I don't think it works in the case where making the claim paints you as an utter loon, and the reply sounds like dry British humor. I would have had a hard time keeping a straight face in the Major's position.
Names are often a product of the history of something.
Medical science identified a group of people who had 'acquired' a 'syndrome' of 'immune system deficiency' that did not match historical cases of suppressed immune systems. Everyone with these symptoms was said to have AIDS because the cause was a mystery. A lot of testing was done to find a commonality between patients that might be a cause. The vast majority of this identifiable trend were found to have HIV when it was discovered. It was clear that the HIV carriers were the true part of the AIDS disease, and the other cases were other diseases with similar symptoms. People who then were found to have HIV couldn't be said to have AIDS because they had a healthy immune system (for a while, anyway). AIDS sufferers also need to be treated differently for other diseases as well, and unlike other immune deficiency sufferers, may be helped by drugs that suppress HIV.
While it is certainly important to develop drugs that help boost the immune system, these are not cures, and can not save AIDS victims from death, or stop the spread. A cure for aids, or a vaccine, will have a much larger impact on global health. It's kind of you to try to keep in mind those suffering from less common ailments, but treatments for them will not stop this. And no, they're not magically better, they're suffering from a different disease that will require a different treatment.
Well, even completely irrespective of skill, a higher bar to entry would raise the pay rate. I gather that to be half of the concern of many people in these discussions. Making code better is a noble cause, but as you point out, linking the certification to quality is a different issue entirely, and not necessarily an easy one to solve.
The other thing that certifications would give is culpability. I wonder how many programmers would be comfortable being held responsible for the code they wrote when they were newbs.:)
As for the worth of most certs or degrees, it doesn't prove anything in a specific case. Everyone knows that guy that's a genius hacker that couldn't stay in school for some reason, as well as that moron who passed by getting others to do his work. But as a whole, they still are a good discriminator. If 10% of applicants without a degree are capable of doing a job, and 90% with, you make it a requirement to have a degree. It's simply not worth your time to interview the degreeless candidates, no matter how many diamonds in the rough you're passing over.
Hmm. Hard to say. Initially I thought it couldn't amount to much, but OTOH, there's a lot of waste in the typical bug-fix and minor feature version churn. But then again, would that problem really go away even with CS engineers?
Who needs fewer programmers? Some programmers would have higher salaries. Some companies would have better code. Many video games might not exist. Would linux? Firefox? Would computers be as useful today if all those crappy enterprise VB applications had consumed all the programming power that currently invests itself in more generally useful areas?
I agree professional certification may help improve software in critical areas. Hell, at my workplace we sometimes hire EEs over CS if they're capable of learning to code. CS certification would probably improve our applicant pool (but we probably couldn't afford to hire them). It seems to me that it would also have many deleterious effects if it the requirement for it was applied with too wide a brush.
At the risk of putting words in the OP's mouth, I don't think he was being so charitable as to say say poor coders would code better in something other than VB6. Rather, the insinuation about it being hard implies that some people have about as much business writing code as they would building bridges.
As for whether the current state of affairs is good, or what would have been better, it really depends on whose perspective you're looking from. If you and I had to have an engineering degree to code, it would most likely mean much higher wages and much higher quality products. It would also mean there would be less software in general, and bad software is a fair bit less likely to kill anyone than a bad bridge. I don't even know where to begin judging what would the effect be on 'the industry'.
While I don't necessarily agree with it, the boat might float a bit higher in the water if some people got off. (That also doesn't mean they need to be thrown off...)
But really, the lesson that's really important here is that VB's syntax makes baby jesus cry. It's like furniture made out of Duplos. It might really be sturdy, but you'd still feel nervous putting your weight on it.
"continue its stock prices growing (which is what shareholders only care about)."
Google has 2 kinds of stock - voting and non-voting. The voting stock is owned almost entirely by the founders. The majority voting shareholders have long since told the traditional traders to take a long walk - every buyer of google's non voting stock is welcome to sell if they don't like that.
So the biggest fear is that Larry and Sergey find that having a big stock price club is too useful and fun. I hardly think they have to worry about *trying* to inflate it, either.
Re:The Predjudicial Environment
on
Photosynth Demo
·
· Score: 1
Some context got lost along the way.
My intent was to explain why the earlier poster might have felt that the research teams shouldn't work for Microsoft. There is a long track record there of unfair business practices and actions that have hurt the industry. (That's up for debate also, I'm sure some would disagree about MS's effect on the industry.) In trying to provide an example I got too specific - originally I was going to state a more general claim about promoting windows (it does not currently work in linux, I've heard), but made the IE comment after trying and failing to use it in Firefox.
I admit to being a bit narrow-minded and possibly misguided. I'll try to do better. I continue to recommend caution when dealing with MS's business plans beyond research & demos.
Funny, I tried it in firefox first and it didn't work for me.
I relent on the criticism, since they apparently are honestly trying. I will, however, maintain that while the individual project group probably has great intentions, MS as a whole has a long history of specious business tactics that I don't think we should let them live down until their track record is more good than bad.
I think because as a part of microsoft, the technology will be used to bolster the market share of internet explorer, rather than be available to everyone regardless of their OS or browser. The current photosynth demo is an activeX plugin.
It's great that the people who came up with a great idea are reaping the benefits. But as far as most slashdotters are concerned, MS is just going to patent the most basic ideas of the interfaces of the future to make sure no one will be able to sneak up on them again, and they'll be able to sit on their non-innovative asses without competition for longer.
That's an extremist view and I doubt it will happen, through innovation in the commons, or through anarchy, but you can be certain that it's the case that MS as a whole would LIKE to see.
That's actually part of the working definition of what a species is. It's hard to define because 'species' is an artificial concept. Ability to interbreed only exhibits that, between assortments of a given set of animals, the offspring doesn't have a crippling incompatibility. The point being made was that 'kinds' is even more artificial. There are many similar species that can't interbreed. The 'kinds' argument is being made by people who are familiar with farm animals that have been bred for various traits - cows, horses, dogs, cats, pigs. It's like trying to take a shrub and decide which of the branches are different organisms by cutting any that are thicker than an inch - completely arbitrary to the shrub and based only on individual taste.
Some specific examples - horses and donkeys can create infertile mules. Ligers and tigons are differentiated by different male/female pairings of lions and tigers, and are very different themselves - Ligers tend to be larger than their parents, the largest known being 1200 lbs, while tigons are distinctly smaller, usually 350 lbs. In the mid-west US there are populations of chipmunks that live in adjacent groups. We'll call them types A, B, C, D, etc. (there are several, but I don't remember how many were identified.) A can breed with B, but not C. B can breed with C and A, but not D. C with B and D, not A.
It's hard enough to classify whether each of those chipmunks should be a species, but are we going to say squirrels and chipmunks are the same 'kind' of animal? Prairie dogs? Capybaras? Beavers? Mice? Reality does not bend to our classifications.
One short answer is that your sense of self is a delusion. Your brain filters your senses, interprets them, culls useless information, and then, maybe, lets your 'consciousness' know something important happened.
One of the best ways to understand a system is to see what happens when it breaks. A famous example: Guy with a brain injury required a surgery that physically cut the two halves of his brain. He's sitting in a chair, and a researcher shows him a sign that tells him to stand up. The researcher asks him why he just stood up, and he answers "I'm thirsty, I was going to go get a drink." - The part of the guy's brain that understands speech didn't have the reason, which was in the part that understands writing. So it made something up. That's one of the key features of the human mind: it's astoundingly great at rationalization. Just as you question your senses, the man questioned his motive and came to an answer that was reasonable and validated his senses, and just happened in his case to be completely wrong.
(I'm probably getting the specifics of the experiment wrong, but the lesson is intact)
I say that that's 'one' answer, because it's a really vague question, and all kinds of approaches have been taken to answer it. There are a lot of different answers.
As to what happens to your consciousness when you die? Science has not found any valid evidence that consciousness extends beyond the confines of the nervous system. Sorry.
Sure. Still the same as evolution. I'm unaware of existing terminology to put it in the same words, but the law would be that living things are related to each other. On many levels from genetic to outward appearance, creatures share features.
The 'Theory' of evolution is the ever-growing body of knowledge of the mechanisms, consequences, and expectations surround the subject matter.
There's no difference in absurdity between saying God wills things to fall, and God willed animals to be what they are. It's not even false - I can't say god didn't will it. But to say that men and monkeys are unrelated is to ignore the apple tree you're sitting under while wondering about your sudden headache.
The only creationist I've talked to on the matter doesn't disbelieve in anything evolution states, as long as it applies after Noah's ark. He thinks the ark carried the different kinds of animals - different dogs evolved from the 2 on the ark. Remarks about his intelligence aside, at least he's got the theory/hypothesis thing mostly straight.
Ok, got off on a tangent - I realize the parent post was just being a semantics nazi, but I still think he's wrong. In the context of talking about the theory of evolution, the theory of gravity is appropriate. The law of gravity has its equivalent as well, I'm just not aware of a term that avoids it being lumped in with the theory of evolution.
=================== "Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night." "To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." -Asimov
EVE's... different. There aren't many rules - the game each player is playing is the one that he wants to compete in. You choose your weapons, whether they are units of money, big guns, allies, forum drama, or real world media pressure on CCP.
I've been out of the loop for a bit so I'm not sure what the situation is, but if the goons manage to influence CCP, then they've accomplished something in game.
These big scandals are part of the fun.
Or in other words... In Soviet Russia, EVE plays you!
That's a surprisingly creative solution. The problem being, of course, that all the politicians will send each other tons of peanuts, and all knowing their impending doom, will unanimously change the law to avoid it.
Companies are beholden to their stakeholders, not capitalism. Over 80% of Google's voting power is still in the hands of the founders, who are idealists, and so rich as to be unbribable.
The video card for the most part does not affect latency. Latency is a factor of many things, and every step can introduce delay - mouse -> USB hardware -> CPU -> mouse software -> windows -> game -> smoothing algorithms -> frame buffering -> graphics settings (can buffer multiple frames) -> digital-analog conversion -> analog-digital conversion (using VGA cable for LCD) -> LCD frame buffering -> multiple frame buffering to compensate for color/ghosting (24" LCDs can have up to 60 ms delays because of this! 4 frames at 60 hz!) -> pixel change time (less of a latency issue than ghosting)
So yes, on a spectacularly bad setup, you could get latency over a 10th of a second. It's hard to say whether FPS or latency is a bigger issue, since they're independent. FPS can make the game look good or bad, but latency can have a very subtle effect on your skill. Most people won't notice, but have to do significant compensation in aiming to make up for the difference in time.
(Can you tell I've spent way too much time thinking about this?:) )
Your sarcasm fails at the point where both of those outcomes are reasonably possible. They could very well clean up DoubleClick's act and mostly use them for their customer base, and as far as google's concerned, facilitating learning in China's their best bet at improving human rights. At least they do what they CAN, rather than make some stupid idyllic stand that ends up hurting everyone other than MS and Yahoo.
Oh, damn, that's right, Google's a company, and US law requires them to be as greedy as possible with no foresight. *rolleyes* You do realize that the creators of Google still have full say of how Google does business? And that they have more money than they could ever use, so they can't really be bought off? Believe it or not, some people might value a better world higher than their Nth+1 billion. Really.
Or alternatively, the owner is happy where he is and has enough money to be comfortable, so he's just got no reason to sell other than to see what ridiculous numbers he can get them to say.
My guess is hydration. I spent a week in Berlin last year and it was ludicrously difficult to get a glass of water pretty much anywhere we went. Well, you could get metallic tasting carbonated water everywhere, but I refuse to believe anyone (sane) can drink that crap.
Of course, I might just be weird, I drink 2 to 5 liters of water a day.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it works in the case where making the claim paints you as an utter loon, and the reply sounds like dry British humor. I would have had a hard time keeping a straight face in the Major's position.
Names are often a product of the history of something.
Medical science identified a group of people who had 'acquired' a 'syndrome' of 'immune system deficiency' that did not match historical cases of suppressed immune systems. Everyone with these symptoms was said to have AIDS because the cause was a mystery. A lot of testing was done to find a commonality between patients that might be a cause. The vast majority of this identifiable trend were found to have HIV when it was discovered. It was clear that the HIV carriers were the true part of the AIDS disease, and the other cases were other diseases with similar symptoms. People who then were found to have HIV couldn't be said to have AIDS because they had a healthy immune system (for a while, anyway). AIDS sufferers also need to be treated differently for other diseases as well, and unlike other immune deficiency sufferers, may be helped by drugs that suppress HIV.
While it is certainly important to develop drugs that help boost the immune system, these are not cures, and can not save AIDS victims from death, or stop the spread. A cure for aids, or a vaccine, will have a much larger impact on global health. It's kind of you to try to keep in mind those suffering from less common ailments, but treatments for them will not stop this. And no, they're not magically better, they're suffering from a different disease that will require a different treatment.
Cheers!
Not many EE job opportunities in the area.
Well, even completely irrespective of skill, a higher bar to entry would raise the pay rate. I gather that to be half of the concern of many people in these discussions. Making code better is a noble cause, but as you point out, linking the certification to quality is a different issue entirely, and not necessarily an easy one to solve.
:)
The other thing that certifications would give is culpability. I wonder how many programmers would be comfortable being held responsible for the code they wrote when they were newbs.
As for the worth of most certs or degrees, it doesn't prove anything in a specific case. Everyone knows that guy that's a genius hacker that couldn't stay in school for some reason, as well as that moron who passed by getting others to do his work. But as a whole, they still are a good discriminator. If 10% of applicants without a degree are capable of doing a job, and 90% with, you make it a requirement to have a degree. It's simply not worth your time to interview the degreeless candidates, no matter how many diamonds in the rough you're passing over.
Hmm. Hard to say. Initially I thought it couldn't amount to much, but OTOH, there's a lot of waste in the typical bug-fix and minor feature version churn. But then again, would that problem really go away even with CS engineers?
Good food for thought at any rate.
Who needs fewer programmers? Some programmers would have higher salaries. Some companies would have better code. Many video games might not exist. Would linux? Firefox? Would computers be as useful today if all those crappy enterprise VB applications had consumed all the programming power that currently invests itself in more generally useful areas?
I agree professional certification may help improve software in critical areas. Hell, at my workplace we sometimes hire EEs over CS if they're capable of learning to code. CS certification would probably improve our applicant pool (but we probably couldn't afford to hire them). It seems to me that it would also have many deleterious effects if it the requirement for it was applied with too wide a brush.
At the risk of putting words in the OP's mouth, I don't think he was being so charitable as to say say poor coders would code better in something other than VB6. Rather, the insinuation about it being hard implies that some people have about as much business writing code as they would building bridges.
As for whether the current state of affairs is good, or what would have been better, it really depends on whose perspective you're looking from. If you and I had to have an engineering degree to code, it would most likely mean much higher wages and much higher quality products. It would also mean there would be less software in general, and bad software is a fair bit less likely to kill anyone than a bad bridge. I don't even know where to begin judging what would the effect be on 'the industry'.
While I don't necessarily agree with it, the boat might float a bit higher in the water if some people got off. (That also doesn't mean they need to be thrown off...)
But really, the lesson that's really important here is that VB's syntax makes baby jesus cry. It's like furniture made out of Duplos. It might really be sturdy, but you'd still feel nervous putting your weight on it.
ftfy
"continue its stock prices growing (which is what shareholders only care about)."
Google has 2 kinds of stock - voting and non-voting. The voting stock is owned almost entirely by the founders. The majority voting shareholders have long since told the traditional traders to take a long walk - every buyer of google's non voting stock is welcome to sell if they don't like that.
So the biggest fear is that Larry and Sergey find that having a big stock price club is too useful and fun. I hardly think they have to worry about *trying* to inflate it, either.
My intent was to explain why the earlier poster might have felt that the research teams shouldn't work for Microsoft. There is a long track record there of unfair business practices and actions that have hurt the industry. (That's up for debate also, I'm sure some would disagree about MS's effect on the industry.) In trying to provide an example I got too specific - originally I was going to state a more general claim about promoting windows (it does not currently work in linux, I've heard), but made the IE comment after trying and failing to use it in Firefox.
I admit to being a bit narrow-minded and possibly misguided. I'll try to do better. I continue to recommend caution when dealing with MS's business plans beyond research & demos.
Funny, I tried it in firefox first and it didn't work for me.
I relent on the criticism, since they apparently are honestly trying. I will, however, maintain that while the individual project group probably has great intentions, MS as a whole has a long history of specious business tactics that I don't think we should let them live down until their track record is more good than bad.
I think because as a part of microsoft, the technology will be used to bolster the market share of internet explorer, rather than be available to everyone regardless of their OS or browser. The current photosynth demo is an activeX plugin.
It's great that the people who came up with a great idea are reaping the benefits. But as far as most slashdotters are concerned, MS is just going to patent the most basic ideas of the interfaces of the future to make sure no one will be able to sneak up on them again, and they'll be able to sit on their non-innovative asses without competition for longer.
That's an extremist view and I doubt it will happen, through innovation in the commons, or through anarchy, but you can be certain that it's the case that MS as a whole would LIKE to see.
That's actually part of the working definition of what a species is. It's hard to define because 'species' is an artificial concept. Ability to interbreed only exhibits that, between assortments of a given set of animals, the offspring doesn't have a crippling incompatibility. The point being made was that 'kinds' is even more artificial. There are many similar species that can't interbreed. The 'kinds' argument is being made by people who are familiar with farm animals that have been bred for various traits - cows, horses, dogs, cats, pigs. It's like trying to take a shrub and decide which of the branches are different organisms by cutting any that are thicker than an inch - completely arbitrary to the shrub and based only on individual taste.
Some specific examples - horses and donkeys can create infertile mules. Ligers and tigons are differentiated by different male/female pairings of lions and tigers, and are very different themselves - Ligers tend to be larger than their parents, the largest known being 1200 lbs, while tigons are distinctly smaller, usually 350 lbs. In the mid-west US there are populations of chipmunks that live in adjacent groups. We'll call them types A, B, C, D, etc. (there are several, but I don't remember how many were identified.) A can breed with B, but not C. B can breed with C and A, but not D. C with B and D, not A.
It's hard enough to classify whether each of those chipmunks should be a species, but are we going to say squirrels and chipmunks are the same 'kind' of animal? Prairie dogs? Capybaras? Beavers? Mice? Reality does not bend to our classifications.
"inarguable"
:)
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
One short answer is that your sense of self is a delusion. Your brain filters your senses, interprets them, culls useless information, and then, maybe, lets your 'consciousness' know something important happened.
One of the best ways to understand a system is to see what happens when it breaks. A famous example: Guy with a brain injury required a surgery that physically cut the two halves of his brain. He's sitting in a chair, and a researcher shows him a sign that tells him to stand up. The researcher asks him why he just stood up, and he answers "I'm thirsty, I was going to go get a drink." - The part of the guy's brain that understands speech didn't have the reason, which was in the part that understands writing. So it made something up. That's one of the key features of the human mind: it's astoundingly great at rationalization. Just as you question your senses, the man questioned his motive and came to an answer that was reasonable and validated his senses, and just happened in his case to be completely wrong.
(I'm probably getting the specifics of the experiment wrong, but the lesson is intact)
I say that that's 'one' answer, because it's a really vague question, and all kinds of approaches have been taken to answer it. There are a lot of different answers.
As to what happens to your consciousness when you die? Science has not found any valid evidence that consciousness extends beyond the confines of the nervous system. Sorry.
Sure. Still the same as evolution. I'm unaware of existing terminology to put it in the same words, but the law would be that living things are related to each other. On many levels from genetic to outward appearance, creatures share features.
The 'Theory' of evolution is the ever-growing body of knowledge of the mechanisms, consequences, and expectations surround the subject matter.
There's no difference in absurdity between saying God wills things to fall, and God willed animals to be what they are. It's not even false - I can't say god didn't will it. But to say that men and monkeys are unrelated is to ignore the apple tree you're sitting under while wondering about your sudden headache.
The only creationist I've talked to on the matter doesn't disbelieve in anything evolution states, as long as it applies after Noah's ark. He thinks the ark carried the different kinds of animals - different dogs evolved from the 2 on the ark. Remarks about his intelligence aside, at least he's got the theory/hypothesis thing mostly straight.
Ok, got off on a tangent - I realize the parent post was just being a semantics nazi, but I still think he's wrong. In the context of talking about the theory of evolution, the theory of gravity is appropriate. The law of gravity has its equivalent as well, I'm just not aware of a term that avoids it being lumped in with the theory of evolution.
===================
"Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."
-Asimov
EVE's... different. There aren't many rules - the game each player is playing is the one that he wants to compete in. You choose your weapons, whether they are units of money, big guns, allies, forum drama, or real world media pressure on CCP.
I've been out of the loop for a bit so I'm not sure what the situation is, but if the goons manage to influence CCP, then they've accomplished something in game.
These big scandals are part of the fun.
Or in other words...
In Soviet Russia, EVE plays you!
That is... the most boring, non-threatening evil ever.
Oh no! Don't let Google pay them the agreed-upon amount with shares that recently increased in value! Oh, the humanity!
That's a surprisingly creative solution. The problem being, of course, that all the politicians will send each other tons of peanuts, and all knowing their impending doom, will unanimously change the law to avoid it.
Companies are beholden to their stakeholders, not capitalism. Over 80% of Google's voting power is still in the hands of the founders, who are idealists, and so rich as to be unbribable.
d =19250783
Read all the replies to this guy who said the same thing you did: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=235955&ci
The video card for the most part does not affect latency. Latency is a factor of many things, and every step can introduce delay - mouse -> USB hardware -> CPU -> mouse software -> windows -> game -> smoothing algorithms -> frame buffering -> graphics settings (can buffer multiple frames) -> digital-analog conversion -> analog-digital conversion (using VGA cable for LCD) -> LCD frame buffering -> multiple frame buffering to compensate for color/ghosting (24" LCDs can have up to 60 ms delays because of this! 4 frames at 60 hz!) -> pixel change time (less of a latency issue than ghosting)
:) )
So yes, on a spectacularly bad setup, you could get latency over a 10th of a second. It's hard to say whether FPS or latency is a bigger issue, since they're independent. FPS can make the game look good or bad, but latency can have a very subtle effect on your skill. Most people won't notice, but have to do significant compensation in aiming to make up for the difference in time.
(Can you tell I've spent way too much time thinking about this?
Your sarcasm fails at the point where both of those outcomes are reasonably possible. They could very well clean up DoubleClick's act and mostly use them for their customer base, and as far as google's concerned, facilitating learning in China's their best bet at improving human rights. At least they do what they CAN, rather than make some stupid idyllic stand that ends up hurting everyone other than MS and Yahoo.
Oh, damn, that's right, Google's a company, and US law requires them to be as greedy as possible with no foresight. *rolleyes* You do realize that the creators of Google still have full say of how Google does business? And that they have more money than they could ever use, so they can't really be bought off? Believe it or not, some people might value a better world higher than their Nth+1 billion. Really.
Or alternatively, the owner is happy where he is and has enough money to be comfortable, so he's just got no reason to sell other than to see what ridiculous numbers he can get them to say.
Oh, you are so full of shit.
:)
Like anyone here would believe security enhancements were a priority.
Jeez.
My guess is hydration. I spent a week in Berlin last year and it was ludicrously difficult to get a glass of water pretty much anywhere we went. Well, you could get metallic tasting carbonated water everywhere, but I refuse to believe anyone (sane) can drink that crap.
Of course, I might just be weird, I drink 2 to 5 liters of water a day.