Money has no intrinsic value. It's value is solely what we project it to be - it has the value of the faith we put in it and nothing more. When people lose faith in money (or the instituion backing the money), it quickly loses that value due to run-away inflation. See Germany following the end of the Second World War.
Re:It's not really all THAT odd...
on
NYT on Game Mods
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· Score: 1
It isn't on the front page because of it's content - it's on the front page BECAUSE it's in the NYT. What's news isn't the state of the modding industry; pretty much everybody here knows that. What's news is the fact that game modding is mainstream enough to garner an article in the NYT.
Certainly, some poeple do that. Some people bound out of bed and can't wait to get to work because they love their job. Do you really think that MOST people act that way, though? Do you really think there's enough people to handle every job there is, from taking orders at McDonalds to standing on the production line at Ford to driving the semi across 18 states to deliver products to your local store, that will do it without thought of pay, just because of an "innate human desire to perform acts of compassion?" Do you really think we can run our entire economy on that?
Some people are passionate about the money. Most are passionate about the things the money can but - whether that's a roof over your head and food in your belly, a new computer with a 3GHz 64bit processor or a new Lamborghini.
It's the work we do that drives the economy and the nation. Something has to motivate us to do that work, and as you pointed out it almost certainly isn't going to be passion for the job itself. So if you take away profit, exactly why am I going to drag myself out of bed in the morning and go to work?
I learned to program using Borland Turbo C++ and later Watcom C++ 10.0 in the very early '90s, so I came in right in the midst of the OOP craze. (I still have the original TC++ floppies and Borland C++ 3.0 and Watcom 10.0 CDs.)
I'm a hobbyist programmer, not a professional, so perhaps I missed some parts of the argument. However, most of the problem of data persistence I'm familiar with involved the difficulties of getting an object properly written to or read from disk. Particularly where there are several generations of inheritance involved, it can be quite tricky to get all of the data properly written out, then to reconstruct the object when the data is read back in. Examples I've seen where the memory state is written out were responses to the problem of properly restoring a complex object, not an attempt to make the data impossible to modify.
I agree that in any particular program, only the class that is dealing with the data needs to be familair with the details of how the data is stored either internally or externally. That isn't the same as saying that OOP requires the data not be manipulated on disk.
The Windows registry seems a poor example to me, since a great many programs manipulate data in the registry. And discussions of making data tamper resistent due to issues of security are quite distinct from issues of OOP design.
Finally, it wasn't my intent to imply you were trolling. I simply don't see the corelation between OOP principles and file formats.
Anyone who believes that has no clue what OOP is about. OOP principles, which are about how data is handled and manipulated within a program, have nothing to do with file formats, which is (primarily) about how data is stored when the program is not running.
I do not have faith in those counting the paper ballots. And in fact, it is exactly my lack of faith in them that allows me to trust them.
The ballots are counted multiple times by more than one person. In order to deliberately miscount the ballots, and thus alter the results of the election, a number of people would have to be involved in the conspiracy. Three people can keep a secret - if two of them are dead. I don't have any faith that those counting the ballots would be able to sustain such a conspiracy even if they wanted to do so, thus I can place trust in the system.
I certainly wouldn't argue with that, but I would point out that no process is completely reversible. We decide what aspects are important in any particular form, and tend to ignore other aspects of that form. If we can reverse the changes which affect the aspects we decide are important, we call the process "reversable" and blissfully overlook the fact that there are other changes which were not reversed. At a sufficient level of detail, not only is no process reversable but no form is sustainable. Entropy increases. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
Thanks for making my point for me. With the possible exception of an occasional idiot savant, I don't believe anyone who can learn to program a computer can be classified as "stupid." The fact that they produce poorly written software indicates that either they are incompetent themselves, or that they are not allowed to utilize their competence by incompetent managers. In either case, the problem is most definitely that they are stupid and incapable of learning safe programming practices.
Stupid means that they lack the intellignece to learn. Incompetent means they do not have the requisite knowledge or skill. What you described is not stupidity. It is incompetence.
I'm not sure what you mean by "...explicitly contrary to the conservation of energy." Are you saying that converting mass to energy is or is not an act of destruction?
If you have an ice sculpture in the shape of a swan that that melts, was that an act of destruction? If you think in terms of the swan, then the answer was yes - the swan was destroyed. If you think in terms of the water, no destruction occurred. The water was ice, it's now liquid. It changed form but it still exitsts.
I'm quite certain that a physicist would tell you that a reaction which converts mass to energy does not destroy that mass. However, there was some object who's essential identity was tied into the form of that mass, and that object will have been destroyed.
Not to flame you in return, but I made no such claim as you seem to be attributing to me. Having sufficient knowledge to build something implies a reasonably deep understanding of how it functions. I made no claim about that understanding having any effect on wisdom or on the desire to use that knowledge in any particular way.
Someone who has sufficient knowledge to build a functioning virus knows a great deal about how they work, and thus has information which is quite valuable in figuring out how to stop them from working. That person may use that knowledge to develop cures for disease, or he may use the knowledge to try to design a super bug that wipes out entier human race. How he uses the knowledge is completely independent of the fact that he has the knowledge.
I'm aware of the original quote. I think my version is better, as incompetence has a much wider range of application than stupidity. I'm not stupid but I'm completely incompetent in a number of areas, ranging from sweater knitting to brain surgery. All too often, the problem isn't really stupidity so much as it is people being completely out of their element.
That depends on your definition of "destroy" and "mass." Arguably, mass and energy are two forms of the same thing, and conversion from one form to another is no more an act of destruction than is melting an ice cube.
Anthrax is a natural pathogen, not an artifical one. It's only the vector by which it was spread that is artificial. And what makes it worthy of head lines is that it was malicious.
Right or wrong, an incident that is the result of deliberate intent is seen as much more heinous than an act of nature, even if it does much less danger. School shootings have killed only a handful of youngsers over several years. How many died from traffic incidents over the same time frame? Where is your child safer - sitting in school or sitting in the front seat of a car? You don't see parents panicking over the thought of their child riding in a car but you see huge discussions over how to make our schools safer.
Assembly is not necessarily the same as synthesis. Designing and building a computer (as oppossed to merely putting together what is essentially a kit created by someone else) certainly implies that you have enough knowledge to make intelligent decisions on how to go about protecting the computer.
Horsefeathers. Matter is not the essence of a thing. Form and function usually (but not always) are. Transformation into another form may not destroy the mass but it most certainly destroys the thing that existed before.
My first thought on reading the headline was 'Cue the Luddites.'
We're all going to die! Nanobot virus AIs created from stem cells and feeding on the bodies of Monarch butterflies slain by the pollen from genetically engineered corn are going to destroy the world!
You are not allowed to use it without paying, and nobody who paid for it is damn well going to just give you a copy.
Do you really believe that? When, right now, you can find copies of everything from Microsoft Office to Mathematica to AutoCAD on warez boards? A corporation which purchases a product might not care to distribute it, but is everyone who works there and has access to the product of a similar mind? After all, it didn't cost THEM anything.
And what's to stop me from forming a software club where a thousand people pay one dollar each, we buy one copy of your thousand dollar program and giver everyone a copy?
Actually, it's you who miss the irony. Most GNU advocates are well aware that the GPL depends on strong intellectual property. True FSF believers (as opposed to Open Source believers) would generally have no problem with intellectual property restrictions on software being completely abolished. All software would then be free for anyone to use for any purpose. There would be no need for the GPL because it would become impossible to take someone else's code and use it in a proprietary product. Whatever you coded and distributed could be freely distributed without your permission. All software would be free, whether the distributer wanted it to be or not. The FSF position is that if you're going to put limits on how I can use your software, I'm going to use your laws to create a culture that uses software the way I believe it should work. The irony isn't that the GPL depends on strong intellectual property protection; the irony is that the GPL uses strong intellectual property protection to promote free (as in speech) software.
Maybe he's pissed off that the majority of the country doesn't seem to care if the government can read your library list any time they want without even getting a warrant or that you can go to jail for writing a program to allow blind people to access certain documents or that a Canadian citizen who got routed through the US on his way back home can be arrested and sent to Syria to be tortured etc.
Believe me, I'm no fan of social programs. Historically, I've been a Republican voter because I thought they were the lesser of two evils. But I think I'd rather have a thief in my pocketbook than Big Brother looking over my shoulder.
Slashdot Mirror
Zoooooommmmm!!!!!
Money has no intrinsic value. It's value is solely what we project it to be - it has the value of the faith we put in it and nothing more. When people lose faith in money (or the instituion backing the money), it quickly loses that value due to run-away inflation. See Germany following the end of the Second World War.
It isn't on the front page because of it's content - it's on the front page BECAUSE it's in the NYT. What's news isn't the state of the modding industry; pretty much everybody here knows that. What's news is the fact that game modding is mainstream enough to garner an article in the NYT.
Certainly, some poeple do that. Some people bound out of bed and can't wait to get to work because they love their job. Do you really think that MOST people act that way, though? Do you really think there's enough people to handle every job there is, from taking orders at McDonalds to standing on the production line at Ford to driving the semi across 18 states to deliver products to your local store, that will do it without thought of pay, just because of an "innate human desire to perform acts of compassion?" Do you really think we can run our entire economy on that?
Some people are passionate about the money. Most are passionate about the things the money can but - whether that's a roof over your head and food in your belly, a new computer with a 3GHz 64bit processor or a new Lamborghini.
It's the work we do that drives the economy and the nation. Something has to motivate us to do that work, and as you pointed out it almost certainly isn't going to be passion for the job itself. So if you take away profit, exactly why am I going to drag myself out of bed in the morning and go to work?
I learned to program using Borland Turbo C++ and later Watcom C++ 10.0 in the very early '90s, so I came in right in the midst of the OOP craze. (I still have the original TC++ floppies and Borland C++ 3.0 and Watcom 10.0 CDs.)
I'm a hobbyist programmer, not a professional, so perhaps I missed some parts of the argument. However, most of the problem of data persistence I'm familiar with involved the difficulties of getting an object properly written to or read from disk. Particularly where there are several generations of inheritance involved, it can be quite tricky to get all of the data properly written out, then to reconstruct the object when the data is read back in. Examples I've seen where the memory state is written out were responses to the problem of properly restoring a complex object, not an attempt to make the data impossible to modify.
I agree that in any particular program, only the class that is dealing with the data needs to be familair with the details of how the data is stored either internally or externally. That isn't the same as saying that OOP requires the data not be manipulated on disk.
The Windows registry seems a poor example to me, since a great many programs manipulate data in the registry. And discussions of making data tamper resistent due to issues of security are quite distinct from issues of OOP design.
Finally, it wasn't my intent to imply you were trolling. I simply don't see the corelation between OOP principles and file formats.
Anyone who believes that has no clue what OOP is about. OOP principles, which are about how data is handled and manipulated within a program, have nothing to do with file formats, which is (primarily) about how data is stored when the program is not running.
I do not have faith in those counting the paper ballots. And in fact, it is exactly my lack of faith in them that allows me to trust them.
The ballots are counted multiple times by more than one person. In order to deliberately miscount the ballots, and thus alter the results of the election, a number of people would have to be involved in the conspiracy. Three people can keep a secret - if two of them are dead. I don't have any faith that those counting the ballots would be able to sustain such a conspiracy even if they wanted to do so, thus I can place trust in the system.
What you're talking about isn't trust. It's faith. And I don't have faith in our system or those who implement it.
There was a reason I did that originally, but I'm damned if I can remember now what it was.
LOL! Thanks. I needed a good laugh.
I certainly wouldn't argue with that, but I would point out that no process is completely reversible. We decide what aspects are important in any particular form, and tend to ignore other aspects of that form. If we can reverse the changes which affect the aspects we decide are important, we call the process "reversable" and blissfully overlook the fact that there are other changes which were not reversed. At a sufficient level of detail, not only is no process reversable but no form is sustainable. Entropy increases. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
Thanks for making my point for me. With the possible exception of an occasional idiot savant, I don't believe anyone who can learn to program a computer can be classified as "stupid." The fact that they produce poorly written software indicates that either they are incompetent themselves, or that they are not allowed to utilize their competence by incompetent managers. In either case, the problem is most definitely that they are stupid and incapable of learning safe programming practices.
Stupid means that they lack the intellignece to learn. Incompetent means they do not have the requisite knowledge or skill. What you described is not stupidity. It is incompetence.
I'm not sure what you mean by "...explicitly contrary to the conservation of energy." Are you saying that converting mass to energy is or is not an act of destruction?
If you have an ice sculpture in the shape of a swan that that melts, was that an act of destruction? If you think in terms of the swan, then the answer was yes - the swan was destroyed. If you think in terms of the water, no destruction occurred. The water was ice, it's now liquid. It changed form but it still exitsts.
I'm quite certain that a physicist would tell you that a reaction which converts mass to energy does not destroy that mass. However, there was some object who's essential identity was tied into the form of that mass, and that object will have been destroyed.
If my sig were a quote, it would be in quotation manrks and attributed.
Not to flame you in return, but I made no such claim as you seem to be attributing to me. Having sufficient knowledge to build something implies a reasonably deep understanding of how it functions. I made no claim about that understanding having any effect on wisdom or on the desire to use that knowledge in any particular way.
Someone who has sufficient knowledge to build a functioning virus knows a great deal about how they work, and thus has information which is quite valuable in figuring out how to stop them from working. That person may use that knowledge to develop cures for disease, or he may use the knowledge to try to design a super bug that wipes out entier human race. How he uses the knowledge is completely independent of the fact that he has the knowledge.
I'm aware of the original quote. I think my version is better, as incompetence has a much wider range of application than stupidity. I'm not stupid but I'm completely incompetent in a number of areas, ranging from sweater knitting to brain surgery. All too often, the problem isn't really stupidity so much as it is people being completely out of their element.
That depends on your definition of "destroy" and "mass." Arguably, mass and energy are two forms of the same thing, and conversion from one form to another is no more an act of destruction than is melting an ice cube.
Anthrax is a natural pathogen, not an artifical one. It's only the vector by which it was spread that is artificial. And what makes it worthy of head lines is that it was malicious.
Right or wrong, an incident that is the result of deliberate intent is seen as much more heinous than an act of nature, even if it does much less danger. School shootings have killed only a handful of youngsers over several years. How many died from traffic incidents over the same time frame? Where is your child safer - sitting in school or sitting in the front seat of a car? You don't see parents panicking over the thought of their child riding in a car but you see huge discussions over how to make our schools safer.
Assembly is not necessarily the same as synthesis. Designing and building a computer (as oppossed to merely putting together what is essentially a kit created by someone else) certainly implies that you have enough knowledge to make intelligent decisions on how to go about protecting the computer.
Horsefeathers. Matter is not the essence of a thing. Form and function usually (but not always) are. Transformation into another form may not destroy the mass but it most certainly destroys the thing that existed before.
My first thought on reading the headline was 'Cue the Luddites.'
We're all going to die! Nanobot virus AIs created from stem cells and feeding on the bodies of Monarch butterflies slain by the pollen from genetically engineered corn are going to destroy the world!
You are not allowed to use it without paying, and nobody who paid for it is damn well going to just give you a copy.
Do you really believe that? When, right now, you can find copies of everything from Microsoft Office to Mathematica to AutoCAD on warez boards? A corporation which purchases a product might not care to distribute it, but is everyone who works there and has access to the product of a similar mind? After all, it didn't cost THEM anything.
And what's to stop me from forming a software club where a thousand people pay one dollar each, we buy one copy of your thousand dollar program and giver everyone a copy?
Actually, it's you who miss the irony. Most GNU advocates are well aware that the GPL depends on strong intellectual property. True FSF believers (as opposed to Open Source believers) would generally have no problem with intellectual property restrictions on software being completely abolished. All software would then be free for anyone to use for any purpose. There would be no need for the GPL because it would become impossible to take someone else's code and use it in a proprietary product. Whatever you coded and distributed could be freely distributed without your permission. All software would be free, whether the distributer wanted it to be or not. The FSF position is that if you're going to put limits on how I can use your software, I'm going to use your laws to create a culture that uses software the way I believe it should work. The irony isn't that the GPL depends on strong intellectual property protection; the irony is that the GPL uses strong intellectual property protection to promote free (as in speech) software.
Maybe he's pissed off that the majority of the country doesn't seem to care if the government can read your library list any time they want without even getting a warrant or that you can go to jail for writing a program to allow blind people to access certain documents or that a Canadian citizen who got routed through the US on his way back home can be arrested and sent to Syria to be tortured etc.
Believe me, I'm no fan of social programs. Historically, I've been a Republican voter because I thought they were the lesser of two evils. But I think I'd rather have a thief in my pocketbook than Big Brother looking over my shoulder.