dissenter · HackerTrans

18 yıl öncediscuss

The media has been placing the blame for the imperfect oath on the Chief Justice, but the fault appears to be with the President.

In the clip of the Vice Presidential oath the first phrase is "I [name] do solemnly swear..." Both the Justice and the Vice President get it right. In the clip of the Presidential oath, the Chief Justice attempts to speak the full first phrase, but is interrupted in the middle by the President.

The President is the one who starts the deviation. The Chief Justice then goes on to mangle an important line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5VB4LgOH58

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EHOHe-_uQg

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

You're approaching it from the wrong perspective. English is the lingua franca. If your colleague were really nice, he would translate his message into Hindi, but that isn't an effective use of time. Neither is writing in Simple English.

Let the recipient use a dictionary. After a while he won't have to anymore.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

On a related note, whuffie is not a new invention. There is no difference whatsoever between whuffie and money. They are perfectly synonymous. I get the feeling the author, and many of his readers, seem to believe that he has created something distinct from money (from the Wikipedia: 'Whuffie has replaced money...'). Whuffie, as a currency, is no more different from the dollar than the króna is from the euro.

As a descriptor of currency in an inconsequential economy it is somewhat useful. I happen to prefer the word "karma."

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

Really? I take your point to mean that two smart people can communicate better using obscure vocabulary when they are communicating only between themselves. High baud necessarily implies higher average information throughput, so there would have to be a significant number of these words in the communication.

Could you point to some examples of letters between two famous people using this method?

Most notable people seem to prefer simple vocabulary, and in fact, many of them go so far as to recommend it. The people who prefer complex vocabulary (cultural studies journals, intellectuals) do not seem to accomplish anything of value, and indeed they are routinely accused of being obscurantists.

(Ground rule: scientific jargon excepted, since it is not a part of the vocabulary. But, feel free to look at letters by Newton, Einstein, Godel, Hilbert, anyone really.)

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

Wrong answer. (Though a true statement.)

The tests are scaled differently. That's all there is to it.

http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/gre_0809_interpreting...

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

Funny, I heard a rumor that the only people who got 800s on the verbal section were foreigners. (Read: people who can't speak English.) The explanation was that they were the only ones willing to invest enough time to form-fit the ETS's method of verbal testing.

In my own experience the verbal section of the GRE was entirely nonsensical. The vocabulary was difficult and exactly the type of vocabulary I would use if it was my goal not to be understood, but at least I could see how it might be a useful and reliable differentiator.

Nobody uses these words often enough for them have any statistically meaningful shades of meaning. If the goal of communication is having other people understand you, why would you deal in words that are notable precisely because they are difficult to understand?

The reading comprehension made less sense. I don't think it's possible to select a passage that has an unambiguous meaning and yet will be misunderstood by a statistically meaningful number of ambitious, college-educated people. So the question-making process must necessarily be corrupt.

I recall many questions which wasted much of my time. Several possible responses, none of which are obviously wrong. I know which one I feel is right---or maybe I do. Which one does the GRE feel is right? Even on sample tests, where I could see the supposed answer, I would read and reread the passages, and understand little about what the correctness or incorrectness of the responses had to do with the meaning of the passage.

I don't think you can presume to have an objective and clear-cut A or B answer as you might on the SAT. The granularity of college-level material is simply too fine. The only thing you can measure is how well you have matched yourself to the GRE's way of thinking, and that is not a particularly valuable expenditure of time.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

Yes, and let's not forget that a generalized test is still useful at the graduate level, for a variety of reasons. The one that comes to mind when you mention subject tests is that people sometimes switch disciplines. I have several friends who went from math to physics and vice versa. They intended to research problems which are closely related to what they've done in their own department but that just happen to be worked on by professors in the other. Does it make sense to hold a math major up to the standard of a physics major taking the physics subject test? No way---he couldn't possibly compare, even though he may be more ably suited to tackling a problem that's being worked on in the physics department. So having a generalized quantitative/analytical section is helpful in at least this case. If the physics professor looking at your application knows nothing about what his colleague is doing (your intended advisor), at least he has a reasonable indication you aren't a dunce.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

Airline recap: entirely focused on operations, always on the brink of collapse. Operations consist largely of optimizations problems, so lots of attention is paid to these problems (peanuts vs. pretzels). For whatever reason customers are not insulated from the volatility (pretzels, bag fees, route duration, availability, etc., in addition to price fluctuation).

Typically you see finely-tuned optimization in old and evolved markets, e.g., cola, where it makes sense, and where customers are insulated from changes in the product or service. Here though it reeks of over-optimization and misapplied attention. Nobody makes a fuss about boarding the bus. When the price of corn goes up I don't have to use a can-opener on my soda.

What's wrong with airplanes? Why don't they work like buses? Let's try to figure this out. Investors have long recognized airlines as a valuable service but a terrible business.

1.) We really like to fly but our technology is behind the curve?

2.) Irrationality of consumers has created government controls which muck too much with an already fragile system? (security lines, shoe removal, bomb sniffing, personal searches, over-training of pilots, too-expensive pilots, burdensome safety regulations, burdensome inspections, all of these perpetuated by expectation)

3.) The average passenger does not fly enough, and so he is inefficient?

4.) Dependent on fixed-location airports? And their regulation?

5.) There's no clear cause and effect, it's simply a manifestation of the system?

6.) ?

7.) Demand for flight is very volatile but the capital which supports it is very expensive and illiquid?

(one red-herring: fuel efficiency, planes appear to be more fuel efficient than driving alone)

(another red-herring: this google hit http://www.brookings.edu/testimony/2005/0928business_morriso... states the obvious but does little to explain what makes the airline industry any different from anybody else dependent on large capital investments. sure they have to buy planes. and cola bottlers have to build plants.)

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

It's bad scholarship. A political ideal is an extremely complex object. All he's done is cherry-picked five filters through which to view it. He's taken a very big n-dimensional object and inspected a handful of the shadows it casts.

Does he think he's pinned it down with these five criteria? This is why people make fun of the humanities. Sloppy, runny thinking. You could select just about any value and the two political ideologies would fall somewhere on either side of it. Those on which they aren't opposed aren't worthy of mention, and so aren't. You could play the same game all day. In fact, you might even argue that it is a defining property of a two-party system.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

Sure. Here's the execution tree necessary to "Hello World" in Cocoa---at least as given in the Apple tutorial I followed. It's possible to cut it down, but only after you've digested all of the material Apple lays in front of you.

  main()
  |
  -> UIApplicationMain()
    |
    -> Info.plist (Never referenced by name!)
       |
       -> MainWindow.xib (Interface Builder. Contains no code!)
          |
          -> HelloWorldAppDelegate .h/.m (Not clearly indicated)
            |
            -> didFinishLaunching()
              |
              -> IBOutlet UIWindow *window
              |
              -> *myViewController
              |
              -> ControllerView (IB Nib, needs dragged connection)
              |
              -> Etc.
              |
              -> HelloWorld ?

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

rationalization / post-hoc. If you were setting out to make the next MySpace or Craigslist, would you consciously decide to make it ugly as a competitive advantage? Ugly designs happen by accident [re: neglect] and in spite of the underlying site's success. By the time the site is successful it's too late/unnecessary to change it.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

Having just learned Cocoa, I can tell you that you are not stupid, the design of Cocoa is stupid.

Design patterns are stupid, hence baking them into a language is stupid. And Interface Builder is very stupid.

Fortunately Objective-C isn't as stupid as C++, so once you've covered most of what makes Apple's design stupid, you can trowel over the gaps in logic with cement and forget about them.

Most platform and language designs are stupid. Sometimes I think it's an emergent case of a desire to ensure job security. Other times I just think the designers were stupid.

Programmers, who supposedly like to question authority, have a really hard time questioning the sanctity of the platforms they work on. I think many would be surprised to learn that their platforms have serious design flaws. Of course you should initialize Function A first using unrelated Function B. How else would you do it?

Part of the reason designers make bad designs is because they have to respect a history of bad designs. People are used to XML. Consequently, it's used in plists.

The antidote for worrying about whether you are stupid is to identify and express why the design of something you're working with is stupid. The next step is to realize that, whatever it is, it's there, and you have to deal with it. That's work, and that's programming as it is today.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

Any material that requires only 5-10 minutes of unbroken concentration is too superficial to be worth your time.

If you can, take something else, if you can't, consider taking a bad grade and focusing on something else anyway.

The suggestion in the article is awful. It is far more important to work hard at concentrating for long periods of time. All this method is doing is conditioning you to be scatterbrained. We get enough of that already.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

1. Rerolling the dice is still a faster (and thus better) way of solving this problem.

2. He could've used the time he spent writing that article to release a free dice rolling iPhone app that implements his special Settlers roll. It could even keep track of when to stop rerolling sevens. There are several similar apps already in the store. It would be trivial to write one that auto-rerolled sevens. This is something that might actually be of use to people, though, then again, maybe not.

To me it looks like the author wasted his time.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

Writing this I actually had the Nobel prize for Literature in mind, which I feel, along with the Pulitzer, has been largely coopted for political reasons. Were I to suggest to a person of average talent the surest way to a Nobel prize (in other words, how to hack it) I would recommend they take up writing, and especially that sort of writing which is unabashedly anti-establishment.

If you were to read through the works of the recipients in the last ten years, you would find the following trend: low quality, combined with the sort of multicultural leanings popular in US academics. This is to simply point out that the prize is no longer rewarding quality work and is instead promoting a political agenda, something that devalues the prize and tarnishes the legacy of past deserving winners. People like Kenzaburo Oe, Dario Fo, and Imre Kertész, while they are respectable writers, fall far short of what I would consider "outstanding work." The only conclusion you can draw then is that their awards were based on their political ideology, or the ideology they represent. Kertész's award, for instance, caused a stir, and rightfully so, since his body of work is small and not particularly good, even in the better translations. It is not even particularly notable among its genre, other than for the fact that it has now received a Nobel prize.

I was one of the early comments in the thread, and thought the thread might evolve into a discussion on ways to Hack the Nobel, a topic I thought of more lasting interest than a clever way of concealing gold. In terms of work done for effect achieved, it seems much easier to take up writing, or to become a politician and branch over into some tumultuous area, than to devote your life to the quiet pursuit of science, which I feel is much more difficult, less rewarding, and largely responsible for the reputation the lesser Nobels feed off of.

I never spent much time thinking about Al Gore's award since to me it indicated an open-and-shut case of bias, typical of the Nobel committee these days, and unworthy of further reflection. I didn't intend to refer to it specifically when I made my initial comment (provoking a reaction from supporters of his ideology), since I could think of many instances to which the comment applied, the recent Peace Prize being just one instance among many.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

These days the best way to get a Nobel is to devote yourself to liberal politics.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

OK, I'm going to send you a list using XML.

Now how do you propose we do that?

This is entirely the problem. The XML didn't solve anything. We still have to negotiate the terms of the transfer. We've agreed to use XML, true, but we are still at square one.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

XML is an embarrassment. It solves no problem: not even the problem of agreeing on how to represent data. The only thing it does is give programmers something recognizable to fiddle with, however irrelevant to the problem it may be.

Most religious wars in computer science hinge on matters of taste. If you prefer emacs to vi, maybe that's just your style. If you prefer PHP to Ruby, there may be several good reasons why.

There is no such ambiguity in the case of XML. If you prefer XML to anything but XML, you don't know what you're talking about. You should have no say in anything that affects other programmers.

We're in this mess because of the unforeseen popularity of the web. When the web was created, its designers chose a simple and not particularly good markup language. Then the web grew, and instead of everybody recognizing the language as bad and replacing it, we turned a blind eye to its faults and kept it around.

The immense popularity of the web has glossed over all the deficiencies present in markup languages. People can't imagine that anything that built the internet might have something wrong with it. The internet is good, so anything that built the internet must be good as well.

Markup language was ill-conceived. Generalizing it into XML was folly.

How can you possibly take XML seriously? How do you squeeze an entire blog post out of it? Have you never bothered to look at the technology? The author is obviously capable of writing a coherent, well-thought out essay. Did he never stop and look at what he was doing and go, "This is a whole lot of shit!"

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

Generations from now our scholars will be lumped in the same category as alchemists and geocentrists---much to their discredit.

dissenter

18 yıl öncediscuss

The bubbles represent the size and importance of the field. This is an accurate depiction of what science is like today.

Science and Nature are filled with articles about medicine and biology and chemistry and physics and so on. These are what scientists think of as science. Rarely does a math or computer science paper slip in, except in the case of groundbreaking new work. And yet most CS professors would give anything to have a paper of theirs published in Science. So you can see how the rest of science values our contributions: every once in a while we contribute something interesting, but for the most part we are not noteworthy. And this is the way it should be. Bipartite graph algorithms and topological manifolds are not as important as Gardasil and alternative energy.

A substantial number of doctors doing useful research these days are, surprise, Medical Doctors. If you want an eye opening experience, take a trip over to the nearest medical library and spend some time going through the journals. It will radically change your opinion of what science is and how your field fits into it. Discrete Math is a pretty cool journal, but it's kind of embarrassing to hold it up to The New England Journal of Medicine. Even Annals of Math is, well, pretty irrelevant.

There's a long tradition of specialists taking myopic views of the world. Computer Scientists think the world is one big computer (http://focus.aps.org/story/v9/st27), chemists think life is one big chemical reaction, stone-cutters think everything can be explained in terms of stone-cutting (The Stone Diaries). Rarely is that the whole truth. You have to be careful to step back and take your own bias into account.