Whack him as crazy all you want, but the truth is that he's crazy and despotic. From TFA:
Berlusconi owns swathes of the Italian mass media.
The left-wing newspaper L'Unita wrote: "You can not say that it is not a disturbing proclamation, given that the only countries in the world where there are filters or restrictions against internet are countries ruled by dictatorial regimes: those between China, Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia."
And -
Any G8 move next year to "regulate the internet" led by Berlusconi is likely to attract criticism. He has often been accused of using his power to try to silence dissent. He lost a long-running libel battle against The Economist earlier this year after it said he was not "fit to run Italy" and was this week suing American critic Andrew Stille for defamation.
I was asked for a source. I think that's where it came from. There's no intent to deceive; Chineseenglish translations aren't easy, and my understanding of his teachings would find this an agreeable statement.
I appreciate the citation and don't think you're being deceiving. The progenitor of the alleged translation/quote is incorrect.
This is really splitting hairs, and its pretty elitist to grind on someone for it.
You turn a phrase nicely. On the other hand, asking a potential pal if they meant to do something isn't elitist - neither is it grinding on someone.
You make an EXCELLENT point, one that I'd like to amplify.
I keep odd hours and like the History and Science channels. In the very early morning hours, there are short shows specifically called out for classroom use. HERE'S THE KICKER: At the end, there's a statement to teachers recording the info for classroom playback that copyright restrictions require them to erase and not use the given program after some certain date. From my memory, it is a VERY short time span.
No way do I believe that this has anything to do with updating current research or anything else kind-minded - it's just a pointless restriction.
Another amplification - what do film and music students get stuck with because of these restrictions????
The history of Lao Tse may have ambiguities, but I'm aware of none that would so bastardize the man's beliefs and philosophies into the quote you've attributed. Neither Lao Tse nor Chuang Tse would be attributed with the spirit of your sig by any means - it is anti-Taoist in the extreme.
More than language, the flexibility of the Chinese mind is a very marvelous thing (nothing negative meant or implied). That's allowed for some - flexible - ideas as to what the Way of the Old Man may be - but your sig contains none of that. It's akin to the "Give a man a fish..." quote.
Your follow-on remark regarding Einstein would by implication mean that you're (your sig is) giving a antecedent thought for Lao Tse's philosophy - is that your intention?
Or are you saying that it's ok to misquote Lao Tse because even Einstein is misquoted?
I hate the use of the net for the propagation of fallacious information.
It would be ludicrous to attribute either of the above to Lao Tse.
Your quote is more akin to this passage from the Hagakure:
Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: ''Matters of great concern should be treated lightly.'' Master lttei commented, "Matters of small concern should be treated seriously."
In keeping with the spirit of the Hagakure - GirlInTraining wrote that if you have to scroll a comment, chances are good it's a religious/fanboy posting. To which EarlyMon commented that if you believe ahead of time that long comments are religious/fanboy ones, you will scroll them.
It's unusual for an MP3 player to require a proprietary syncing app and refuse to work if the user chooses some other way to get the music onto the player.
This is not hair-splitting: with iTunes, you can choose to sync your iPod or to manage it manually.
The iTunes/iPod combo just worked - it wasn't difficult, it did just work - very easily. THAT is what gained it marketshare.
The evil (that I've heard of) with some Win revisions of the iTunes installer came later. The real complaint need not be iTunes itself - but that iTunes isn't open source, allowing for easy management of music from any OS. However, the problem with that is that iTunes is essentially an XML frontend/browser for Quicktime.
First came Quicktime on the desktop, then iTunes on the desktop - THEN came the iPod. And the iPod is using.... essentially iTunes/QT code - unless I'm very much mistaken, which I don't believe that I am.
To ask the iPod to easily xfer music - and perform music library management - outside of its core technologies is asking a very great deal.
We don't have to like the marketdroids responsible for some of the Win installer issues, or the mgmt for the OS ports decisions or for how they sic'd the lawyers about.
But the music xfer technology - be it by sync or manually (via the iTunes/XML browser) is really decent software in its own right.
Because it's not "damn near everyone else," it's damn near no one else.
Correct - because of the quality of the underlying software to begin with.
Often argued on/. - that it's the software quality that should drive things, coupled with the high criticism of the iPod software architecture. I find it ironic, that's all.
Honestly - complaining about iTunes lock-in with an iPod is like complaining about metric wrench lock-in with a German car.
OSX is a descendant of Mach, which shares a distant common ancestor with FreeBSD.
Some years back, just at the OS X Public Beta launch, and later, the Darwin Project, Apple did a decent job of documenting what was what on their web. No more.
The earliest OS X info was clear - Mach kernel w/ elements from not only FreeBSD but also NetBSD and OpenBSD. The idea was to capitalize (no pun intended) on flexibility, networking and security features. Some of the original documentation supporting this is with some accuracy is wikipedia (sorry - hate to use that for something this important) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Mac_OS_X
There are probably surviving papers from geniuses of the likes of Wilfredo Sanchez explaining why and how this architecture was undertaken - further googling is left as an exercise.
The issue that I take with your statement is that OS X is a Mach descendent. It was originally touted as a BSD with a Mach kernel - the architectural diagram itself argues with that statement.
Perhaps it is more accurate to call it a fusion of Mach and BSD software technologies.
If you think you're an artist, then I know some REAL artists who would laugh at you.
I think I'm an engineer and that my wife is a rather famous artist.
I bet you don't know even a single person who lives in a loft.
Please show this to your REAL artist friends and explain to them why you believe that the structure a person lives in does or does not make them an artist.
But you just keep telling yourself you're special, OK?
How about you just keep telling yourself that you're a flaming asshole, with no reading comprehension skills, and a sad and pathetic inferiority complex and leave it at that - OK?
"But there's an obvious problem: nothing is simpler than a sweep of blue sky, or the inky blackness of space. If simplicity is the benchmark, space itself is evidence of design." What? I don't understand how something not being simple enough for our limited intelligence to understand constitutes divine creation?
It doesn't - and TFA article goes on to explain and agree, which the flaming summary does not:
That's true, agreed Shostak. But the key is comparison. Against a low-information background, one looks for life in complication; and against a complex background, one searches for simplicity. In either case, it's the degree of unexpected variation that matters. That's where Intelligent Design falls short.
And also from TFA, Shostak of SETI sums up how we might recognize life elsewhere:
"Another answer is that given by Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, in a case on pornography," said Shostak. "It's become a famous answer to all these questions: 'I'll know it when I see it.'"
I don't know anyone who watched the series (before it went downhill and we all stopped...) Earth: Final Conflict and didn't want one of those phone/PDAs. If you're unfamiliar, there was an interesting announcement to something similar much earlier this year: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1410 - it includes a photo of the EFC phone (opened) and acknowledges Gibson.
The fictional EFC phone still outclasses anything I've seen dreamt-up to date.
I couldn't find a youtube of the EFC phone in use - but for EFC early-series (or music or sci-fi) fans, I found this and want to share it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3WqQfTVlTc
As a PhD student myself, I very much recognise the completely-out-of-touch-with-the-common-man stereotype.
Three observations: 1. Just like you found more birds of a feather going from high school to college (sampling outside a narrow geography), you may find more birds of a feather - meaning "in touch" - where you're out from under your studies (same reason).
2. Who is this "common man" of which you speak, really?
3. The "common man" I've seen is buttoned down, inhibited, doesn't dance, doesn't like gays (as if its business who other people sleep with), dresses the way the advertisers tell him to... &c, &c, &c. I know a lot of PhDs that fit that description - but having worked with (way) more than a thousand PhDs in my lifetime, I assure you that over time - meaning, out from under the grind of getting one - they're generally very better rounded than popularly thought. The ones that aren't - that is, never become - well-rounded... I say to you it wasn't their PhD-like mind that made them so - it is that they ARE the common man.
I haven't taken music theory and therefore don't know that much higher math is explicitly taught (my point in using him as an example). But as you point out, the accomplished mind doesn't always reveal itself in obvious ways.
I am reminded of a lecture by Dick Heyser where in the middle of explaining, he pointed at the equations on his blackboard, and agitatedly said that that wasn't math - it was just squiggles representing the math in his head. (Those unfamiliar with him may be interested in http://www.gold-line.com/heyser07.htm - in addition to work at the JPL and NASA, the audio industry owes much to him, a music lover.)
I find it interesting that science based Phd students are able to be this creative - they are dealing with very intangible things, and correlating them to a form of communication that they are traditionally not known to be able to identify with.
Not known by whom? You? The popular media?
I'm a graybeard (literally) sick of this stereotype.
FYI - Dweebs exist in EVERY discipline - and they are better suited as the outlyers, not the norm, for their disciplines./. is rife with science and engineering types - but just look at the post counts for any topic dealing with: music, DRM, films and YRO. That is more than merely anecdotal, it speaks clearly to the developed mind being whole, ready to embrace all that life offers.
I've worked in science and engineering most of my life. Creativity is not the exception - it is the norm. Introspection is a strict requirement for the creative mind - it is denigrated as introversion. Excitement and a need to express excitement over complex work is denigrated as yet another computer-wearing-tennis-shoes running his mouth without social skills. I say that the non-receptive audience is the grown-up from not-paying-attention-in-school crowd. My wife is a well-known and accomplished artist - as are her friends. Her friends and mine never have trouble getting along, relating, or enjoying fun things - be it art, dance, music - or high tech toys and scientific concepts. The creative mind seeks its own kind, not its own narrow expression of specialization.
The mind of a scientific researcher lives in a fine balance - on one side, beyond the fringe thinking, the only true way NEW ideas are born - on the other side, strict conservatism, the only way crackpotism is avoided.
Mathematics is the language of science. Everyone here with a hard science degree knows that each semester there were fewer and fewer students in the theoretical math classes - the language is not accessible to everyone. JS Bach was quite a mathist - and purposely expressed his music as such. From what I know, Miles Davis was not so - but his music contains math anyway. The point of that? Math is the language of science - and science is the outcome of the mind of humankind trying to understand the universe.
The stars dance. Molecules dance. Quarks dance. Dogs dance. DNA dances. Why shouldn't the very people who work the hardest to understand those dances not dance themselves?
This isn't a rare case, and is pretty much the norm of advertising.
While technically true, I'm more of a glass half-empty sort of guy: I say that the norm is for poor product delivery - and seems to apply to more than just the fast food gang. The trouble isn't that advertising exaggerates (which it does) - the problem is that the products are lousy and rather than improve product, the dollar-dollar-bill-y'all goes to advertising.
Slashdot Mirror
I, for one, am delighted to live in a world where people will take up arms for the internet after living (and putting up) with poisoned air and water.
This just in - the internet hasn't been what it's been since AOL opened its spigot and Kevlar is on sale for the holidays - film at 11.
It is just a matter of time until they will block sites criticizing the government itself.
You've nailed it in one.
Whack him as crazy all you want, but the truth is that he's crazy and despotic. From TFA:
Berlusconi owns swathes of the Italian mass media.
The left-wing newspaper L'Unita wrote: "You can not say that it is not a disturbing proclamation, given that the only countries in the world where there are filters or restrictions against internet are countries ruled by dictatorial regimes: those between China, Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia."
And -
Any G8 move next year to "regulate the internet" led by Berlusconi is likely to attract criticism. He has often been accused of using his power to try to silence dissent. He lost a long-running libel battle against The Economist earlier this year after it said he was not "fit to run Italy" and was this week suing American critic Andrew Stille for defamation.
More on this guy - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/world/europe/02italy.html?_r=1&ref=europe
Complaints - that's another power source entirely - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXlz1BDvSn0
Ask and ye shall receive.
If she's that loud, her vocalizations could probably power other "battery operated" devices she may use...
Except that that's not a chicken/egg situation. By the time a girl's that loud, batteries aren't required... or, so I'm told.
I'm really confused. If iPods don't play AACplus then how do you know that their audio output is good enough to hear the difference?
I was asked for a source. I think that's where it came from. There's no intent to deceive; Chineseenglish translations aren't easy, and my understanding of his teachings would find this an agreeable statement.
I appreciate the citation and don't think you're being deceiving. The progenitor of the alleged translation/quote is incorrect.
This is really splitting hairs, and its pretty elitist to grind on someone for it.
You turn a phrase nicely. On the other hand, asking a potential pal if they meant to do something isn't elitist - neither is it grinding on someone.
Hold fast to center.
I see you've met my sister. She comes through clear as a bell from 8 states away. Next time, I'll have her turn her phone on...
You make an EXCELLENT point, one that I'd like to amplify.
I keep odd hours and like the History and Science channels. In the very early morning hours, there are short shows specifically called out for classroom use. HERE'S THE KICKER: At the end, there's a statement to teachers recording the info for classroom playback that copyright restrictions require them to erase and not use the given program after some certain date. From my memory, it is a VERY short time span.
No way do I believe that this has anything to do with updating current research or anything else kind-minded - it's just a pointless restriction.
Another amplification - what do film and music students get stuck with because of these restrictions????
PLEASE MOD PARENT UP.
Thanks for the kind reply.
The history of Lao Tse may have ambiguities, but I'm aware of none that would so bastardize the man's beliefs and philosophies into the quote you've attributed. Neither Lao Tse nor Chuang Tse would be attributed with the spirit of your sig by any means - it is anti-Taoist in the extreme.
More than language, the flexibility of the Chinese mind is a very marvelous thing (nothing negative meant or implied). That's allowed for some - flexible - ideas as to what the Way of the Old Man may be - but your sig contains none of that. It's akin to the "Give a man a fish..." quote.
Your follow-on remark regarding Einstein would by implication mean that you're (your sig is) giving a antecedent thought for Lao Tse's philosophy - is that your intention?
Or are you saying that it's ok to misquote Lao Tse because even Einstein is misquoted?
I hate the use of the net for the propagation of fallacious information.
I've been meaning to ask, this is as good a time and place as any - where did you get this quote for your sig?
All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small. ~ Lao Tzu
I have studied The Old Man for 35 years and have no idea where he said this. It's not in the Tao Te Ching. Neither are these quotes:
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage." http://www.whatquote.com/quotes/Lao-Tzu/1399-Being-deeply-loved-b.htm
"Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens." http://www.whatquote.com/quotes/Lao-Tzu/24946-Ambition-has-one-hee.htm
It would be ludicrous to attribute either of the above to Lao Tse.
Your quote is more akin to this passage from the Hagakure:
Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: ''Matters of great concern should be treated lightly.''
Master lttei commented, "Matters of small concern should be treated seriously."
http://www.rosenoire.org/archives/Hagakure.pdf
In fact, I dispute virtually all of these quotes attributed to The Old Man - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/lao_tzu.html - cleverly, there are a few of his actual quotes there - not very many.
In keeping with the spirit of the Hagakure - GirlInTraining wrote that if you have to scroll a comment, chances are good it's a religious/fanboy posting. To which EarlyMon commented that if you believe ahead of time that long comments are religious/fanboy ones, you will scroll them.
It's unusual for an MP3 player to require a proprietary syncing app and refuse to work if the user chooses some other way to get the music onto the player.
This is not hair-splitting: with iTunes, you can choose to sync your iPod or to manage it manually.
The iTunes/iPod combo just worked - it wasn't difficult, it did just work - very easily. THAT is what gained it marketshare.
The evil (that I've heard of) with some Win revisions of the iTunes installer came later. The real complaint need not be iTunes itself - but that iTunes isn't open source, allowing for easy management of music from any OS. However, the problem with that is that iTunes is essentially an XML frontend/browser for Quicktime.
First came Quicktime on the desktop, then iTunes on the desktop - THEN came the iPod. And the iPod is using.... essentially iTunes/QT code - unless I'm very much mistaken, which I don't believe that I am.
To ask the iPod to easily xfer music - and perform music library management - outside of its core technologies is asking a very great deal.
We don't have to like the marketdroids responsible for some of the Win installer issues, or the mgmt for the OS ports decisions or for how they sic'd the lawyers about.
But the music xfer technology - be it by sync or manually (via the iTunes/XML browser) is really decent software in its own right.
Because it's not "damn near everyone else," it's damn near no one else.
Correct - because of the quality of the underlying software to begin with.
Often argued on /. - that it's the software quality that should drive things, coupled with the high criticism of the iPod software architecture. I find it ironic, that's all.
Honestly - complaining about iTunes lock-in with an iPod is like complaining about metric wrench lock-in with a German car.
OSX is a descendant of Mach, which shares a distant common ancestor with FreeBSD.
Some years back, just at the OS X Public Beta launch, and later, the Darwin Project, Apple did a decent job of documenting what was what on their web. No more.
The earliest OS X info was clear - Mach kernel w/ elements from not only FreeBSD but also NetBSD and OpenBSD. The idea was to capitalize (no pun intended) on flexibility, networking and security features. Some of the original documentation supporting this is with some accuracy is wikipedia (sorry - hate to use that for something this important) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Mac_OS_X
There are probably surviving papers from geniuses of the likes of Wilfredo Sanchez explaining why and how this architecture was undertaken - further googling is left as an exercise.
The issue that I take with your statement is that OS X is a Mach descendent. It was originally touted as a BSD with a Mach kernel - the architectural diagram itself argues with that statement.
Perhaps it is more accurate to call it a fusion of Mach and BSD software technologies.
They're the PETA of the environmentalist movement.
You mean People Eating Tasty Animals?? http://www.tastyanimals.us/
Man - I thought youtube comments were stupid...
http://www.xkcd.com/202/
If you think you're an artist, then I know some REAL artists who would laugh at you.
I think I'm an engineer and that my wife is a rather famous artist.
I bet you don't know even a single person who lives in a loft.
Please show this to your REAL artist friends and explain to them why you believe that the structure a person lives in does or does not make them an artist.
But you just keep telling yourself you're special, OK?
How about you just keep telling yourself that you're a flaming asshole, with no reading comprehension skills, and a sad and pathetic inferiority complex and leave it at that - OK?
"But there's an obvious problem: nothing is simpler than a sweep of blue sky, or the inky blackness of space. If simplicity is the benchmark, space itself is evidence of design." What? I don't understand how something not being simple enough for our limited intelligence to understand constitutes divine creation?
It doesn't - and TFA article goes on to explain and agree, which the flaming summary does not:
That's true, agreed Shostak. But the key is comparison. Against a low-information background, one looks for life in complication; and against a complex background, one searches for simplicity. In either case, it's the degree of unexpected variation that matters. That's where Intelligent Design falls short.
And also from TFA, Shostak of SETI sums up how we might recognize life elsewhere:
"Another answer is that given by Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, in a case on pornography," said Shostak. "It's become a famous answer to all these questions: 'I'll know it when I see it.'"
I don't know anyone who watched the series (before it went downhill and we all stopped...) Earth: Final Conflict and didn't want one of those phone/PDAs. If you're unfamiliar, there was an interesting announcement to something similar much earlier this year: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1410 - it includes a photo of the EFC phone (opened) and acknowledges Gibson.
The fictional EFC phone still outclasses anything I've seen dreamt-up to date.
I couldn't find a youtube of the EFC phone in use - but for EFC early-series (or music or sci-fi) fans, I found this and want to share it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3WqQfTVlTc
As a PhD student myself, I very much recognise the completely-out-of-touch-with-the-common-man stereotype.
Three observations:
1. Just like you found more birds of a feather going from high school to college (sampling outside a narrow geography), you may find more birds of a feather - meaning "in touch" - where you're out from under your studies (same reason).
2. Who is this "common man" of which you speak, really?
3. The "common man" I've seen is buttoned down, inhibited, doesn't dance, doesn't like gays (as if its business who other people sleep with), dresses the way the advertisers tell him to... &c, &c, &c. I know a lot of PhDs that fit that description - but having worked with (way) more than a thousand PhDs in my lifetime, I assure you that over time - meaning, out from under the grind of getting one - they're generally very better rounded than popularly thought. The ones that aren't - that is, never become - well-rounded... I say to you it wasn't their PhD-like mind that made them so - it is that they ARE the common man.
And to that I say, vive la différence!
Roger that, Houston!
I haven't taken music theory and therefore don't know that much higher math is explicitly taught (my point in using him as an example). But as you point out, the accomplished mind doesn't always reveal itself in obvious ways.
I am reminded of a lecture by Dick Heyser where in the middle of explaining, he pointed at the equations on his blackboard, and agitatedly said that that wasn't math - it was just squiggles representing the math in his head. (Those unfamiliar with him may be interested in http://www.gold-line.com/heyser07.htm - in addition to work at the JPL and NASA, the audio industry owes much to him, a music lover.)
namaste
I find it interesting that science based Phd students are able to be this creative - they are dealing with very intangible things, and correlating them to a form of communication that they are traditionally not known to be able to identify with.
Not known by whom? You? The popular media?
I'm a graybeard (literally) sick of this stereotype.
FYI - Dweebs exist in EVERY discipline - and they are better suited as the outlyers, not the norm, for their disciplines. /. is rife with science and engineering types - but just look at the post counts for any topic dealing with: music, DRM, films and YRO. That is more than merely anecdotal, it speaks clearly to the developed mind being whole, ready to embrace all that life offers.
I've worked in science and engineering most of my life. Creativity is not the exception - it is the norm. Introspection is a strict requirement for the creative mind - it is denigrated as introversion. Excitement and a need to express excitement over complex work is denigrated as yet another computer-wearing-tennis-shoes running his mouth without social skills. I say that the non-receptive audience is the grown-up from not-paying-attention-in-school crowd. My wife is a well-known and accomplished artist - as are her friends. Her friends and mine never have trouble getting along, relating, or enjoying fun things - be it art, dance, music - or high tech toys and scientific concepts. The creative mind seeks its own kind, not its own narrow expression of specialization.
The mind of a scientific researcher lives in a fine balance - on one side, beyond the fringe thinking, the only true way NEW ideas are born - on the other side, strict conservatism, the only way crackpotism is avoided.
Mathematics is the language of science. Everyone here with a hard science degree knows that each semester there were fewer and fewer students in the theoretical math classes - the language is not accessible to everyone. JS Bach was quite a mathist - and purposely expressed his music as such. From what I know, Miles Davis was not so - but his music contains math anyway. The point of that? Math is the language of science - and science is the outcome of the mind of humankind trying to understand the universe.
The stars dance. Molecules dance. Quarks dance. Dogs dance. DNA dances. Why shouldn't the very people who work the hardest to understand those dances not dance themselves?
This isn't a rare case, and is pretty much the norm of advertising.
While technically true, I'm more of a glass half-empty sort of guy: I say that the norm is for poor product delivery - and seems to apply to more than just the fast food gang. The trouble isn't that advertising exaggerates (which it does) - the problem is that the products are lousy and rather than improve product, the dollar-dollar-bill-y'all goes to advertising.
OK - I expected to be modded down for maybe not funny enough...
I have in my parent post attacked a patent troll, to vent my anger - and have been modded down as a troll.
Wow. No, really - wow.