Back in the day, expensive texts made sense. Why? Because the publisher received a typed manuscript with equations, etc *written* in. They then had to take that, reformat, etc, etc, etc and finally set the machines up and print the thing. A very time intensive expensive process.
That being said, the world has changed. What publishers get today is pretty much a finished work. And because we've entered the wonderful world of computers, they just need to input the file and push the start button. It's now a considerable cheaper process. But, yet the price of texts has increases very much disproportionally.
What I find deplorable, is that old texts like Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis (1976) costs $185 (hardcover) and $90 (softcover). Then there's Dudley's Elementary Number Theory (1978) which cost ~$120 when I bought it a couple years ago and Nering's Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory (amazon says 1976 but my copy says 1970) which costs $145. All three being some of the best books in there respective fields. But, the cost is prohibitive and quite frankly nonsensical. There's exactly zero reason why they should be so expensive when it is clear that they have since recouped the cost long ago.
I gotta say that if the publishers get significantly hurt because of downloading, they've done it to themselves. I won't be shedding any tears.
"well-substantiated explanation" is too fuzzy. Should be more like, reproducibly experimentally verifiable. Plus, said theory should also be able to make experimentally verifiable predictions.
And it should also be noted that a good experiment satisfies _both_ the provability as well as falsifiability requirement. As in, if the experiment works, the prediction is verified, otherwise the prediction has been falsified.
(Aside: String Theory fails all of the above. Not only does it not have any experimental evidence to its name, but its fundamentally un-testable. As in, there are countless possible ground states that lead to different "string theories." It might as well be ID.)
Hyperbole can be used to make a point, but cannot be a point in and of itself. You're using hyperbole in the latter form, not the former. That makes your "cowards" argument disappear in a puff of logic (apologies to Douglas Adams).
Good good. But, I wouldn't say that they are acting cowardly. Protecting oneself isn't cowardly. It's just that they don't realise that what is proposed doesn't work one iota. So, I'd say they're acting stupidly and/or irrationally rather than cowardly.
But, now that the US has completely insane visa bullshit going on, few people are willing to put up with it. Especially considering what kind of environment people would be living in while there. You people are going bockers.
But, all that is old news. As has been widely reported, fewer and fewer grad students are entering the country. In the longer run (feeling it right now) it's trivial that it'll turn into less brain power for industry and government in the US.
""" String theory makes predictions that can be tested - just not at energies that are within easy reach. """
Every one of those so called predictions not only cannot be currently tested, but those experiments that cannot be run also don't have the falsifiability requirement in them. And I've only hear of ONE so called experiment. And I've been paying attention to this nonsense from a while now. So, I'm calling bullshit on this statement.
""" making predictions and testing them """
And String "theory" has done this when? Calling String "theory", String Theory does nothing but show ignorance of what a scientific theory actually is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory "In science a theory is a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation."
String "theory" fails this accepted definition of a scientific theory. It might as well be intelligent design.
Also, String "theory" doesn't have something very *very* important in it. Or at least by its nature it isn't in it. That being a "big bang". Quantum Loop Gravity has one of those in it *by the very nature of Quantum Loop Gravity*./Also/, falsifiability is a REQUIREMENT of any physical theory. If a theory doesn't have the possibility of being falsified, then it isn't a theory.
""" Knowledge of this reality is gradually percolating through the physics establishment. Give it time. """
Wrong. Knowledge of this has been known in the physics establishment for a long *long* time. It's just that the funding, etc isn't done by the physics establishment. But, rather by administrators that are easily swayed by String "theory's" nasty PR campaign. But, the lack of results has lead even that to not hold as much sway any more. Luckly...
2) It's very fundamental basis is problematic when considering it for force unification. You see, it's based on particle physics which is frame dependant, where as GR is frame independent. There are other *far* more likely theories, e.g. quantum loop gravity, that are frame independent as well.
So, even if there is even just a hint of reality to string "theory", it'll prove *very* problematic in the long run for other very *very* necessary things. You know, like consistency.
... and given the number of different tasks I had to do, I have a todo list posted on a corkboard in my (shared) office. The request was from some new sales guy and he wasn't exactly ambiguous about the reasons for it. So, I talked to a couple co-workers about it and everyone (thankfully) agreed that it'd be a bad idea. So, I wrote "ethics" beside it on my todo list and crossed it off.
Later that day (or the next - it was a while ago), one of the bosses came around to add another task. He asked me what I meant by "ethics" and why this project was crossed off. I explained the project and why I ethically couldn't do it. He seemed confused and went to talk to someone else about it. That guy pretty much used the exact same wording as I did. This frustrated this boss, but the project was silently dropped.
You're assuming that String theory is useful. It isn't even a theory. You see, to be a theory it has to do what it says it does to at least a large degree. Point of fact, there is exactly ZERO experimental evidence that it is physically correct to/any/ degree. String "Theory" is a bloody joke that has plagued Physics for decades and is now (far to late IMO) coming under significant fire for its lack of experimental evidence. Thankfully, that fire also comes in the form of much less funding so that other *far* more promising fields can get some research done.
Scepticism requires critical thought. There are three subjects that simply by studying them (properly) one acquires an excellent "bullshit detector". These three require the highest level of critical thinking of all subjects out there and as such have many ancillary benefits. Those being, Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy.
Of course there are other subjects that do a good job. Those being the subjects that/use/ those listed above e.g. Engineering. But, the above three are the big ones.
""" Does this hinder technological advancement? """
(The bulk of) Journals are academic in nature. So, by definition they are quite far away from anything practical. And even if so, there are many pre-print servers on-line so researchers can get a "sneak peak" at the work of others. Typically, these people are able to tell if something is crack-pot-ery or not. But, not always. Peer review is a necessity.
""" There are certainly other venues for peer review, so why journals? """
Name ONE. The work has to be written up and sent to a place where an anonymous expert can evaluate the work, then submit a report on it. This takes time because the work not trivial and people have there own work to do that is research and/or teaching and/or... Upon passing this test, it has to be published in such a way that people know that it has passed this test. Now, what would you call that?
You're right that this isn't news, but it actually does have a processor that is designed for general-purpose computing; it's called the PPU (64-bit PowerPC processor blah blah blah). There are 7 OTHER SPU's (6 available in Linux) that have been optimized for vector processing. *Those* aren't general-purpose. But, Linux doesn't even need to see those to work. It can just run on the PPU.
Paying people more won't make people more competent. We are stuck with the incompetent idiots that are teaching wrong things to children and an increase in pay isn't going to solve that. It also won't bring in any more competent people, just people who are looking for a high pay/skills needed ratio. This is a very bad thing.
What is actually needed is to increase the standards significantly for that teacher certificate and the curriculum. The sad part is that the standards from several decades ago meet this criteria. Another sad part is that the incompetence shown with today's teachers tells of a group of so-called educators that wouldn't be capable of teaching such a curriculum.
I'll also point out that the teachers unions wouldn't have any of this.
But, it isn't completely the teachers fault. It's hard to be a good teacher, teaching good things, when one has his/her hands tied:
Administration surely must take the lions share of the blame for the past decade or so of the degradation of the education system.
Then you have mark mercenary students with parents to match. It's hard to give out grades that properly reflect the students achievements with all that crap breathing down your neck. The average teacher will fall in line quickly, whereas the teacher with actual integrity will last longer or just get fired. The end is the same though, the teacher leaves the teaching "profession" or they become just like everyone else.
What is needed is teachers with competence in teaching as well as competence with there subject matter not to mention a spine, and administration that will back them up and not mess around with curriculum that they don't understand. On the other side, parents must realise that there kids will lie from time to time and aren't the best at everything, and that teachers typically aren't vindictive bastards that are "out to get" your kids.
None of this can be accomplished by a micro-chance like increase in wages. It takes long term planning and a fair bit of sacrifice. But, in an age where the people with the power to make these changes can't see beyond there couple year terms, do you think any of this will happen?
Quite frankly, if I have kids and the education situation remains even remotely the same, it'll be home-schooling if I can swing it. That way (s)he actually learn something.
Given that this is/. and the number of GPL zealots that there are here, it is no surprise that there are so many responses that tell of, pretty much, functional illiteracy when it comes to reading this article. As has been mentioned above, this is NOT about a misunderstanding about the details of the [L]GPL, but rather a "heads up" about the ramifications of using someone else's work. As in, you better read the fine print on that license. This guy even said exactly that in the article.
The only thing that this guy consistently did wrong was confuse open-source with "free" software (as in RMS's definition, not dictionary). Quite frankly, as an advocate of the BSD license (_not_ a zealot mind you) I'm rather irritated that this guy is lumping me in with the GPL people. No, I'm not like that, I don't want to shove my opinions down "your" throat.
But, welcome to the "us v.s. them" BS that RMS wants.
The thing that I find sad is that when a lot of companies get together to release code under an open-source license, much of the time, it's actually free-er than the GPL. Newlib and Insomniac Games Nocturnal project are two good examples. Not to mention the closed source, non-restrictive libs offered by commercial entities such as Apple and M$. It's kinda sad that I get more freedom as a developer when using closed source libs rather than much of the "open-source" libs out there.
Point of fact, Facebook does NOT have offices in Canada. They have offices in Palo Alto, London (UK), NewYork, Los Angeles, etc. But, not one in Canada. Therefore, they are not bound by Canadian law. Quite frankly, as a Canadian, I encourage Facebook to tell these nut jobs to go f**k themselves.
As an aside, this is what happens when Conservatives are in power, and education takes a downturn. No offence to the US people here, but, this is just an indication that we are well on our way down the path to where you guys are. Time to start wacking people with clue sticks...
Problem is that this distro still contains non-free software in it. Though it might have a totally free (in the FSF definition) *goal*, it's rather dis-honest to advertise something that has yet to be accomplished. Quite frankly, if one wants a totally free *NIX OS, then one should be looking at OpenBSD rather than this thing. You know, the people who are actually fighting against Blobs, etc instead of just removing things that can be easily put back in.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the day, expensive texts made sense. Why? Because the publisher received a typed manuscript with equations, etc *written* in. They then had to take that, reformat, etc, etc, etc and finally set the machines up and print the thing. A very time intensive expensive process.
That being said, the world has changed. What publishers get today is pretty much a finished work. And because we've entered the wonderful world of computers, they just need to input the file and push the start button. It's now a considerable cheaper process. But, yet the price of texts has increases very much disproportionally.
What I find deplorable, is that old texts like Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis (1976) costs $185 (hardcover) and $90 (softcover). Then there's Dudley's Elementary Number Theory (1978) which cost ~$120 when I bought it a couple years ago and Nering's Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory (amazon says 1976 but my copy says 1970) which costs $145. All three being some of the best books in there respective fields. But, the cost is prohibitive and quite frankly nonsensical. There's exactly zero reason why they should be so expensive when it is clear that they have since recouped the cost long ago.
I gotta say that if the publishers get significantly hurt because of downloading, they've done it to themselves. I won't be shedding any tears.
"well-substantiated explanation" is too fuzzy. Should be more like, reproducibly experimentally verifiable. Plus, said theory should also be able to make experimentally verifiable predictions.
And it should also be noted that a good experiment satisfies _both_ the provability as well as falsifiability requirement. As in, if the experiment works, the prediction is verified, otherwise the prediction has been falsified.
(Aside: String Theory fails all of the above. Not only does it not have any experimental evidence to its name, but its fundamentally un-testable. As in, there are countless possible ground states that lead to different "string theories." It might as well be ID.)
Hyperbole can be used to make a point, but cannot be a point in and of itself. You're using hyperbole in the latter form, not the former. That makes your "cowards" argument disappear in a puff of logic (apologies to Douglas Adams).
Good good. But, I wouldn't say that they are acting cowardly. Protecting oneself isn't cowardly. It's just that they don't realise that what is proposed doesn't work one iota. So, I'd say they're acting stupidly and/or irrationally rather than cowardly.
Yah, the other guy called me an idiot too. My answer to him, and now to you is the same:
IT WAS A FUCKING JOKE.
Since you didn't get it, it was a joke. Now who's the idiot.
That's something a terrorist would say!
But, now that the US has completely insane visa bullshit going on, few people are willing to put up with it. Especially considering what kind of environment people would be living in while there. You people are going bockers.
But, all that is old news. As has been widely reported, fewer and fewer grad students are entering the country. In the longer run (feeling it right now) it's trivial that it'll turn into less brain power for industry and government in the US.
Is this honestly a surprise?
"""
String theory makes predictions that can be tested - just not at energies that are within easy reach.
"""
Every one of those so called predictions not only cannot be currently tested, but those experiments that cannot be run also don't have the falsifiability requirement in them. And I've only hear of ONE so called experiment. And I've been paying attention to this nonsense from a while now. So, I'm calling bullshit on this statement.
"""
making predictions and testing them
"""
And String "theory" has done this when? Calling String "theory", String Theory does nothing but show ignorance of what a scientific theory actually is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory
"In science a theory is a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation."
String "theory" fails this accepted definition of a scientific theory. It might as well be intelligent design.
See my comment to CorSci81 above.
/Also/, falsifiability is a REQUIREMENT of any physical theory. If a theory doesn't have the possibility of being falsified, then it isn't a theory.
Also, String "theory" doesn't have something very *very* important in it. Or at least by its nature it isn't in it. That being a "big bang". Quantum Loop Gravity has one of those in it *by the very nature of Quantum Loop Gravity*.
"""
Knowledge of this reality is gradually percolating through the physics establishment. Give it time.
"""
Wrong. Knowledge of this has been known in the physics establishment for a long *long* time. It's just that the funding, etc isn't done by the physics establishment. But, rather by administrators that are easily swayed by String "theory's" nasty PR campaign. But, the lack of results has lead even that to not hold as much sway any more. Luckly...
The problem with that is that:
1) It's already had about 40 years, and
2) It's very fundamental basis is problematic when considering it for force unification. You see, it's based on particle physics which is frame dependant, where as GR is frame independent. There are other *far* more likely theories, e.g. quantum loop gravity, that are frame independent as well.
So, even if there is even just a hint of reality to string "theory", it'll prove *very* problematic in the long run for other very *very* necessary things. You know, like consistency.
More than the, what about, 40 years its already had?
... and given the number of different tasks I had to do, I have a todo list posted on a corkboard in my (shared) office. The request was from some new sales guy and he wasn't exactly ambiguous about the reasons for it. So, I talked to a couple co-workers about it and everyone (thankfully) agreed that it'd be a bad idea. So, I wrote "ethics" beside it on my todo list and crossed it off.
Later that day (or the next - it was a while ago), one of the bosses came around to add another task. He asked me what I meant by "ethics" and why this project was crossed off. I explained the project and why I ethically couldn't do it. He seemed confused and went to talk to someone else about it. That guy pretty much used the exact same wording as I did. This frustrated this boss, but the project was silently dropped.
In short, mutiny works.
You're assuming that String theory is useful. It isn't even a theory. You see, to be a theory it has to do what it says it does to at least a large degree. Point of fact, there is exactly ZERO experimental evidence that it is physically correct to /any/ degree. String "Theory" is a bloody joke that has plagued Physics for decades and is now (far to late IMO) coming under significant fire for its lack of experimental evidence. Thankfully, that fire also comes in the form of much less funding so that other *far* more promising fields can get some research done.
Correction: Certain interpretations of Mathematical results can be physically relevant.
Scepticism requires critical thought. There are three subjects that simply by studying them (properly) one acquires an excellent "bullshit detector". These three require the highest level of critical thinking of all subjects out there and as such have many ancillary benefits. Those being, Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy.
/use/ those listed above e.g. Engineering. But, the above three are the big ones.
Of course there are other subjects that do a good job. Those being the subjects that
I should actually comment on these as well.
"""
Does this hinder technological advancement?
"""
(The bulk of) Journals are academic in nature. So, by definition they are quite far away from anything practical. And even if so, there are many pre-print servers on-line so researchers can get a "sneak peak" at the work of others. Typically, these people are able to tell if something is crack-pot-ery or not. But, not always. Peer review is a necessity.
"""
There are certainly other venues for peer review, so why journals?
"""
Name ONE. The work has to be written up and sent to a place where an anonymous expert can evaluate the work, then submit a report on it. This takes time because the work not trivial and people have there own work to do that is research and/or teaching and/or... Upon passing this test, it has to be published in such a way that people know that it has passed this test. Now, what would you call that?
Peer Review.
Yes, it is. Read the docs. They're available from IBM.
You're right that this isn't news, but it actually does have a processor that is designed for general-purpose computing; it's called the PPU (64-bit PowerPC processor blah blah blah). There are 7 OTHER SPU's (6 available in Linux) that have been optimized for vector processing. *Those* aren't general-purpose. But, Linux doesn't even need to see those to work. It can just run on the PPU.
Paying people more won't make people more competent. We are stuck with the incompetent idiots that are teaching wrong things to children and an increase in pay isn't going to solve that. It also won't bring in any more competent people, just people who are looking for a high pay/skills needed ratio. This is a very bad thing.
What is actually needed is to increase the standards significantly for that teacher certificate and the curriculum. The sad part is that the standards from several decades ago meet this criteria. Another sad part is that the incompetence shown with today's teachers tells of a group of so-called educators that wouldn't be capable of teaching such a curriculum.
I'll also point out that the teachers unions wouldn't have any of this.
But, it isn't completely the teachers fault. It's hard to be a good teacher, teaching good things, when one has his/her hands tied:
http://www.wellingtongrey.net/
Administration surely must take the lions share of the blame for the past decade or so of the degradation of the education system.
Then you have mark mercenary students with parents to match. It's hard to give out grades that properly reflect the students achievements with all that crap breathing down your neck. The average teacher will fall in line quickly, whereas the teacher with actual integrity will last longer or just get fired. The end is the same though, the teacher leaves the teaching "profession" or they become just like everyone else.
What is needed is teachers with competence in teaching as well as competence with there subject matter not to mention a spine, and administration that will back them up and not mess around with curriculum that they don't understand. On the other side, parents must realise that there kids will lie from time to time and aren't the best at everything, and that teachers typically aren't vindictive bastards that are "out to get" your kids.
None of this can be accomplished by a micro-chance like increase in wages. It takes long term planning and a fair bit of sacrifice. But, in an age where the people with the power to make these changes can't see beyond there couple year terms, do you think any of this will happen?
Quite frankly, if I have kids and the education situation remains even remotely the same, it'll be home-schooling if I can swing it. That way (s)he actually learn something.
Given that this is /. and the number of GPL zealots that there are here, it is no surprise that there are so many responses that tell of, pretty much, functional illiteracy when it comes to reading this article. As has been mentioned above, this is NOT about a misunderstanding about the details of the [L]GPL, but rather a "heads up" about the ramifications of using someone else's work. As in, you better read the fine print on that license. This guy even said exactly that in the article.
The only thing that this guy consistently did wrong was confuse open-source with "free" software (as in RMS's definition, not dictionary). Quite frankly, as an advocate of the BSD license (_not_ a zealot mind you) I'm rather irritated that this guy is lumping me in with the GPL people. No, I'm not like that, I don't want to shove my opinions down "your" throat.
But, welcome to the "us v.s. them" BS that RMS wants.
The thing that I find sad is that when a lot of companies get together to release code under an open-source license, much of the time, it's actually free-er than the GPL. Newlib and Insomniac Games Nocturnal project are two good examples. Not to mention the closed source, non-restrictive libs offered by commercial entities such as Apple and M$. It's kinda sad that I get more freedom as a developer when using closed source libs rather than much of the "open-source" libs out there.
No doubt. Because, it's not like other sites do similar things *cough/.cough* (mostly sans ads of course).
Point of fact, Facebook does NOT have offices in Canada. They have offices in Palo Alto, London (UK), NewYork, Los Angeles, etc. But, not one in Canada. Therefore, they are not bound by Canadian law. Quite frankly, as a Canadian, I encourage Facebook to tell these nut jobs to go f**k themselves.
As an aside, this is what happens when Conservatives are in power, and education takes a downturn. No offence to the US people here, but, this is just an indication that we are well on our way down the path to where you guys are. Time to start wacking people with clue sticks...
Problem is that this distro still contains non-free software in it. Though it might have a totally free (in the FSF definition) *goal*, it's rather dis-honest to advertise something that has yet to be accomplished. Quite frankly, if one wants a totally free *NIX OS, then one should be looking at OpenBSD rather than this thing. You know, the people who are actually fighting against Blobs, etc instead of just removing things that can be easily put back in.