WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

sengan's comments

sengan | 16 years ago | on: Share your ideas

Add to that a proof of receipt mechanism using a webbug.

(Edit: a webbug is a small image with a unique identifier that is downloaded by the client when the document is shown, assuming that image loading is enabled)

sengan | 16 years ago | on: A libertarian socialist engineer solves the financial crisis

It's harder to be corrupt if you have to argue technically why your decisions will improve the economy.

Engineers and Scientists value the truth, whereas Lawyers value a convincing argument whether it is true or not. Think about their jobs: you can't convince reality you're right, but you can convince a jury.

I think you'd find it much harder to create feedback models of the economy which just happen to predict the best thing to do is to "Give Goldman Sachs a bonus to fix the economy", than it is to come up with some unprovable scare-mongering which terrifies the politicians into doing just that.

So yes, engineers or scientists would probably be more trustworthy running the economy as long as they stay true to the discipline.

sengan | 16 years ago | on: 50 US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive

Pruning trees helps them. Parasitic insects cannot enter through dead limbs. There's enough space for new shoots to grow. And they don't break in the snow or the wind.

Pruning back overgrown cities seems very sensible to me. If you don't want to move, you get to live in the countryside!

sengan | 16 years ago | on: China and "our standard of living"

Nope. I have kept every computer I've owned ever since the ZX81. And none of them has broken. Perhaps I'm lucky... But chips used to be rated to last 25 years, and by the time I left the semiconductor industry it was down to 5. Why? Yield. But I'm sure you've worked on chip design and have more experience on this topic than I do...

sengan | 16 years ago | on: China and "our standard of living"

My Atari ST still works. Never needed a repair. Its Syquest harddrive still works.

The WD harddrive I bought last year crashed... My 3 year old mac needed a repair.

Yes, things run hotter, and faster, and are smaller, and whatever. But they are less reliable.

sengan | 16 years ago | on: Today Was The Last Day of Sun Microsystems

You forgot Open Office which they bought and opened up and which has changed the competitive landscape in many ways. I'm struck by the number of non-geeks I know who use it daily.

SPARC was a great architecture, and the Sun workstations of yesteryear were where a lot of cutting edge research was done... It'll be interesting to see how many more OpenSolaris features Darwin picks up (ZFS?). It has dtrace already.

sengan | 16 years ago | on: A Tale of Two Programmers

Finding the simplest solution to a problem is hard, but because it seems simple in hindsight, only those competent in the art can recognize a brilliant solution.

This is just another example of "bullshit baffles brains" and that it takes competence to recognize competence.

sengan | 17 years ago | on: Meditation: Why Bother?

The feelings will always come back. The question is whether they are overwhelming or rootless, and that is a question of view. The various forms of insight meditation help see through the solidity of experience.

sengan | 17 years ago | on: Meditation: Why Bother?

Meditation changes your brain structure which changes your experience. This is in the domain of science, not faith: it is measurable.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090512134655.ht...

At the beginning it reduces the impetus of your emotions. Your emotions do not change, but you do not feel you have to follow them. The biological change is more inhibitor neurones from your neocortex to your hyppocampus.

http://www.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/%7eleggert/lucas_eggert_...

Further down the path, it changes the left/right balance of your brain functioning leading to a more pleasant and holistic experience. This can also occur with a left-brain stroke, but you lose brain functionality that you don't with meditation. Eg:

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=...

While there is a lot of superstition, it is foolish to assume that all pre-scientific experience is invalid. Just like many people with high school science believe in a "scientific religion" (i.e. it doesn't fit with theory therefore is wrong, rather than doesn't it fit with theory? hmm. how interesting!), many Buddhists believe in a Buddhist religion. That does not mean that there is no valuable knowledge gained by the best practitioners of Science or of meditation.

page 1