Wow, that was a thoroughly awesome reply, I really appreciate it.
I only knew about Lisi's paper because it was posted on Slashdot; I do consider all of the lifestyle stuff to be completely superfluous and don't base my judgment on the paper on those things (however considering how sour the taste is in my mouth whenever I hear about string theory, the fact that he is very much outside the 'establishment' does have its appeal). Also there was some flack posted about his paper because it was titled 'An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything' which does clearly overstate its reach, but I forgive him because I have learned that the title was simply a tongue-in-cheek pun based on the mathematical names of the constructs he uses in forming his theory.
I really have tried hard to read and understand as much as I can about his theory, which is difficult when my formal education is in computer science and I know nothing of 'manifolds' and 'Higgs space' and the like. One thing reading his paper and the scientific community's online comments about it taught me is that advanced physics is communicated in terms that require quite a bit of background knowledge. Of course I kind of already suspected this but it's one thing to infer it, and another thing to experience it directly by trying to make sense of a paper when every sentence contains terminology whose meaning is assumed, and obvious to the target audience, but which is completely opaque to the uninitiated.
At any rate, what I have concluded, very non-scientifically, is that Lisi's paper is basically just a 'periodic table of elements' for fundamental particles. Kind of like how the chemical periodic table of elements organized atoms in ways that both explained known phenomena, and predicted new atoms with new properties, Lisi's paper gives a mathematical model that encompasses known particles and the forces by which they interact, and and by nature of the fact that the mathematical models in question also describe particles and forces which have not yet been observed, predicts new subatomic particles.
I also concluded after my layman research that while this is interesting, and perhaps might help point scientists in a new direction of research, it does not answer any fundamental questions of 'why' physics works the way it does. Of course, I have to wonder philosophically whether or not there really is an answer to 'why' things are the way they are, and if the best we can do is perhaps to describe 'how' our universe works, but never 'why'.
However, I am still intensely interested in the outcome of his research because, like I mentioned, I am not a fan of string theory, and Lisi's stuff is, as far as I understand it, completely at odds with string theory, and if his stuff works and it obsoletes string theory, then I really want to know about it.
Once again, thanks for your awesome post. It is a laborious process to search via google and try to tease out understanding of Lisi's work and where it's going, and your comments gave me more insight than hours and hours of my own 'research' has done.
Oh my god, this guy's question was like an invitation for every holier-than-thou type to come out of the woodwork and spout off about how much more worthy than he is they are and how stupid he is for even asking the question.
Well, I guess if you really need the ego stroking - you sound like a real genius man, like you must have been the best qualified high school grad of all time and I am sure that all the universities were begging you to sign up, and if they weren't, well it's the dumbest thing they ever did to pass up on talent like you.
Now that that's over with - do you actually have a useful answer to his question?
No offense man, but you are kidding yourself. Your degree from MTU (whatever that is) is not as good as a degree from M.I.T. and anyone doing interviews for a desirable software development company knows this and will take this into account when considering your resume. This is not a value judgment about you personally, but it is true, and you really ought not to delude yourself about it. There are certainly jobs where both you and an M.I.T. grad could both apply and be equally well qualified, but chances are that there are also jobs that the M.I.T. graduate will get offered and you won't. The M.I.T. grad's resume will get them in the door for an interview, but yours won't, and just because he has M.I.T. on his resume and you don't. Don't kid yourself, it will happen.
And there is good reason for it, too. M.I.T. provides a better computer science education than just about anywhere else. And it's miles better than that available at schools which are not known for computer science. Employers know this, and it's why they will rate the M.I.T. resume higher than the MTU resume. Employers desperately want to save time in the interview process, it is a tremendous waste of time to interview candidates that are clearly not qualified, and so they are always looking for ways to improve the quality of the candidates that they invite for interviews. And the school you graduated from, is a very very easy way to do this weeding. Now there are superstars that graduate from no-name schools and duds that graduate from M.I.T., and employers know this, which is why they don't look *just* at the school when deciding who to interview. But it is a big factor, whether or not you realize it, and it is very justified.
You are right though that if your resume is good enough to get you to the interview, the school you went to is not particularly relevent. But first, you have to acknowledge that the M.I.T. degree will open doors that your degree will not, and will land more and better interviews. Just accept it, because it's true. And second, you have to realize that the average grad from M.I.T. is just going to be better qualified and thus a better interview than the average grad from MTU, so on average, the M.I.T. guys will get the better jobs.
Once again, nothing about this is personal to you, because maybe you would interview really well and get the job anyway. But you have to accept that where you went to college does correlate with your qualifications, and employers know that.
I also wouldn't advertise that I was born to just plain poor parents and to drag my ass up to middle class with nobody to help me. It makes it really hard to get much sympathy from people who don't like the assumption that being born with less money than someone else gives you moral high ground over them.
Seriously, what's with the people reading this who feel the need to point out how much harder it was for them and that the person asking the question is just being a whiner for wanting to go to M.I.T.? I'm sure he would take a job if that was the only alternative but when you're a high school kid not knowing exactly what to expect from college, isn't it prudent to not want to overcommit yourself by going into it knowing you're going to have to earn 15 grand a year just to keep yourself in school? I mean, of course the kid will do it if he has to, do you know what kind of work ethic it takes just to get into a place like M.I.T.? But is it so wrong to look for alternatives first?
You are right, and many people who have posted on this subject have made the same mistake as the GP did. I wish everyone would read your clarification before posting the same tired statements about how 'if you can already afford 30 grand than you can afford a few K more'...
Oh my god give me a fucking break. The kid wants to find out of there are options to help him go to the college he wants to go to, and you are jumping down his throat because you don't think he's going to be earning his chops like you did? Sounds like 'sour grapes' to me. M.I.T. is a very good computer science institution, maybe the kid will end up being one of the great researchers of the 21st century and contribute to the field.
Why don't you just answer his question instead of spouting off about how much better your way of doing things is? What, you don't have an answer to his question because instead of going to a good school you fucked around with a "Berufsmatur" instead? Well then shut the fuck up.
You sound like you know what you're talking about. I'm a non-physicist who was intrigued by Lisi's paper, to the small extent that I understood it. I've been waiting to hear any kind of validation of it or further research in that direction, I even do a google search every couple of months to see what's up, but nothing seems to be forthcoming.
Was it really just a flash in the pan? Is there any hope that Lisi's theory will prove to have any relevence in modern physics?
Given what the parent poster has said, I think that he/she would *never* impose their standards on anyone else in the way that you want to. It's really not that hard to do - you just have to be able to allow someone to watch something that you yourself would not want to watch. If you feel a moral imperative to stop people from doing things that you think they shouldn't do, then you will find this difficult. But those of us who have no problems letting other people be as crude (from our own viewpoint) as they want to be, have no problem with this.
Furthermore, you speak as if you think the 'burden of proof' is on people to convince you that they should be allowed to watch what they want. That is totally backwards. You should be trying to prove why you have any right whatsoever to dictate the rules about what other people can watch, with your only justification thus far being that you wouldn't want to watch it so they shouldn't either. So far your arguments have not been very compelling.
On a related note, I lived in the USA all my life but moved to New Zealand a bit over a year ago. I was really surprised to see that they have almost no "broadcast standards" here. They do keep the racy stuff off the air until 8 or 9 pm but after that it seems anything goes. I have seen full frontal nudity (male and female), simulated sex, gore, every swear word there is and just about any tasteless joke you can think of (actually all of this was accomplished in pretty much one movie shown in the late evening time slot - Scary Movie 3 (or was it 4?)), all broadcast over the free airwaves that anyone at all can pick up just by turning on their TV.
I find it completely and entirely refreshing after having grown up in the USA where I wouldn't even bother watching movies on TV because they are so edited and bleeped out that it's not even like watching the original. I wholeheartedly support New Zealand's much less fascist (when compared to the USA) broadcasting standards. It is Yet Another Thing to love about this great country of New Zealand, that you will not find in the stone age culture of the USA.
I have young children and I don't fret the fact that these R rated movies (and R rated TV shows - you should see some of the stuff that comes out of the U.K.!) are shown on TV. When I need to exercise parental control to ensure that my kids don't see it, I will. I don't need the government to do it for me, I am a perfectly capable parent.
Speaking as an American who has been living in New Zealand for over a year now, I have to say that the NTSC vs. PAL thing is totally overblown. I can't say that I notice any difference in quality between the two at all. The only thing I noticed was the amount of flicker in PAL which I found annoying at first in bright scenes but over time I have become used to it and don't notice it at all. I never think 'wow this PAL stuff looks soooo much better than the NTSC I used to watch!".
Definitely the most annoying thing is how New Zealand televisions do this stupid thing where they don't map specific UHF/VHF frequencies to specific channels but instead have to build up a mapping table so that selecting a channel on the TV tunes not to a predefined frequency but instead to a frequency that has been assigned to that channel. And this mapping is accomplished by this really stupid and annoying 'autoscan' process where you tell your TV to scan for frequencies and it assigns channels based on what it finds. So you run this stupid, slow, and annoying autoscan thing and you end up with a completely arbitrary set of channel assignments with duplications due to multipath and other crap. Move to a different part of town and run the autoscan again and you end up with a completely different mapping and have to re-learn where all of the channels are. It's retarded.
It's so much simpler and more straightforward to have channel numbers map directly to specific frequencies. Whoever thought the NZ way up (is all PAL like this) must have been on drugs.
That is good news for artists who want to publish their own music. Clearly such a business model can be successful for the artist.
However, is this success likely to be duplicated? Is it just because this concept is so novel that so many people were willing to pay so much for the special edition? Would that many people line up to buy the special edition of his next album? Are other artists as likely to experience this success once such things become more mainstream and less unique?
Part of the criteria that people use in deciding the value of something is how rare and unusual it is, and since this is one of the first such instances of an artist-produced album, I wonder if the profits that Trent Reznor has enjoyed here will be sustainable for other artists.
Consider: all of the people who paid $300 for his special edition release, probably listen to many other artists as well. Would they spend $300, or anything close to it, for special edition releases of albums from all the other artists they like? Probably not; most almost certainly couldn't afford to pay $300 x N artists x M albums; Trent was savvy enough to do it first, so he gets to enjoy what is likely an unsustainable pricing model.
I'm not trying to belittle his accomplishment, which is awesome (although I personally wouldn't know a Trent Reznor song from a Barry Manilow song, I'm glad that someone is pushing the boundaries for music distribution and trying to fix the music publishing system), I'm just trying to point out that anyone who thinks that all artists can be this successful, need to realize that this is unlikely to be duplicated, based on purely economic considerations.
Thank you very much, that answers my question. I didn't know what 'Silverlight' was but now that you've explained it to me I can see what the problem is.
Can someone explain to me where the term "locked up" applies to this news article? I read the (very brief) article linked to - and didn't see how anything in the library would become 'locked up', which I assume to mean, available only to people using Windows software. Yeah, they're going to accept some 'donations' of OS's and stuff (so Microsoft spends $10 burning a bunch of CDs and calls it a multi-million-dollar donation, with all the relevent tax perks as well - why does the government let them get away with this?) for their new kiosks (which if my experience with Windows kiosks is anything to go by, will be sitting at a blue screen or an empty Windows desktop 50% of the time), but how does this equal anything being 'locked up'?
Taxes allow the government to collect money from individuals based on more than just the amount of money that they have. If the government could only print money, not collect taxes, then it would only be able to take twice as much value away from someone who has twice as much money as someone else. There would be no way to have progressive income tax scales, for example, because richer people would be effectively 'taxed' (by having the value of their money reduced, and an equivalent value of money ending up in the hands of the government, as a result of the government printing some money for itself) at the same rate as poorer people.
Not that I think that this is a bad thing, but it is not historically how the populous of the USA wants its taxes to work.
I think you may be unfamiliar with Panasonic's "business tough" line of laptops. They are not the ultra hardened ones sold to the military, police, etc. They are sold to businesses as sturdy, light, and reliable laptops for travelers.
You should google search for Panasonic Y5, W5, or T5 (or even R5 if you don't mind a Japanese-only model) to see examples of these laptops.
They can have water/coffee spilled on them, a car run over them, or a 200 lb person stand on them and they are fine. Also they can be dropped from a typical desk height and survive unscathed. However these are not the super hardened versions that you may be familiar with, and they can't withstand everything that those can.
I think that Panasonic Toughbooks are the best-engineered laptops that sell to real road warrios who rely on laptops for their livelihood. Of course, they are outsold by Thinkpads by a huge margin, which I believe is more likely due to the greater market presence of IBM (now Lenovo) than technical superiority. Also, IBM/Lenovo put out many, many more models than Panasonic have of their "business tough" line (not their true hardened laptops which are almost certainly too bulky and expensive for travellers), so it's hard to make a fair comparison there; IBM/Lenovo are just much bigger in the laptop market than Panasonic. And yet, the few models that Panasonic make are really nice.
I am typing this on a Panasonic Toughbook Y2 that weighs 3.3 pounds, has a 14.1 inch display, and a titanium alloy case that is super strong and attractive. This laptop feels like it will go forever; after 3 years of nearly constant use it doesn't have the smallest bit of flex in any part of it and the hinge between the base and display is as tight and solid as ever. I like its sleek metal exterior in the same way that I like real metal bodies on late 70's Japanese hatchbacks. I don't like plastic!
Most people disagree with you, and can't stand trackpoints, which is why they are in only very few laptops anymore. I am one of those who dislikes trackpoints, and it's why I have never, or will ever, consider buying a Thinkpad. I don't like having that little thing in the keyboard; maybe it's the way I type, but every time I have had to use a laptop which had one, my fingers were constantly 'tripping' on it. Very annoying.
There is an annoyance with trackpads too - the base of my thumb sometimes hits it accidentally and then the cursor suddenly jumps to some random place and I find that my last few words have been inserted in the middle of some other part of my document instead of at the end. That is annoying but only happens once every couple of days despite how much typing I do.
I wish that IBM would offer a Thinkpad without the trackpoint; how hard can it be to have a replacement keyboard, for the majority of people who don't use trackpoints (yes the modern Thinkpads have *both* a trackpad and trackpoint, but I don't just want to be able to use a trackpad, I specifically want to *not* have a trackpoint in there, and I think many people would agree. Besides, having two pointing devices really seems like a hack doesn't it?).
Re:So when do we get its successor?
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I'm not offended, although I purposely tried to make myself sound that way in my post to incite your response. So I guess two can play at that game huh...:)
As a final point, something I mentioned in another post I made just a minute ago to another poster in this thread... I think that a large part of the perceived inadequacy of X is due to the nature of modern desktop implementations. I'm really going to show what an old man I am here, but I *still* run twm, one of the original X window managers, and I have it 'tuned' using a configuration file that does things like remove window title bars (they waste space don't you know), and binding most windowing operations to keypresses (or key/mouse combinations). I don't run any kind of 'start' menu bar, I just type the command name of any program I want to run into an xterm. While my desktop is in no way representative of the reality of modern desktops, it does demonstrate, I think, that performance is to a large degree dependent upon the complexity of the desktop, much more so than the underlying graphics subsystem. All X programs have always run speedily for me, because there is so little running on my system and contending for CPU and video card cycles. I have no fancy effects going on. No D-Bus servers, or clients, no big and complex window managers like the K window manager or whatever one Gnome uses. It's all streamlined and simple. And as a result, I get to see the performance of X when it's not bogged down with 'crap', and honestly, it's pretty good.
I mentioned in my other post about how my father-in-law's approach to computers is to buy (or build, actually he likes to build his own systems, to his credit) the fastest stuff available, and the absolutely *load* it down with the newest version of Windows and every task bar application, quick-launcher, drag-and-drop utility, browser toolbar, etc, that he possibly can. It is absolutely no joke when I say that he, for example, will have two or three browser toolbars installed at once (who needs BOTH Yahoo and Google toolbar at the same time? You end up with the top 1/3 of every browser window being covered in little buttons and doodads that are totally redundant and useless). And he'll have 2 or 3 drag-and-drop CD-burning applications running from the taskbar at the same time. On top of that, every little task bar icon known to mankind; there'll be literally 15 - 20 of them in there. His computer, despite being way faster than anything I ever owned, boots in like 5 minutes, and once booted, every windowing operation is sluggish; redraws can be watched as they occur. Opening windows or pulling up the Start menu or clicking on a drop-down menu literally takes several seconds. It is insane.
This is an example of how the exact same poor performance that you are ascribing to X, can be achieved on the supposedly superior (from a performance perspective) Windows "directly in the kernel" graphical system.
I installed Linux on a USB drive and booted his same computer up with it, and it was so fast and snappy in comparison to his Windows XP installation, it was amazing.
So my point is, that really the slowness is almost certainly caused by the amount of work being loaded onto the graphical system, not by the underlying performance of the system itself. And Windows and X are no different in this respect.
Re:So when do we get its successor?
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And what evidence do you have that any of the problems that you are seeing are related to X?
I open discussions in many tabs all the time and my system doesn't grind to a halt.
I suspect the problem is more likely the tremendous amount of bells, whistles, and cruft that go into a "modern" Linux desktop implementation. I still run twm and no Enlightenment, K Desktop, Gnome Desktop, or any of the countless 'servers', 'D-Bus clients', or any of the reams and reams of associated stuff.
I think that the bloated nature of Linux desktop implementations is more likely the cause of your problems than your X server. I can say with fair certainty that if you keep your desktop trim and light, as I do, that performance is very good. X doesn't enter into it; any system that was running as much crap as modern desktop systems do will have poor performance.
An example is my father-in-law's computers. Any of them. He always installs the latest version of Windows, and every single little task bar applet, browser plug-in, desktop quick-launch software, etc, etc, that he can get his hands on. I can't quite understand his thinking, except to assume that he really likes the idea of having as much software as he can, just in case someday he needs something. His computers are always much more powerful than mine and yet take 3 - 5 minutes to boot Windows, and when they are up and running, suffer from all of the problems you have ascribed to X; clicking on windows will show noticeable redraw latency, trying to open a pull down menu will cause a noticeable pause, etc.
It's not the underlying window system that's the problem, it's how much 'junk' (for lack of a better term, although certainly one man's junk is another man's treasure) you have gumming up the works. X and Windows are the same in this respect.
Re:So when do we get its successor?
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"You're pretty new to this eh?"
"Sorry but that totally reads like 'get of [sic] my lawn'. My old man thought GEM was plenty responsive too..."
Why do you feel a need to trivialize the comments of the people that you respond to in this way? Do you have some kind of deep-seated insecurity about your viewpoint that requires that you disregard others' points by dismissing them using phrases like the above? Do you think there is any good reason to dismiss the personal opinions of others in this way when your posts are nothing but opinions themselves?
Re:So when do we get its successor?
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I have been using X since 1990 and it has *always* been fast enough for my purposes, except when used over a slow network link. I wish that they had improved the network performance of X long ago, but I have read recently about improvements that supposedly make X over slow links useable, which is great.
Aside from that, X has *always* been fast enough for me, to the extent that I have never considered it to be significantly different from, say, Windows on the same platform.
I'm talking about computers all the way from Digital DECStation 4100s (which had the processing equivalent of maybe a 486 sx 33), to Pentium 100s, AMD 233s, Athlons, Pentium Ms, desktop, notebooks, Sun SparcStations, you name it.
I don't know what it is you are doing, but your assertion that X has been perceptibly slow until modern hardware of the last couple of years made it fast enough flies in the face of over *two decades* of my own experience.
X may not be fast enough for high performance games or 3d stuff, that may very well be true, but considering the number of games available on X platforms, that is hardly important, and only affects a small number of applications and a small number of people who use them. And it's my understanding that lots of improvements have been made recently with respect to gaming in X, which is not surprising since nobody really wanted to play games in X until recently - we always used to just Do Real Work. Not that I have anything against games, I'm just saying that this aspect of the windowing system didn't get much focus until recently because the typical user of X didn't need it until recently. I do remember playing XEvil about 10 years ago, that was fun, but hardly a game that would stress any windowing system.
Doesn't it take 1 to cause a hung jury, and 12 to acquit? Or am I misunderstanding?
Also, don't be so quick to judge other people. You don't know the specifics of the situation, and yet you've already decided that this person was "completely responsible for the imprisonment of a fellow person." I know you want to be a champion of justice and all (I've seen some of your other posts in this discussion, it's pretty clear), but making just decisions is kind of hard to do when you make hasty decisions.
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Wow, that was a thoroughly awesome reply, I really appreciate it.
I only knew about Lisi's paper because it was posted on Slashdot; I do consider all of the lifestyle stuff to be completely superfluous and don't base my judgment on the paper on those things (however considering how sour the taste is in my mouth whenever I hear about string theory, the fact that he is very much outside the 'establishment' does have its appeal). Also there was some flack posted about his paper because it was titled 'An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything' which does clearly overstate its reach, but I forgive him because I have learned that the title was simply a tongue-in-cheek pun based on the mathematical names of the constructs he uses in forming his theory.
I really have tried hard to read and understand as much as I can about his theory, which is difficult when my formal education is in computer science and I know nothing of 'manifolds' and 'Higgs space' and the like. One thing reading his paper and the scientific community's online comments about it taught me is that advanced physics is communicated in terms that require quite a bit of background knowledge. Of course I kind of already suspected this but it's one thing to infer it, and another thing to experience it directly by trying to make sense of a paper when every sentence contains terminology whose meaning is assumed, and obvious to the target audience, but which is completely opaque to the uninitiated.
At any rate, what I have concluded, very non-scientifically, is that Lisi's paper is basically just a 'periodic table of elements' for fundamental particles. Kind of like how the chemical periodic table of elements organized atoms in ways that both explained known phenomena, and predicted new atoms with new properties, Lisi's paper gives a mathematical model that encompasses known particles and the forces by which they interact, and and by nature of the fact that the mathematical models in question also describe particles and forces which have not yet been observed, predicts new subatomic particles.
I also concluded after my layman research that while this is interesting, and perhaps might help point scientists in a new direction of research, it does not answer any fundamental questions of 'why' physics works the way it does. Of course, I have to wonder philosophically whether or not there really is an answer to 'why' things are the way they are, and if the best we can do is perhaps to describe 'how' our universe works, but never 'why'.
However, I am still intensely interested in the outcome of his research because, like I mentioned, I am not a fan of string theory, and Lisi's stuff is, as far as I understand it, completely at odds with string theory, and if his stuff works and it obsoletes string theory, then I really want to know about it.
Once again, thanks for your awesome post. It is a laborious process to search via google and try to tease out understanding of Lisi's work and where it's going, and your comments gave me more insight than hours and hours of my own 'research' has done.
Oh my god, this guy's question was like an invitation for every holier-than-thou type to come out of the woodwork and spout off about how much more worthy than he is they are and how stupid he is for even asking the question.
Well, I guess if you really need the ego stroking - you sound like a real genius man, like you must have been the best qualified high school grad of all time and I am sure that all the universities were begging you to sign up, and if they weren't, well it's the dumbest thing they ever did to pass up on talent like you.
Now that that's over with - do you actually have a useful answer to his question?
No offense man, but you are kidding yourself. Your degree from MTU (whatever that is) is not as good as a degree from M.I.T. and anyone doing interviews for a desirable software development company knows this and will take this into account when considering your resume. This is not a value judgment about you personally, but it is true, and you really ought not to delude yourself about it. There are certainly jobs where both you and an M.I.T. grad could both apply and be equally well qualified, but chances are that there are also jobs that the M.I.T. graduate will get offered and you won't. The M.I.T. grad's resume will get them in the door for an interview, but yours won't, and just because he has M.I.T. on his resume and you don't. Don't kid yourself, it will happen.
And there is good reason for it, too. M.I.T. provides a better computer science education than just about anywhere else. And it's miles better than that available at schools which are not known for computer science. Employers know this, and it's why they will rate the M.I.T. resume higher than the MTU resume. Employers desperately want to save time in the interview process, it is a tremendous waste of time to interview candidates that are clearly not qualified, and so they are always looking for ways to improve the quality of the candidates that they invite for interviews. And the school you graduated from, is a very very easy way to do this weeding. Now there are superstars that graduate from no-name schools and duds that graduate from M.I.T., and employers know this, which is why they don't look *just* at the school when deciding who to interview. But it is a big factor, whether or not you realize it, and it is very justified.
You are right though that if your resume is good enough to get you to the interview, the school you went to is not particularly relevent. But first, you have to acknowledge that the M.I.T. degree will open doors that your degree will not, and will land more and better interviews. Just accept it, because it's true. And second, you have to realize that the average grad from M.I.T. is just going to be better qualified and thus a better interview than the average grad from MTU, so on average, the M.I.T. guys will get the better jobs.
Once again, nothing about this is personal to you, because maybe you would interview really well and get the job anyway. But you have to accept that where you went to college does correlate with your qualifications, and employers know that.
I also wouldn't advertise that I was born to just plain poor parents and to drag my ass up to middle class with nobody to help me. It makes it really hard to get much sympathy from people who don't like the assumption that being born with less money than someone else gives you moral high ground over them.
Seriously, what's with the people reading this who feel the need to point out how much harder it was for them and that the person asking the question is just being a whiner for wanting to go to M.I.T.? I'm sure he would take a job if that was the only alternative but when you're a high school kid not knowing exactly what to expect from college, isn't it prudent to not want to overcommit yourself by going into it knowing you're going to have to earn 15 grand a year just to keep yourself in school? I mean, of course the kid will do it if he has to, do you know what kind of work ethic it takes just to get into a place like M.I.T.? But is it so wrong to look for alternatives first?
You are right, and many people who have posted on this subject have made the same mistake as the GP did. I wish everyone would read your clarification before posting the same tired statements about how 'if you can already afford 30 grand than you can afford a few K more' ...
Oh my god give me a fucking break. The kid wants to find out of there are options to help him go to the college he wants to go to, and you are jumping down his throat because you don't think he's going to be earning his chops like you did? Sounds like 'sour grapes' to me. M.I.T. is a very good computer science institution, maybe the kid will end up being one of the great researchers of the 21st century and contribute to the field.
Why don't you just answer his question instead of spouting off about how much better your way of doing things is? What, you don't have an answer to his question because instead of going to a good school you fucked around with a "Berufsmatur" instead? Well then shut the fuck up.
You sound like you know what you're talking about. I'm a non-physicist who was intrigued by Lisi's paper, to the small extent that I understood it. I've been waiting to hear any kind of validation of it or further research in that direction, I even do a google search every couple of months to see what's up, but nothing seems to be forthcoming.
Was it really just a flash in the pan? Is there any hope that Lisi's theory will prove to have any relevence in modern physics?
Erm, sorry about the typo.
So did Garrett Lisi predict the new particles? Do they fit into the E8 algebra thing that his theory is based on?
Given what the parent poster has said, I think that he/she would *never* impose their standards on anyone else in the way that you want to. It's really not that hard to do - you just have to be able to allow someone to watch something that you yourself would not want to watch. If you feel a moral imperative to stop people from doing things that you think they shouldn't do, then you will find this difficult. But those of us who have no problems letting other people be as crude (from our own viewpoint) as they want to be, have no problem with this.
Furthermore, you speak as if you think the 'burden of proof' is on people to convince you that they should be allowed to watch what they want. That is totally backwards. You should be trying to prove why you have any right whatsoever to dictate the rules about what other people can watch, with your only justification thus far being that you wouldn't want to watch it so they shouldn't either. So far your arguments have not been very compelling.
On a related note, I lived in the USA all my life but moved to New Zealand a bit over a year ago. I was really surprised to see that they have almost no "broadcast standards" here. They do keep the racy stuff off the air until 8 or 9 pm but after that it seems anything goes. I have seen full frontal nudity (male and female), simulated sex, gore, every swear word there is and just about any tasteless joke you can think of (actually all of this was accomplished in pretty much one movie shown in the late evening time slot - Scary Movie 3 (or was it 4?)), all broadcast over the free airwaves that anyone at all can pick up just by turning on their TV.
I find it completely and entirely refreshing after having grown up in the USA where I wouldn't even bother watching movies on TV because they are so edited and bleeped out that it's not even like watching the original. I wholeheartedly support New Zealand's much less fascist (when compared to the USA) broadcasting standards. It is Yet Another Thing to love about this great country of New Zealand, that you will not find in the stone age culture of the USA.
I have young children and I don't fret the fact that these R rated movies (and R rated TV shows - you should see some of the stuff that comes out of the U.K.!) are shown on TV. When I need to exercise parental control to ensure that my kids don't see it, I will. I don't need the government to do it for me, I am a perfectly capable parent.
Must be a Sony thing. Both of the TVs that we have had here have been Sonys. I guess it doesn't surprise me that Sony TVs are dumber than most.
Speaking as an American who has been living in New Zealand for over a year now, I have to say that the NTSC vs. PAL thing is totally overblown. I can't say that I notice any difference in quality between the two at all. The only thing I noticed was the amount of flicker in PAL which I found annoying at first in bright scenes but over time I have become used to it and don't notice it at all. I never think 'wow this PAL stuff looks soooo much better than the NTSC I used to watch!".
Definitely the most annoying thing is how New Zealand televisions do this stupid thing where they don't map specific UHF/VHF frequencies to specific channels but instead have to build up a mapping table so that selecting a channel on the TV tunes not to a predefined frequency but instead to a frequency that has been assigned to that channel. And this mapping is accomplished by this really stupid and annoying 'autoscan' process where you tell your TV to scan for frequencies and it assigns channels based on what it finds. So you run this stupid, slow, and annoying autoscan thing and you end up with a completely arbitrary set of channel assignments with duplications due to multipath and other crap. Move to a different part of town and run the autoscan again and you end up with a completely different mapping and have to re-learn where all of the channels are. It's retarded.
It's so much simpler and more straightforward to have channel numbers map directly to specific frequencies. Whoever thought the NZ way up (is all PAL like this) must have been on drugs.
That is good news for artists who want to publish their own music. Clearly such a business model can be successful for the artist.
However, is this success likely to be duplicated? Is it just because this concept is so novel that so many people were willing to pay so much for the special edition? Would that many people line up to buy the special edition of his next album? Are other artists as likely to experience this success once such things become more mainstream and less unique?
Part of the criteria that people use in deciding the value of something is how rare and unusual it is, and since this is one of the first such instances of an artist-produced album, I wonder if the profits that Trent Reznor has enjoyed here will be sustainable for other artists.
Consider: all of the people who paid $300 for his special edition release, probably listen to many other artists as well. Would they spend $300, or anything close to it, for special edition releases of albums from all the other artists they like? Probably not; most almost certainly couldn't afford to pay $300 x N artists x M albums; Trent was savvy enough to do it first, so he gets to enjoy what is likely an unsustainable pricing model.
I'm not trying to belittle his accomplishment, which is awesome (although I personally wouldn't know a Trent Reznor song from a Barry Manilow song, I'm glad that someone is pushing the boundaries for music distribution and trying to fix the music publishing system), I'm just trying to point out that anyone who thinks that all artists can be this successful, need to realize that this is unlikely to be duplicated, based on purely economic considerations.
Thank you very much, that answers my question. I didn't know what 'Silverlight' was but now that you've explained it to me I can see what the problem is.
Can someone explain to me where the term "locked up" applies to this news article? I read the (very brief) article linked to - and didn't see how anything in the library would become 'locked up', which I assume to mean, available only to people using Windows software. Yeah, they're going to accept some 'donations' of OS's and stuff (so Microsoft spends $10 burning a bunch of CDs and calls it a multi-million-dollar donation, with all the relevent tax perks as well - why does the government let them get away with this?) for their new kiosks (which if my experience with Windows kiosks is anything to go by, will be sitting at a blue screen or an empty Windows desktop 50% of the time), but how does this equal anything being 'locked up'?
Taxes allow the government to collect money from individuals based on more than just the amount of money that they have. If the government could only print money, not collect taxes, then it would only be able to take twice as much value away from someone who has twice as much money as someone else. There would be no way to have progressive income tax scales, for example, because richer people would be effectively 'taxed' (by having the value of their money reduced, and an equivalent value of money ending up in the hands of the government, as a result of the government printing some money for itself) at the same rate as poorer people.
Not that I think that this is a bad thing, but it is not historically how the populous of the USA wants its taxes to work.
"10 times longer" is a euphemism meaning "much longer". Two years is much longer than a month. So his statements are perfectly self-consistent.
I think you may be unfamiliar with Panasonic's "business tough" line of laptops. They are not the ultra hardened ones sold to the military, police, etc. They are sold to businesses as sturdy, light, and reliable laptops for travelers.
You should google search for Panasonic Y5, W5, or T5 (or even R5 if you don't mind a Japanese-only model) to see examples of these laptops.
They can have water/coffee spilled on them, a car run over them, or a 200 lb person stand on them and they are fine. Also they can be dropped from a typical desk height and survive unscathed. However these are not the super hardened versions that you may be familiar with, and they can't withstand everything that those can.
I think that Panasonic Toughbooks are the best-engineered laptops that sell to real road warrios who rely on laptops for their livelihood. Of course, they are outsold by Thinkpads by a huge margin, which I believe is more likely due to the greater market presence of IBM (now Lenovo) than technical superiority. Also, IBM/Lenovo put out many, many more models than Panasonic have of their "business tough" line (not their true hardened laptops which are almost certainly too bulky and expensive for travellers), so it's hard to make a fair comparison there; IBM/Lenovo are just much bigger in the laptop market than Panasonic. And yet, the few models that Panasonic make are really nice.
I am typing this on a Panasonic Toughbook Y2 that weighs 3.3 pounds, has a 14.1 inch display, and a titanium alloy case that is super strong and attractive. This laptop feels like it will go forever; after 3 years of nearly constant use it doesn't have the smallest bit of flex in any part of it and the hinge between the base and display is as tight and solid as ever. I like its sleek metal exterior in the same way that I like real metal bodies on late 70's Japanese hatchbacks. I don't like plastic!
Anyway, that's my plug for Panasonic.
Most people disagree with you, and can't stand trackpoints, which is why they are in only very few laptops anymore. I am one of those who dislikes trackpoints, and it's why I have never, or will ever, consider buying a Thinkpad. I don't like having that little thing in the keyboard; maybe it's the way I type, but every time I have had to use a laptop which had one, my fingers were constantly 'tripping' on it. Very annoying.
There is an annoyance with trackpads too - the base of my thumb sometimes hits it accidentally and then the cursor suddenly jumps to some random place and I find that my last few words have been inserted in the middle of some other part of my document instead of at the end. That is annoying but only happens once every couple of days despite how much typing I do.
I wish that IBM would offer a Thinkpad without the trackpoint; how hard can it be to have a replacement keyboard, for the majority of people who don't use trackpoints (yes the modern Thinkpads have *both* a trackpad and trackpoint, but I don't just want to be able to use a trackpad, I specifically want to *not* have a trackpoint in there, and I think many people would agree. Besides, having two pointing devices really seems like a hack doesn't it?).
I'm not offended, although I purposely tried to make myself sound that way in my post to incite your response. So I guess two can play at that game huh ... :)
... I think that a large part of the perceived inadequacy of X is due to the nature of modern desktop implementations. I'm really going to show what an old man I am here, but I *still* run twm, one of the original X window managers, and I have it 'tuned' using a configuration file that does things like remove window title bars (they waste space don't you know), and binding most windowing operations to keypresses (or key/mouse combinations). I don't run any kind of 'start' menu bar, I just type the command name of any program I want to run into an xterm. While my desktop is in no way representative of the reality of modern desktops, it does demonstrate, I think, that performance is to a large degree dependent upon the complexity of the desktop, much more so than the underlying graphics subsystem. All X programs have always run speedily for me, because there is so little running on my system and contending for CPU and video card cycles. I have no fancy effects going on. No D-Bus servers, or clients, no big and complex window managers like the K window manager or whatever one Gnome uses. It's all streamlined and simple. And as a result, I get to see the performance of X when it's not bogged down with 'crap', and honestly, it's pretty good.
As a final point, something I mentioned in another post I made just a minute ago to another poster in this thread
I mentioned in my other post about how my father-in-law's approach to computers is to buy (or build, actually he likes to build his own systems, to his credit) the fastest stuff available, and the absolutely *load* it down with the newest version of Windows and every task bar application, quick-launcher, drag-and-drop utility, browser toolbar, etc, that he possibly can. It is absolutely no joke when I say that he, for example, will have two or three browser toolbars installed at once (who needs BOTH Yahoo and Google toolbar at the same time? You end up with the top 1/3 of every browser window being covered in little buttons and doodads that are totally redundant and useless). And he'll have 2 or 3 drag-and-drop CD-burning applications running from the taskbar at the same time. On top of that, every little task bar icon known to mankind; there'll be literally 15 - 20 of them in there. His computer, despite being way faster than anything I ever owned, boots in like 5 minutes, and once booted, every windowing operation is sluggish; redraws can be watched as they occur. Opening windows or pulling up the Start menu or clicking on a drop-down menu literally takes several seconds. It is insane.
This is an example of how the exact same poor performance that you are ascribing to X, can be achieved on the supposedly superior (from a performance perspective) Windows "directly in the kernel" graphical system.
I installed Linux on a USB drive and booted his same computer up with it, and it was so fast and snappy in comparison to his Windows XP installation, it was amazing.
So my point is, that really the slowness is almost certainly caused by the amount of work being loaded onto the graphical system, not by the underlying performance of the system itself. And Windows and X are no different in this respect.
And what evidence do you have that any of the problems that you are seeing are related to X?
I open discussions in many tabs all the time and my system doesn't grind to a halt.
I suspect the problem is more likely the tremendous amount of bells, whistles, and cruft that go into a "modern" Linux desktop implementation. I still run twm and no Enlightenment, K Desktop, Gnome Desktop, or any of the countless 'servers', 'D-Bus clients', or any of the reams and reams of associated stuff.
I think that the bloated nature of Linux desktop implementations is more likely the cause of your problems than your X server. I can say with fair certainty that if you keep your desktop trim and light, as I do, that performance is very good. X doesn't enter into it; any system that was running as much crap as modern desktop systems do will have poor performance.
An example is my father-in-law's computers. Any of them. He always installs the latest version of Windows, and every single little task bar applet, browser plug-in, desktop quick-launch software, etc, etc, that he can get his hands on. I can't quite understand his thinking, except to assume that he really likes the idea of having as much software as he can, just in case someday he needs something. His computers are always much more powerful than mine and yet take 3 - 5 minutes to boot Windows, and when they are up and running, suffer from all of the problems you have ascribed to X; clicking on windows will show noticeable redraw latency, trying to open a pull down menu will cause a noticeable pause, etc.
It's not the underlying window system that's the problem, it's how much 'junk' (for lack of a better term, although certainly one man's junk is another man's treasure) you have gumming up the works. X and Windows are the same in this respect.
"You're pretty new to this eh?"
"Sorry but that totally reads like 'get of [sic] my lawn'. My old man thought GEM was plenty responsive too..."
Why do you feel a need to trivialize the comments of the people that you respond to in this way? Do you have some kind of deep-seated insecurity about your viewpoint that requires that you disregard others' points by dismissing them using phrases like the above? Do you think there is any good reason to dismiss the personal opinions of others in this way when your posts are nothing but opinions themselves?
I have been using X since 1990 and it has *always* been fast enough for my purposes, except when used over a slow network link. I wish that they had improved the network performance of X long ago, but I have read recently about improvements that supposedly make X over slow links useable, which is great.
Aside from that, X has *always* been fast enough for me, to the extent that I have never considered it to be significantly different from, say, Windows on the same platform.
I'm talking about computers all the way from Digital DECStation 4100s (which had the processing equivalent of maybe a 486 sx 33), to Pentium 100s, AMD 233s, Athlons, Pentium Ms, desktop, notebooks, Sun SparcStations, you name it.
I don't know what it is you are doing, but your assertion that X has been perceptibly slow until modern hardware of the last couple of years made it fast enough flies in the face of over *two decades* of my own experience.
X may not be fast enough for high performance games or 3d stuff, that may very well be true, but considering the number of games available on X platforms, that is hardly important, and only affects a small number of applications and a small number of people who use them. And it's my understanding that lots of improvements have been made recently with respect to gaming in X, which is not surprising since nobody really wanted to play games in X until recently - we always used to just Do Real Work. Not that I have anything against games, I'm just saying that this aspect of the windowing system didn't get much focus until recently because the typical user of X didn't need it until recently. I do remember playing XEvil about 10 years ago, that was fun, but hardly a game that would stress any windowing system.
Doesn't it take 1 to cause a hung jury, and 12 to acquit? Or am I misunderstanding?
Also, don't be so quick to judge other people. You don't know the specifics of the situation, and yet you've already decided that this person was "completely responsible for the imprisonment of a fellow person." I know you want to be a champion of justice and all (I've seen some of your other posts in this discussion, it's pretty clear), but making just decisions is kind of hard to do when you make hasty decisions.