realize: xml is the bell-bottoms of programming language design.
it may get you in w/ some easy-come-easy-go folks in a grassy-hilled cultural
festival but you will always (attempt to) hide the fact from your kids.
languages w/ parens, on the other hand, are the height of style.
see for yourself: look carefully at those who deride them.
this is very close to true, but not quite. better to say: acts are what
reality judges. (people may choose to follow reality or not when judging,
and in fact often choose to ignore it altogether, basing their judgement on
factors other than scientifically observable phenomenon.)
personally, i try to keep reality in mind when forming judgement,
especially when forming judgement on judgement (meta-judging). if the
judgement methodology under consideration takes reality into account,
that scores higher in my mind than if it doesn't.
to get back on topic: the reality here is that bits of magnetic pattern on
spinning disk platters are perfectly reproducible. when an entity makes a
decision to not fight that reality, my judgement on that decision is that it
has merit in the sense that the entity can now use its energy for other
activities. however, it is to be seen what other activities arise.
so all in all, thumbs up to ibm for this move. let's hope there will be
more in the same vein.
maybe you can't but there are indeed some people who can
do just that. those are the people i try to learn from.
what is software?
software is codified thought.
if you can understand the thought behind it all, that is a
first step in being able to judge the merit (or suckiness) of
the artifact. the second step is to understand the codification
process. the third step is understanding this from different
points of view. the last step is understanding all these points
of view as they change over time.
not every piece of software can be subject to this analysis
(the primary reason is usually you do not have enough access or
inclination to find out a person's point of view, much less
their pov over time), but just start w/ the zeroth step (sturgeon's law)
and you can reduce the raw data to digestable amounts, hopefully
within your pattern-matching comfort level.
in sum, to hone your craft:
hang around a mailing list for any project a bit,
scan the code and the comments, make a prediction on where that
project is going, revisit in six months. make systematic
corrections to your predictive heuristics. over time, you will
develop ability to make the call. this is not dissimilar to
what a construction foreman/manager does. are you saying their
codified thought is more refined than yours?!
it's not a magic cauldron, people. it's not easy, but
there are no newts feet or virgin's blood involved (ok, maybe
for this crowd that last bit is not guaranteed...;-).
there is no cure for the human condition. people are all sick, even those
"unafflicted" w/ religion. from the moment of your birth, you begin to die,
it's just that some are more graceful, charming or entertaining in their death
throes than others. that some would cling to their private aesthetic w/o
acknowledging pov of others, of insentient machines (and other missives from
reality), of even themselves from repeated experience, is a constantly
renewing phenomenon.
let us hope the machines (both of flesh and of silicon) we teach today
will deign to let this human nature survive.
i peeked in on the sipb folks once -- they were more decstation oriented
(project athena, after all) than anything. sun chips and systems (hardware)
are more interesting than their software side.
actually i fancy "thoughtpad" would be timeless and thus quite fetching,
if you read "thought" to be a noun. like a "thoughtpad for blasting off into
the innovative beyond" (hmm, missing something there...). can
you see why i don't work in marketing?
you say you have learned, but you have not learned to not hurt.
for many people, learning to not hurt requires being dishonest (w/
themselves and sometimes w/ others). you probably still have time to learn
another method that does not involve dishonesty. that will be a fine day when
you get there.
china doesn't need to buy U.S. companies when it can buy the U.S.
government (nakedly, in the form of debt, and more covertly, in the
form of poltical contributions).
of course, you could say that (top) U.S. companies and the U.S. government
are almost indistinguishable by now, and we'd both be right...
you can't slam modularity w/o being self-inconsistent.
why? because to slam something means to put yourself outside of it in the
first place (and pour invective on it in the second). putting yourself
outside of something (drawing a boundary around it) is the essence of
encapsulation, which is one of the techniques of modularity.
so, let's be charitable and assume you don't want to slam modularity
full-force, but rather some of the other techniques for modularity that often
find themselves badly understood and/or badly implemented.
btw, lisp is modular, object-oriented, etc etc, too.
as for the invective you poured, not bad. just don't waste it in the
gutter the next time 'round.
i skimmed the changes page and saw "tiny-fu" to replace "script-fu", or
something of that nature. being a scheme programmer, i am curious what
this means in the grand plan (i.e., future direction).
i also noticed that non-reliance on GTK was deemed "small". IMHO, on the
contrary, that is really big news -- a cleaner architecture is easier to hack
on. i'd like to install gimp w/o gtk, and use it solely from the command-line
(to replace imagemagick). maybe that has been available for a long time now,
but the gtk requirement has been a real turn-off.
(disclaimer: i only moved from full-time console to full-time X in 2003;
use ratpoison; no mouse; slow machine; etc. etc.)
"sound technical reasons" for a "license".
that shows how confused you are.
please understand licensing is a political (root stem: "pol", common in
policy, police, metropolis, and so on) question not a technical one. sound
technical reasons are appreciated by both computers and people. licensing is
only ever (un)appreciated by humans, though of course, computers are integral
to implementing the schemes.
you whine about RMS pushing FUD and yet you sully the purity of a
computer's one-and-zero worldview w/ the issue of licensing. as a fellow
human, i can understand and sympathize w/ your confusion. get well soon!
hmmm, that makes misunderstanding the currency, deceit the mint,
and ignorance the fort that protects the system from crumbling.
that sounds like a crappy system, IMHO (and that's being optimistic).
a pessimist would say "that system will fail" or such. all valid points of
view, and easy to bandy about. viva slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
gah, it is to laugh.
realize: xml is the bell-bottoms of programming language design. it may get you in w/ some easy-come-easy-go folks in a grassy-hilled cultural festival but you will always (attempt to) hide the fact from your kids.
languages w/ parens, on the other hand, are the height of style. see for yourself: look carefully at those who deride them.
"when *exactly* ..."
at the moment of observation (according to pirsig ;-).
"Acts are what we judge."
this is very close to true, but not quite. better to say: acts are what reality judges. (people may choose to follow reality or not when judging, and in fact often choose to ignore it altogether, basing their judgement on factors other than scientifically observable phenomenon.)
personally, i try to keep reality in mind when forming judgement, especially when forming judgement on judgement (meta-judging). if the judgement methodology under consideration takes reality into account, that scores higher in my mind than if it doesn't.
to get back on topic: the reality here is that bits of magnetic pattern on spinning disk platters are perfectly reproducible. when an entity makes a decision to not fight that reality, my judgement on that decision is that it has merit in the sense that the entity can now use its energy for other activities. however, it is to be seen what other activities arise.
so all in all, thumbs up to ibm for this move. let's hope there will be more in the same vein.
moral of the story:
eat lunch at joints dripping w/ insecticide
? hmmm, that can't be it.
maybe you can't but there are indeed some people who can do just that. those are the people i try to learn from.
what is software?
software is codified thought.
if you can understand the thought behind it all, that is a first step in being able to judge the merit (or suckiness) of the artifact. the second step is to understand the codification process. the third step is understanding this from different points of view. the last step is understanding all these points of view as they change over time.
not every piece of software can be subject to this analysis (the primary reason is usually you do not have enough access or inclination to find out a person's point of view, much less their pov over time), but just start w/ the zeroth step (sturgeon's law) and you can reduce the raw data to digestable amounts, hopefully within your pattern-matching comfort level.
in sum, to hone your craft: hang around a mailing list for any project a bit, scan the code and the comments, make a prediction on where that project is going, revisit in six months. make systematic corrections to your predictive heuristics. over time, you will develop ability to make the call. this is not dissimilar to what a construction foreman/manager does. are you saying their codified thought is more refined than yours?!
it's not a magic cauldron, people. it's not easy, but there are no newts feet or virgin's blood involved (ok, maybe for this crowd that last bit is not guaranteed... ;-).
very low
(slashdot lameness filter really bites.)
i have to pedal, like fred flintstone. (but that's good exercise! ;-)
a lot of the "this makes you look like FOO" comments goes to show you that you can be a FOO, too. oop ack!
there is no cure for the human condition. people are all sick, even those "unafflicted" w/ religion. from the moment of your birth, you begin to die, it's just that some are more graceful, charming or entertaining in their death throes than others. that some would cling to their private aesthetic w/o acknowledging pov of others, of insentient machines (and other missives from reality), of even themselves from repeated experience, is a constantly renewing phenomenon.
let us hope the machines (both of flesh and of silicon) we teach today will deign to let this human nature survive.
i peeked in on the sipb folks once -- they were more decstation oriented (project athena, after all) than anything. sun chips and systems (hardware) are more interesting than their software side.
actually i fancy "thoughtpad" would be timeless and thus quite fetching, if you read "thought" to be a noun. like a "thoughtpad for blasting off into the innovative beyond" (hmm, missing something there...). can you see why i don't work in marketing?
sometimes understanding a goal really well results in avoiding that goal.
you say you have learned, but you have not learned to not hurt.
for many people, learning to not hurt requires being dishonest (w/ themselves and sometimes w/ others). you probably still have time to learn another method that does not involve dishonesty. that will be a fine day when you get there.
happy hacking!
china doesn't need to buy U.S. companies when it can buy the U.S. government (nakedly, in the form of debt, and more covertly, in the form of poltical contributions).
of course, you could say that (top) U.S. companies and the U.S. government are almost indistinguishable by now, and we'd both be right...
-- milo minderbinder, rationalizing a bomb run on his own squadron.
(catch-22, joseph heller.)
general advice (not directed to the parent): read a book; try to twitch your brain instead of your fingers.
you can't slam modularity w/o being self-inconsistent.
why? because to slam something means to put yourself outside of it in the first place (and pour invective on it in the second). putting yourself outside of something (drawing a boundary around it) is the essence of encapsulation, which is one of the techniques of modularity.
so, let's be charitable and assume you don't want to slam modularity full-force, but rather some of the other techniques for modularity that often find themselves badly understood and/or badly implemented.
btw, lisp is modular, object-oriented, etc etc, too.
as for the invective you poured, not bad. just don't waste it in the gutter the next time 'round.
if some forward-thinking IBM exec wants to fund an emacs-on-silicon pilot, please email me privately. thanks.
i skimmed the changes page and saw "tiny-fu" to replace "script-fu", or something of that nature. being a scheme programmer, i am curious what this means in the grand plan (i.e., future direction).
i also noticed that non-reliance on GTK was deemed "small". IMHO, on the contrary, that is really big news -- a cleaner architecture is easier to hack on. i'd like to install gimp w/o gtk, and use it solely from the command-line (to replace imagemagick). maybe that has been available for a long time now, but the gtk requirement has been a real turn-off.
(disclaimer: i only moved from full-time console to full-time X in 2003; use ratpoison; no mouse; slow machine; etc. etc.)
only two options?
how much global history have you studied?
probably you want: culo.
ciao for now...
heh, 0xdeadbeef is certainly not a "new one". -- ex vector-VAX-processor verification co-op
data integrity starts w/ data entry. when data entry is reduced to "no" vs "yes-for-now-we-can-fix-it-later", the game is lost; GIGO prevails, then.
"sound technical reasons" for a "license". that shows how confused you are.
please understand licensing is a political (root stem: "pol", common in policy, police, metropolis, and so on) question not a technical one. sound technical reasons are appreciated by both computers and people. licensing is only ever (un)appreciated by humans, though of course, computers are integral to implementing the schemes.
you whine about RMS pushing FUD and yet you sully the purity of a computer's one-and-zero worldview w/ the issue of licensing. as a fellow human, i can understand and sympathize w/ your confusion. get well soon!
"markets work on optimism"
hmmm, that makes misunderstanding the currency, deceit the mint, and ignorance the fort that protects the system from crumbling.
that sounds like a crappy system, IMHO (and that's being optimistic). a pessimist would say "that system will fail" or such. all valid points of view, and easy to bandy about. viva slashdot.
but before you go read some numbers from a book, go to the store and look at the labels (numerical and/or non-numerical).
then, combine your experience w/ those numbers from the book, w/ the grandparent post, and the great-grandparent post.
ttn motto