I guess I've got to complement them on their honesty that one of the goals of the creators of lisp was to remove the fun from programming.(Because it certainly did for me.)
Why is that? Must have been a bad teacher, because Lisp is really fun to program in. You need the help of an editor for the parentheses, but other than that its very easy and very powerful.
Not like there was any big competition left for a usable UI for anyone but tech-illiterate.
Depending on how you define usable. If your definition is like that of most people - then I really do not understand why you are saying what you are saying. You can use xfce4, for example, and fluxbox, and a couple of others.
Do people generally view social media as more destructive than other addictions such as cigarettes or alcohol?
As with cigarettes or alcohol, It really depends on the degree of addiction.
Lots of people really spend their day in social media. I agree it is probably fun, but does it lead somewhere in the long run? If you notice in ten or twenty years that you got nowhere basically because you spent your time chatting, blogging, and posting stuff in facebook - then it might well be a very destructive addiction.
Why would I want to have an employer with that kind of approach and attitude to managing employees?
Because you need to eat? And all employers are doing the same?
Maybe your question was geared towards: should we, as a society, allow that kind of thing? Isn't it more important to ensure general population happiness than allowing this latest Kafkaesque fad that probably does little except annoying people? Then it would be a very good question.
Well, after a couple of years as a postdoc I can tell you there is no good metric for success. Except looking like you were appreciated and considered good by your senior peers. Maybe you published only four papers in crappy journals, but it so happens that somebody who matters thinks you are a genius. And there you go. You can win against highly cited people who are considered morons by the powers that be.
That is the way of the scientist. Never forget you are in fact a monk. There might be sacrifices.
I usually cite everybody I can as long as I can find a plausible excuse for citing them.
Visiting this planet is perfectly feasible if the human race wants it.
...at leas for some value of 'visiting'. We could send a probe that will stay dormant for all the time it takes to fly by the planet, then wake up and send a couple of pictures. If you build it right, it could weight just a couple of kilograms, and be accelerated with a high g value to a halfway decent velocity. All we had left to do would be to wait for 22 years after when it was supposed to wake up.
What do you guys think? What velocity is realistically achievable for, say, a ten kilogram payload? Just a camera and something capable to transmit a couple of pictures with very high energy?
The idea of a "socially engineered society", the idea that managing many aspects of people's behaviour and society as a whole through laws and taxes is not only possible but desirable, is deeply rooted in our country.
What you are describing is precisely what a society with a government is. Anyone who thinks that a "socially engineered society" is not desirable at all is a libertarian. And, IMO, also deluded. You will get a socially engineered society anyway, the question is, who will engineer it to the benefit of whom.
Personal freedom, and the right to be a fool, are things that a well engineered society allows. Within bounds.
The idea of attacking cancer by a massive data mining exercise is probably a very good one, as almost all other approaches have essentially failed. Only a very healthy society can afford the risk this approach represents, though. I sincerely wish Norway good luck with that.
Does it encourage more innovation? I think many of the people and companies actually trying to make stuff will still do so in the absence of patents.
One of the upshots of this whole discussion is that the pattent system works better or worse depending on the context. For software it is a disaster. The chemical industry seems to be quite comfortable with it.
For some inventions, like drugs, one can make the argument that patents are the wrong vehicle to start with. I once attended a talk by an exec where he essentially said that if you wanted to make sure a new drug never came to market, all you had to do is publish its formula without patenting it. There I would say that patents are a hindrance in many respects, and a concession model would be better (exclusivity licence granted by the government to cover for medical study).
So maybe we should reframe the whole discussion in terms of contexts.
You can't drink pure H2O - it disrupts ionic balance, you could probably die from drinking too much pure water.
What you need is to make sure you obtain the electrolytes and minerals from some other source to avoid insufficiency. Other than that, pure water is safe to drink.
At best, all the petition will do is prove what everyone should already know: Democrats and Republicans are the servants of big businesses and not the American public.
What, 100% one thing and 0% the other? That's what I call small-minded thinking.
Anyways, what do you propose? Doing nothing because we cannot win? On what side are you?
I believe that corporations have stronger lobbies than any other parties, thus the politicians always hear the same side of story over and over again, and act upon it. So they're mostly misinformed, and waiving the possibility of lost jobs and shrinking economy is enough to force them to act quickly.
It also happens that lobbyists have their agents in key secondary positions of government. Secretaries, for example, and those that take care of the protocols in meetings, etc. So sometimes, they can manage to get a piece of info early, remove a sentence from a declaration, or at least change its meaning a bit, etc. Often, no more power is needed to nudge things into a shape that is closer to your liking. In particular, if you can keep at it for long enough.
Also, politicians have to rely on law firms to write laws, and these law firms are an easier target for lobbyism than politicians. They can sneak in stuff that looks pretty innocent, but actually changes the meanings of things. Like, for example, the dreadful "as such" in the provision against software patents in the EU, which has been used to remove a tooth or two of that provision. Politicians normally do not have the sophistication to detect this kind of tampering, or even more crucially, detect that it is happening on purpose.
Public opinion normally overlooks these hidden layer of power, believing that the politicians are everything that matters. We should change this.
They do "have a shot". We the people get no real say in what bills get passed or not. Best we can do is vote the current person out of office, at which point they get a cushy job in the industry they represented and a new industry spokesperson takes their place.
I do not think that is correct. We the people do get a say in what bills get passed or not. Please do not underestimate it. Defeatism and apathy are the best allies of those that want to take away our freedoms.
We the people do have power. Not absolute, but we have it, and when we use it we end up having an influence. Voting is one part of exercising power, and protest (like the blackouts) another. Raising consciousness of the issues and our power is another.
When was the last time you've seen more that one politician take a serious stand on something? It's small concessions all around that keeps them in office.
I sometimes get the impression that politicians are just a distraction, that politicians nowadays are the marketing department. Talking with the marketing department works, but may sometimes not be the most effective thing.
It would be more interesting and useful if we knew
- Who wrote the bill (the actual law firm and lawyers)
- Who organizes and coordinates the effort of trying to get the bill to pass (the lobby organization and people in charge)
These might be much more usefull people to watch, talk to, interview, pressure, and/or shame in public.
He is still right in the sense that proving that some code is dead might not be possible for the compiler. Not just beacause it can be arbitrarily hard, but because it could be in fact undecidable. You are right in that many interesting cases can be cached by good heuristics.
Incidentally, if it's truly "dead" code, then it shouldn't actually be compiled, so it's not like the bridge engineer left in a bunch of extra girders, it's more like he's keeping addendum 6-c to revision 12b of the plans for section 3 in the same file cabinet as revision 13 rather than shifting it to a storage box and warehousing it.
Fun anecdote: In the building where I have my office, there used to be chemistry labs. They have been gone for at least fifteen years, yet we have the fire extinguishing infrastructure still in place. Twice a year a couple of engineers drop by and inspect everything, replacing old parts and stuff. The building next to it is identical in structure, but was offices all the time, and thus has nothing of the sort.
That amounts to dead code that is still being run.
That does not reflect my experience. I taught some programming courses and I would say about half of the people didn't really get loops. I would say it wasn't my fault, because when I took this sort of course, I saw the same thing. Most people can't understand and code a loop.
I never really understood this. These were smart people that could and did achieve interesting things in life. Put program? Nope.
You say that as though coming up with good original ideas and bringing them to market is the easy bit. That's kind of what the whole patent process should be there to protect, otherwise it's almost always better to be second to market, let some other chump do all the costly research and development, then you just bring out a shinier version of their product based on initial feedback.
Then the first one can one-up the copy-cats again. In fact, in this way, patents are anticompetitive and hinder the proper function of a market, because they allow companies to rest on crappy products for twenty years (at least in principle). Not to mention adding to the cost of doing business by converting any sort of development into a trip through a minefield.
The American system will succumb to the monied interests and corrupt politicians over and over without constant vigilance of a significant proportion of the citizens.
As far as I can tell, it is happening despite that. The ideas of those doing the vigilance have to make sense, and they currently do not. Libertarians have played the usefull idiot successfully time and again, being "vigilant" against exactly the wrong things, and playing into the hands of the wrong people. The result is that now you have a market based democracy. Don't you love it? It's just money, and no laws above it!
Now, the option is to realize that this is all wrong, and to actually participate in political discourse. Wake up your neighbors, and study to know and understand how things actually work and can be improved realistically (and not just how they should work in an ideal world, which will always lead to disapointment).
No need to pull punches, though. A less corrupt government, good cheap healthcare for all, etc. are big, good things, but for that the US has to start seeing itself as an actual society.
The article says "free rein". The summary says "free reign". "Rein" is the "correct" term, although apparently folk usage of "reign" is moving up fast.
Yeah, and depending on where they live, they also get free rain.
yes this money was well spent to figure out one of man's most complex problems... a fucking brain teaser
Just so you know, I have no problem with that and in fact I think this is a good way of spending money. I think this is money well spend, and I find it good that the state spends money on this.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does this incoherent drivel get modded up to +5 insightful? Has the modding system been infiltrated again?
I'm mystified - why don't we call them Freedom numerals instead?
Why is that? Must have been a bad teacher, because Lisp is really fun to program in. You need the help of an editor for the parentheses, but other than that its very easy and very powerful.
Depending on how you define usable. If your definition is like that of most people - then I really do not understand why you are saying what you are saying. You can use xfce4, for example, and fluxbox, and a couple of others.
As with cigarettes or alcohol, It really depends on the degree of addiction.
Lots of people really spend their day in social media. I agree it is probably fun, but does it lead somewhere in the long run? If you notice in ten or twenty years that you got nowhere basically because you spent your time chatting, blogging, and posting stuff in facebook - then it might well be a very destructive addiction.
Indeed. This is very important. And this one does not even require thinking.
Because you need to eat? And all employers are doing the same?
Maybe your question was geared towards: should we, as a society, allow that kind of thing? Isn't it more important to ensure general population happiness than allowing this latest Kafkaesque fad that probably does little except annoying people? Then it would be a very good question.
Well, after a couple of years as a postdoc I can tell you there is no good metric for success. Except looking like you were appreciated and considered good by your senior peers. Maybe you published only four papers in crappy journals, but it so happens that somebody who matters thinks you are a genius. And there you go. You can win against highly cited people who are considered morons by the powers that be.
That is the way of the scientist. Never forget you are in fact a monk. There might be sacrifices.
I usually cite everybody I can as long as I can find a plausible excuse for citing them.
What do you guys think? What velocity is realistically achievable for, say, a ten kilogram payload? Just a camera and something capable to transmit a couple of pictures with very high energy?
What you are describing is precisely what a society with a government is. Anyone who thinks that a "socially engineered society" is not desirable at all is a libertarian. And, IMO, also deluded. You will get a socially engineered society anyway, the question is, who will engineer it to the benefit of whom.
Personal freedom, and the right to be a fool, are things that a well engineered society allows. Within bounds.
The idea of attacking cancer by a massive data mining exercise is probably a very good one, as almost all other approaches have essentially failed. Only a very healthy society can afford the risk this approach represents, though. I sincerely wish Norway good luck with that.
It must be a nice place in your brain, with little pony and the teletubbies. I mean, do you really believe that?
The Patriot Act has a beautiful record of being abused for all sorts of purposes.
One of the upshots of this whole discussion is that the pattent system works better or worse depending on the context. For software it is a disaster. The chemical industry seems to be quite comfortable with it.
For some inventions, like drugs, one can make the argument that patents are the wrong vehicle to start with. I once attended a talk by an exec where he essentially said that if you wanted to make sure a new drug never came to market, all you had to do is publish its formula without patenting it. There I would say that patents are a hindrance in many respects, and a concession model would be better (exclusivity licence granted by the government to cover for medical study).
So maybe we should reframe the whole discussion in terms of contexts.
What you need is to make sure you obtain the electrolytes and minerals from some other source to avoid insufficiency. Other than that, pure water is safe to drink.
Interesting. So you suddenly favor big government and regulation? How did that happen? (Just curious - I am not a libertarian).
What, 100% one thing and 0% the other? That's what I call small-minded thinking.
Anyways, what do you propose? Doing nothing because we cannot win? On what side are you?
It also happens that lobbyists have their agents in key secondary positions of government. Secretaries, for example, and those that take care of the protocols in meetings, etc. So sometimes, they can manage to get a piece of info early, remove a sentence from a declaration, or at least change its meaning a bit, etc. Often, no more power is needed to nudge things into a shape that is closer to your liking. In particular, if you can keep at it for long enough.
Also, politicians have to rely on law firms to write laws, and these law firms are an easier target for lobbyism than politicians. They can sneak in stuff that looks pretty innocent, but actually changes the meanings of things. Like, for example, the dreadful "as such" in the provision against software patents in the EU, which has been used to remove a tooth or two of that provision. Politicians normally do not have the sophistication to detect this kind of tampering, or even more crucially, detect that it is happening on purpose.
Public opinion normally overlooks these hidden layer of power, believing that the politicians are everything that matters. We should change this.
I do not think that is correct. We the people do get a say in what bills get passed or not. Please do not underestimate it. Defeatism and apathy are the best allies of those that want to take away our freedoms.
We the people do have power. Not absolute, but we have it, and when we use it we end up having an influence. Voting is one part of exercising power, and protest (like the blackouts) another. Raising consciousness of the issues and our power is another.
I sometimes get the impression that politicians are just a distraction, that politicians nowadays are the marketing department. Talking with the marketing department works, but may sometimes not be the most effective thing.
It would be more interesting and useful if we knew
- Who wrote the bill (the actual law firm and lawyers)
- Who organizes and coordinates the effort of trying to get the bill to pass (the lobby organization and people in charge)
These might be much more usefull people to watch, talk to, interview, pressure, and/or shame in public.
He is still right in the sense that proving that some code is dead might not be possible for the compiler. Not just beacause it can be arbitrarily hard, but because it could be in fact undecidable. You are right in that many interesting cases can be cached by good heuristics.
Fun anecdote: In the building where I have my office, there used to be chemistry labs. They have been gone for at least fifteen years, yet we have the fire extinguishing infrastructure still in place. Twice a year a couple of engineers drop by and inspect everything, replacing old parts and stuff. The building next to it is identical in structure, but was offices all the time, and thus has nothing of the sort.
That amounts to dead code that is still being run.
That does not reflect my experience. I taught some programming courses and I would say about half of the people didn't really get loops. I would say it wasn't my fault, because when I took this sort of course, I saw the same thing. Most people can't understand and code a loop.
I never really understood this. These were smart people that could and did achieve interesting things in life. Put program? Nope.
Then the first one can one-up the copy-cats again. In fact, in this way, patents are anticompetitive and hinder the proper function of a market, because they allow companies to rest on crappy products for twenty years (at least in principle). Not to mention adding to the cost of doing business by converting any sort of development into a trip through a minefield.
As far as I can tell, it is happening despite that. The ideas of those doing the vigilance have to make sense, and they currently do not. Libertarians have played the usefull idiot successfully time and again, being "vigilant" against exactly the wrong things, and playing into the hands of the wrong people. The result is that now you have a market based democracy. Don't you love it? It's just money, and no laws above it!
Now, the option is to realize that this is all wrong, and to actually participate in political discourse. Wake up your neighbors, and study to know and understand how things actually work and can be improved realistically (and not just how they should work in an ideal world, which will always lead to disapointment).
No need to pull punches, though. A less corrupt government, good cheap healthcare for all, etc. are big, good things, but for that the US has to start seeing itself as an actual society.
Yeah, and depending on where they live, they also get free rain.
Just so you know, I have no problem with that and in fact I think this is a good way of spending money. I think this is money well spend, and I find it good that the state spends money on this.