One surprising trend I found in this survey was that among scientists, young scientists between the ages 18-34 believe in God more than older scientists aged 65 or more (42% vs 28%).
If I'm not mistaken I think that in America (and in a lot of other countries) the number of believers in God is greater among elderly people than among the younger generations. So why the noteworthy discrepancy with scientists? Would it be that scientists 'find out' that there's no God some time during the course of their life/career? Would the 65+ year old scientists have been as religious when they were young as the current young scientists? Or could it be something else?
what does the "55% of scientists are Democrats" statistic mean?
That most highly educated men and women of science and reason are liberals. If you're a liberal like me you can see this as a comforting sort of validation that you're right.
Yes, you need to look at the bigger picture dude, it's a big conspiracy to suppress the Libertarians, dude! Because if the majority of scientists doesn't share the same political affiliation as I do (and everyone knows how big libertarianism is outside of IT nerd circles), then it must be that the Pew Research Center has a secret agenda of suppressing libertarians. Because everyone knows The Man has a big thing against libertarians. Like anyone cares about libertarians... hehe
Like Shivetva when I don't like a fact I discard it by claiming that the fact was obtained by discarding other facts. I distort reality by accusing others of distorting it in the first place. It really works, in my version of reality.
And if we also look at global warming with the same critical eye, can we really say that humans are responsible for global warming when all we can really show is a strong correlation?
No, we can't just only show a strong correlation. I'll leave to someone more motivated the pleasure of explaining to you how we account for the emissions of various gasses, either directly from the tailpipe or indirectly by provoking the defrost of vast areas of permafrost, or how we know for sure what the effects of these gasses are on the climate.
The amazing thing is that we consider individual brains to be "intelligent" when it seems pretty clear we're only intelligent as part of a social network. None of us are able to live alone, work alone, think alone. The concept of "self" is largely a deceit designed to make us more competitive, but it does not reflect reality.
No, you're completely wrong. It's sufficiently obvious why that I don't feel the need to elaborate.
Actually, the telegraph was already a global AI tool.
No, it's called a network. You seem to fail to see the difference between a network and an intelligence. I don't think you know what intelligence means.
No, reality got in the way. As much as you can want to have a HAL 9000 in your computer, it's not going to happen, because as far as we know it might just be theoretically impossible to create something like that.
Thirty years ago we expected to be able to talk to our machines, now those advances can make it finally possible.
No it's not. What makes you think it's gonna help with anything you talk about? That's typical of throwing the word "neuron" into a technology story, just as soon you have a bunch of readers peeing their pants fantasising of HAL 9000/Skynet/whatever else you people think is a cool scifi example of strong AI.
Is it best achieved by killing people? Actually you might argue that yes it is (if you look at the immediate efficacy), but if killing people was the solution to everything then everything that's not even a crime but just undesirable (like being fat) would be punished by death and quickly enough you'd end up with a huge population decline and a society 100 times more fascist than Nazi Germany or USSR.
Slashdot doesn't like non-passionate discussions. That's why whenever a scientific article states they've discovered hydrocarbons on Titan/some nebulae/Mars quickly enough you get "let's go and give the Titanians some democracy!" jokes and it quickly degenerates into "Bush or Obama, they're both the same side of different coins dude, you need to look at the bigger picture, it's all about the 'third party' vs 'them'".
If you can't make a discussion into a well-heated flamefest then there's no point.
Obesity is a predictable problem of placing humans in an environment with surplus food
Yeah, that's what Americans like to think, but that's bullshit. Eating as much as you want doesn't make you fat. You can get fat off not eating enough but eating the wrong things. It's called malnutrition. If you eat the right food you can eat until you can't take anymore and not gain weight.
See, for example, if you take 1960s France, the country was quite prosperous, everyone ate as much as they wanted, yet we didn't have an obesity problem. Child obesity was 3% in France in 1960, despite that "surplus" of food. But now, the eating culture has changed, under the strong American influence, and now child obesity reaches 17%. We still eat as much as we did in 1960, that is as much as we want, the difference is that what we eat is different.
So no, eating as much as we need isn't the source of the problem, taxing McDonald's isn't the solution, somehow popularising good food is the way to go. How about some French cuisine between two pieces of bread?
Yes, let's solve a problem by killing the people affected by the problem! Brb, gonna go back in time and solve the Jewish and homosexual problem.
Also, you seem to think that it's an "evolution thing". It has nothing to do with inherited traits, except for the very few people who are "genetically fat". It has to do with eating habits, and to a much lesser extent, physical activity. Why else do you think the French are so fit? Different eating culture, and that's not a Europe vs USA thing, I now live in Ireland and people are much much chubbier than in France. Hard to get fat off eating ratatouille and endive salads. The solution? Changing the eating culture. An uphill battle in the land of yummy hamburgers and corndogs.
When you make something like a video game, music or a movie for a very wide audience you have to aim for the lowest common denominator. Humour and the lowest common denominator of very wide audiences doesn't mix well. That's why huge Hollywood comedies are to comedy as easy listening/pop is to music, and why they feature subtle comedians such as Adam Sandler or Martin Lawrence.
Big studio games are going the same way as big studio movies now. Some game are now just as much games as they are movies. Huge budgets, huge production teams, the same type of writers for the story as in Hollywood movies, and the same kind of voice actors too. Just look at CoD:WaW, it's all a big blockbuster movie with a big linear story that's only waiting for you to do what you're expected to do for it to proceed.
When I was a kid I went to the Futuroscope park and saw a movie where you could choose the unfolding by voting on the branching of the story. Big budget video games these days tend to be the same way, except that instead of voting you have to destroy 3 tanks and advance to a checkpoint. And more often than not you have little control on the outcome of the story, you just try it again until you succeed.
I'll go out on a limb and say that it doesn't matter much to Google, at least I don't think it does. They're not trying to be the best Linux distro, they're not trying to be a Linux distro, they just picked the Linux kernel cause it's a good starting point, but yeah, basically they're just starting a new OS, so it won't be very compatible with much, but I think that's the idea. At first there'll be no apps for it except web apps, but you can bet that within 2-3 years it'll get a lot ported to it. You can compare it with how it worked out for Mac OS X.
Awesome! I know no one cares, but when you use Mac OS 8/9 (which is otherwise a great OS), the biggest problem you meet is an utter lack of a decent browser that can display a normal modern website normally.
I'll take the bet that you're wrong. Of course they want Microsoft's market share, because if they don't grab some of it then they get nothing. They're not making this OS for it to be used by no one. They're competing, and because they're competing and nothing stupid they won't dumbly lock it down. They're out to make a better all-around OS than Windows, because that's the only way they can achieve what they want.
Am I the only one who's tired of seeing the same old libertarian talking points being modded up just because Slashdot is full of libertarians? I swear, you guys are so full of shit. If you can't see the difference between an Obama and a George W. Bush, you're a fucktard. In the real world what these guys decide makes a real difference to a lot of people, such as the difference between becoming a hobo and keeping a job and a home, getting an education or ending up a factory worker, or even getting an healthcare or living a shitty life/dying. But I've noticed that around here people's grasp on other people's reality tends to be very tenuous.
We will not see a truely progressive politician make it to the presidency until we get a viable third party.
Yeah right, because having more than two parties just is the silver bullet that will fix democracy and civilisation. How about you guys actually look at countries with more than two large parties, realise that it doesn't make them any better and STFU?
God damn Slashdot, seeing doom, gloom and whatever else you want to see in the badly spun Slashdot summaries. As other commenters noted, it's $18 million to make the whole site and run it for 5 years.
Guess what, the administration is actually not full of idiots, people who write Slashdot summaries are, and people like you who've been there for so long should know that by now.
Here's how Slashdot works :
1. Summary misrepresents what TFA says by giving its claims a sensationalist spin
2. Slashdotters read the summary and go "OMG WE'RE DOOOOOMED"
3. Someone actually reads the article and goes "no wait actually that's not what the article says at all"
4. Most don't get to hear that and just keep on predicting the fascist Armageddon.
If I recall correctly it's been for years that TomTom and Garmin have been offering GPS apps for Symbian phones. That's probably all their business will be about in a few years anyways.
Fixed it for you. So, they're using a proven and tested OS kernel instead of making their own from scratch. So?? That really doesn't tell you much, by that I mean, just knowing that they use the Linux kernel doesn't allow you to infer much about what it's actually gonna be like as an OS.
Why does everybody act like Chrome OS will somehow be locked down to just running Chrome and using webapps into it? Just because the original blog post emphasised on the webapps part doesn't mean it will be any less functional than your favourite distro. They're not stupid, they'll do what the market wants to eat Microsoft's yummy marketshare, they won't give you a half-assed OS, they'll give you a fully featured OS that has the advantage of having an OS designed around performance, security, usability and more importantly (according to them) designed around the use of web apps in mind. That means you can beat your ass you'll have all the offline apps you want and have an OS just as functional as your favourite distro.
As for partnering with Adobe, what do you know, maybe they're out to get Adobe Photoshop on Chrome OS;-).
Slashdot Mirror
One surprising trend I found in this survey was that among scientists, young scientists between the ages 18-34 believe in God more than older scientists aged 65 or more (42% vs 28%).
If I'm not mistaken I think that in America (and in a lot of other countries) the number of believers in God is greater among elderly people than among the younger generations. So why the noteworthy discrepancy with scientists? Would it be that scientists 'find out' that there's no God some time during the course of their life/career? Would the 65+ year old scientists have been as religious when they were young as the current young scientists? Or could it be something else?
what does the "55% of scientists are Democrats" statistic mean?
That most highly educated men and women of science and reason are liberals. If you're a liberal like me you can see this as a comforting sort of validation that you're right.
Yes, you need to look at the bigger picture dude, it's a big conspiracy to suppress the Libertarians, dude! Because if the majority of scientists doesn't share the same political affiliation as I do (and everyone knows how big libertarianism is outside of IT nerd circles), then it must be that the Pew Research Center has a secret agenda of suppressing libertarians. Because everyone knows The Man has a big thing against libertarians. Like anyone cares about libertarians... hehe
Like Shivetva when I don't like a fact I discard it by claiming that the fact was obtained by discarding other facts. I distort reality by accusing others of distorting it in the first place. It really works, in my version of reality.
And if we also look at global warming with the same critical eye, can we really say that humans are responsible for global warming when all we can really show is a strong correlation?
No, we can't just only show a strong correlation. I'll leave to someone more motivated the pleasure of explaining to you how we account for the emissions of various gasses, either directly from the tailpipe or indirectly by provoking the defrost of vast areas of permafrost, or how we know for sure what the effects of these gasses are on the climate.
The amazing thing is that we consider individual brains to be "intelligent" when it seems pretty clear we're only intelligent as part of a social network. None of us are able to live alone, work alone, think alone. The concept of "self" is largely a deceit designed to make us more competitive, but it does not reflect reality.
No, you're completely wrong. It's sufficiently obvious why that I don't feel the need to elaborate.
Actually, the telegraph was already a global AI tool.
No, it's called a network. You seem to fail to see the difference between a network and an intelligence. I don't think you know what intelligence means.
Huh??! Please explain how this was used incorrectly in the GP post, and then explain what it means to you.
but the succes has stalled computer innovation
No, reality got in the way. As much as you can want to have a HAL 9000 in your computer, it's not going to happen, because as far as we know it might just be theoretically impossible to create something like that.
Thirty years ago we expected to be able to talk to our machines, now those advances can make it finally possible.
No it's not. What makes you think it's gonna help with anything you talk about? That's typical of throwing the word "neuron" into a technology story, just as soon you have a bunch of readers peeing their pants fantasising of HAL 9000/Skynet/whatever else you people think is a cool scifi example of strong AI.
the only difference between our spiking neural nets and Skynet is the processing power.
No, repeat after me: Putting a shitload of neural networks on a supercomputer won't create a strong AI.
A very common persistent misconception.
Is it best achieved by killing people? Actually you might argue that yes it is (if you look at the immediate efficacy), but if killing people was the solution to everything then everything that's not even a crime but just undesirable (like being fat) would be punished by death and quickly enough you'd end up with a huge population decline and a society 100 times more fascist than Nazi Germany or USSR.
Slashdot doesn't like non-passionate discussions. That's why whenever a scientific article states they've discovered hydrocarbons on Titan/some nebulae/Mars quickly enough you get "let's go and give the Titanians some democracy!" jokes and it quickly degenerates into "Bush or Obama, they're both the same side of different coins dude, you need to look at the bigger picture, it's all about the 'third party' vs 'them'".
If you can't make a discussion into a well-heated flamefest then there's no point.
The second first data is certainly nice
And much nicer than the first second data!
Obesity is a predictable problem of placing humans in an environment with surplus food
Yeah, that's what Americans like to think, but that's bullshit. Eating as much as you want doesn't make you fat. You can get fat off not eating enough but eating the wrong things. It's called malnutrition. If you eat the right food you can eat until you can't take anymore and not gain weight.
See, for example, if you take 1960s France, the country was quite prosperous, everyone ate as much as they wanted, yet we didn't have an obesity problem. Child obesity was 3% in France in 1960, despite that "surplus" of food. But now, the eating culture has changed, under the strong American influence, and now child obesity reaches 17%. We still eat as much as we did in 1960, that is as much as we want, the difference is that what we eat is different.
So no, eating as much as we need isn't the source of the problem, taxing McDonald's isn't the solution, somehow popularising good food is the way to go. How about some French cuisine between two pieces of bread?
Yes, let's solve a problem by killing the people affected by the problem! Brb, gonna go back in time and solve the Jewish and homosexual problem.
Also, you seem to think that it's an "evolution thing". It has nothing to do with inherited traits, except for the very few people who are "genetically fat". It has to do with eating habits, and to a much lesser extent, physical activity. Why else do you think the French are so fit? Different eating culture, and that's not a Europe vs USA thing, I now live in Ireland and people are much much chubbier than in France. Hard to get fat off eating ratatouille and endive salads. The solution? Changing the eating culture. An uphill battle in the land of yummy hamburgers and corndogs.
When you make something like a video game, music or a movie for a very wide audience you have to aim for the lowest common denominator. Humour and the lowest common denominator of very wide audiences doesn't mix well. That's why huge Hollywood comedies are to comedy as easy listening/pop is to music, and why they feature subtle comedians such as Adam Sandler or Martin Lawrence.
Big studio games are going the same way as big studio movies now. Some game are now just as much games as they are movies. Huge budgets, huge production teams, the same type of writers for the story as in Hollywood movies, and the same kind of voice actors too. Just look at CoD:WaW, it's all a big blockbuster movie with a big linear story that's only waiting for you to do what you're expected to do for it to proceed.
When I was a kid I went to the Futuroscope park and saw a movie where you could choose the unfolding by voting on the branching of the story. Big budget video games these days tend to be the same way, except that instead of voting you have to destroy 3 tanks and advance to a checkpoint. And more often than not you have little control on the outcome of the story, you just try it again until you succeed.
Is why everyone cares so much about Money. It's just pieces of paper and little bits of metal. What really matters is Love!
Well, with money anyone can get some temporary love! And permanent herpes.
I'll go out on a limb and say that it doesn't matter much to Google, at least I don't think it does. They're not trying to be the best Linux distro, they're not trying to be a Linux distro, they just picked the Linux kernel cause it's a good starting point, but yeah, basically they're just starting a new OS, so it won't be very compatible with much, but I think that's the idea. At first there'll be no apps for it except web apps, but you can bet that within 2-3 years it'll get a lot ported to it. You can compare it with how it worked out for Mac OS X.
Awesome! I know no one cares, but when you use Mac OS 8/9 (which is otherwise a great OS), the biggest problem you meet is an utter lack of a decent browser that can display a normal modern website normally.
I'll take the bet that you're wrong. Of course they want Microsoft's market share, because if they don't grab some of it then they get nothing. They're not making this OS for it to be used by no one. They're competing, and because they're competing and nothing stupid they won't dumbly lock it down. They're out to make a better all-around OS than Windows, because that's the only way they can achieve what they want.
Am I the only one who's tired of seeing the same old libertarian talking points being modded up just because Slashdot is full of libertarians? I swear, you guys are so full of shit. If you can't see the difference between an Obama and a George W. Bush, you're a fucktard. In the real world what these guys decide makes a real difference to a lot of people, such as the difference between becoming a hobo and keeping a job and a home, getting an education or ending up a factory worker, or even getting an healthcare or living a shitty life/dying. But I've noticed that around here people's grasp on other people's reality tends to be very tenuous.
We will not see a truely progressive politician make it to the presidency until we get a viable third party.
Yeah right, because having more than two parties just is the silver bullet that will fix democracy and civilisation. How about you guys actually look at countries with more than two large parties, realise that it doesn't make them any better and STFU?
God damn Slashdot, seeing doom, gloom and whatever else you want to see in the badly spun Slashdot summaries. As other commenters noted, it's $18 million to make the whole site and run it for 5 years.
Guess what, the administration is actually not full of idiots, people who write Slashdot summaries are, and people like you who've been there for so long should know that by now.
Here's how Slashdot works :
1. Summary misrepresents what TFA says by giving its claims a sensationalist spin
2. Slashdotters read the summary and go "OMG WE'RE DOOOOOMED"
3. Someone actually reads the article and goes "no wait actually that's not what the article says at all"
4. Most don't get to hear that and just keep on predicting the fascist Armageddon.
If I recall correctly it's been for years that TomTom and Garmin have been offering GPS apps for Symbian phones. That's probably all their business will be about in a few years anyways.
Google is not making an OS kernel...
Fixed it for you. So, they're using a proven and tested OS kernel instead of making their own from scratch. So?? That really doesn't tell you much, by that I mean, just knowing that they use the Linux kernel doesn't allow you to infer much about what it's actually gonna be like as an OS.
Also, Linux is not an OS.
Why does everybody act like Chrome OS will somehow be locked down to just running Chrome and using webapps into it? Just because the original blog post emphasised on the webapps part doesn't mean it will be any less functional than your favourite distro. They're not stupid, they'll do what the market wants to eat Microsoft's yummy marketshare, they won't give you a half-assed OS, they'll give you a fully featured OS that has the advantage of having an OS designed around performance, security, usability and more importantly (according to them) designed around the use of web apps in mind. That means you can beat your ass you'll have all the offline apps you want and have an OS just as functional as your favourite distro.
As for partnering with Adobe, what do you know, maybe they're out to get Adobe Photoshop on Chrome OS ;-).
Google is a giant. It partners with other giants, not with little independent reverse-engineering projects.