OK, maybe writing arbitrary English as a program won't work; but, I can think of a lot of occasions where it would be useful for a computer program to be understandable by any English speaker. I'm thinking of lawyers, who want to be able to review whether a program conforms with legal requirements, or managers, who want to be able to confirm that business logic is doing what they want it to do. Zed Shaw kind of hints at this in his classic "ACLs are Dead" talk, where he talks about using metaprogramming to make Ruby syntax more readable for lawyers.
No, to be honest they should just learn to program then. Maybe what you're talking about would be great if all programs were 100 line simple things but that's not reality. If we want to solve the "lawyers need to read and understand computer programs for legal reasons" problem, it makes more sense to just educate lawyers on programming. In some ways this is like saying lawyers need to be electrical engineers, civil engineers, etc. We need physics to more Englishy and less Mathy. :) I jest but I'm serious. For business rules, perhaps this simple case could be expressed with a specialized DSL or config depending on your needs but I think this is a little tertiary.
No, that list of steps is wrong. Google Wallet doesn't require you to unlock your phone or launch the Wallet app. You just hold your phone up to the reader and enter a PIN.
The old PalmOS also had a global find option. The OS would call every app that registered for this function and pass it the query. Problem was, this meant that having a single buggy app on your device would cause Find to crash for everyone. http://mobile.eric-poncet.com/palm/tutorial/find.html
Was the problem that they were "unable to adapt to the new world," or was the problem that they editorially went off the deep end? Readers abandoned Newsweek as Newsweek's quality declined. Perhaps the one drove the other--with fewer readers, it was tougher to fund expensive journalism. But, from the link: "Last November, she featured a cover story about sex addiction, and in May President Obama was shown wearing a rainbow-colored halo with a headline that read ”The First Gay President.”" The Internet didn't do that; Tina Brown did.
There's some kind of blindspot with traditional media: people say "oh, they couldn't handle the competition from the blogs" but that was only after decades of reducing the local papers into skeleton crews - if your newspaper is little more than a platform for syndicating Reuters stories verbatim then yeah, you're asking to be disrupted.
I've seen so much derision toward them for the First Gay President thing but I don't really understand why. It's an obvious play on First Black President Bill Clinton, made poignant by Obama being the actual first black President.
Now, their recent "Heaven is Real" cover on the other hand…
You need to tell it that the source language is Russian; if you tell it the source language is English, it will try to recognize Cyrillic characters as Roman, which doesn't work. Also, it looks like the scan option is not available for Ukrainian at all. But for something like a restaurant menu, you're probably fine telling it the language is Russian--there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages.
> there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages.
I know, and I can read cyrilic.
> You need to tell it that the source language
well, if it wasn't a bug, now I guess I faced a usability issue (using translate online it usually auto-detects the lang so I'm not used to choosing it), that's probable, and one friend of mine also told me he got gibberish from scanning cyrilic.
still one case stands: the need of a working data connection when you are travelling abroad is an obstacle.
The difference between auto guessing it online and during scanning is that it has to do one more round of guessing during OCR which is why it is more error prone.
I have been bike commuting for nine years. The biggest things that change since the initial rush of delight?
First, as time goes on, you care a lot more about safety. Newbies may write about how they can meditate or listen to music while riding, but experienced riders know they must always stay alert. You shouldn't be meditating, you should be focused on potential dangers.
Second, the weight loss? Not as big a deal as time goes on. Don't ask me the medical reason why, maybe it's the same phenomenon as when people who haven't worked out for years start a program and quickly lose 10 pounds of water weight but then find the rest is harder to lose. Commuting usually doesn't involve the intense aerobic activity associated with road racing.
The 300 dollar bike you are satisfied with? I didn't stay satisfied after a few months. After trying many options (too many) I took Sheldon Brown's advice and ride a touring bike, with disc brakes, fenders, rack, and panniers.
> Don't ask me the medical reason why, maybe it's the same phenomenon as when people who haven't worked out for years start a program and quickly lose 10 pounds of water weight but then find the rest is harder to lose
It's because the body is extremely good at adapting to whatever you do to it. Even if you were riding for a hundred hours a week at maximum aerobic output, your body would slowly adapt and you would stop making gains (getting faster, losing weight).
Over a long period of exercise, you have to constantly vary what you are doing to your body so it won't adapt and plateau. Keep throwing different challenges at your body, and it will keep adapting in an attempt to deal with these new challenges.
Try sprinting home from work at max output a couple of days a week, then intentionally go for an extremely long ride on the weekend at a sustainable pace. Don't do the same thing day-in, day-out
Also, eat less calories if you want to lose weight.
Also, people struggle with weight loss because they approach it only from the side of burning excess calories with exercise, but as long as their caloric requirements stay the same, the moment they stop exercising, calories start piling up again. If you want to burn more fuel, there is longer lasting approach: grow a bigger engine. That means: gain some muscle. The more muscle you have, the more calories you will be burning, even while eating an ice-cream on a couch. Muscles will also make you look less flabby, because toned abs will keep your belly in check.
"it never gets easier, you just go faster" - Greg LeMond
this is the reason elite athletes keep getting better, they keep up intensity, continuing to push the limits. Bike committing gets easier, and, like you said, your body adjusts to the level of output you need to get to work.
> Second, the weight loss? Not as big a deal as time goes on.
Sure, deciding to bike commute isn't a guarantee of sustainable weight loss. But no single activity is. Combine its caloric deficit with a sensible health plan and you'll reap its benefits.
The constant need for focus was my biggest misunderstanding. I thought it would be like running, where you can listen your inner self, breathing, or enjoying the sight.
20km/h : human radar scanning hidden corners. no more looking at girls or you'll hug trees.
30km/h+: better have swift brakes, any surprise feels like a threat.
Somehow it almost makes biking moot as a vehicle, since there's no speeding bike only roads there will always be obstacles nearby (mom/baby, slow biker/runner, soccer balls). I really wish there was large scale plans to build bike pathways as those for tramways.
I'm still riding the $300 bike to work that I bought 10 years ago and it still helps me control my weight (as I discovered when I stopped for 6 weeks.) The reason? My $300 bike is a lot heavier than your $3000 bike.
I commute to work on bike every day, but I still am a happy member of my city's bike share program. Even though I have a bike locked in the garage under the building, I use bikeshare to go to meetings at other buildings in the city during the day. I would rather that my personal bike remain safe in my office building's guarded garage, rather than parked on the street. Also, heading into a meeting, it takes me 3 seconds to park a bikeshare bike at the station, as opposed to several minutes locking up my personal bike using a U-lock and cable. I know of other regular commuters who switched to using bikeshare for their commutes--the bikes may be slower, but you don't have to worry about maintenance or theft.
Essentially, I pay my membership fee so that someone else bears the risk of owning a bike in a city filled with vandals and thieves. It's a good deal.
You would typically do point-to-point trips between stations. Bixi Toronto has something like $500-$1000 liability if stolen, as I recall (less if recovered later presumably... the bikes stand out so it'd be rather difficult to pawn).
There are various ways to deal with this, and it can vary between programs. In general, the rider is responsible for ensuring the bicycle is kept in good order.
viaCycle's system allows riders to secure their bicycle between stations, so you're not forced to ride from to specific points until you're ready to check it back into the system. Enforcing a penalty for bikes that get stolen helps reinforce proper locking of the bicycle.
Salon published in 2003 a great series of articles by John Sundman about the Loebner Prize. He describes a two-time winner, "ALICE," in a way that doesn't inspire awe for the creator's programming achievements:
"""Wallace’s theory of A.I. is no theory at all. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in artificial intelligence, per se; rather, he doesn’t much believe in intelligence, period. In a way that oddly befits a contest sponsored by a bunch of Skinnerians, Wallace’s ALICE program is based strictly on a stimulus-response model. You type something in, if the program recognizes what you typed, it picks a clever, appropriate, “canned” answer. ... There is no representation of knowledge, no common-sense reasoning, no inference engine to mimic human thought. Just a very long list of canned answers, from which it picks the best option. Basically, it’s Eliza on steroids. ... And this strategy works, Wallace says, because that’s what people are: mindless robots who don’t listen to each other but merely regurgitate canned answers."""
If Wallace's theory is correct, then there is no reason for me to consider it, since it is just a canned response devoid of thinking, and my response would be similar. If his theory is false, then there is no reason for me to believe it.
The only logical response to his theory is to ignore it.
If Wallace's theory is correct, your internal monologue about believing or ignoring his theory is an illusion; the only logical response to his theory is to trot it out in conversation if it seems clever, and otherwise ignore it.
> ...mindless robots who don’t listen to each other but merely regurgitate canned answers
This only serves to sweep the definition of intelligence under the carpet. What is the algorithm by which people determine the most appropriate canned answer? The Chinese Room argument is similarly flawed.
I am by no means as smart as these people but I did recently made this observation myself while visiting Google+. I try to avoid political discussions but someone always finds a way to insert them. This time, as I glanced over one such discussion it made me realize... People don't think, they just repeat things that have been told to them, fact or not, as long as it sounds like a good fit. No one involved in these discussions is going to convince the other to change their mind. AIs should be this easy!
That is very true. Most of what I say is phrasing or idioms I've unconciously absorbed. However I obviously don't randomly repeat anything I hear. The things that I absorb are ideas that resonate with my existing world view, which has been crafted by original thought over a much longer time. So behind those memes and tired phrasing in the arguments you heard there is porbably a kernel of unique thought.
This is why I prefer online forums and other forms of asynchronous communication over face to face debates. The former allows me to form an opinion - which can often change as I try to articulate myself. The later relies on my initial reaction, which is always much less refined.
"""over the past forty-plus years, the Stanford Prison Experiment has had a strong, and arguably detrimental impact upon both scholarly and popular conceptions of social psychology. Contrary to Zimbardo's misleading conclusions, ordinary people do not mindlessly and helplessly succumb to brutality; instead the evidence (even from his own experiment) seems to suggest that individuals tend to engage in brutality only when they truly believe that such actions are warranted -- acting upon ideas that are condoned by equally brutal group ideologies. The guards in Zimbardo's experiment were thus coerced by Zimbardo and his researchers to brutalize the prisoners; while the prisoners did not simply submit to the guards' brutality, but instead, actively resisted their oppression, both collectively and individually. This resistance was considered intolerable to Zimbardo, and as this article has shown, he utilized his system power to intervene to increase guard brutality and undermine the prisoners' collective will to resist their abusers."""
I've spent over 400 days in a closed environment with "special" group dynamics - the armed forces of Switzerland. Service is mandatory. I was made a NCO against my will.
I've made some valuable unscientific, personal observations during this time. One is, that most people (I'd say 80%) do not speak up for themselves or others when it matters in groups with strict hierarchies.
Not only that, I think that most people don't have any basic moral convictions. Group punishment is highly effective.
I've learnt that sadistic, manipulative and narcissistic people thrive in such environments and if left uncontrolled, alike to a malign tumor that spreads rapidly to other parts of the body, they can impact the entire organization quickly.
> I've learnt that sadistic, manipulative and narcissistic people thrive in such environments and if left uncontrolled, alike to a malign tumor that spreads rapidly to other parts of the body, they can impact the entire organization quickly.
Aye. The phrase "One bad apple (spoils the bunch)" is often misunderstood but applies dreadfully well to human organizations.
I spent 540 days in a series of closed environments and it isn't that simple.
I was chief sergeant in an army recruit center and every 45 days 130 people left and the system rebooted with another 130 people (in boot camp training...)
The more people in the group that have previously lived either in highly predatory enviroments, or have only seen life through TV tend to try and copy attitudes and behaviours as seen on TV.
If everybody start the same day, the most predatory get an advantage but they can't keep up with their image unless they form a subgroup. The subgroup enforces and the subgroup groupthinks. If they don't create a subgroup they soon become a nuisance and fade in to the background.
If everybody does not start at the same day then there is already an established group dynamic and people with social skills in competitive environments usually fit right in. I don't mean this always in a good way. A social skill that people adapted to was that, when nobody spoke to someone, they did not speak to him either. When they wanted to establish themselves they slowly tested their boundaries and tried to cease oportunities.
What most people did not see was that, after a few repetitions of the same procedure (new recruits) human behaviour given certain initial variables tended to repeat itself. That is bad for a predatory, freely evolving environment, but for somebody like me who had done and watched this again and again it was easy to control.
The man in charge is the one who specifies how things will go.
People think they are smart and everything is a matter of intelligence. It isn't. You either know because you tested or because you studied social sciences (The second part is a guess).
So what happened: I learnt all there is to learn regarding rules and regulations. I failed one or two groups by applying everything I had seen in Hollywood movies,I was ignored and the situation turned in to a violent mess. Not violent against me but against each other...
The next group I simply anticipated what would happen because I had already seen it (people attacking people, how somebody could sneak in drugs or how they used them) so it was an easy process that wasn't any more tiring for me or for them. I taught them all the rules and they would listen to me! I was very happy with myself. The recruits kept good relations to each other and they were model soldiers. So I ended my military service with a good feeling of giving.
Not a happy ending: One and a half year later I had to meet a friend of mine to a military hospital as he was being dismissed for medical reasons and nobody could drive him. There I met one of my recruits for whom I was very proud of, and I did't like what I was seeing. He looked like Charlie Seen after having served in Vietnam for 10years. Long story short, when they left my army recruit center, all of them had gained knowledge and it was better than most of their NCOs. They couldn't be forced by the book because they knew better, they knew how to assert themselves because I had shown them how it is done. They spent the rest of their days in the army manipulating people, getting power, and doing nothing themselves. Their behaviour still looked alike, and their behaviour repeated throughout the country.
There are valid criticisms of the SPE, but this isn't one of them. Zimbardo, in his work on heroism, later referenced exactly how he himself came to recognize the mistake: his fiancee came in, took one look, and was terrified by what she observed.
I don't know how your author managed to read The Lucifer Effect and miss that. The last page he quotes from is page 194. The book is a good 400 pages long. The "unreflective" echo that Zimbardo gives ends a chapter offering evidence.
But remember that War and Peace was not originally written in English, and the quality of translation matters a great deal. With Russian literature especially, the quality of translation varies widely, and some of the best translations into English are still copyrighted. A bad translation might faithfully reproduce the text's literal meaning but badly mangle the literary elegance that made the book so acclaimed in the first place. I'd rather pay $14 for a good translation than spend 1100 pages regretting being cheap.
Sure, but the 99 cent edition in question almost certainly is the Project Gutenberg edition, mangled by a third-party file conversion.
(On personal note, a few months ago I decided to read Les Miserables. I read a few chapters in one of the modern translations and the same material in the Project Gutenberg version. I concluded that IMO the Gutenberg version was clearly the superior translation.)
I agree, but I think in the case of Tolstoy, or even Dostoevsky, the best translations also have their copyrights expired, since they were written usually few years after the works were published. I read a French version of Anna Karenina (Recommended by the way) once in hard copy, then reread the Gutenberg version, and to me the literary differences were minimal.
I can't speak for Tolstoy, but the Gutenberg version of Dostoevsky was atrocious compared to the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation. FOr a more modern example, Simone de Beauvoir's first translation was by an unskilled botanist who happened to know french and english. A recent translation came out that is night and day compared to the original, but it will enter public domain some fifty years later.
Indeed. The English translation of Jules Verne's "The Mysterious Island" in Project Guttenberg is an "old" one which censors certain aspects of Captain Nemo's anti-colonial background.
Really? "The Mysterious Island" is one of my favorites, and I'd be curious to know what, exactly, is being elided in the Project Guttenberg edition. Is this something you noticed yourself, or something you read about?
"Captain Nemo was an Indian, the Prince Dakkar, son of a rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkund. His father sent him, when ten years of age, to Europe, in order that he might receive an education in all respects complete, and in the hopes that by his talents and knowledge he might one day take a leading part in raising his long degraded and heathen country to a level with the nations of Europe."
"In Captain Nemo was an Indian prince, the Prince Dakkar, the son of the rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkund, and nephew of the hero of India, Tippo Saib. His father sent him, when ten years old, to Europe, where he received a complete education; and it was the secret intention of the rajah to have his son able some day to engage in equal combat with those whom he considered as the oppressors of his country."
And the original French
"Le capitaine Nemo était un indien, le prince Dakkar, fils d’un rajah du territoire alors indépendant du Bundelkund et neveu du héros de l’Inde, Tippo-Saïb. Son père, dès l’âge de dix ans, l’envoya en Europe, afin qu’il y reçût une éducation complète et dans la secrète intention qu’il pût lutter un jour, à armes égales, avec ceux qu’il considérait comme les oppresseurs de son pays."
