every pair of straight lines in the universe can be viewed as parallel
when projected onto the cylinder whose axis is the normal of these lines.
(crack open a geometry book if you can't picture this --- sorry, slashdot is
not so great for sharing images.) "projection" is the impersonal form of
"viewing". so of course it can be seen the parallel you speak of. who
actually sees it is a statistical question. who actually does anything about
it (and how they go about their business) is a cultural question.
there will probably be no such (emergent) leader if the current leadership
keeps control. the corruption of human beings is a thoroughly studied art by
now. if the leadership is wise they corrupt w/ wisdom, any other type is
inferior in the long run.
i suppose it's time for someone to write the next great app: WOOT. here
are some specifications for all you hackers out there:
WOOT takes as its input a keyword or two, e.g. "forbes".
WOOT does a web crawl for all relevant[1] ownership/trust[2] relationships
pertaining to the keyword. it compiles a graph comprising entity nodes
(company, person, nation-state) and ownership/trust edges. the graph can be
sent to stdout in graphviz-, vcg- or sexp-compatible format.
(optional) WOOT lays out the graph and displays it.
(optional) WOOT-based wiki and other web interfaces.
notes:
[1] relevancy should be user-configurable in some way; obviously this is
a difficult problem to solve generally, but the problem domain suggests these
common attributes to use for correlation: board-of-directors, political-parties,
[2] ownership/trust is mentioned like this because these are two
separate but related ideas. also, it completes the acronym, which is Very
Important.
anyway, i look forward to any activity in this area.
here's to a more transparent society. post code, not lies!
there's an old story where the beggar, caught enjoying the fumes wafting
from a restaurant from the street, is hauled before a judge by the restaurant
owner seeking payment for services rendered or somesuch. the judge applied
"in kind" thinking, the result being the restaurant owner had to settle for
listening to the sounds of the beggar's two coins jingling as payment.
listen, you idiot mofos w/ the guns and the fancy clothes: you want people
to pay to lick clean the slop you dish out on your stupidity-dissemination
networks? fine. you want people to pay you to think, to share, to relate to
each other in ways beyond the reach of your stupidity? that's fine, too. but
realize this: the payment is always in kind. you will get slop for
slop and you will get disrespect for disrespect. have fun w/ the slop, and
watch out for the disrespect, for that, my idiot friends, in great quantity
means your head on a platter, your dignity scattered, your fancy clothes
tattered, your ediface splattered.
"a tax on the people's minds, for i am the state!
have they no bread left? then let them eat cake!
a victory tour, install that hi-def telescreen!
300-yuk lure, nudge nudge, heh you know what i mean!
let's all pretend that it's getting quite chilly,
i'll put my hands in your pocket, a small game, quite silly!"
"but massah, i'm broke (though my pocket's quite cramped for some reason).
why not share grog, instead --- wouldn't that be more pleasin'?
we'll play a few cards and laugh at ourselves a lot
get drunk on the stars, find a waterpipe, and keep it hot.
what's up w/ sniffing my armpits and calling for showers?
you ain't no weaklin' yourself in the BO power!"
[ ok, someone else can complete this little rhyme.
i've ranted myself thin and no longer have the time.
main point still stands: what goes around comes around.
make some noise NOW before payment is required for SOUND. ]
wow a religious capitalist, blind to the holy terror you worship. get a
clue, my friend. placing blame on one leg of the shaky table does not help
anyone trust their weight, not to mention their love-making activities, to it.
your point that free software has to work harder is well taken,
regardless. that's the lot of free software programmers, voluntarily.
blaming is like science: an attempt to explain some observed phenomenon in
a causally consistent manner.
blaming is not like science: the process at arriving at the explanation
is itself not under any methodology or self-consistent constraints.
blaming is like engineering: first principles of physics/human-nature
are composed to form the proposed system/explanation.
blaming is not like engineering: the explanation cannot be black-boxed and
finalized; it is always open to further input and redesign.
what code is the most beautiful code?
that which runs and begins to load
itself anew w/ improved data sets,
in time renewed, ungrooved and limitless.
what groups are the most beautiful groups?
those which use half-dimension infinite loops
self-similar yet eschewing deadening linearity
not singular, but diverse in glorious variety.
what noise is the most beautiful noise?
law tapping, war snapping, and deathraygun toys?
or silence from fear of harsh litigation?
or cries of despair beyond mitigation?
what word is the most beautiful word?
un-pronounceable acronym (like FBI)? (absurd!)
basta che non voglio parlare con te di piu.
basta che non voglio parlare con te di piu?
basta che non voglio parlare con te di piu.
basta che non voglio parlare con te di piu!
but of all the meta comments you could make, saying "i said this before"
is a rather poor choice because it's basically uninteresting information.
perhaps you can try one of these (next time):
i have said FOO before at a frequency of 36.8 hours and each time
the response has changed for the worse, so i expect this meta comment
to get royally flamed (note that this is a triply-meta comment;-).
i notice that saying FOO before has no effect whatsoever on
reality even though i feel better for saying it. what does this
say about me? (this is only a doubly-meta comment.)
to avoid the tedium of rewriting, see FOO-URL. (this is akin
to the singly-meta comment "i've said this before and i'll say it
again" but at least injects a bit of actual quality-based commentary
instead of merely relying on quantity-based (re-)count.)
in this booth the bearded lady taps the obligatory escape! behind this screen the monkey boy wraps the purfunctory C-8. witness, o ye wandering marks, what contrast between the svelte and the stark! today you see treasures type-trodden without having to wait!
is that man really as tall as his regexp legs gawking 'neath? one hopes the (s)word (s)wallower cleans well his (h)awking sheath! hear the sound of the subprocess organ pipe, seventeen keypresses for some is alright! can someone show me the repagination room, i need to ^L for relief!
if a lot of people diss on others, placing the others in an easily
identifiable box is going to make it easy for the people who diss others to
find these others (to diss).
while the spirit of this initiative is worthy, the above fragment
of human nature will just get in the way, in the end. to improve things
you cannot run from that which needs improvement to some imagined better
place. better to stay and grow your own tree of improvement in the
current place, even if it is imperfect there, if you care about the place
as well as the improvement.
here, the place is the programming mindset, and the improvement is
its dissemination into people (young and old, traditional programmers
and non traditional programmers), so that the community of programmers
can survive and grow.
water the tree,
don't transplant it.
specialization is for insects, so said alan perlis. but everyone likes to feel so special, unique and peerless. what is it about neighborliness that makes us nervous? have we bought into a worldview where only the lonely are fearless?
once, programmers' users were users' programmers. the community danced around the totem, no mules, to play. now, fleeced sheep lusers wring separate from pro scammers. deception and concealment of wisdom still rule the day.
stand apart from users and a programmer goes mad w/ bloat. stand apart from programmers and a user feels sick w/ doubt. mad and sick the walls, no longer solid, define the moat in which all manner of twisted vermin squirm and shout.
so whence the bridge to heal the massive rift? who will move w/o moving and fight w/o fighting? what is the future of the digital sift? where can i get advice to improve on my writing?
i see an act of defense missed: large passenger planes flying
over sensitive areas (and off their pre-registered course) unchecked
by smaller faster 2-minute-to-scramble "defense oriented" planes.
then i see many acts which are called "defense" but could also
be called "retribution". now, on (italian) tv, i see continuing
acts of violence and no one even cares whether or not it is "defense".
so, to sum it up, the one time where an act of violence would
be unquestionably interpretable as "defense", i don't see. probably
there are lots of words that can be said to explain things this way
and that, but you who have time to defend the actions of others, may
your own defenses against yourselves prove worthy in the long run.
elites don't want to lose their elite status, so things like education and
responsibility are not well-supported. you see two messages: to themselves,
education is good, responsibility is a burdensome thing that needs to be
pushed away; which leads to the other message, to the non-elite: education is
a waste and responsibility is not really a burdensome thing so why don't you
take on more of it (primarily in terms of credit load).
the end result, of course, is that the elites are educated about
realpolitik, and everyone else is semi-educated and responsible only for
pointing the finger at each other. class warfare stays w/in the class.
the courts in italy have printed behind the judge in large letters "all
people are equal under the law" (or, if you rather, "the law is equal for
everyone"), but the rich still are trying to pass some law that says "some
people are more equal than others", namely the top O(5) handful running
government.
the economic situation in italy (and much of europe) is also teetering on
the brink of disaster, now watch software patents take hold and everything
from UTC+2 and westward slide into fascism. (again.)
love and hate are two sides of the same coin, a coin less pretty than
fear. why is this? fear is deeper: less controllable, less rationalizable,
and mostly, extremely personal.
expressions of love and hate are the currency of social discouse, but
cognition of fear cannot be shared, cannot be amortized, cannot be assuaged by
anyone except the one feeling the fear. thus, fear is more valuable because
it cannot be parlayed once planted.
these things everyone knows, some people use, and some some people abuse.
one's morality and one's actions are not the same thing.
from this you can see how relative moralities exist in a feedback loop w/
one's actions and the actions of others. lops intersect all the time, too.
if you cannot see this, but insist that actions must "logically follow"
from morality, that's fine, too. logic is a useful tool w/ computers, in
debate, and for understanding certain systems, so it is no surprise to see its
attempted use to describe how the actions of human beings reflect their
morality. but when the surf breaks, does the whitecap mean the sun is dancing
mad?
"could go a long way towards restoring integrity and trust..."
that's the thing, integrity and trust are best built from accountability;
all these bills of rights are less powerful than simply gravitating towards
software that supports a simple "cvs annotate" (or equivalent). if large
numbers of people can't/don't want to do that, that's fine, too; encourage
them to
make friends
with programmers who
can, today!
marketing is/was the funky game of the baby boomers; have the rest of us
forgotten what it is to concencrate influence on improving oneself? who even
cares about phaedrus and the insanity of excellence anymore! and by funky, i
mean smelly like an old sock, fetid, stale, putrid, unwholesome, stinky,
malodorous, rank, overgrown. i mean, "50% off!" where the price is typically
at least 2x that in the first place! i mean, an advertisement on tv that says
"the economy turns for me" w/ people THANKING a shopping bag, a piece
of packaging, an unlikely to be recycled because it contains wax and/or
plastic manifestation of something on the OUTSIDE! with equally
DISPOSABLE HANDLES, even! i mean, psychologically fine-tuned megadoses
delievered straight to the infant's eyes and ears so that their first words
are brand names and jingle fragments! gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! i'm so tired.
Slashdot Mirror
there is also beauty in source code (for those of the computer programming bent).
get twisted and read emacs source (c or lisp) comments for starters... definitely recommended.
every pair of straight lines in the universe can be viewed as parallel when projected onto the cylinder whose axis is the normal of these lines. (crack open a geometry book if you can't picture this --- sorry, slashdot is not so great for sharing images.) "projection" is the impersonal form of "viewing". so of course it can be seen the parallel you speak of. who actually sees it is a statistical question. who actually does anything about it (and how they go about their business) is a cultural question.
there will probably be no such (emergent) leader if the current leadership keeps control. the corruption of human beings is a thoroughly studied art by now. if the leadership is wise they corrupt w/ wisdom, any other type is inferior in the long run.
i suppose it's time for someone to write the next great app: WOOT. here are some specifications for all you hackers out there:
notes:
anyway, i look forward to any activity in this area. here's to a more transparent society. post code, not lies!
what kind of twisted world is this?!
there's an old story where the beggar, caught enjoying the fumes wafting from a restaurant from the street, is hauled before a judge by the restaurant owner seeking payment for services rendered or somesuch. the judge applied "in kind" thinking, the result being the restaurant owner had to settle for listening to the sounds of the beggar's two coins jingling as payment.
listen, you idiot mofos w/ the guns and the fancy clothes: you want people to pay to lick clean the slop you dish out on your stupidity-dissemination networks? fine. you want people to pay you to think, to share, to relate to each other in ways beyond the reach of your stupidity? that's fine, too. but realize this: the payment is always in kind. you will get slop for slop and you will get disrespect for disrespect. have fun w/ the slop, and watch out for the disrespect, for that, my idiot friends, in great quantity means your head on a platter, your dignity scattered, your fancy clothes tattered, your ediface splattered.
"a tax on the people's minds, for i am the state!
have they no bread left? then let them eat cake!
a victory tour, install that hi-def telescreen!
300-yuk lure, nudge nudge, heh you know what i mean!
let's all pretend that it's getting quite chilly,
i'll put my hands in your pocket, a small game, quite silly!"
"but massah, i'm broke (though my pocket's quite cramped for some reason).
why not share grog, instead --- wouldn't that be more pleasin'?
we'll play a few cards and laugh at ourselves a lot
get drunk on the stars, find a waterpipe, and keep it hot.
what's up w/ sniffing my armpits and calling for showers?
you ain't no weaklin' yourself in the BO power!"
[ ok, someone else can complete this little rhyme.
i've ranted myself thin and no longer have the time.
main point still stands: what goes around comes around.
make some noise NOW before payment is required for SOUND. ]
thi
wow a religious capitalist, blind to the holy terror you worship. get a clue, my friend. placing blame on one leg of the shaky table does not help anyone trust their weight, not to mention their love-making activities, to it.
your point that free software has to work harder is well taken, regardless. that's the lot of free software programmers, voluntarily.
blaming is like science: an attempt to explain some observed phenomenon in a causally consistent manner.
blaming is not like science: the process at arriving at the explanation is itself not under any methodology or self-consistent constraints.
blaming is like engineering: first principles of physics/human-nature are composed to form the proposed system/explanation.
blaming is not like engineering: the explanation cannot be black-boxed and finalized; it is always open to further input and redesign.
what code is the most beautiful code?
that which runs and begins to load
itself anew w/ improved data sets,
in time renewed, ungrooved and limitless.
what groups are the most beautiful groups?
those which use half-dimension infinite loops
self-similar yet eschewing deadening linearity
not singular, but diverse in glorious variety.
what noise is the most beautiful noise?
law tapping, war snapping, and deathraygun toys?
or silence from fear of harsh litigation?
or cries of despair beyond mitigation?
what word is the most beautiful word?
un-pronounceable acronym (like FBI)? (absurd!)
basta che non voglio parlare con te di piu.
basta che non voglio parlare con te di piu?
basta che non voglio parlare con te di piu.
basta che non voglio parlare con te di piu!
we all try to entertain ourselves and maybe each other as best we can (before dying)... happy hacking!
but of all the meta comments you could make, saying "i said this before" is a rather poor choice because it's basically uninteresting information. perhaps you can try one of these (next time):
i have said FOO before at a frequency of 36.8 hours and each time the response has changed for the worse, so i expect this meta comment to get royally flamed (note that this is a triply-meta comment ;-).
i notice that saying FOO before has no effect whatsoever on reality even though i feel better for saying it. what does this say about me? (this is only a doubly-meta comment.)
to avoid the tedium of rewriting, see FOO-URL. (this is akin to the singly-meta comment "i've said this before and i'll say it again" but at least injects a bit of actual quality-based commentary instead of merely relying on quantity-based (re-)count.)
anyway, good luck w/ your Evolution of Style.
in this booth the bearded lady taps the obligatory escape!
behind this screen the monkey boy wraps the purfunctory C-8.
witness, o ye wandering marks,
what contrast between the svelte and the stark!
today you see treasures type-trodden without having to wait!
is that man really as tall as his regexp legs gawking 'neath?
one hopes the (s)word (s)wallower cleans well his (h)awking sheath!
hear the sound of the subprocess organ pipe,
seventeen keypresses for some is alright!
can someone show me the repagination room, i need to ^L for relief!
if a lot of people diss on others, placing the others in an easily identifiable box is going to make it easy for the people who diss others to find these others (to diss).
while the spirit of this initiative is worthy, the above fragment of human nature will just get in the way, in the end. to improve things you cannot run from that which needs improvement to some imagined better place. better to stay and grow your own tree of improvement in the current place, even if it is imperfect there, if you care about the place as well as the improvement.
here, the place is the programming mindset, and the improvement is its dissemination into people (young and old, traditional programmers and non traditional programmers), so that the community of programmers can survive and grow. water the tree, don't transplant it.
you can code wherever you live. whether or not you can convince someone to pay you for your code is another matter.
specialization is for insects, so said alan perlis.
but everyone likes to feel so special, unique and peerless.
what is it about neighborliness that makes us nervous?
have we bought into a worldview where only the lonely are fearless?
once, programmers' users were users' programmers.
the community danced around the totem, no mules, to play.
now, fleeced sheep lusers wring separate from pro scammers.
deception and concealment of wisdom still rule the day.
stand apart from users and a programmer goes mad w/ bloat.
stand apart from programmers and a user feels sick w/ doubt.
mad and sick the walls, no longer solid, define the moat
in which all manner of twisted vermin squirm and shout.
so whence the bridge to heal the massive rift?
who will move w/o moving and fight w/o fighting?
what is the future of the digital sift?
where can i get advice to improve on my writing?
w3m all the way, baby....
but even a tool can be useful...
i see an act of defense missed: large passenger planes flying over sensitive areas (and off their pre-registered course) unchecked by smaller faster 2-minute-to-scramble "defense oriented" planes.
then i see many acts which are called "defense" but could also be called "retribution". now, on (italian) tv, i see continuing acts of violence and no one even cares whether or not it is "defense".
so, to sum it up, the one time where an act of violence would be unquestionably interpretable as "defense", i don't see. probably there are lots of words that can be said to explain things this way and that, but you who have time to defend the actions of others, may your own defenses against yourselves prove worthy in the long run.
said patch, being nice cloth rich in nutritious Mark oils and human skin flakes, is probably what attracted the moth in the first place!
what is a "disbursal"? (thanks.)
sounds nice, but a nation of minimalists does not tend to indulge in things like SUVs. please refine your argument.
elites don't want to lose their elite status, so things like education and responsibility are not well-supported. you see two messages: to themselves, education is good, responsibility is a burdensome thing that needs to be pushed away; which leads to the other message, to the non-elite: education is a waste and responsibility is not really a burdensome thing so why don't you take on more of it (primarily in terms of credit load).
the end result, of course, is that the elites are educated about realpolitik, and everyone else is semi-educated and responsible only for pointing the finger at each other. class warfare stays w/in the class.
so what does this say about the experiment?
the courts in italy have printed behind the judge in large letters "all people are equal under the law" (or, if you rather, "the law is equal for everyone"), but the rich still are trying to pass some law that says "some people are more equal than others", namely the top O(5) handful running government.
the economic situation in italy (and much of europe) is also teetering on the brink of disaster, now watch software patents take hold and everything from UTC+2 and westward slide into fascism. (again.)
love and hate are two sides of the same coin, a coin less pretty than fear. why is this? fear is deeper: less controllable, less rationalizable, and mostly, extremely personal.
expressions of love and hate are the currency of social discouse, but cognition of fear cannot be shared, cannot be amortized, cannot be assuaged by anyone except the one feeling the fear. thus, fear is more valuable because it cannot be parlayed once planted.
these things everyone knows, some people use, and some some people abuse.
one's morality and one's actions are not the same thing.
from this you can see how relative moralities exist in a feedback loop w/ one's actions and the actions of others. lops intersect all the time, too.
if you cannot see this, but insist that actions must "logically follow" from morality, that's fine, too. logic is a useful tool w/ computers, in debate, and for understanding certain systems, so it is no surprise to see its attempted use to describe how the actions of human beings reflect their morality. but when the surf breaks, does the whitecap mean the sun is dancing mad?
"could go a long way towards restoring integrity and trust..."
that's the thing, integrity and trust are best built from accountability; all these bills of rights are less powerful than simply gravitating towards software that supports a simple "cvs annotate" (or equivalent). if large numbers of people can't/don't want to do that, that's fine, too; encourage them to make friends with programmers who can, today!
marketing is/was the funky game of the baby boomers; have the rest of us forgotten what it is to concencrate influence on improving oneself? who even cares about phaedrus and the insanity of excellence anymore! and by funky, i mean smelly like an old sock, fetid, stale, putrid, unwholesome, stinky, malodorous, rank, overgrown. i mean, "50% off!" where the price is typically at least 2x that in the first place! i mean, an advertisement on tv that says "the economy turns for me" w/ people THANKING a shopping bag, a piece of packaging, an unlikely to be recycled because it contains wax and/or plastic manifestation of something on the OUTSIDE! with equally DISPOSABLE HANDLES, even! i mean, psychologically fine-tuned megadoses delievered straight to the infant's eyes and ears so that their first words are brand names and jingle fragments! gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! i'm so tired.