions in contracts, but you'd need a lawyer to tell you about how enforceable they are. Or you could just make a commonsense assessment based on your understanding of what is an obvious engineering problem versus a trade secret could be. See some definitions of trade secrets from the law: http://www.execpc.com/~mhallign/tradesec.html then go and ask a lawyer for a _real_ opinion (i.e. is your company willing to go to bat for you should something happen in the future where you get sued).
This is pure trash. The fact is that most programmers don't and don't really care to understand much about the business. That's exactly the reason that you need technical leads or TPMs who understand both the business requirements and enough of technology to make reasonable trade-off decisions, and either work closely with a business-oriented PM/requirements person, or have excellent rapport with upper-management (i.e. have their trust - not be perceived as a lying technology person).
You either need a person trained and experienced in both roles managing a project, OR you need two people with equal status in the company who can work closely together without killing each other. I've seen lots of structures for doing this. Some work, many don't. Also "project management" at some organizations corresponds to annoying schedule keepers rather than decision makers who recognize and decide on trade-offs, and requirements come from a different group entirely. These are some of the most broken organizations on earth.
This should be modded up. When we layer on constraints to a development project, eventually you will ALWAYS hit the point where the project becomes impossible UNLESS you are willing to relax some of the constraints.
I have fought both sides of this battle as a technologist and manager, and I agree massively that a technologically competent manager does make a huge difference, because they can map out the business needs communicated to them and make constraint/trade-off decisions informed by a better understanding of the possibilities and real technological effort involved in implementation.
Of course, the problem is that there is often somebody above the technically-astute manager who still doesn't know what the fuck is going on, and then the battles just ensue another level up. Unless the company happens to be organized like a _real_ software development shop, which is pretty rare these days.
Re:So let me get this straight.
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Wolframania
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· Score: 2
I think your description is exactly what he contributes to the field, when you take away the grandiosity, pomposity, and credit-stealing that Wolfram does. And indeed, it is underwhelming because it's not new scientifically, and it's not new meta-scientific commentary either.
That's an inane argument. You assume it is possible to come to a basic understanding with a group of people who believe you should be dead and that you have no right to live on this planet. The problem is that their teleology is so fundamentally different from ours that we could NEVER come to a basic understanding. They believe that those who are opposed to Allah's will must be killed. We don't believe in Allah, we believe in secular humanism. QED. This problem won't go away with a little talking. This isn't solvable by warm fuzzies. We had our country, they had their many countries, and they don't like the fact that their leaders and rulers dealt with the US, imported American made weapons, sold oil to the US, and westernized their societies. They don't like the fact that Israel exists and that Jews exist. And they don't like the fact that America exists or that Americans, who live life according to American ideals exist. These facts will not change and make the opposition here quite fundamental.
The main difference is that we are morally good and they are morally bad. Their teleology is broken - they justify evil (in a utilitarian sense) acts in this world with a fantastical (i.e. not based on logic or reason, but on an arbitrary book, the Quran) idea about martyrdom and the rewards of those who kill themselves to further their own faith (often including killing those who don't practice their faith).
I think the solution of law enforcement is quite a reasonable one if you think about it. You can't force people to change belief-sets, but you can damn well tell them that if they act on their beliefs, you will kill them on the spot, and in fact, kill their neighbors, next of kin, friends and so forth. It's a defensive posture, and a fair one. If you don't like it, get the fuck off my planet, or we'll be coming for you next (yes, that means you, whiny pro-terrorist Euro-leftists).
Agreed - I'm interested too in any models for these complex behaviors that provide interesting predictive or explanatory insight to the problems. There may be some such explanations that come from cellular automata or other more general "algorithmic" approaches, but I refuse utterly to give Wolfram credit for these models unless HE creates the models and presents them. Just claiming that they must exist and that they will be useful means nothing.:) We'll see when I get my hands on the book.
Fully agreed. If it's a better framework than that's wonderful. I agree that there are many degrees of improved models that sort of stack on top of each other in physics. Up to some level of accuracy, the more detailed models have to match up to the predictions of the less detailed ones, to the extent that they describe reality.
My point is that I want to hear about what new predictions or results he's obtained from his models, or which interesting existing results he's replicated using a new method (the method of Cellular Automata) before I can accept that this is a "better" framework for describing the world. If he can provide an alternative derivation for the curvature of space-time or for QED or even for something MUCH more simple, than there's some merit here. If he can just wave his hands (like I hear others doing) and say "this behavior is complex, complex behavior is modelled by CAs, look at my CA that makes patterns sort of similar to this thing" than he's not providing me with the kind of results I need to accept the model as useful.
Like I said, I haven't read the book yet so I am reserving my judgement. But I haven't heard ANYBODY mention ANY interesting results or derivations done in the book, just handwaving about how great and interesting Cellular Automata are and how simple rulesets can have complex emergent behavior (this has been known for years and people have been working on such models for quite a few years now).
But if all he's saying is that fundamentally we can be modelled by a bunch of units with mostly local interactions that come together to have global effects and can be described by a set of rules - well, shit, physics has known that for years. Cellular automata also have other characteristics like a finite number of states (is that accepted by modern quantum theory? Is it even consistent to describe the world in that manner?). Given that we can construct a Turing Machine from the Game of Life (i.e. it is Turing complete), we can already describe all computational processes via CAs, and if we believe that the universe could be simulated in finite time via a TM, then it makes some sense that there could be some model equivalence.
In order to be USEFUL, though, there needs to BE an actual model that can make useful predictions. If Wolfram constructed a model for some physical processes that made useful and non-obvious predictions (i.e. better than some existing models for the process) than I think he'd get a lot more credit. Otherwise, it amounts to a metaphysical statement that the Universe IS a CA. If, as you say, he's not making this claim, than I hold him to the same standards of usefulness, insight and predictions that I hold any other theory.
Disclaimer: I haven't read the book yet but I plan on doing so. I have read some of Wolfram's scrawling notes and have a bit of an idea what the general gist of the book is likely to be.
I am disappointed that a Physics PhD could miss out on some fundamental issues here. First of all: anybody who has worked their way through an undergraduate curriculum in Physics understands in a visceral fashion that there is an extreme difference between MODELLING the world with a construct, mathematical, computational or otherwise, and saying that the world IS such a construct. We are in possession of many equations that model certain interactions between different kinds of substances via different forces in the world. Traditional mathematics has yielded many useful tools for modelling these processes. Stating that computational theory or cellular automata may yield useful models as well is an obvious inference. Saying that all physical processes are fundamentally composed of elements that ARE cellular automata seems to me to be a non sequitor. Hell, we don't KNOW what anything in quantum physics or beyond IS really, we just know that certain relationships hold mathetmatically that we can translate in physical conceptions and understanding.
Now, the concept of emergent complexity and complexity theory in general - as I understand it, this is stuff that folks at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have been working on for years, and that the understanding has been around for years that you can model many real-world processes well by systems such as cellular automata or other rule-based systems with complex emergent behaviors.
So... I am left wondering what to make of this book. Ultimately, it will speak for itself when I read it. But it sounds like it's a mix of already known fact with ego and some intuitionist insights into certain physical processes in a monolithic volume. If he PROVES anything interesting and fundamental about certain areas of physics or fluid dynamics, or presents models more useful and meaningful (i.e. that provide information NOT obtainable through current models) than he has produced a valuable scientific work. Otherwise, it's just an interesting treatise that may inspire more meaningful work by others who are more willing to work within the establishment and processes of the mainstream scientific world (not to say that those outside it CAN'T do excellent work, just that I'm not sure if Wolfram can).
Re:The best he can build is a disintegration chamb
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Time Travel
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· Score: 2
Please see my other post here. As I point out, I believe this whole article is logically inconsistent. IF it is truly the case that you branch into a parallel universe, then we will never observe a neutron. And as you point out, the machine reduces to a disintegration chamber. Then there's no reason to expect we'd ever observe 2 neutrons at all. This is why I have LOTS of trouble taking this guy too seriously. But then again, see his paper on the topic and judge for yourself, or wait for him to finish building his prototype.
Mallett's Paper from Physics Letters A
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Time Travel
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· Score: 2
Here is Professor Mallett's paper from 2 years ago or so as printed in Physics Letters A (it took me a bit of Googling around to find this so I thought I might share it with anyone interested).
This is a bit more concrete than the BS in this Boston.com article. There is also a more reasonable New Scientist article, at least it isn't riddled with the same awful logical fallacies as this Boston.com piece is, and Mallett doesn't come off as quite as much of an arrogant idiot, and the author doesn't come off sounding so worshipfully stupid. I found a copy of this here.
How the hell do you expect to see the neutron that has "time travelled"? If you accept the line about parallel universes - i.e. that a traveller back in time would exist in a "forked" parallel universe, and thus essentially exist outside of the light cone of all of us Somewhere Else, than the neutron must obey the fame fate. How the hell come the neutron is expected to show up in our own universe for all of us to see, but we couldn't do the same thing with a person? If the neutron goes "back in time" but ends up forked into its own parallel universe, clearly "we" (where we is any set of particles other than that neutron) certainly won't observe it.
And if we _do_ observe the neutron, then presumably we could do the same thing with a human or any other object. But now we have just opened up the universe to all sorts of logical inconsistencies since it indicates we can actually travel into the past to affect the future of the same folks around us.
IANAP (but I majored in Physics as an undergrad). But this is boggling me a bit at this instant. I am trying to figure out if this is a hoax, if this guy is an idiot, or if my little logical fallacy above is malformed in and of itself or missing some critical information from this dudes "brilliant research". Outrageous claims that seem internally inconsistent require some pretty fucking outrageous proof - I wouldn't go spouting crap like this off to journalists unless I had the damned thing working. And convinced at least a few of my more open minded colleagues that my explanation of the results was correct.
Slashdot Mirror
More complex algorithms for encryption do not necessarily mean more security. If factoring, for example, is only linearly hard in the number of digits of the large pseudoprime, then you could theoretically generate absolutely massive pseudoprimes, but at some point the method becomes useless.
The problem is that our notion of "hard" and "one-way" problems is all based on the concept of NP-completeness. This concept is broken by quantum computation. We would need to find new problems that are QC-complete, in other words, problems that are hard (exponential time and # qubits) even with quantum computation, and base new encryption methods around such problems.
I'm not up to date on the literature of computational complexity, but I'm fairly sure such problems should be possible to find, a class of harder problems than NP-complete problems. But since functional QC is so far off, this is not really a practical issue yet, but I'm sure it's of theoretical interest to many.
To make hydrogen gas may even take more energy than you get back from it (if for example you hydrolize it from water, then use it in a fuel cell, you have a net loss of energy unless your processes are all 100% efficient).
That's why hydrogen is commonly considered a storage medium rather than energy source on planet earth.
If you happen to be a large, high pressure ball of gas in outer space with a superheated, ultradense cloud of hydrogen as one of your primary components, then yes, hydrogen makes a fine source of energy via high temperature fusion. Hydrogen may also be harvestable elsewhere in the solar system, but we were really just talking about planet earth here.
I remember at the time arguing that it was almost definitely bogus and wondering whether Katz was trolling us or whether Katz had in fact been trolled himself.
This story on the other hand, is just grotesque.
Damn, my link to the press release didn't come out before.
The guy's name is Michael Mazur and he was at WPI. Here was the original story from WPI. Also there are other similar incidents on record, so the injuries are accurately described.
Though it's not perfect in feel, the look it pretty darn close. I find it much more comfortable to work in the IE skin on Windows and I barely _notice_ that I'm not browsing using IE (at least in Windows 2k... when I'm in XP, alas, I notice, but barely).
Then again, platform emulation will just never be perfect with XUL, it's such a kludgey tool. I HATE non-native widgets thrown all over the place on my platform of choice.
The issue is, WHY is something very similar to this skin the default for Mozilla on Windows?
These are all not unreasonable suggestions in certain scenarios. A lot of it has to do with the tradeoffs involved in your deadline. I'll tell you this: you undoubtedly need to meet with your manager at some point in time. Lay it out calmly and cooly and explain whether, in your judgement, the team has potential or is beyond hope. Discuss how you can still meet the deadline, or explain that you need to push this deadline a bit because there's going to be ramp-up time associated with getting this team up to speed.
You can be a team leader without being a full-time manager. In fact, you should be, in my opinion. A lead developer for a team needs to be concerned with project design, deadlines/scope clarification (from the technical side at least, though you don't have to spend all your time in MS Project to represent the tech team in this regard). It's better that the lead developer not be directly responsible for HR concerns, schedule reporting, and shouldn't have to be the primary negotiator with the business/requirements side.
That aside, firing people who are continually nonproductive is reasonable - but I'd push that decision up to your manager and let him/her decide that - and generally, unless this is a small startup, people get more than one chance to screw up. Personally, I think they should get two, not five or six. And they should be told that they've been screwing up - ASSUMING that they are supposed to be mid-level or more experienced developers. If these guys are junior, or this is their first job out of school, they need to be cut some slack, and your manager shouldn't have given you a team with four new kids as your first gig as a development lead.
So this leaves pair programming and mentoring. I don't think there's much of a difference, but I'll say this - pair programming is helpful even if two junior/dumb/mediocre programmers are working together. And if you are working with each of them in turn (swapping out) they WILL improve over time, unless they are ROCK stupid. I can't judge whether these fellows are rock stupid, or just inexperienced, or not good at thinking in the logical manner that programming dictates. I have seen people improve in certain ways, but I've never seen a revelation in which a shitty programmer became a key contributer.
If their egos get in the way of effective pair programming (or mentoring - well, hell I think you'll need to be doing rounds and mentoring as well as practicing pair programming as much as possible), then you will need to exercise a bit of leadership skills, and make clear to them that they are partially responsible for the team falling behind and that you all need to work together to get things up to speed. If they still resist, take them aside and explain that they are blocking progress, and you'll have to push that up the management chain.
As for the rest of extreme programming methodology - well, I agree with posters who suggest you might want to try instituting pair programming first, and seeing how that works. If you feel comfortable with that, then instituting the rest of XP for future projects might be a good idea (though I don't know how adaptable some of the methodology is to embedded systems development - it is really geared toward end user app development, IMHO). For other ideas and perspectives check out the book Rapid Development from Microsoft Press (I know, we all hate Microsoft, but there have been some good ideas for software team organization and development methodology to come out of their shop). Plus, it's definitely easier to sell management on organizational ideas from Microsoft than something like XP (though you can certainly find XP success stories out there as well).
Sometimes the /. crowd is just up for a good flamefest - and they like to perceive that they are being victimized by the mass media. So eager to jump the gun and strike back, they read the Slashdot posting as if it were an honest description of the contents of a linked-to article. It's not. We should encourage journalists who generally write interesting, generally well-researched pieces for the popular press. That being said, I think sometimes the editors do force things to be jiggled around a bit to make the piece more catchy and interesting, but that's the nature of print media.
It is amazing seeing how the slashbots really come out and rip on somebody based on a cursory reading (or none at all) of an article. Camberley was a CS major in college. She isn't an idiot - she knows that you can request to have pages removed from the Google cache (if you were the original author of said work - not just if your name is used).
She also isn't "shocked" to discover that information put on the web is effectively public information. But like all of us who've had web presences dating back many years now, we were less concerned what we put online 5-6 years ago when the Internet felt like a smaller more tightly knit community. Furthermore, I didn't consider when I was 14-15 years old that my Usenet postings and strange online rants might still be around to haunt me 8-10 years later as a businessman engaged in a moderately serious attempt at a career.
I think we all know that Google and the Google cache does us a great service by keeping information around even after hosting fees have stop being paid or frustrated maintainers of web sites get sick of the responsibility. And that it's great that we can find information about ourselves on Google, and thereby know what others are likely to think about us as a first web-based impression.
But the common person (non-geek) doesn't necessarily realize the persistence and easy accessibility of informatiion on the web - hell, most people I see don't really know how to properly use a search engine, including many of the professional programmers that have worked on my teams (and they are amazed when I'm able to rapidly dig up tons of information).
In no way did this article read like a condemnation of search engines to me, just a piece pointing out the human interest aspect of how search engines can change first impressions, a warning to the non-uber-geeks to be wary of what they place on the web and the persistence of web-based information.
However, I find his defeatist attitude annoying. I think the reason for it is simple: he seems to be a pure technologist, and therefore upon observing that the technically superior OS loses on the desktop, he gives up hope, embracing the idea that making the coolest, whiz-bangest WM for the ultra-31337 geeks is the best course of action (and while at it, take pot shots at the KDE and GNOME dudes).
What we need is more people who know how to market Linux to software companies so that the damned applications will get developed. This is not a technical problem, it's a business problem: there are too few desktop Linux users, thus a relatively small business imperative for software companies to incur the overhead of porting applications. Furthermore, the fear of free clones of your application and the culture of imitation in the Free Software world scare companies aware from producing commercial products for Linux (note that I think this fear is unfounded: a sufficiently complex, powerful application takes an awful lot of effort to clone. Your work should stand on its own quality).
The reality is that we need to find more ways to entice companies to develop commercial, closed source software for Linux if we want it to succeed on the desktop, for the masses. Don't say it's already there, we all know it's not. And we need to remember that the solutions to business problems are usually not found by technical means.
We need both. The only way to counteract the DMCA is by legislative means - and a law like this will supercede at least some of the worst parts of the DMCA. But it sure will be nice to have Fair Use codified in the law, rather than just residing in common law judicial decisions where it was before the most ill-conceived piece of legislation ever knocked it out of the water.
If you are going to ask your employees to do questionable stuff, you'd better be willing to go to bat for them - just common sense here, nothing legally binding about it (since obviously, as you mentioned, contracts aren't legally binding on third parties, but neither can a third party try to coerce you into breaking a contract by threatening to fire you from your job). It definitely falls into common business understanding that you can't ask employees to divulge trade secrets that belong to previous employers on threat of firing them - and if you want to convince yourself of this, ask a lawyer.
I'm sure there must be some precedent for including these provisions in contracts, but you'd need a lawyer to tell you about how enforceable they are. Or you could just make a commonsense assessment based on your understanding of what is an obvious engineering problem versus a trade secret could be. See some definitions of trade secrets from the law: http://www.execpc.com/~mhallign/tradesec.html then go and ask a lawyer for a _real_ opinion (i.e. is your company willing to go to bat for you should something happen in the future where you get sued).
This is pure trash. The fact is that most programmers don't and don't really care to understand much about the business. That's exactly the reason that you need technical leads or TPMs who understand both the business requirements and enough of technology to make reasonable trade-off decisions, and either work closely with a business-oriented PM/requirements person, or have excellent rapport with upper-management (i.e. have their trust - not be perceived as a lying technology person).
You either need a person trained and experienced in both roles managing a project, OR you need two people with equal status in the company who can work closely together without killing each other.
I've seen lots of structures for doing this. Some work, many don't. Also "project management" at some organizations corresponds to annoying schedule keepers rather than decision makers who recognize and decide on trade-offs, and requirements come from a different group entirely. These are some of the most broken organizations on earth.
I have fought both sides of this battle as a technologist and manager, and I agree massively that a technologically competent manager does make a huge difference, because they can map out the business needs communicated to them and make constraint/trade-off decisions informed by a better understanding of the possibilities and real technological effort involved in implementation.
Of course, the problem is that there is often somebody above the technically-astute manager who still doesn't know what the fuck is going on, and then the battles just ensue another level up. Unless the company happens to be organized like a _real_ software development shop, which is pretty rare these days.
I think your description is exactly what he contributes to the field, when you take away the grandiosity, pomposity, and credit-stealing that Wolfram does. And indeed, it is underwhelming because it's not new scientifically, and it's not new meta-scientific commentary either.
The main difference is that we are morally good and they are morally bad. Their teleology is broken - they justify evil (in a utilitarian sense) acts in this world with a fantastical (i.e. not based on logic or reason, but on an arbitrary book, the Quran) idea about martyrdom and the rewards of those who kill themselves to further their own faith (often including killing those who don't practice their faith).
I think the solution of law enforcement is quite a reasonable one if you think about it. You can't force people to change belief-sets, but you can damn well tell them that if they act on their beliefs, you will kill them on the spot, and in fact, kill their neighbors, next of kin, friends and so forth. It's a defensive posture, and a fair one. If you don't like it, get the fuck off my planet, or we'll be coming for you next (yes, that means you, whiny pro-terrorist Euro-leftists).
Agreed - I'm interested too in any models for these complex behaviors that provide interesting predictive or explanatory insight to the problems. There may be some such explanations that come from cellular automata or other more general "algorithmic" approaches, but I refuse utterly to give Wolfram credit for these models unless HE creates the models and presents them. Just claiming that they must exist and that they will be useful means nothing. :) We'll see when I get my hands on the book.
My point is that I want to hear about what new predictions or results he's obtained from his models, or which interesting existing results he's replicated using a new method (the method of Cellular Automata) before I can accept that this is a "better" framework for describing the world. If he can provide an alternative derivation for the curvature of space-time or for QED or even for something MUCH more simple, than there's some merit here. If he can just wave his hands (like I hear others doing) and say "this behavior is complex, complex behavior is modelled by CAs, look at my CA that makes patterns sort of similar to this thing" than he's not providing me with the kind of results I need to accept the model as useful.
Like I said, I haven't read the book yet so I am reserving my judgement. But I haven't heard ANYBODY mention ANY interesting results or derivations done in the book, just handwaving about how great and interesting Cellular Automata are and how simple rulesets can have complex emergent behavior (this has been known for years and people have been working on such models for quite a few years now).
In order to be USEFUL, though, there needs to BE an actual model that can make useful predictions. If Wolfram constructed a model for some physical processes that made useful and non-obvious predictions (i.e. better than some existing models for the process) than I think he'd get a lot more credit. Otherwise, it amounts to a metaphysical statement that the Universe IS a CA. If, as you say, he's not making this claim, than I hold him to the same standards of usefulness, insight and predictions that I hold any other theory.
I am disappointed that a Physics PhD could miss out on some fundamental issues here. First of all: anybody who has worked their way through an undergraduate curriculum in Physics understands in a visceral fashion that there is an extreme difference between MODELLING the world with a construct, mathematical, computational or otherwise, and saying that the world IS such a construct. We are in possession of many equations that model certain interactions between different kinds of substances via different forces in the world. Traditional mathematics has yielded many useful tools for modelling these processes. Stating that computational theory or cellular automata may yield useful models as well is an obvious inference. Saying that all physical processes are fundamentally composed of elements that ARE cellular automata seems to me to be a non sequitor. Hell, we don't KNOW what anything in quantum physics or beyond IS really, we just know that certain relationships hold mathetmatically that we can translate in physical conceptions and understanding.
Now, the concept of emergent complexity and complexity theory in general - as I understand it, this is stuff that folks at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have been working on for years, and that the understanding has been around for years that you can model many real-world processes well by systems such as cellular automata or other rule-based systems with complex emergent behaviors.
So... I am left wondering what to make of this book. Ultimately, it will speak for itself when I read it. But it sounds like it's a mix of already known fact with ego and some intuitionist insights into certain physical processes in a monolithic volume. If he PROVES anything interesting and fundamental about certain areas of physics or fluid dynamics, or presents models more useful and meaningful (i.e. that provide information NOT obtainable through current models) than he has produced a valuable scientific work. Otherwise, it's just an interesting treatise that may inspire more meaningful work by others who are more willing to work within the establishment and processes of the mainstream scientific world (not to say that those outside it CAN'T do excellent work, just that I'm not sure if Wolfram can).
Please see my other post here. As I point out, I believe this whole article is logically inconsistent. IF it is truly the case that you branch into a parallel universe, then we will never observe a neutron. And as you point out, the machine reduces to a disintegration chamber. Then there's no reason to expect we'd ever observe 2 neutrons at all. This is why I have LOTS of trouble taking this guy too seriously. But then again, see his paper on the topic and judge for yourself, or wait for him to finish building his prototype.
This is a bit more concrete than the BS in this Boston.com article. There is also a more reasonable New Scientist article, at least it isn't riddled with the same awful logical fallacies as this Boston.com piece is, and Mallett doesn't come off as quite as much of an arrogant idiot, and the author doesn't come off sounding so worshipfully stupid. I found a copy of this here.
And if we _do_ observe the neutron, then presumably we could do the same thing with a human or any other object. But now we have just opened up the universe to all sorts of logical inconsistencies since it indicates we can actually travel into the past to affect the future of the same folks around us.
IANAP (but I majored in Physics as an undergrad). But this is boggling me a bit at this instant. I am trying to figure out if this is a hoax, if this guy is an idiot, or if my little logical fallacy above is malformed in and of itself or missing some critical information from this dudes "brilliant research". Outrageous claims that seem internally inconsistent require some pretty fucking outrageous proof - I wouldn't go spouting crap like this off to journalists unless I had the damned thing working. And convinced at least a few of my more open minded colleagues that my explanation of the results was correct.