The purpose of science is to explain how things work
Not quite. Everything in science is a theory therefore it is not an explaination. The purpose of science is to come up with the "why" things work not how. The romans were a great civilization, but they focused on the how things work, rather than examining why they worked. It's easy to explain how something works with superstition.... Actually probeing as to why something works is a bit farther in...
Hmmmm,
I can understand that the video might be entertaining, however, since they picked the spot to shoot at, nothing is really said about the reliability of the system. On the other hand, I have seen IBM machines shot, electricuted and other "accidents" in the field that kept running.
However, the cost for IBM equipment is also more expensive than just buying multiple generic systems and running them out of different data sections... so funny clip, but not really impressive.
Lando
PS, also the techs in the clip chose where to shoot the dang thing right?
PSS, I am anti-HP nowdays since they are no longer an engineering company.
I assume that poked is referring to old basic poke amd peek commands. Poke was use to set a memory cell to a certain value and peek was used to see what a value at a memory location was. However, he did talk about C, maybe this is leftover terminaology?
Another thing that kinda lead to it's "death"... If I remember correctly, the decision had been made to drop support for OS/2 before the advertising campaign for os2/warp even started... Had the effect of turning a lot of the OS/2 developers away from the platform... Also, having to call 10-15 different divisions to get technical information was always a pain...
Hmmm,
At this point, I actually think we are of a similiar accord. I agree with you that the possibility of the wiki providing the answer is slim, very slim. My disagreement with the earlier posts of others was not that the wiki would provide the solution, but that there is the smallest of possibilities that the wiki might help. Perhaps by attracting a mind that will funnel it's efforts.
Given that, let me talk about myself for a bit... Oh, and be careful, an ego is definately troublesome and times, and I am no exception.
I am, or at least at one point was a mathmatical prodgey... Until the 7th grade I couldn't do times tables. My work didn't reflect this because instead of memorization I used logrithms... I have no clue as to how it worked and indeed I do not do it anymore... It seems the more I have learned the more I have forgotten at times.
Now, this is not to put myself up... The fact of the matter is that I have not been able to understand what is going on with these problems... I don't have the necessary education and skills... I'm finally given up programming and have gone to school to get a degree, I'm tired of working for a living...
Anyway, my love of computers are merely an extention of my love of mathmatics, but whereas any bookstore has books on computers, higher level mathmatics has been difficult to aquire the ability to speak the language... In computers, once the problem has been defined, it is simple to create the solution, but then again, most small businesses, or large businesses for that matter are not in need of the type of mind that can do advanced mathmatics....
Currently, I see no real future in mathmatics. While I'd love to be on the theory and research side of the field, I think that I have grown accustomed to implementation and thus look at the problem from an engineer's point of view... However, I do like fun so I'm currently planning on blowing through all the mathematics and computer science classes at the current university I am before I jump over to the university where I will actually pursue my true undergraduate degree.
I guess, that as an outsider, I've had a lot of frustration trying to get into the system. Every place I have gone to work, technically at least, I have been the big fish in the small pond. Personally, I hate that position.
I have several problems. First and formost I have ADD, which for most of my life has made it impossible to sit down and learn in a formal environment, however, I have studied on my own and done fairly well in my field. I should say technically, I have tried to run 2 businesses and run both of them into the ground because of business decisions. The implementation side is easy for me, but I've always had difficulty charging for what I see as playing and having fun...
Next, in addition to ADD I have a memory problem. Of the three type of general memory, skills(carpentry, sailing, riding a bike) and formula or tokenized thinking (logic and related knowledge based memory) I do well... The third type of memory, ie event memory, is almost impossible for me... I forget the beginning of a sentence before I reach the end. At night I am able to do much better and is when I get most of my work done, I assume because I don't have a lot of light and sound stimulating me.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you look at it about 5 years ago I had devolved to the point where I could not function. The force me to concentrate solely on trying to get myself functional once more... I am definately an "A" type personality, the inability to function was madning... Anyway, it took 3 years of pushing against the system, but I was finally able to get some relief from my problems through medication... This more than anything else is what has allowed me to return to school...
So, in my opinion I am extremely talented, and as an ego boost the discrete mathmatics teacher is continually telling me that I should major in mathmatics. It's hard for me to co
The position that since someone is educated knows more than another and thus the other does not need have a voice in the matter is known as elitism. It is practiced by many in society, but mainly by those who through no part of their own been granted a superior economic position due to the inheritance, knowledge and the ability to resources that those with a lessor economic position just are not able to accomplish because of the resources that person has to invest just to support basic necessities.
This is the stance, although veiled, of "Might makes right" as well as the golden rule, "He that has the goal, makes the rules." The position that a person with more resources takes is that since they are more successful, they are a "better" person and excell in all areas in comparison with those of lesser resources. However, if taken to it's logical conclusion.... Al Capone was thereby smarter than probably any academic on the face of the planet... Which is troublesome, because with all of his ability, I don't remember the Capone equation, maybe it's buried in his grave?
Anyway, the position that one's personal resources determines that person's ability extends to the position that those without resources are not able to make decisions for themselves and that the "elite" therefore must make their decisions for them. Thus, all women that need economic help should be sterilize, PI is actually 3 and not 3.14... and that Jews are inferior beings all become rational truths...
So to me, all the statement that the wiki shouldn't be started because no one who uses it will be capable of doing anything that the "closed" academic community cannot do, is just biogotry hidden behind snobish superiority.
As a hacker, I know for a fact that education is worth very little if you cannot expand your toughts beyond that knowledge and formulate thoughts of your own. While the hacker that has drive can get an education if only he or she can get access to materials, the educated mind that can do nothing but regurgitate formula and information learned in the classroom can by definition come up with a new idea. Furthermore, the assumption that the community that has not been able to formulate the solution to these problems will, by following the same path, be able to answer these problems by using the same tools that have been used the the past strikes me as absurd. By your own admission, "these are problems that have consistently resisted "plain old ingenuity,"" and therefore will more than likely require a leap of intuition to solve.
This fact is that the main difference between the so called amateur and the professional, is merely that the professional gets paid to do the work, and the work is his job, whereas the amateur does the work because he/she loves it.
In my opinion, betting on which one is more likely to come up with the solution, I am inclined to put my money on the maverick for revolutionary answers... The mainstream professional does have a position, but that position is more of the evolutionary variety and the formulation of a body of experts that can "prove" that something is incorrect, rather than wave a hand of dismissal if someone presents a theory that does not fit within there knowledge pool... After all the solution to these problems, since they have no solution as of this time, is by definition outside the pool of information that is currently available.
Another thing that has not been pointed out, is that wikis are a means of gathering information and presenting them in a manner that makes it easy to locate the information needed. Which means that with more people having more access to more example of fallacies, "crackpots" as many call them will actually have a harder time passing the bar of credibility because those with a lesser eduction will be able to point out recurring problems rather than requiring an "expert" to go in and verify all submissions no matter how conceivably possible the "proof" may be.
I appreciate your comments, so let me in turn try to be a little more clear in my response.
First, it is my understanding that the wiki is a new enterprise, so even if as you say "The community on the wiki so far seems unwilling to devote time to the real experts, focusing almost exclusively on cranks who claim to already have proofs, and ignoring actual published, peer-reviewed papers that describe all the advances made so far." The is still room for change.
Further, I believe and education is useful for learning about what has come before and use that for a launching board to creation of new ideas, proofs, etc. The fact is though, that an academic education is by no means a real education at least in the undergraduate levels. Instead it's seems to have become an excercise in giving a certain number of students A's a certain number B's etc. Sorry, if I am a bit pessamistic at the moment, but I am taking a calculus course at the moment, where the instructo mumbles to the board as he works math problems and doesn't explain why things are what they are. Imagine trying to understand the concept of calc without the concept of a limit and why it is important, this is basically what has been called for during this class.
I have pointed out to this teach that practical demonstrations and explainations of why things are done in a certain manner would be helpful. To which he responds that though it would help, the explainations would be based on physics and the girls in the class only know how to apply formula, they cannot understand the hard sciences.
So, the only option I have is to study the material on my own, because following the examples the instructor is providing over half the class is failing and 75% of the class has changed instructors after the first two examine in his course. There does appear to be a problem here, yet when approached, the response of the department is that it is the student's responsibility to learn the material and poor instruction is not a viable excuse for any academic failure.
So you'll have to excuse me if I don't agree that the academics deserve to be placed on a pedistal merely because of the fact that they have put in years to answer the questions in a particular manner. I believe that the true test of your knowledge is in the ability to explain the subject matter in a comprehensible manner to your students and I so far see that as a skill sadly lacking in computer science and mathmatics at the undergrad level.
There are exceptions of course, but that really is my point. If you consider the exceptions on the academic side, then you must consider the exceptions outside the academic environment. There have been a number of people that have re-invented calculus that had they have gone to school, they would have been able to study it directly. From this, I think it's absolutely conceivable that someone outside the academic community has more talent in mathematics than people within the field.
Now, I do agree that there is little hope of someone coming up with the solution without education, because even if the person solved the problem, they might not recognise the acheivement and might not distribute their answer.
The whole thing comes down to education and not academic standing. The vast majority of the comments where saying that if you were not a top researcher, well regarded in your field, you could not make a contribution, which I believe is patently false... What is really required is education and to get that education, a person needs exposure.
It doesn't matter if the answers on the wiki are correct or not. If theories are disproven and it is demonstrated why they are incorrect, anyone in the world with an internet connection will be able to learn from what is happening on the wiki and that, my fr
Proof: Wiki users will not contribute to the millennium problem
Counter Example Suppose: Problem will be solved Suppose: Wiki users > 0 Suppose: All educated members of the community do not work on the wiki
Thus: EU educated users
: WU wiki users
: MP is problem with MP being millennium problem
Since we know that P will be solved, we know that EU likelyhood of solving problem + ~EU likelyhood of solving problem are == 1
Thus, by examining the chances of EU we will know what the likelyhood of someone else solving the problem.
The number of EU members is fixed, because only members of EU are able to solve the problem and no one is born having the skills to be a member of EU.
The number of ~EU is infinite being that there is no known event that will destroy the human race.
so EU/~EU is infinitely small and therefore the chance of someone in group EU solving the problem is also infinately small because the maximum possibility of EU solving the problem is 1 and 1/infinity is pretty damn small, but not 0
However, now the likelyhood of ~EU solving the problem is approximately 1.
And since we know that no members of eu are members of the wiki and we know that the number of members of the wiki are greater than 1. This means that the there is a possibility of that the person who solves the problem to be a member of the wiki.
It seems pretty simple to me, but maybe I am wrong... Wait a sec, I came up with the question therefore I am an expert and since no one else is an expert I must be correct because only experts can solve problems.
Seems like an odd stance for most of Slashdot to take, but I guess I'm too old. Since I am just now starting college after only 24 years of professional computer experience what right do I have to find any flaws with my instructors. After all some of them have had 4 years of academic computer experience.
Also, if we are to believe that a wiki member has no chance to solve the problem... Then we must assume that there is no reason for anyone to seek an education, because they are noting going to be able to learn anything that is not known. I guess it's time to stop investigating anythin if you are not an expert.
Yeah, I haven't heard too many horror stories about them yet. However, I would feel more confortable if the code was already done and deposited in a source trust so that it would automatically release on a certain date or when certain effects occured in the future. However, that being said, I don't run windows so they aren't losing a sale on me either.
Wow, that's weird. I just sent in a request yesterday asking if I could work on something for a thesis paper. Now, less than 24 hours later... Nice of them to create the program after I sent the mail yesterday... Grin
Agreed, I realize that it's a tragity that some people do bad things, but forgive me, how does that give government the right to punish me?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Good points,
Actually I concede to your logic, I've been shut in for too long and I guess I've made assumptions. More than likely it was also influenced by my experiences with Windows in the past and just a knee jerk reaction, ie "OMG how did that happen".
In general, Apple ranks wear HP used to before they stopped being engineers... Apple is one of the few companies that are innovating. I don't have an Apple frankly due to costs... and vender lock in on the hardware.
Anyway, thanks for the input.
Oh and the article is just going to be the previous post cleaned up a bit. I'm in the process of getting an academic degree, so writing and posting articles is actually going to be something I have to do frequently now...
Probably, but the AC response was even better I think... He said, no I'm eating an apple, I'll tell you which one I didn't eat. Same difference though... Damn it sucks actually having intelligent people reading my comments...
I think we can assume that I stated the question incorrectly.
Hmmm, never thought of it that way. I know it was something like that and I equated it to the pulling of black and white stones out of the bag. I guess I failed that one... Either originally, or when I rewrote it here, or both.
Nice,
Easy to read and concise. Two thoughts strike me.
First, it is harder to close the $40/hr client than the $120/hr client because the $120 client is looking for solutions whereas the $40/hr client is more interested in how much he/she is paying and what "value" he/she is receiving. So given the choice, go after the $120 customer. Note: I'm too much of a techie and generally don't follow my own advice since I'm not thinking about the money, but about the project.
Second, I've got an even better answer for you...
"How much do you charge?"
"You can't afford me, but maybe you can get me interested" BTW, I'm thinking that it's more affective to actually not need the income when you say this, but depending on your client... I say it now because I just don't care anymore and I suck at negotiating for income for myself.
Lando
PS $120/hour at this point of time in the states for a consultant is too low. If your a professional, rather than a contract worker you need to charge what Professional Doctors and Professional Lawyers make, ie $300/hour minimum. Doctors in offices are selling the same hour to multiple patients thus the make far more than the $120 you equate to them making. Myself, I follow the rule of 3. 1 part to pay yourself, 1 part to pay for advertising and 1 part to tide you through til the next job. So if I want to make $100/hour roughly 200k a year I charge $300. For myself, I estimate that I'm work around 170k/year currently or roughly $90 dollars and hour and then I tack on 50% for the inconvience that consulting tacks on. This is my slack for customers that wish to purchase retainer services from me. The theory being, that if I don't have to go looking for your work, then I can just do my job and it's not an inconvience. So my base hourly rate is $150 an hour which translates to $450/hour for consulting. Remember of course that I'm tired of working so I figure that's my base and at this time I figure that anything over $500/hour for my services, if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.
The few people that have come to me haven't required anything special and I've been able to send them to some of my old students and other aquantences that can do the job at a resonable rate. Then if the client wants I'll take an hour or two to eat the code, which is where I'm actually worth my fee.
Beta's are expected to have bugs too. At least that's how I always learned it. Alpha software was in-house, app developer only, still undergoing major changes and fixes.
Alpha software should be expected to fail and fail often, and is more likely to have an entire section of it's code rewritten rather than patched or fixed.
Beta software works most of the time on in-house, app developer machines. At this point the developers are looking to move the software away from testing to see what works to testing to see what isn't working like it should when applied to "real world" tasks. At this point bugs should be expected but those bugs should involved patching and fixing code rather than scratching things and rewriting.
Publc-Beta software should be esentialy the same as beta, the main difference being the developers believe it's stable enough in house to give it to untrained people to try. In this case you're looking to make the program as idiot proof as possible so you're actualy counting on your users to not read the directions, not follow the directions and attempt things you wouldn't dream of attempting because "it's not supposed to do that".
Final Release software should be stable on most machines most of the time for the public at large.
I've had several comments that agree with you in spirit so apparently this is what majority of people out there think. It's interesting how some of my practices are not precisely the same as others.
Your answers are not wrong for you and probably for most. I however develop enterprise software and as such my beta is probably close to your public beta. Of course then again, I don't have a public beta. It's a matter of pride more than anything else, although the costs of some of my code failing for some applications is probably more than the house you live in. (I know blatent assumption that you live in a house.. I'm not being literal, every 10 minutes of downtime for at least one specific program results in fees of at least a million dollars so I've had to produce at a little higher level than most and I try to use the same care for smaller projects as well. I have had to release buggy code on occassion, but it's never labeled beta and is only released because of the wishes of my client. Now that I no longer work for anyone, I shouldn't have to release early again. Once my code released it should never require a patch to fix syntax errors of any kind and only in the most remote situations should any type of logic error be found. The fact is that hardware is more likely to fail than any stable release and that beta should only be a full test of features, no bugs should ever be found, though on occassion that do slip past me. I do not write government security software nor medical software and so I don't have to be perfect.
I've actually written a lot more, but I'm tired and I'm thinking that this would be better sumerized in an article. So feel free to ignore the rest of the message and if you want I'll leave you a message once I flesh out the topic and write a proper article. I'll do it sometime in May or June.
Lando
It's amazing to me how the standards have changed from when I first began to program professionally. Even the title of the job is no longer the same. I still think of myself as a programmer...
Sorry, I've been chattering away all day, I rarely get into the mood. and I tend to just start rambling. I guess I should merely say that I think windows has lowered programming standards and my definitions are "out of date". Of course I don't use windows and I also don't think a reset button should ever have appeared on a computer system and I try to treat all my code as mission critical with millions of dollars on the line. I guess for reference you should compare my code to Oracle. Any error that is not recovered gracefully is unacceptible in any released product.
It'll be interesting to see if my opinions change now that
LOL,
Okay, I need to refine my statement, although videolan isn't really the type of product I had it mind. I was thinking about consumer electronics, but for the record, decss is illegal in the United States because it is an act of terrorism to break any type of encryption no matter how weak. Note: DMCA was passed in 1998 so I can't blame it on Bush, but I'm pretty sure that he's probably labeled it as a terrorist act. But I'm tired and I've just about worn out my commenting on slashdot for this year, ie I only comment when I am distracted, I should be doing other things.
So if we add the specification or legal to my statement, does that suffice?
You might want to refer to the other response I gave to the anonymous coward that pointed out a difference between my "beta" and his "beta" as well. It's just a different level of software production, I've been doing this for a while and it's a point of pride that no one finds a bug in one of my programs once it reaches a beta status.
I no longer work for a living, so after I clean up some code I have out there, I plan to start offering rewards for any bugs that make it past the alpha stage. I now no longer have any requirement to release code before I am satisfied. I write code for the enterprise environment and I demand from myself and those that work for me a higher definition of the term beta. However, yes I do occassionally let bugs through that I have to fix, but I think I said no known bugs in a beta release. The problem apple has seems to be rather apparent when you consider just how critical this is. However, anyone actually deciding to use Windows, especially over BSD, probably doesn't have any critical needs anyway.
Note: I do not at this time produce medical or government security solutions so I don't have to be perfect, it's just a matter of pride and my definition and those that work for/around me since I am the person that gets the final say.
So I don't disagree with you, I just have a different definition of the term beta and I would have expected Apple to have had a bit better qa than this.
PS. The fact that Apple is not communicating with these people and will not give any support to fix the problem means that they weren't worried about any bugs that there might have been in there when the released the beta. So I still believe that beta as the defined it for this application is alpha or pre-alpha code. I write GPL code, so there is no guarentee, but by golly if someone does have a problem, I pull out the stops to fix it since I developed the stuff I'm probably in the best position to address and fix the bug in the first place.
Nod,
For some people it is and more people would probably agree with you than with me on that definition. Although, I think you and I would both agree that this Beta isn't even close? Not when your wiping people's harddrives.
BTW, I write GPL and so for my clients and others that have access to my projects, they can get in and get everything at any time. It's just that I don't move the project into beta until everything is "ready" for a user test. Incremental construction, takes longer but everything has full automatic testing suites and the like. Also note, that lack of a feature in my opinion is not a bug, that's what the beta should be looking for, whether or not any changes need to be made before declaring the product stable.
I don't offer rewards for anyone finding a bug in any documented program at the moment, but since I've stopped working, I am no longer forced to release code before I want to and so as soon as I clean up a few applications roaming the net, I will be adding a notice of reward to all of my code in a similiar vein to what knuth offers. Or at least I think it's him who offers it... Who wrote tex?
Umm, what search engine? What are the details. Frankly google is probably higher in the first page hits, but is unlikely to be the target audience for this article. Seems to create an atmosphere, yes I know it says it as well, of opinion that you have to have your website on the front page.
Who benefits?
Google? nope they try to actually give search results. Who else? Well I don't use them, but in the old days some search engines used to sell placements. I assume it's either them or businesses who sell search engine positioning services.
Also, if your going to read any type of advanced perl, Jeffrey E.F. Friedl, "Mastering Regular Expressions" O'reilly Media is highly recommended. I'm the one doing the recommendation, so there are bound to be other opinions, but I think that it's probably my most important perl book.
Actually, you were treated like your time was not valuable because you didn't charge enough. It has been my experience that as a consultant in the computer industry at least, people don't have enough knowledge of the work you are doing. Therefore, they judge people by how much they charge.
** moved this line up because this is what I originally set out to write, but didn't. It is duplicated after the Disclaimer:
If you don't charge much and you run into a problem, that's because you don't have experience and so you have to take jobs that pay nothing, but if you charge an arm and a leg, by god, if you have a problem than wow, it must be a really hard problem.
Doesn't matter what the facts are, the guy that charges little and knows more is not given the respect that the other guy earns just by charging enormous sums.
Disclamer:: What follows actually diverged into a story about how by charging more I was actually able to do "fun" stuff and probably is quite boring. Fear not that it may actually support the above statment, after a while it begins to diverge and there is no reason for the reader to continue unless he/she finds it entertaining. I'm planning on coming back sometime and massaging it into a coherant article for posting with my cv, but frankly it's likely to be extremely rough and prone to many spelling errors, runon sentences, subject jumping and becomes just an ego boosting looking back on how by getting over the fact that I am not worth 6 figures, by asking for it, I've actually gotten more respect than when I "gave it away for free". The more you charge the more people respect you in this line of business it seems. Or to put it another way.
If you don't charge much and you run into a problem, that's because you don't have experience and so you have to take jobs that pay nothing, but if you charge an arm and a leg, by god, if you have a problem than wow, it must be a really hard problem.
Doesn't matter what the facts are, the guy that charges little and knows more is not given the respect that the other guy earns just by charging enormous sums.
Consider: When I stared out doing windows consulting, 1992 or so? I charged $20.00/hour for my services before that just helping people out. At this time, because of the need for command line experience, occassionally needing to gopher, fido, or bbs for drivers or hopefully less often write your own drivers my skills we a bit more extensive that today's "tech". I eventually got to the point where I said, hey lets try to do this full time, I should be able to squeeze by until I build a customer base.
Now that I was doing it full time and spending a bit of money for tools and such I felt justified in raising my rates to $45 an hour. The strange thing was that I immediately started to get a lot more customers, too many to handle really. So I raised my rates to $65 thinking that I would lose customers, but that I would have some time off work. Within 2 months my business volume doubled. Wouldn't it be nice if I was a businessman rather than some geek just having fun.
The fact is that while I was astute enough to understand that to customers my competence level was directly proportional to how much they were paying me, I couldn't see charging that much, it was more than I felt I was worth and I was worried about people paying too much. My company eventually folded a few years later when I tried to be fair to a customer by not overcharging them and I ended up having to pay several weeks of salary to employees without being compensated. But as I said before I am not a business man.
After the business collapsed I tried to get a job as a computer tech at what was then "average" wages 30-40k a year (roughly 199[56]). Let's say it went rather poorly. By accident I applied for a job that paid 80k/year more than twice the price guys with a few years of experience and college degrees were making, I was hired on the spot. Partially because the position paid well, I was considered for the job.
Slashdot Mirror
The purpose of science is to explain how things work
Not quite. Everything in science is a theory therefore it is not an explaination. The purpose of science is to come up with the "why" things work not how. The romans were a great civilization, but they focused on the how things work, rather than examining why they worked. It's easy to explain how something works with superstition.... Actually probeing as to why something works is a bit farther in...
Hmmmm,
I can understand that the video might be entertaining, however, since they picked the spot to shoot at, nothing is really said about the reliability of the system. On the other hand, I have seen IBM machines shot, electricuted and other "accidents" in the field that kept running.
However, the cost for IBM equipment is also more expensive than just buying multiple generic systems and running them out of different data sections... so funny clip, but not really impressive.
Lando
PS, also the techs in the clip chose where to shoot the dang thing right?
PSS, I am anti-HP nowdays since they are no longer an engineering company.
I assume that poked is referring to old basic poke amd peek commands. Poke was use to set a memory cell to a certain value and peek was used to see what a value at a memory location was. However, he did talk about C, maybe this is leftover terminaology?
Another thing that kinda lead to it's "death"... If I remember correctly, the decision had been made to drop support for OS/2 before the advertising campaign for os2/warp even started... Had the effect of turning a lot of the OS/2 developers away from the platform... Also, having to call 10-15 different divisions to get technical information was always a pain...
Lando
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/htp/tpf/
Hmmm,
At this point, I actually think we are of a similiar accord. I agree with you that the possibility of the wiki providing the answer is slim, very slim. My disagreement with the earlier posts of others was not that the wiki would provide the solution, but that there is the smallest of possibilities that the wiki might help. Perhaps by attracting a mind that will funnel it's efforts.
Given that, let me talk about myself for a bit... Oh, and be careful, an ego is definately troublesome and times, and I am no exception.
I am, or at least at one point was a mathmatical prodgey... Until the 7th grade I couldn't do times tables. My work didn't reflect this because instead of memorization I used logrithms... I have no clue as to how it worked and indeed I do not do it anymore... It seems the more I have learned the more I have forgotten at times.
Now, this is not to put myself up... The fact of the matter is that I have not been able to understand what is going on with these problems... I don't have the necessary education and skills... I'm finally given up programming and have gone to school to get a degree, I'm tired of working for a living...
Anyway, my love of computers are merely an extention of my love of mathmatics, but whereas any bookstore has books on computers, higher level mathmatics has been difficult to aquire the ability to speak the language... In computers, once the problem has been defined, it is simple to create the solution, but then again, most small businesses, or large businesses for that matter are not in need of the type of mind that can do advanced mathmatics....
Currently, I see no real future in mathmatics. While I'd love to be on the theory and research side of the field, I think that I have grown accustomed to implementation and thus look at the problem from an engineer's point of view... However, I do like fun so I'm currently planning on blowing through all the mathematics and computer science classes at the current university I am before I jump over to the university where I will actually pursue my true undergraduate degree.
I guess, that as an outsider, I've had a lot of frustration trying to get into the system. Every place I have gone to work, technically at least, I have been the big fish in the small pond. Personally, I hate that position.
I have several problems. First and formost I have ADD, which for most of my life has made it impossible to sit down and learn in a formal environment, however, I have studied on my own and done fairly well in my field. I should say technically, I have tried to run 2 businesses and run both of them into the ground because of business decisions. The implementation side is easy for me, but I've always had difficulty charging for what I see as playing and having fun...
Next, in addition to ADD I have a memory problem. Of the three type of general memory, skills(carpentry, sailing, riding a bike) and formula or tokenized thinking (logic and related knowledge based memory) I do well... The third type of memory, ie event memory, is almost impossible for me... I forget the beginning of a sentence before I reach the end. At night I am able to do much better and is when I get most of my work done, I assume because I don't have a lot of light and sound stimulating me.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you look at it about 5 years ago I had devolved to the point where I could not function. The force me to concentrate solely on trying to get myself functional once more... I am definately an "A" type personality, the inability to function was madning... Anyway, it took 3 years of pushing against the system, but I was finally able to get some relief from my problems through medication... This more than anything else is what has allowed me to return to school...
So, in my opinion I am extremely talented, and as an ego boost the discrete mathmatics teacher is continually telling me that I should major in mathmatics. It's hard for me to co
Oh, another thought...
The position that since someone is educated knows more than another and thus the other does not need have a voice in the matter is known as elitism. It is practiced by many in society, but mainly by those who through no part of their own been granted a superior economic position due to the inheritance, knowledge and the ability to resources that those with a lessor economic position just are not able to accomplish because of the resources that person has to invest just to support basic necessities.
This is the stance, although veiled, of "Might makes right" as well as the golden rule, "He that has the goal, makes the rules." The position that a person with more resources takes is that since they are more successful, they are a "better" person and excell in all areas in comparison with those of lesser resources. However, if taken to it's logical conclusion.... Al Capone was thereby smarter than probably any academic on the face of the planet... Which is troublesome, because with all of his ability, I don't remember the Capone equation, maybe it's buried in his grave?
Anyway, the position that one's personal resources determines that person's ability extends to the position that those without resources are not able to make decisions for themselves and that the "elite" therefore must make their decisions for them. Thus, all women that need economic help should be sterilize, PI is actually 3 and not 3.14... and that Jews are inferior beings all become rational truths...
So to me, all the statement that the wiki shouldn't be started because no one who uses it will be capable of doing anything that the "closed" academic community cannot do, is just biogotry hidden behind snobish superiority.
As a hacker, I know for a fact that education is worth very little if you cannot expand your toughts beyond that knowledge and formulate thoughts of your own. While the hacker that has drive can get an education if only he or she can get access to materials, the educated mind that can do nothing but regurgitate formula and information learned in the classroom can by definition come up with a new idea. Furthermore, the assumption that the community that has not been able to formulate the solution to these problems will, by following the same path, be able to answer these problems by using the same tools that have been used the the past strikes me as absurd. By your own admission, "these are problems that have consistently resisted "plain old ingenuity,"" and therefore will more than likely require a leap of intuition to solve.
This fact is that the main difference between the so called amateur and the professional, is merely that the professional gets paid to do the work, and the work is his job, whereas the amateur does the work because he/she loves it.
In my opinion, betting on which one is more likely to come up with the solution, I am inclined to put my money on the maverick for revolutionary answers... The mainstream professional does have a position, but that position is more of the evolutionary variety and the formulation of a body of experts that can "prove" that something is incorrect, rather than wave a hand of dismissal if someone presents a theory that does not fit within there knowledge pool... After all the solution to these problems, since they have no solution as of this time, is by definition outside the pool of information that is currently available.
Another thing that has not been pointed out, is that wikis are a means of gathering information and presenting them in a manner that makes it easy to locate the information needed. Which means that with more people having more access to more example of fallacies, "crackpots" as many call them will actually have a harder time passing the bar of credibility because those with a lesser eduction will be able to point out recurring problems rather than requiring an "expert" to go in and verify all submissions no matter how conceivably possible the "proof" may be.
On the other
Ah,
I appreciate your comments, so let me in turn try to be a little more clear in my response.
First, it is my understanding that the wiki is a new enterprise, so even if as you say "The community on the wiki so far seems unwilling to devote time to the real experts, focusing almost exclusively on cranks who claim to already have proofs, and ignoring actual published, peer-reviewed papers that describe all the advances made so far." The is still room for change.
Further, I believe and education is useful for learning about what has come before and use that for a launching board to creation of new ideas, proofs, etc. The fact is though, that an academic education is by no means a real education at least in the undergraduate levels. Instead it's seems to have become an excercise in giving a certain number of students A's a certain number B's etc. Sorry, if I am a bit pessamistic at the moment, but I am taking a calculus course at the moment, where the instructo mumbles to the board as he works math problems and doesn't explain why things are what they are. Imagine trying to understand the concept of calc without the concept of a limit and why it is important, this is basically what has been called for during this class.
I have pointed out to this teach that practical demonstrations and explainations of why things are done in a certain manner would be helpful. To which he responds that though it would help, the explainations would be based on physics and the girls in the class only know how to apply formula, they cannot understand the hard sciences.
So, the only option I have is to study the material on my own, because following the examples the instructor is providing over half the class is failing and 75% of the class has changed instructors after the first two examine in his course. There does appear to be a problem here, yet when approached, the response of the department is that it is the student's responsibility to learn the material and poor instruction is not a viable excuse for any academic failure.
So you'll have to excuse me if I don't agree that the academics deserve to be placed on a pedistal merely because of the fact that they have put in years to answer the questions in a particular manner. I believe that the true test of your knowledge is in the ability to explain the subject matter in a comprehensible manner to your students and I so far see that as a skill sadly lacking in computer science and mathmatics at the undergrad level.
There are exceptions of course, but that really is my point. If you consider the exceptions on the academic side, then you must consider the exceptions outside the academic environment. There have been a number of people that have re-invented calculus that had they have gone to school, they would have been able to study it directly. From this, I think it's absolutely conceivable that someone outside the academic community has more talent in mathematics than people within the field.
Now, I do agree that there is little hope of someone coming up with the solution without education, because even if the person solved the problem, they might not recognise the acheivement and might not distribute their answer.
The whole thing comes down to education and not academic standing. The vast majority of the comments where saying that if you were not a top researcher, well regarded in your field, you could not make a contribution, which I believe is patently false... What is really required is education and to get that education, a person needs exposure.
It doesn't matter if the answers on the wiki are correct or not. If theories are disproven and it is demonstrated why they are incorrect, anyone in the world with an internet connection will be able to learn from what is happening on the wiki and that, my fr
Proof: Wiki users will not contribute to the millennium problem
Counter Example
Suppose: Problem will be solved
Suppose: Wiki users > 0
Suppose: All educated members of the community do not work on the wiki
Thus: EU educated users
: WU wiki users
: MP is problem with MP being millennium problem
Since we know that P will be solved, we know that EU likelyhood of solving problem + ~EU likelyhood of solving problem are == 1
Thus, by examining the chances of EU we will know what the likelyhood of someone else solving the problem.
The number of EU members is fixed, because only members of EU are able to solve the problem and no one is born having the skills to be a member of EU.
The number of ~EU is infinite being that there is no known event that will destroy the human race.
so EU/~EU is infinitely small and therefore the chance of someone in group EU solving the problem is also infinately small because the maximum possibility of EU solving the problem is 1 and 1/infinity is pretty damn small, but not 0
However, now the likelyhood of ~EU solving the problem is approximately 1.
And since we know that no members of eu are members of the wiki and we know that the number of members of the wiki are greater than 1. This means that the there is a possibility of that the person who solves the problem to be a member of the wiki.
It seems pretty simple to me, but maybe I am wrong... Wait a sec, I came up with the question therefore I am an expert and since no one else is an expert I must be correct because only experts can solve problems.
Seems like an odd stance for most of Slashdot to take, but I guess I'm too old. Since I am just now starting college after only 24 years of professional computer experience what right do I have to find any flaws with my instructors. After all some of them have had 4 years of academic computer experience.
Also, if we are to believe that a wiki member has no chance to solve the problem... Then we must assume that there is no reason for anyone to seek an education, because they are noting going to be able to learn anything that is not known. I guess it's time to stop investigating anythin if you are not an expert.
Shrug,
Yeah, I haven't heard too many horror stories about them yet. However, I would feel more confortable if the code was already done and deposited in a source trust so that it would automatically release on a certain date or when certain effects occured in the future. However, that being said, I don't run windows so they aren't losing a sale on me either.
Wow, that's weird. I just sent in a request yesterday asking if I could work on something for a thesis paper. Now, less than 24 hours later... Nice of them to create the program after I sent the mail yesterday... Grin
Agreed, I realize that it's a tragity that some people do bad things, but forgive me, how does that give government the right to punish me?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Good points,
Actually I concede to your logic, I've been shut in for too long and I guess I've made assumptions. More than likely it was also influenced by my experiences with Windows in the past and just a knee jerk reaction, ie "OMG how did that happen".
In general, Apple ranks wear HP used to before they stopped being engineers... Apple is one of the few companies that are innovating. I don't have an Apple frankly due to costs... and vender lock in on the hardware.
Anyway, thanks for the input.
Oh and the article is just going to be the previous post cleaned up a bit. I'm in the process of getting an academic degree, so writing and posting articles is actually going to be something I have to do frequently now...
Lando
Probably, but the AC response was even better I think... He said, no I'm eating an apple, I'll tell you which one I didn't eat. Same difference though... Damn it sucks actually having intelligent people reading my comments...
I think we can assume that I stated the question incorrectly.
Lando
Hmmm, never thought of it that way. I know it was something like that and I equated it to the pulling of black and white stones out of the bag. I guess I failed that one... Either originally, or when I rewrote it here, or both.
Nice,
Easy to read and concise. Two thoughts strike me.
First, it is harder to close the $40/hr client than the $120/hr client because the $120 client is looking for solutions whereas the $40/hr client is more interested in how much he/she is paying and what "value" he/she is receiving. So given the choice, go after the $120 customer. Note: I'm too much of a techie and generally don't follow my own advice since I'm not thinking about the money, but about the project.
Second, I've got an even better answer for you...
"How much do you charge?"
"You can't afford me, but maybe you can get me interested" BTW, I'm thinking that it's more affective to actually not need the income when you say this, but depending on your client... I say it now because I just don't care anymore and I suck at negotiating for income for myself.
Lando
PS $120/hour at this point of time in the states for a consultant is too low. If your a professional, rather than a contract worker you need to charge what Professional Doctors and Professional Lawyers make, ie $300/hour minimum. Doctors in offices are selling the same hour to multiple patients thus the make far more than the $120 you equate to them making. Myself, I follow the rule of 3. 1 part to pay yourself, 1 part to pay for advertising and 1 part to tide you through til the next job. So if I want to make $100/hour roughly 200k a year I charge $300. For myself, I estimate that I'm work around 170k/year currently or roughly $90 dollars and hour and then I tack on 50% for the inconvience that consulting tacks on. This is my slack for customers that wish to purchase retainer services from me. The theory being, that if I don't have to go looking for your work, then I can just do my job and it's not an inconvience. So my base hourly rate is $150 an hour which translates to $450/hour for consulting. Remember of course that I'm tired of working so I figure that's my base and at this time I figure that anything over $500/hour for my services, if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.
The few people that have come to me haven't required anything special and I've been able to send them to some of my old students and other aquantences that can do the job at a resonable rate. Then if the client wants I'll take an hour or two to eat the code, which is where I'm actually worth my fee.
Anyway. Tired and heading to bed.
Night
"Correct response" - Can't be determined without more information.
"Generally universal incorrect response" - Green (based on the assumption that Apples are red when ripe and therefore you wouldn't eat a green apple.
So basically, when faced with an answer of a or b, sometimes c is the correct answer.
Great comment by the way. In response:
Beta's are expected to have bugs too. At least that's how I always learned it. Alpha software was in-house, app developer only, still undergoing major changes and fixes.
Alpha software should be expected to fail and fail often, and is more likely to have an entire section of it's code rewritten rather than patched or fixed.
Beta software works most of the time on in-house, app developer machines. At this point the developers are looking to move the software away from testing to see what works to testing to see what isn't working like it should when applied to "real world" tasks. At this point bugs should be expected but those bugs should involved patching and fixing code rather than scratching things and rewriting.
Publc-Beta software should be esentialy the same as beta, the main difference being the developers believe it's stable enough in house to give it to untrained people to try. In this case you're looking to make the program as idiot proof as possible so you're actualy counting on your users to not read the directions, not follow the directions and attempt things you wouldn't dream of attempting because "it's not supposed to do that".
Final Release software should be stable on most machines most of the time for the public at large.
I've had several comments that agree with you in spirit so apparently this is what majority of people out there think. It's interesting how some of my practices are not precisely the same as others.
Your answers are not wrong for you and probably for most. I however develop enterprise software and as such my beta is probably close to your public beta. Of course then again, I don't have a public beta. It's a matter of pride more than anything else, although the costs of some of my code failing for some applications is probably more than the house you live in. (I know blatent assumption that you live in a house.. I'm not being literal, every 10 minutes of downtime for at least one specific program results in fees of at least a million dollars so I've had to produce at a little higher level than most and I try to use the same care for smaller projects as well. I have had to release buggy code on occassion, but it's never labeled beta and is only released because of the wishes of my client. Now that I no longer work for anyone, I shouldn't have to release early again. Once my code released it should never require a patch to fix syntax errors of any kind and only in the most remote situations should any type of logic error be found. The fact is that hardware is more likely to fail than any stable release and that beta should only be a full test of features, no bugs should ever be found, though on occassion that do slip past me. I do not write government security software nor medical software and so I don't have to be perfect.
I've actually written a lot more, but I'm tired and I'm thinking that this would be better sumerized in an article. So feel free to ignore the rest of the message and if you want I'll leave you a message once I flesh out the topic and write a proper article. I'll do it sometime in May or June.
Lando
It's amazing to me how the standards have changed from when I first began to program professionally. Even the title of the job is no longer the same. I still think of myself as a programmer...
Sorry, I've been chattering away all day, I rarely get into the mood. and I tend to just start rambling. I guess I should merely say that I think windows has lowered programming standards and my definitions are "out of date". Of course I don't use windows and I also don't think a reset button should ever have appeared on a computer system and I try to treat all my code as mission critical with millions of dollars on the line. I guess for reference you should compare my code to Oracle. Any error that is not recovered gracefully is unacceptible in any released product.
It'll be interesting to see if my opinions change now that
LOL,
Okay, I need to refine my statement, although videolan isn't really the type of product I had it mind. I was thinking about consumer electronics, but for the record, decss is illegal in the United States because it is an act of terrorism to break any type of encryption no matter how weak. Note: DMCA was passed in 1998 so I can't blame it on Bush, but I'm pretty sure that he's probably labeled it as a terrorist act. But I'm tired and I've just about worn out my commenting on slashdot for this year, ie I only comment when I am distracted, I should be doing other things.
So if we add the specification or legal to my statement, does that suffice?
You might want to refer to the other response I gave to the anonymous coward that pointed out a difference between my "beta" and his "beta" as well. It's just a different level of software production, I've been doing this for a while and it's a point of pride that no one finds a bug in one of my programs once it reaches a beta status.
I no longer work for a living, so after I clean up some code I have out there, I plan to start offering rewards for any bugs that make it past the alpha stage. I now no longer have any requirement to release code before I am satisfied. I write code for the enterprise environment and I demand from myself and those that work for me a higher definition of the term beta. However, yes I do occassionally let bugs through that I have to fix, but I think I said no known bugs in a beta release. The problem apple has seems to be rather apparent when you consider just how critical this is. However, anyone actually deciding to use Windows, especially over BSD, probably doesn't have any critical needs anyway.
Note: I do not at this time produce medical or government security solutions so I don't have to be perfect, it's just a matter of pride and my definition and those that work for/around me since I am the person that gets the final say.
So I don't disagree with you, I just have a different definition of the term beta and I would have expected Apple to have had a bit better qa than this.
PS. The fact that Apple is not communicating with these people and will not give any support to fix the problem means that they weren't worried about any bugs that there might have been in there when the released the beta. So I still believe that beta as the defined it for this application is alpha or pre-alpha code. I write GPL code, so there is no guarentee, but by golly if someone does have a problem, I pull out the stops to fix it since I developed the stuff I'm probably in the best position to address and fix the bug in the first place.
Nod,
For some people it is and more people would probably agree with you than with me on that definition. Although, I think you and I would both agree that this Beta isn't even close? Not when your wiping people's harddrives.
BTW, I write GPL and so for my clients and others that have access to my projects, they can get in and get everything at any time. It's just that I don't move the project into beta until everything is "ready" for a user test. Incremental construction, takes longer but everything has full automatic testing suites and the like. Also note, that lack of a feature in my opinion is not a bug, that's what the beta should be looking for, whether or not any changes need to be made before declaring the product stable.
I don't offer rewards for anyone finding a bug in any documented program at the moment, but since I've stopped working, I am no longer forced to release code before I want to and so as soon as I clean up a few applications roaming the net, I will be adding a notice of reward to all of my code in a similiar vein to what knuth offers. Or at least I think it's him who offers it... Who wrote tex?
Lando
Umm, what search engine? What are the details. Frankly google is probably higher in the first page hits, but is unlikely to be the target audience for this article. Seems to create an atmosphere, yes I know it says it as well, of opinion that you have to have your website on the front page.
Who benefits?
Google? nope they try to actually give search results. Who else? Well I don't use them, but in the old days some search engines used to sell placements. I assume it's either them or businesses who sell search engine positioning services.
I also stopped reading fairly early.
Hmmm, apparently some people don't understand a joke which after researching other comments made by you, I am quite certain this is.
Oh well, I was amused and ended up wasting way too many hours.
Also, if your going to read any type of advanced perl, Jeffrey E.F. Friedl, "Mastering Regular Expressions" O'reilly Media is highly recommended. I'm the one doing the recommendation, so there are bound to be other opinions, but I think that it's probably my most important perl book.
Lando
Actually, you were treated like your time was not valuable because you didn't charge enough. It has been my experience that as a consultant in the computer industry at least, people don't have enough knowledge of the work you are doing. Therefore, they judge people by how much they charge.
** moved this line up because this is what I originally set out to write, but didn't. It is duplicated after the Disclaimer:
If you don't charge much and you run into a problem, that's because you don't have experience and so you have to take jobs that pay nothing, but if you charge an arm and a leg, by god, if you have a problem than wow, it must be a really hard problem.
Doesn't matter what the facts are, the guy that charges little and knows more is not given the respect that the other guy earns just by charging enormous sums.
Disclamer::
What follows actually diverged into a story about how by charging more I was actually able to do "fun" stuff and probably is quite boring. Fear not that it may actually support the above statment, after a while it begins to diverge and there is no reason for the reader to continue unless he/she finds it entertaining. I'm planning on coming back sometime and massaging it into a coherant article for posting with my cv, but frankly it's likely to be extremely rough and prone to many spelling errors, runon sentences, subject jumping and becomes just an ego boosting looking back on how by getting over the fact that I am not worth 6 figures, by asking for it, I've actually gotten more respect than when I "gave it away for free". The more you charge the more people respect you in this line of business it seems. Or to put it another way.
If you don't charge much and you run into a problem, that's because you don't have experience and so you have to take jobs that pay nothing, but if you charge an arm and a leg, by god, if you have a problem than wow, it must be a really hard problem.
Doesn't matter what the facts are, the guy that charges little and knows more is not given the respect that the other guy earns just by charging enormous sums.
Consider: When I stared out doing windows consulting, 1992 or so? I charged $20.00/hour for my services before that just helping people out. At this time, because of the need for command line experience, occassionally needing to gopher, fido, or bbs for drivers or hopefully less often write your own drivers my skills we a bit more extensive that today's "tech". I eventually got to the point where I said, hey lets try to do this full time, I should be able to squeeze by until I build a customer base.
Now that I was doing it full time and spending a bit of money for tools and such I felt justified in raising my rates to $45 an hour. The strange thing was that I immediately started to get a lot more customers, too many to handle really. So I raised my rates to $65 thinking that I would lose customers, but that I would have some time off work. Within 2 months my business volume doubled. Wouldn't it be nice if I was a businessman rather than some geek just having fun.
The fact is that while I was astute enough to understand that to customers my competence level was directly proportional to how much they were paying me, I couldn't see charging that much, it was more than I felt I was worth and I was worried about people paying too much. My company eventually folded a few years later when I tried to be fair to a customer by not overcharging them and I ended up having to pay several weeks of salary to employees without being compensated. But as I said before I am not a business man.
After the business collapsed I tried to get a job as a computer tech at what was then "average" wages 30-40k a year (roughly 199[56]). Let's say it went rather poorly. By accident I applied for a job that paid 80k/year more than twice the price guys with a few years of experience and college degrees were making, I was hired on the spot. Partially because the position paid well, I was considered for the job.