...a couple of points here (I will move towards the topic as I go):
1. If the Internet had not been "exploited" and "taken over" by businesses, it would still be a useless boondoggle.
Really? And all the scientific dialog, the ability for university research programs to communicate quickly and effectively - do I even need to go on? - a "useless boondoggle?" Hm. I expect the creation of alt.flame was probably one of the points at which people realized the 'Net had a lot more potential than simply exchanging research data.
2. They didn't create the Net, but without them we wouldn't want the Net.
You are so wrong. We could still be using it to develop open source software, host useless web pages, and pour nice hot bowls of grits down your pants. Come on, now.
3. Here's an interesting question: if I decide that I want to name the street I'm developing something like "Apple Street," should Apple be able to stop me? No. Because while Apple(TM) may be a trademark, apple (or even Apple) is not. Isn't that roughly analagous to this situation? Think about the implications of businesses with plain-language names getting involved here. There are many. There are also many businesses names that are common last names. What if mister Slim buys Slim.ert before the diet company does? is there a problem with that?
I'm impressed that they're considering that course of action - it shows some real foresight. Europa, if inhabited (by any life) could be enormously useful ('uncontaminated') by virtue of being a huge, somewhat isolated biosphere. In addition, this is some real respect for the universe, a big thing we don't quite understand. Let's not mess up another rock if we don't need to. And why would we need to?
Good points. I was beginning to wonder when someone would bring up other kinds of keyboarding. I've had my fair share of discomfort in the wrists, lower back, etc., related to typing and heavy mousework, but I've come to the conclusion in every case that it was the arrangement of the desk and chair that proved to be the real problem.
Good piano technique involves both knowing the 'correct' hand -arm -torso -everything positioning, but also knowing that your body has to move depending on what you're doing. Being locked into a particular position is bad for you - your joints were meant to move, and the ones meant to move in different directions need to move in different directions. Think about that in terms of muscles - if you don't use it, it will atrophy. (Overuse is bad too.)
Make sure your typing/working surface is at the right height, make sure that your hands and forearms have room to move about as you work (not tensely hovering over homekeys), and remember that general muscle tension/stress will wear you down faster than any external repetitive strain.
I think this may explain to some extent why some of the people using M$nat keyboards can't re-adapt to standard keyboard layouts - those muscles and joints have been out of use. They're tired. One is not better than the other, IMHO - the people suggesting other activities (eg aikido - but be careful) have a great point. This isn't so much about repetitive strain, it's about repetitive strain.
From what I've seen and heard, which has been a mix of mainstream media, environmental press, and (gasP) studies, there has not been "Proof." Mountains of data do not constitute proof - they constitute, at the most, documentation of what may or may not be reality. There are some interesting arguments out there, not so much against the concept of 'global warming', but against the models used, the viability of the studies, and the conjecture needed to form a nice-looking trend. We don't have hundreds of years of correllated, controlled data. Beyond that, the trends we're trying to examine are very long. Long enough to show up (as blips, I guess) on a geological time scale, in my limited understanding. And just to bring this back into the scope of the thread, it's "proof" that got mister Bruno killed. 'Cause he was wrong.
There have been a couple of posts regarding the limits of who can/should be considered a 'geek'. To sum the first one: if you're not heavily into computers, you're not a geek. The second: geek is mental addiction to a particular subject.
Take geek as a verb. To geek. I'm not going to bother defining that to death, but I do trust we all know what it means. To geek, in short, could be to apply a significantly greater than average knowledge of a technical subject (or techne) for a large portion of your time... for fun.
Computer scientists are certainly not all geeks. This I know from experience. And so some filmmakers can be, especially those who work with a limited or non-existent budget and do their own cutting, editing, photography, etc. So can musicians, electricians, members of your local Tesla Coil Club, model train enthusiasts, mechanics. People that know far too much about a specialized subject, according to the mass culture, and interact with it as a physical need (am I exaggerating?).
It's accurate to say that the social stigmas of geekdom result from the societal reaction to geeking, that reaction being in general uninformed, short-sighted, and possibly stupid.
D) As for "a very large deterministic system in a chaotic environment" It falls when you point out two things. The deterministic system must itself be a "chaotic environment" as the individual is always a piece of its environment. "To obsever is to influence, and to be influenced" Professor Klemke.
The deterministic system may be influenced by chaotic events which were not present in the original formulation, but if the original formulation is based on the input of those chaotically-formed events, then the entropy of the system can be tracked by tracking those inputs. The processing of the input can be seen as a deterministic process, either wholly from state zero to present, or from state n through state n+1 continuously.
Thus, knowledge of the initial state and operational parameters, combined with knowledge of the input, can result in knowledge of the current system.
BUT - (of course) - any real "deterministic" system is simply a highly predictable chaotic system (perhaps a 'simple' chaotic system?). On the other hand, the deterministic model can furnish more information faster until its limits are met. The trick is knowing when you've encountered the limit.
There is a place from which ideas come that is outside the human mind.
It's called experience, and experience - like the Turing tape that invariably gets discussed in articles like this one - is unbounded. At the least, humans are an extremely complex combination of both biology and experience. Experience and biology being what they are, it's very difficult to rule out that they might be the only influences on human growth and change.
You don't have to remove any of the wonder or mysticism from your work or your perception of life to accept any of this: it's still pretty fcking incredible, and worthy of great respect.
Additional applause due to Red Hat not only for their work to make Linux more visible, but for doing it in a way that really makes some sense - by making Linux a little easier to get running for people that would rather just having a working OS with no guilt. Ease of installation is important to the people.
Slashdot Mirror
1. If the Internet had not been "exploited" and "taken over" by businesses, it would still be a useless boondoggle.
Really? And all the scientific dialog, the ability for university research programs to communicate quickly and effectively - do I even need to go on? - a "useless boondoggle?" Hm. I expect the creation of alt.flame was probably one of the points at which people realized the 'Net had a lot more potential than simply exchanging research data.
2. They didn't create the Net, but without them we wouldn't want the Net.
You are so wrong. We could still be using it to develop open source software, host useless web pages, and pour nice hot bowls of grits down your pants. Come on, now.
3. Here's an interesting question: if I decide that I want to name the street I'm developing something like "Apple Street," should Apple be able to stop me? No. Because while Apple(TM) may be a trademark, apple (or even Apple) is not. Isn't that roughly analagous to this situation? Think about the implications of businesses with plain-language names getting involved here. There are many. There are also many businesses names that are common last names. What if mister Slim buys Slim.ert before the diet company does? is there a problem with that?
nope.
I'm impressed that they're considering that course of action - it shows some real foresight. Europa, if inhabited (by any life) could be enormously useful ('uncontaminated') by virtue of being a huge, somewhat isolated biosphere. In addition, this is some real respect for the universe, a big thing we don't quite understand. Let's not mess up another rock if we don't need to. And why would we need to?
Good piano technique involves both knowing the 'correct' hand -arm -torso -everything positioning, but also knowing that your body has to move depending on what you're doing. Being locked into a particular position is bad for you - your joints were meant to move, and the ones meant to move in different directions need to move in different directions. Think about that in terms of muscles - if you don't use it, it will atrophy. (Overuse is bad too.)
Make sure your typing/working surface is at the right height, make sure that your hands and forearms have room to move about as you work (not tensely hovering over homekeys), and remember that general muscle tension/stress will wear you down faster than any external repetitive strain.
I think this may explain to some extent why some of the people using M$nat keyboards can't re-adapt to standard keyboard layouts - those muscles and joints have been out of use. They're tired. One is not better than the other, IMHO - the people suggesting other activities (eg aikido - but be careful) have a great point. This isn't so much about repetitive strain, it's about repetitive strain.
From what I've seen and heard, which has been a mix of mainstream media, environmental press, and (gasP) studies, there has not been "Proof." Mountains of data do not constitute proof - they constitute, at the most, documentation of what may or may not be reality. There are some interesting arguments out there, not so much against the concept of 'global warming', but against the models used, the viability of the studies, and the conjecture needed to form a nice-looking trend. We don't have hundreds of years of correllated, controlled data. Beyond that, the trends we're trying to examine are very long. Long enough to show up (as blips, I guess) on a geological time scale, in my limited understanding.
And just to bring this back into the scope of the thread, it's "proof" that got mister Bruno killed. 'Cause he was wrong.
Take geek as a verb. To geek. I'm not going to bother defining that to death, but I do trust we all know what it means. To geek, in short, could be to apply a significantly greater than average knowledge of a technical subject (or techne) for a large portion of your time... for fun.
Computer scientists are certainly not all geeks. This I know from experience. And so some filmmakers can be, especially those who work with a limited or non-existent budget and do their own cutting, editing, photography, etc. So can musicians, electricians, members of your local Tesla Coil Club, model train enthusiasts, mechanics. People that know far too much about a specialized subject, according to the mass culture, and interact with it as a physical need (am I exaggerating?).
It's accurate to say that the social stigmas of geekdom result from the societal reaction to geeking, that reaction being in general uninformed, short-sighted, and possibly stupid.
The deterministic system may be influenced by chaotic events which were not present in the original formulation, but if the original formulation is based on the input of those chaotically-formed events, then the entropy of the system can be tracked by tracking those inputs. The processing of the input can be seen as a deterministic process, either wholly from state zero to present, or from state n through state n+1 continuously.
Thus, knowledge of the initial state and operational parameters, combined with knowledge of the input, can result in knowledge of the current system.
BUT - (of course) - any real "deterministic" system is simply a highly predictable chaotic system (perhaps a 'simple' chaotic system?). On the other hand, the deterministic model can furnish more information faster until its limits are met. The trick is knowing when you've encountered the limit.
yowza.
It's called experience, and experience - like the Turing tape that invariably gets discussed in articles like this one - is unbounded. At the least, humans are an extremely complex combination of both biology and experience. Experience and biology being what they are, it's very difficult to rule out that they might be the only influences on human growth and change.
You don't have to remove any of the wonder or mysticism from your work or your perception of life to accept any of this: it's still pretty fcking incredible, and worthy of great respect.
Additional applause due to Red Hat not only for their work to make Linux more visible, but for doing it in a way that really makes some sense - by making Linux a little easier to get running for people that would rather just having a working OS with no guilt. Ease of installation is important to the people.