Comment Re:Hawking? (Score 1) 208
Hawking is already on record saying it is a bad idea to try and contact alien races. OTOH, checking to see if we can here them doesn't pose much threat.
Hawking is already on record saying it is a bad idea to try and contact alien races. OTOH, checking to see if we can here them doesn't pose much threat.
Because you say so? Oxford dictionary disagrees with you.
The "study" of mathematics is a science in the broad sense, just like the "study" of theology is also a science. But mathematics itself, particularly as used in the context of this article, is a descriptive language.
Or at 11 it's still not their fault. Remember, these vehicles are logging 10,000 miles per week - there's a lot more opportunities to be rear-ended by an inattentive driver when one is on the road that much than there are for a typical driver. By way of example, in the video from the article at Medium there were two cars in front of the driverless car that had also stopped at the light - there was nowhere else for the driverless car to go.
I agree that usually if you are rear-ended that it is the other driver's fault (not always, but usually). However, there aren't a large number of google cars on the road, so I would be curious as compared to a random sample from the general population how many non-google cars were rear-ended in the same time period? In addition, it would be interesting to know if any of the google cars have been rear-ended more than once?
but he is one of the most proactive.
Nuclear bombs are proactive, but we can both agree they are pretty much never a good thing, can't we?
He takes the nuclear approach, ALWAYS. More harm than good.
Nuclear bombs are not proactive. Nor are they reactive. Nuclear bombs are just that -- nuclear bombs. However, they can be used proactively or reactively, but it is the human person that makes that choice, not the bomb.
What this is about is people in the middle without any direct customer relation to Netflix or the end user, wanting Netflix to pay them too.
Which is normal, when two ISPs connect, and one sends far more data than it receives.
That's the point. It shouldn't be normal. As a consumer, you pay your ISP for x amount of bandwidth. It shouldn't matter that those bits are used for receiving video or text files. You are already paying your ISP for the data you use. With regards to Netflix, they pay their ISP for the bandwidth they are a sending. Would anybody seriously contend that Netflix should pay extra for the data that you are already paying for? No, of course not, so why should the consumer pay for the data that Netflix is already paying for?
Netflix is an easy target, but think this through. Amazon does a tremendous amount business on the internet. Should consumers pay a surcharge for the privileged of shopping there? What about Google? It is the leading search engine. Should there be surcharges to access it? Does it cost an ISP more to send a packet containing video versus a packet containing data? No. So why should they be allowed to charge more for it?
some would argue mathematics is king of the sciences
Mathematics is not a science. It is a language used to describe scientific principles and theories.
I was referring to the various programming languages for young children that have been around since the late 60s.
ORLY?
What programming languages for young children were around in the late 60s? Name ONE. Name ONE kindergarten or primary school that was teaching ANY programming language to young children the late 60s. Name ONE high school that was teaching ANY programming language to students in the late 60s. Name ONE UNIVERSITY teaching undergrads a programming language in the late 60s.
You either have a very different definition of "young children" than the rest of the world, or you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
I believe that Logo was invented by MIT in 1967. With it, a child could give it simple commands to move a cursor to draw various shapes. I think it was called turtle graphics or something like that. It was demoed with five year olds drawing simple geometric shapes and older children producing Spirograph type drawings (although still pretty simple and crude by today's standards). By the mid-to late 70s, it was available on the Apple II, C64 and other microcomputers.
Being available for use and actually being used are obviously two different things. However, it definitely could be used if somebody chose to do so beyond MIT.
I would concur with that, at least structured programming. OTOH, young people do quite well with Logos and derivatives there of.
Apparently they do much better with tablets than legos or building blocks. Swiping is more important than constructing these days.
I was referring to the various programming languages for young children that have been around since the late 60s.
As for swiping versus building things, it's too soon to tell how that will developmentally manifest itself in the adult population. "Building things" is prevalent in many cultures and is probably an inherited trait in the human genome. Even other primates exhibit the trait to some degree. So, substituting tablets will be an interesting social experiment.
That said, the structures in the brain that allow for critical thinking aren't formed until around the age of 7, so it isn't really useful to attempt to teach critical thinking skills, except at a most rudimentary level, in kindergarten.
Yeah, and the structures in the brain that allow for learning computer science aren't formed either.
I would concur with that, at least structured programming. OTOH, young people do quite well with Logos and derivatives there of.
They can't even do basic addition without using their fingers. And yet you want to teach them critical thinking? Idiot.
In the US, today, kindergarten is what 1st grade used to be. The emphasis is on reading and math. They aren't allowed to count on their fingers after pre-school. That said, the structures in the brain that allow for critical thinking aren't formed until around the age of 7, so it isn't really useful to attempt to teach critical thinking skills, except at a most rudimentary level, in kindergarten.
Reoptimizing is not the same thing as fixing a bug. For one thing, the software would need to know the bug is in fact a bug and what the correct behavior was supposed to be. Suppose your algorithm is coded as c = a - b, but it really is supposed to be c = a + b. Obviously that is a bug but how is the software supposed to know that? Or suppose you used an incorrect conversion factor, but the formula is otherwise correct (Didn't NASA have a lander crash because the program used feet instead of meters or something like that?).
Anyway, decompiling a program, which is no smal feat, and then optimizing it is not the same as bug fixing.
Example? In CNN's recent interview of Hillary Clinton, she claimed that she never got a subpoena for her private mail server... took less than 30 seconds to discover otherwise.
Technically, she is correct. She never received a subpoena for her mail server. She did receive a subpoena for certain emails, but not the server itself. Now did she speak truthfully? Probably not as for all practical purposes, people see the emails stored on the server and her email server as synonymous. But, the question isn't if she spoke truthfully, it is whether or not she lied, which she did not.
...because our natural instinct is to tell a lie point the finger to someone else.
Lying is not some "natural instinct", but a learned behavior to avoid a negative consequence. Other than that, I agree with the rest of your post.
And yet, when you look at the stalwarts of today's tech industry, most of them excelled, not because of their technical skills but because of their ideas. The best technical skills in the world don't mean a thing if you can't envision how to use them for something others want. Put differently, it is a lot easier to teach others to code than it is to teach them to think creatively.
No, they didn't succeed because of their ideas, but because they managed to put money where their mouth is, and got the finances to turn the idea into something that can be sold.
Not in the beginning. Take Microsoft, for example, it was a pretty small company headed by a college dropout that saw what DOS could do and what a number Xerox products could do when their actual creators couldn't. That's called vision or ideas. Yes, they had to finance those things, but usually, that isn't the visionary part of the work.
Even beyond the startup stage, Microsoft and Apple weren't/aren't innovators in the traditional sense. Apple didn't make the first music player or the first smartphone, for instance. What both companies were very good at, under Gates and Jobs was articulating their vision of what technology could be used for and then marketing it to the masses.
It is vision that leads to real success and that is something that isn't taught in school.
Yes, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs knew how to program. They both were mediocre cooks, too, but they didn't become famous chefs because of that. Both Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and many others had a vision of what the technology could do before others around them did and they were able to capitalize on that.
Another commonality between the two was that they both knew their strengths and weaknesses and surrounded themselves with people who made up for those weaknesses.
Finally, they both happened to be in the right place at the right time. The tech industry today is very different than in the 1980s.
Not to dismiss their accomplishments, nor to discourage one from pursuing a CS discipline, but to be successful, in any endeavor, you need capital, vision, hard work and luck. If you are missing one or more of those, it is unlikely that you will succeed, regardless of one's educational background.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein
