You're being ignorant or silly. It's not possible to find "all of the available" information on any topic, and much less to be -certain- that you've found it all. Not even for tiny, specialised subjects. For larger more complex subjects, you can easily find enough information that you'd spend 10 lifetimes just reading trough it once, nevermind critically assess and synthesise anything whatsoever. Then what ?
You're wrong about that. The academic indexes are good enough that you can be certain enough not to have missed anything important. If somebody has done some significant (yes even Indian students), then they will have sent it to a peer reviewed journal, and that journal will be indexed. I'm not saying it's easy, and it can take months to do right. I know the model for publication in Computer Science is different to all other academic subjects so maybe it wouldn't work there, I don't really know.
I'm a PhD student. In my field, there's a book which looks relevant to me. It's in Chinese. I can't read Chinese. For enough money, I could get it translated, and for enough time, I could learn Mandarin, but there's always information behind barriers. Maybe it's not usually important, but it's there.
The argument I've found most persuasive, and IIRC correctly from a Berkeley physics seminar umpty years ago by Hawking, shared by at least some first-rank cosmologists, is that the physical laws we have will ultimately prove to be the only possible logically consistent set. I often wonder how Godel's incompleteness theorem sits with physicists.
Don't party too soon. What if they created a human with near the strength per pound of that of an ant by splicing in some ant's DNA. Then give her eyes from a bug with good vision. Then raise the IQ, 500 - 600 aught to be enough. Will of course look like Natasha Henstridge. Finally, make the human female pheromones irresistibly strong for the male species.
An ant is strong because its muscles are small. Muscle strength increases with length, and decreases with volume (I think). Guess which one grows faster! We need not fear giant ants. Or Natasha Henstridge.
I still have never seen a coherent explanation of why Wikipedia is so concerned lately about deleting any material that is unworthy. It has greatly reduced the site's utility to me, and is the reason I use it less and less, and will refuse to contribute to its fund raisers until their deletion policy is substantially revised. The only explanation I've ever seen is a sort of question-begging, "But if we allow non-notable information without deleting it, then there will be non-notable information there!" Yes, so? Here's a nickel, kid, buy yourself a bigger hard drive. If you want to make "non-notable" information appear lower in search results, fine. That's useful. But a lot of information that I find useful is apparently now considered "non-notable" by the Wikipedia admins, and I'd rather there still be some way for me to find that information.
I have had the same experience. I also have chosen not to contribute to the latest fundraising drive for this reason. I also use wikipedia less often now. The editors seem to be killing what was a useful resource for me.
Warning: This article links to four top ten lists that only display one item at a time.
I hope Time gets paid per impression because that's the only way they'll get ad revenue from me. (And viewing all of those forty pages seems like a good way to punish the advertizers who enable articles like these.) Unless someone else posts these top ten lists, I won't be reading them at all. I refuse to view Time's website at all for exactly this reason.
Also, it's probably easier for meteorites to travel inward than outward in the solar system (due to the sun's gravity well). We've found lots of Martian meteorites on Earth, by how many Venusian meteorites ?
I don't know about Venusian meteorites, but the vast majority of stuff that heads inward slingshots around the sun and back out, so I don't buy your theory. Perhaps an astronomer can confirm either way.
...When the first Director's Cut came out, they reverted some of the stuff back, but again, it was a rush job, so Scott didn't get an opportunity to really go back over it the way he wanted to (apparently he wasn't even really involved in this)... Michael Arick, and not Scott, put together the Director's cut. He mainly made changes to the parts he knew Scott was unhappy with, so the Director's Cut is influenced by Scott's opinion, but not actually his work.
Very poor from El Reg. There may be a story right there, but anyone familiar with Wikipedia who's capable of reading between the lines is going to give a big "WTF" and assume El Reg is making up controversy where none exists. The Register has a very anti-wikipedia slant to all of its articles on the subject. There's one author in particular, Orlowski I think, who has written many such articles. That doesn't mean there's nothing going on, but if it's on El Reg, assume it's being interpreted in the least favourable light possible.
Re:Will they ever listen?
on
The Cult of Kindle
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
People don't seem to have any problem plugging their MP3 players into a USB port every once in a while to synchronize new content; so who decided that it customers would not tolerate doing the same thing with an e-Book reader? Truth is, people are going to change the content of an e-book far less often than an mp3 player, so if anything, they'll be even less bothered by that model. The wireless connection is pretty pointless.
Only half of the statements he referenced there claimed something was technically impossible. The others were about demand and will - very relevant. For what it's worth, I agree with him - your original statement was arrogant and deeply presumptuous.
I once worked for a Village Voice Media publication and a music writer was fired for giving a bad review of the local musical venues... advertisers. The clients were livid and the sales team did everything they could think of to appease them, but in the end, termination of the writer was all they could do. I suppose this was before Schwarzenegger got elected.
Your statistical study has a population of 1, how am I supposed to be convinced by your compelling argument? Now it's five. I and my brothers own probably 200 albums between us, an eclectic mix of every genre and label going. I'm the family computer guy and I've never had any trouble, nor had trouble brought to me with DRM on a CD. Computer games, yes; DVDs, YES; CDs, no. I'm supporting a mix of OSes (Fedora, Ubuntu, XP and Vista). Maybe it's because I'm in Ireland. Maybe people here just like to whine and bitch and haven't actually bought a CD in ten years anyway, but I've found sweet fuck-all DRM on CDs. Long may it last, because I'll happily recommend alternatives if I do.
Now, watch as I get modded flamebait for telling the truth.
When you turn it off, it puts something interesting on the screen
Yes, but does it have anything inscribed on its cover with large calming letters? Yes it does, in pink. I'm waiting for the version that reads the book aloud in Stephen Fry's voice before I buy it though.
Just to clarify, that's the file in C:/Documents and Settings/[username]/Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/bookmarks.html and not C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/defaults/profile/bookmarks.html [I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.9 and Windows XP SP2 (I'm at work, don't mod me down!).]
I like the idea, but it would be nice to have a bit more formatting to the page. Mine is a bit long to use conveniently.
Esa officials have told member states to expect ExoMars to cost in the region of one billion euros. That's a lot of money. Anyone have figures for the cost of the various other Mars rovers and landers?
As another replier says, parody is protected, but LL could have made some trouble for this guy regardless. Instead, they displayed a sense of humour and a piece of good PR.
Languages evolve over time, and the previous generation always have the sense that the next generation is somehow speaking the language wrong. Your parents probably thought that there was something wrong in the way you talked as well. If you went to shakespeare's time, I'm sure people would think that you were some kind of idiot who couldn't speak properly.
The thing is, that english is *improving* not getting worse. Languages change in response to changing concepts, and the addition of new terminology. Modern english has extremely precise technical terminology embedded in it. Many things that were considered passive are now considered active, and so now are expressed as verbs instead of nouns. Many grammatical constructions have changed to allow for expressions that have become more common to be expressed more clearly and unambiguously. Many sophisticated systems for expressing common phrases in shorthand have developed so that ideas can be expressed more concisely.
You have to remember that no one ever *designed* the English language and that there *is no* authoritative English grammer or vocabulary because the English grammar and vocabularies are an *open set*. Yeah, you're doing nothing wrong here at all.
We tried that here recently - built a train that went from one city to the next. We figure that as soon as you get on, you're already at your destination. We're still working out the kinks though.
That's a common complaint. However, the summary does deal with this in that it mentioned that US students are doing very well in international rankings, so unless standards are falling meteorically (I always wondered why that image is used for a rise) all across the world, that's not entirely true, or at least there's some contradictory data. Of course, the actual report doesn't seem to be linked, so we're commenting on an article which probably misrepresents it. Ah, who am I kidding? This is/. - we're commenting on the summary of said article.
Slashdot Mirror
Which would work for just as long as it took her to figure out where to get shit TV on DVD.
Oh, for mod points... The IT Crowd, for those of you who don't get the reference.
You're wrong about that. The academic indexes are good enough that you can be certain enough not to have missed anything important. If somebody has done some significant (yes even Indian students), then they will have sent it to a peer reviewed journal, and that journal will be indexed. I'm not saying it's easy, and it can take months to do right. I know the model for publication in Computer Science is different to all other academic subjects so maybe it wouldn't work there, I don't really know.
I'm a PhD student. In my field, there's a book which looks relevant to me. It's in Chinese. I can't read Chinese. For enough money, I could get it translated, and for enough time, I could learn Mandarin, but there's always information behind barriers. Maybe it's not usually important, but it's there.It's Flimbo's Quest on the C64 for me too. I got it for Christmas when I was about seven or eight, I think.
Don't party too soon. What if they created a human with near the strength per pound of that of an ant by splicing in some ant's DNA. Then give her eyes from a bug with good vision. Then raise the IQ, 500 - 600 aught to be enough. Will of course look like Natasha Henstridge. Finally, make the human female pheromones irresistibly strong for the male species.
An ant is strong because its muscles are small. Muscle strength increases with length, and decreases with volume (I think). Guess which one grows faster! We need not fear giant ants. Or Natasha Henstridge.I still have never seen a coherent explanation of why Wikipedia is so concerned lately about deleting any material that is unworthy. It has greatly reduced the site's utility to me, and is the reason I use it less and less, and will refuse to contribute to its fund raisers until their deletion policy is substantially revised. The only explanation I've ever seen is a sort of question-begging, "But if we allow non-notable information without deleting it, then there will be non-notable information there!" Yes, so? Here's a nickel, kid, buy yourself a bigger hard drive. If you want to make "non-notable" information appear lower in search results, fine. That's useful. But a lot of information that I find useful is apparently now considered "non-notable" by the Wikipedia admins, and I'd rather there still be some way for me to find that information.
I have had the same experience. I also have chosen not to contribute to the latest fundraising drive for this reason. I also use wikipedia less often now. The editors seem to be killing what was a useful resource for me.
I hope Time gets paid per impression because that's the only way they'll get ad revenue from me. (And viewing all of those forty pages seems like a good way to punish the advertizers who enable articles like these.) Unless someone else posts these top ten lists, I won't be reading them at all. I refuse to view Time's website at all for exactly this reason.
Also, it's probably easier for meteorites to travel inward than outward in the solar system (due to the sun's gravity well). We've found lots of Martian meteorites on Earth, by how many Venusian meteorites ?
I don't know about Venusian meteorites, but the vast majority of stuff that heads inward slingshots around the sun and back out, so I don't buy your theory. Perhaps an astronomer can confirm either way.
...When the first Director's Cut came out, they reverted some of the stuff back, but again, it was a rush job, so Scott didn't get an opportunity to really go back over it the way he wanted to (apparently he wasn't even really involved in this)... Michael Arick, and not Scott, put together the Director's cut. He mainly made changes to the parts he knew Scott was unhappy with, so the Director's Cut is influenced by Scott's opinion, but not actually his work.Only half of the statements he referenced there claimed something was technically impossible. The others were about demand and will - very relevant. For what it's worth, I agree with him - your original statement was arrogant and deeply presumptuous.
It was the BLURST of times?
You stupid ape! The chimp still wins because the average undergrad would type
It wuz d bst ov timz
wuz d wrst uf tyms.
Now, watch as I get modded flamebait for telling the truth.
Just to clarify, that's the file in C:/Documents and Settings/[username]/Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/bookmarks.html and not C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/defaults/profile/bookmarks.html [I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.9 and Windows XP SP2 (I'm at work, don't mod me down!).]
I like the idea, but it would be nice to have a bit more formatting to the page. Mine is a bit long to use conveniently.
Nah, it'll just resort to using a cane and become bitter and hilariously sarcastic.
Here's the story.
As another replier says, parody is protected, but LL could have made some trouble for this guy regardless. Instead, they displayed a sense of humour and a piece of good PR.
The thing is, that english is *improving* not getting worse. Languages change in response to changing concepts, and the addition of new terminology. Modern english has extremely precise technical terminology embedded in it. Many things that were considered passive are now considered active, and so now are expressed as verbs instead of nouns. Many grammatical constructions have changed to allow for expressions that have become more common to be expressed more clearly and unambiguously. Many sophisticated systems for expressing common phrases in shorthand have developed so that ideas can be expressed more concisely.
You have to remember that no one ever *designed* the English language and that there *is no* authoritative English grammer or vocabulary because the English grammar and vocabularies are an *open set*. Yeah, you're doing nothing wrong here at all.
We tried that here recently - built a train that went from one city to the next. We figure that as soon as you get on, you're already at your destination. We're still working out the kinks though.
That's a common complaint. However, the summary does deal with this in that it mentioned that US students are doing very well in international rankings, so unless standards are falling meteorically (I always wondered why that image is used for a rise) all across the world, that's not entirely true, or at least there's some contradictory data. Of course, the actual report doesn't seem to be linked, so we're commenting on an article which probably misrepresents it. Ah, who am I kidding? This is /. - we're commenting on the summary of said article.