I'm old enough to remember how good it felt to do the same with my car. Nothing dramatic, I only changed my oil, did my tuneups, rotated my tires, and did simple troubleshooting. But it was fulfilling and fun to spend time regularly under the hood. Now Mr. Musk, who I generally admire, tells me that the EV will make all that unnecessary, and if it's true I suppose it's a gain for the car owner and the environment. Yet I have to wonder if we really bother to think about what we lose with such a level of convenience, in which we use the technology without being able to develop a relationship with it.
Preoccupation with The Face: what if these apps were called something different, like Brainbook and Heart-time? What if they were designed to explore what is deeper than appearance, mere image? Would they have a different ethos, a different cultural focus, a different user base and therefore a more sensitive development model? But okay, words mean little anymore, I suppose it's a silly question in this culture.
I've recently taken my third or fourth journey through Pirsig's classic from 40+ yrs. ago, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He had a vision of the future beyond binary -- for tech, art, and philosophy -- that we are so urgently being called toward by our current evolutionary moment.
New book about an author with a similar perspective: Decker's bio of Hermann Hesse, just published by Harvard U. Press. If like me you grew up reading Steppenwolf and Siddhartha and Demian and Magister Ludi, this bio may have some meaning for you.
The science here is quite clear, as this Nature piece explains. If you choose to ignore the science, then of course you're free to do so. But that doesn't make the science wrong and the conservatives right.
Yes, he is. As Amy Goodman keeps reminding us: governments lie, politicians lie -- and the corporations that own them definitely lie. That's their business, it seems, so it must be the business of both professional journalists and private citizens to relentlessly expose the lies.
It's the fake news ads that caused any and all the trouble (though it's a non-provable claim that they tilted the election to Trump). So the horse is out of the barn by now, Mr. Z -- continue with your obsessive money-grab as you were doing.
I disagree that this isn't a problem for the geek workforce. As an earlier posting showed, there have been massive layoffs in tech this year and the next recession is likely to come from the bursting of another tech industry bubble. So what Stern is saying has plenty of relevance here, unless of course you're drinking Trump's kool-aid. I know a number of Trumpists, and the sole concession I've ever been able to get out of any of them is along the lines of "his message is great but his delivery sucks."
Agreed: George McGovern's single-sentence addition to the Constitution is the best ("Medicare is hereby extended to cover all American citizens"); but nevertheless this is an outstanding common sense liferaft to throw in these troubled waters until this dying Empire somehow awakens from its cultural coma.
Last stats I saw showed that Oracle is the 2nd leading software vendor by volume behind MS. They're over $100B in AUM, but they don't make this list? Maybe the "frightful 5" should be the "sinful six".
My problem with all this, and the tentative point where I agree with Lucas, is that it seems a strange new world where the creator of a work is locked out of its further development simply because a corporation stepped in with $4B's and bought all rights and control of it. In other words, when a work of art becomes too popular it is in danger of becoming a mere franchise.
I have spent roughly a third of my life these past 2 decades or so among folks who code professionally, but there is one language that seems to have been avoided or repressed in the rush toward a society of coders. Paradoxically or not, I have found that those who really understand computer languages are often the ones who most value this other, rather moribund language:
True story from about a decade ago: I was sitting around a lunchroom table with a group of Indian tech workers. A new person had just arrived from our company’s office in Chennai, India, and he was getting acquainted with the “onshore” staff. Their way of breaking the ice was to go around the table, each man telling his name, position, and language(s). The web developer would introduce himself and say, ” I am Anand, I specialize in XML, javascript, CSS” The systems administrator would then chime in with something like “Ravi, I work in UNIX, Powershell, Perl” And so on it went, around the table, six or eight guys with varying skills and responsibilities.
Finally it was my turn. I smiled and said, “I’m Brian Donohue, I work in the QA area and I also do some technical writing, and my language isoh damn itEnglish?”
Is this really a dig at religion? I've seen far more idiotic expressions in powerpoints from the boys over in marketing. Now spiritual practitioners who really know the field of their own game (such as Alan Watts, for instance) -- they celebrate nonsense. Scientists who have any grain of self-awareness get this too: is there any sillier proposition than, "everything originated in a Bang?" Or this one: "space was made and is perpetuated by quantum entanglement." Once you get this, you realize what a vast difference there is between nonsense and bullshit.
Slashdot Mirror
The Heisenberg Compensator is already within you. The transporter command is not "energize"; it's "entangle-ize".
Ah, yes, the techno-Freudian slip that the editor blithely lets through. Makes a man's cigar glow.
I'm old enough to remember how good it felt to do the same with my car. Nothing dramatic, I only changed my oil, did my tuneups, rotated my tires, and did simple troubleshooting. But it was fulfilling and fun to spend time regularly under the hood. Now Mr. Musk, who I generally admire, tells me that the EV will make all that unnecessary, and if it's true I suppose it's a gain for the car owner and the environment. Yet I have to wonder if we really bother to think about what we lose with such a level of convenience, in which we use the technology without being able to develop a relationship with it.
Preoccupation with The Face: what if these apps were called something different, like Brainbook and Heart-time? What if they were designed to explore what is deeper than appearance, mere image? Would they have a different ethos, a different cultural focus, a different user base and therefore a more sensitive development model? But okay, words mean little anymore, I suppose it's a silly question in this culture.
New book about an author with a similar perspective: Decker's bio of Hermann Hesse, just published by Harvard U. Press. If like me you grew up reading Steppenwolf and Siddhartha and Demian and Magister Ludi, this bio may have some meaning for you.
The science here is quite clear, as this Nature piece explains. If you choose to ignore the science, then of course you're free to do so. But that doesn't make the science wrong and the conservatives right.
Everything makes sense in the era of Trumpy.
It's been a few weeks since I last turned it on, but I suspect my TV doesn't even rate 2k. What will it cost me to join this "we-all" collective?
Agreed, and the falsifications in that report are almost too numerous to count, but Ed gave it a try.
Oh, I don't know, maybe they're just "no-boner-about-it" kind of guys...
Really? That's it? Well, nothing to see here, everyone just move along...
Yes, he is. As Amy Goodman keeps reminding us: governments lie, politicians lie -- and the corporations that own them definitely lie. That's their business, it seems, so it must be the business of both professional journalists and private citizens to relentlessly expose the lies.
It's the fake news ads that caused any and all the trouble (though it's a non-provable claim that they tilted the election to Trump). So the horse is out of the barn by now, Mr. Z -- continue with your obsessive money-grab as you were doing.
I disagree that this isn't a problem for the geek workforce. As an earlier posting showed, there have been massive layoffs in tech this year and the next recession is likely to come from the bursting of another tech industry bubble. So what Stern is saying has plenty of relevance here, unless of course you're drinking Trump's kool-aid. I know a number of Trumpists, and the sole concession I've ever been able to get out of any of them is along the lines of "his message is great but his delivery sucks."
Looking to government for insight about tech is like looking to yahoo for insight about privacy.
Remember the last part of Gulliver's Travels? Where G. encounters the houyhnhnms, who are more intelligent and civilized than the humanoid yahoos?
I mean, corporate persons fighting over their dick size.
Agreed: George McGovern's single-sentence addition to the Constitution is the best ("Medicare is hereby extended to cover all American citizens"); but nevertheless this is an outstanding common sense liferaft to throw in these troubled waters until this dying Empire somehow awakens from its cultural coma.
Last stats I saw showed that Oracle is the 2nd leading software vendor by volume behind MS. They're over $100B in AUM, but they don't make this list? Maybe the "frightful 5" should be the "sinful six".
My problem with all this, and the tentative point where I agree with Lucas, is that it seems a strange new world where the creator of a work is locked out of its further development simply because a corporation stepped in with $4B's and bought all rights and control of it. In other words, when a work of art becomes too popular it is in danger of becoming a mere franchise.
A hate spell checker? Come now, Eric, we can do better: how about something along the lines of a Flesch-Kincaid Hate Index?
Is this really a dig at religion? I've seen far more idiotic expressions in powerpoints from the boys over in marketing. Now spiritual practitioners who really know the field of their own game (such as Alan Watts, for instance) -- they celebrate nonsense. Scientists who have any grain of self-awareness get this too: is there any sillier proposition than, "everything originated in a Bang?" Or this one: "space was made and is perpetuated by quantum entanglement." Once you get this, you realize what a vast difference there is between nonsense and bullshit.
I'll confess: I preferred G+ and wrote about it (before they started taking it apart).
My question to "ask /." is this: what's the diff btwn a programmer and a developer?