There must be a way to determine if an arbitrary computer program halts for a given input!
...and so on. Maybe there is a way of telling smart people from dumb people (Forrest Gump comes to mind), but there is no guarantee that we can always reasonably measure a vaguely defined property like "intelligence".
If a "general purpose" processor solves your problems fast enough, it's good enough.
How the fuck is that "harmful"?
You miss the point. It's not the "general purpose processor" that is harmful per se. What is harmful is the labelling of a certain class of processors as "general purpose", when, in the view of the author, they are not really general purpose, but specialised for executing C code with, at most, mid-sized working sets and little inter-processor communication. By assuming this workload as the default and calling processors good for it "general purpose", we may miss other approaches that might be more suitable for certain classes of problems.
Saying that's not how it works implies you know how it works.
Not true. There are many things of which I know how they don't work without knowing how they work. Before the detection of nuclear fusion, we didn't know how the sun was heated. But we did know that it was not a chemical reaction (not enough fuel for the time it had been burning). I don't know how Google indexes keywords. But I do know they are not looking them up via sequential search (too fast for that). I don't know what the annoying traffic light on my way to work is triggered by, but I know its not telepathy - or I wouldn't be standing there forever each day. And so on. Indeed, that's how science works - you formulate hypotheses and then refute them one-by-one. If you can't refute a reasonable one, that's your tentative model of reality.
Nowadays, most journals will expect the author to provide a camera-ready copy. They don't do any editing or typesetting anymore, they just handle peer-review and publication.
It is the field of biology that you are talking about? That's certainly not the case for my own field (linguistics). The editor still molds the submissions into a house style before it goes to the printer; the author isn't expected to do all the typesetting himself.
Ok, my experience is mostly with computer science, math and physics. Typically, you write your paper in LaTeX with a style provided by the publisher. LaTeX does the actual typesetting, of course. Some journals also have Word templates, but that's much rarer.
I would have assumed journals would let you err on the side of caution and simply remove your citation if it were unnecessary, but apparently citing too much can block approval.
Nowadays, most journals will expect the author to provide a camera-ready copy. They don't do any editing or typesetting anymore, they just handle peer-review and publication. Authors can modify papers following suggestions from peer review, which may include suggestions on citations. I think Nature and Science still to their own typesetting, and may commission better illustrations, but that's a rare exception. In nearly all cases where the paper has been accepted, the author has the final say about the details (within reason, of course).
You're looking at it from a very technical perspective, which is valid for the few who have the time and knowledge to dick around with a UNIX system to make it things. Apple's user-base isn't that sector, despite the fanboi protests (cue accusations of trolling). Apple shines brightest for people who want to get other things done without worrying about how they get done. For someone in the humanities, there's no better machine for putting together a fast, smooth workflow with an amazingly small learning curve. [....]
I'm regularly attending conferences in the field of theoretical computer science and AI, and about 70% of laptops there are MacBooks. 25% are Linux, and then there are a few researchers paid by Microsoft Research;-). But Macs are not just for humanities people - a significant draw is "a UNIX box that just works". With Fink or MacPorts, package management is nearly as good as on the best Linux distributions, and the hardware integration is totally trouble-free. And the hardware is nice from a purely physical point of view - smooth, quite, compact, with decent performance and reliability. Of course, most of the people with Mac laptops use Linux servers for nearly everything else.
Another thing that Apple has going for it is consistency. The PC market is gigantic, and if you want to get a good deal, you must spend a lot of time investigating and usually also get lucky. With Apple, the chances of getting a complete lemon are very low, and the choices are limited enough that it's easy to get an overview.
It's not any different with open programs, as no one has the time to read the source code anyway. It always boils down to trust towards the vendor.
That's wrong. Not everyone has that time, but someone usually does have - and for popular programs, many people do take the time. That does not make the system completely fool-proof, but it does make hidden backdoors a lot less of a concern. If neither of two approaches is perfect, it does not mean that one is not vastly superior to the other. Take antibiotics and witchcraft as treatments for pneumonia....
Yes, commercial software is based on trust. We have now found out that Adobe does not respect our privacy and we can simply stop using their products. The system still works.
Maybe you forgot a smiley here? We run this risk every time we install and run a proprietary program - how often do you need your nude pictures, private medical records and credit card information leaked all over the internet?
Even if he can be hard to handle, this is one of his core arguments. If you don't control your computer, your computer controls you. With proprietary software, you are basically handing control of your computer over to the software company. You can hope that are both honest and competent. Keep those fingers crossed...
Somehow a quite conservatively formulated claim (subjunctive mode, "some models, 75% chance, 5-7 years, during some month of the summer") magically morphed into the strong claim "Al Gore said in 5 years time the Arctic will be completely ice free". How much did you pay for that perceptional filter? And can you get a refund?
[...] on the street [bicycles] interfere with traffic.
Just for your information, bicycles are part of the traffic! As for "interference", the appropriate control situation is not one where the cyclists are magically poofed to New Delhi (or the moon), but one where every cyclist is replaced by yet another car...
It is the job of a "scientist" to present claim and data that supports said claim in such a way that it may be consumed by anyone and still stand on its own, only then is there "consensus."
Well, the job of a "scientist" may be to provide soundbites that so-called think tanks can feed to sympathetic reporters and the uninformed public. But it is not the job of a scientist (no quotes) to present his results in a way that "anyone" can consume them. Scientists need to present their results in a way that an interested, fair-minded, and, most of all, sufficiently educated person (i.e. usually another scientist with a similar speciality) can follow the research.
Some complex research can be presented to the general public (although even then not to everybody), but then it's necessarily simplified and no longer iron-clad. It's a sad illusion to assume that modern science can be spoon-fed to a passive audience in a way that said audience can really understand it. If it were that simple, we would not need universities and Ph.D. programs.
To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
...
To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
Isn't that socialism? Or communism? Anyways, that's a wimpy European idea. Proper American heros are more Wyatt Earp, Dirty Harry and Jack Bauer. Civil rights are as quaint as the Geneva Convention. If you're a law-abiding citizen, why would you walk outside your gated community? Or inside after dark? Can't you afford a car? Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius!
I can see the superficial attraction of this, but I think it overreaches. Nobody will work well if under permanent surveillance. On the other hand, why not turn it around? Have the senators wear body cameras during all fund-raisers, committee meetings, and discussions with staff, potential donors, and others.
For a very low-price but useful entry-level telescope, try the Galileoscope. It is an achromatic refractor that has been designed as part of the International Year of Astronomy, and can be had for approximately US$ 50 (or order a box of 6 for US$30 apiece). It comes with an eyepiece that approximates Galileo Galilei's experience, but also with (IIRC) 2 modern eyepieces that are decent enough for the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn's ring. Also, it uses a standard eyepiece adapter, so it can be further upgraded if required. Some assembly required - this is intended as a teaching opportunity;-). It's cheap enough that it can just be passed on to another kid or a local school if a better instrument is obtained.
What "geologic indications" are these, exactly? The last time I checked, the global warming proponents were just checking ice cores for CO2 content in the atmosphere. The melting point of most rocks is well above the hottest temperatures encountered in the atmosphere...
You haven't checked very carefully, then. There are several geological proxies for past temperatures. One example is the Oxygen isotope ratio in calcium carbonate.
The Heartland Institute's NIPCC reports use the same research papers cited by the IPCC and shows how the IPCC conveniently skews data and ignores all the data in between.
There is a difference in semantics between "shows" and "claims" that you seem to not be aware of. The so-called NIPCC is a front for Heartland, and consists of a changing but minuscule group of well-known deniers. Their report is a transparent piece of propaganda for everyone who has at least a basic scientific understanding.
I thought the MWP was a full three degrees warmer then the 1990's. Which were warmer then now.
What you think, is, of course, your own problem (although the "a full three degrees warmer" must come from some very creative interpretation of the record). But how do you get the ideas that the 1990's were warmer than it is now? The 1990s were about 0.2 degree C colder than 2013, and this year will most likely be warmer still. There was one exceptional year (1998) that was marginally warmer than 2013. Of course, these short-term trends are heavily influenced by noise, so the significance of these results is low. But that's no reason to make wrong claims.
Sipser's book is not bad, but I find it much shallower than any of the editions of Hopcroft[,Motwani], Ullman. Many of his proofs seemed to be more hand-waving. On the other hand, he is somewhat good at building intuition, which is valuable for students not yet used to the domain.
The Dragon Book"
Compiler construction teaches many different aspects of computer science, and this is a classic.
Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment
One of the best-written technical books, ever. On the practical side, but doing useful things (tm) is not illegal in computer science.
CFACT is not a remotely reliable source, nor to they cite any such source. Google Scholar is usually good at finding real research papers on the topic. This is the top hit for 2013, and while it finds some bird mortality due to wind turbines, it estimates the effect to be much lower than that of other anthropogenic risks for birds, even assuming a 10-fold increase in wind turbines.
There is no silver bullet, nor will we ever manage to return the planet to Garden of Eden conditions. But "there is no single perfect solution, therefore let's not do anything" is not a viable approach to life. Perfect solutions to any problem are exceedingly rare, but that does not stop us from improving situations.
On ISS, they get about 0.1 mw from an acre, that is 24.7 mw from km2.
Pedantic remark: There is a slight difference between a mW (milliwatt) and a MW (megawatt), a factor of about a short billion, or 9 (decimal) orders of magnitude.
Even more pedantic: W is upper case (as it's named after James Watt). I'm not aware of any unit using a lower case "w" as the abbreviation. But in general, capitalisation is significant for units.
Small problem with that is this summer had 50% less ice melt in the arctic
Says who? 50% less than what? 2012 was a record minimum year. 2013 has bounced back from that record low (in ice extend, not ice volume), but is still one of the years with the least sea ice extend science measurements began. And all the other similarly low extend years have been after 2005.
Slashdot Mirror
There must be a way of telling smart people from dumb people... .
If a "general purpose" processor solves your problems fast enough, it's good enough.
How the fuck is that "harmful"?
You miss the point. It's not the "general purpose processor" that is harmful per se. What is harmful is the labelling of a certain class of processors as "general purpose", when, in the view of the author, they are not really general purpose, but specialised for executing C code with, at most, mid-sized working sets and little inter-processor communication. By assuming this workload as the default and calling processors good for it "general purpose", we may miss other approaches that might be more suitable for certain classes of problems.
Saying that's not how it works implies you know how it works.
Not true. There are many things of which I know how they don't work without knowing how they work. Before the detection of nuclear fusion, we didn't know how the sun was heated. But we did know that it was not a chemical reaction (not enough fuel for the time it had been burning). I don't know how Google indexes keywords. But I do know they are not looking them up via sequential search (too fast for that). I don't know what the annoying traffic light on my way to work is triggered by, but I know its not telepathy - or I wouldn't be standing there forever each day. And so on. Indeed, that's how science works - you formulate hypotheses and then refute them one-by-one. If you can't refute a reasonable one, that's your tentative model of reality.
It is the field of biology that you are talking about? That's certainly not the case for my own field (linguistics). The editor still molds the submissions into a house style before it goes to the printer; the author isn't expected to do all the typesetting himself.
Ok, my experience is mostly with computer science, math and physics. Typically, you write your paper in LaTeX with a style provided by the publisher. LaTeX does the actual typesetting, of course. Some journals also have Word templates, but that's much rarer.
I would have assumed journals would let you err on the side of caution and simply remove your citation if it were unnecessary, but apparently citing too much can block approval.
Nowadays, most journals will expect the author to provide a camera-ready copy. They don't do any editing or typesetting anymore, they just handle peer-review and publication. Authors can modify papers following suggestions from peer review, which may include suggestions on citations. I think Nature and Science still to their own typesetting, and may commission better illustrations, but that's a rare exception. In nearly all cases where the paper has been accepted, the author has the final say about the details (within reason, of course).
You're looking at it from a very technical perspective, which is valid for the few who have the time and knowledge to dick around with a UNIX system to make it things. Apple's user-base isn't that sector, despite the fanboi protests (cue accusations of trolling). Apple shines brightest for people who want to get other things done without worrying about how they get done. For someone in the humanities, there's no better machine for putting together a fast, smooth workflow with an amazingly small learning curve. [....]
I'm regularly attending conferences in the field of theoretical computer science and AI, and about 70% of laptops there are MacBooks. 25% are Linux, and then there are a few researchers paid by Microsoft Research ;-). But Macs are not just for humanities people - a significant draw is "a UNIX box that just works". With Fink or MacPorts, package management is nearly as good as on the best Linux distributions, and the hardware integration is totally trouble-free. And the hardware is nice from a purely physical point of view - smooth, quite, compact, with decent performance and reliability. Of course, most of the people with Mac laptops use Linux servers for nearly everything else.
Another thing that Apple has going for it is consistency. The PC market is gigantic, and if you want to get a good deal, you must spend a lot of time investigating and usually also get lucky. With Apple, the chances of getting a complete lemon are very low, and the choices are limited enough that it's easy to get an overview.
It's not any different with open programs, as no one has the time to read the source code anyway. It always boils down to trust towards the vendor.
That's wrong. Not everyone has that time, but someone usually does have - and for popular programs, many people do take the time. That does not make the system completely fool-proof, but it does make hidden backdoors a lot less of a concern. If neither of two approaches is perfect, it does not mean that one is not vastly superior to the other. Take antibiotics and witchcraft as treatments for pneumonia....
Yes, commercial software is based on trust. We have now found out that Adobe does not respect our privacy and we can simply stop using their products. The system still works.
Maybe you forgot a smiley here? We run this risk every time we install and run a proprietary program - how often do you need your nude pictures, private medical records and credit card information leaked all over the internet?
Even if he can be hard to handle, this is one of his core arguments. If you don't control your computer, your computer controls you. With proprietary software, you are basically handing control of your computer over to the software company. You can hope that are both honest and competent. Keep those fingers crossed...
Somehow a quite conservatively formulated claim (subjunctive mode, "some models, 75% chance, 5-7 years, during some month of the summer") magically morphed into the strong claim "Al Gore said in 5 years time the Arctic will be completely ice free". How much did you pay for that perceptional filter? And can you get a refund?
[...] on the street [bicycles] interfere with traffic.
Just for your information, bicycles are part of the traffic! As for "interference", the appropriate control situation is not one where the cyclists are magically poofed to New Delhi (or the moon), but one where every cyclist is replaced by yet another car...
It is the job of a "scientist" to present claim and data that supports said claim in such a way that it may be consumed by anyone and still stand on its own, only then is there "consensus."
Well, the job of a "scientist" may be to provide soundbites that so-called think tanks can feed to sympathetic reporters and the uninformed public. But it is not the job of a scientist (no quotes) to present his results in a way that "anyone" can consume them. Scientists need to present their results in a way that an interested, fair-minded, and, most of all, sufficiently educated person (i.e. usually another scientist with a similar speciality) can follow the research.
Some complex research can be presented to the general public (although even then not to everybody), but then it's necessarily simplified and no longer iron-clad. It's a sad illusion to assume that modern science can be spoon-fed to a passive audience in a way that said audience can really understand it. If it were that simple, we would not need universities and Ph.D. programs.
Isn't that socialism? Or communism? Anyways, that's a wimpy European idea. Proper American heros are more Wyatt Earp, Dirty Harry and Jack Bauer. Civil rights are as quaint as the Geneva Convention. If you're a law-abiding citizen, why would you walk outside your gated community? Or inside after dark? Can't you afford a car? Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius!
I can see the superficial attraction of this, but I think it overreaches. Nobody will work well if under permanent surveillance. On the other hand, why not turn it around? Have the senators wear body cameras during all fund-raisers, committee meetings, and discussions with staff, potential donors, and others.
For a very low-price but useful entry-level telescope, try the Galileoscope. It is an achromatic refractor that has been designed as part of the International Year of Astronomy, and can be had for approximately US$ 50 (or order a box of 6 for US$30 apiece). It comes with an eyepiece that approximates Galileo Galilei's experience, but also with (IIRC) 2 modern eyepieces that are decent enough for the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn's ring. Also, it uses a standard eyepiece adapter, so it can be further upgraded if required. Some assembly required - this is intended as a teaching opportunity ;-). It's cheap enough that it can just be passed on to another kid or a local school if a better instrument is obtained.
What "geologic indications" are these, exactly? The last time I checked, the global warming proponents were just checking ice cores for CO2 content in the atmosphere. The melting point of most rocks is well above the hottest temperatures encountered in the atmosphere...
You haven't checked very carefully, then. There are several geological proxies for past temperatures. One example is the Oxygen isotope ratio in calcium carbonate.
The Heartland Institute's NIPCC reports use the same research papers cited by the IPCC and shows how the IPCC conveniently skews data and ignores all the data in between.
There is a difference in semantics between "shows" and "claims" that you seem to not be aware of. The so-called NIPCC is a front for Heartland, and consists of a changing but minuscule group of well-known deniers. Their report is a transparent piece of propaganda for everyone who has at least a basic scientific understanding.
I thought the MWP was a full three degrees warmer then the 1990's. Which were warmer then now.
What you think, is, of course, your own problem (although the "a full three degrees warmer" must come from some very creative interpretation of the record). But how do you get the ideas that the 1990's were warmer than it is now? The 1990s were about 0.2 degree C colder than 2013, and this year will most likely be warmer still. There was one exceptional year (1998) that was marginally warmer than 2013. Of course, these short-term trends are heavily influenced by noise, so the significance of these results is low. But that's no reason to make wrong claims.
Standard Oil. Microsoft. AT&T.
Sipser's book is not bad, but I find it much shallower than any of the editions of Hopcroft[,Motwani], Ullman. Many of his proofs seemed to be more hand-waving. On the other hand, he is somewhat good at building intuition, which is valuable for students not yet used to the domain.
Compiler construction teaches many different aspects of computer science, and this is a classic.
One of the best-written technical books, ever. On the practical side, but doing useful things (tm) is not illegal in computer science.
A good introduction to the fundamentals of theoretical computer science.
Seconded!
Bird deaths are no myth:
http://www.cfact.org/2013/03/1...
CFACT is not a remotely reliable source, nor to they cite any such source. Google Scholar is usually good at finding real research papers on the topic. This is the top hit for 2013, and while it finds some bird mortality due to wind turbines, it estimates the effect to be much lower than that of other anthropogenic risks for birds, even assuming a 10-fold increase in wind turbines.
There is no silver bullet, nor will we ever manage to return the planet to Garden of Eden conditions. But "there is no single perfect solution, therefore let's not do anything" is not a viable approach to life. Perfect solutions to any problem are exceedingly rare, but that does not stop us from improving situations.
On ISS, they get about 0.1 mw from an acre, that is 24.7 mw from km2.
Pedantic remark: There is a slight difference between a mW (milliwatt) and a MW (megawatt), a factor of about a short billion, or 9 (decimal) orders of magnitude.
Even more pedantic: W is upper case (as it's named after James Watt). I'm not aware of any unit using a lower case "w" as the abbreviation. But in general, capitalisation is significant for units.
Small problem with that is this summer had 50% less ice melt in the arctic
Says who? 50% less than what? 2012 was a record minimum year. 2013 has bounced back from that record low (in ice extend, not ice volume), but is still one of the years with the least sea ice extend science measurements began. And all the other similarly low extend years have been after 2005.