He never stated christianity should be a state religion
He didn't use those exact words, I suppose. He wants the decent, honest people of America to be forced -- by law, as far as I can tell -- to live according to the dictates of his bizarre superstitions. That's called a theocracy. The comparison to Iran was reasonable and appropriate, especially right now given the political situation in Iran. Watch the news from Iran closely; that's where we'll be too, twenty years after the Christians take over.
. . . the valid points of his argument
There weren't any. It was all just the usual "protect-the-children" hysteria, with no attempt made to quantify the damage that's allegedly being done, much less establish any causal link between the alleged damage and the alleged cause.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . although both of them aptly poked fun at the endless talmudic yammering that usually passes for discussion on Slashdot -- this discussion being a perfect example.
As for those who thought Hashnot was "too childish", I liked it and I'm an S. J. Perelman fan, so there.:)
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Jesus, Christiansen, grow up already. Stallman may be an annoying monomaniac about software, but software is at least interesting -- you on the other hand are an annoying monomaniac about Stallman, which is just plain childish. Fine, you hate the guy. We got the picture. Grow out of it already.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . keep the ACLU out of it. Let people think for themselves and raise their own children.
In other words, you want LOCAL governments to engage in censorship. As if there were "good" censorship and "bad" censorship. The ACLU wants nobody to engage in censorship -- not the feds, not Fort Dodge IA, nobody. You want local tyrrany; Libby Dole wants federal tyranny; in my book, you're pretty much equal. The Constitution seems to agree with my view, though with a big enough majority you could probably get that changed.
Hooray for the ACLU, and to hell with all tyrants everywhere.
But I wouldn't tell you what to do, because it would set the precedent that you could tell me what to do.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but you seem to be saying that you have no problem at all with telling me what to do, if I happen to live in your community. Sure, that's a lot better than you coming to Cambridge and getting on my case in my community, and it's arguable that if I don't like the way Fort Dodge works, I don't have to live there (not that you necessarily live there, but we may as well both use the same examples). By the same token, though, you can leave the USA, too, if you don't like things there (this is a not-so-gentle hint to all the Christians out there, by the way). One could argue that all tax-paying citizens have an equal claim not to be pushed around by the community, be it a national community or a local one.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . wanted homosexuals stoned to death, along with adulterous women. He didn't want us to eat pork, either. Jesus was into tolerance -- as in "Go, and sin no more" -- but you and the rest of the thugs who call themselves "Christians" these days aren't much interested in what Jesus said, as far as I can tell. One of the very few areas where Jesus was more strict than the OT was divorce: He was against it, unconditionally. Modern evangelical US protestants think divorce is permissible, of course. Undesirable maybe, but certainly permissible.
Don't just talk about the Bible, read it.
. . . whom Christians serve
Most Christians serve political Ayatollahs like Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson. The Bible is just an excuse, and an empty symbol.
I think you folks have a very skewed idea of what Christianity is and who Christians are.
I pay close attention to the Christian right, along with the Aryan Nation crowd and all the rest. Sporadically violent fringe lunatics make me nervous, and I feel better if I know what they're up to.
I can't tolerate things that are wrong (sinful), but I can still love those who do wrong.
You should've put "wrong" in quotes, because your twisted notion of "wrong" has nothing to do with community standards in the United States, nor very damn much to do with Christ's teachings either (whence most of those community standards came, by the way). Don't give us this bullshit about "loving the sinner but hating the sin", either. Nobody believes that hypocritical nonsense. I've seen enough "Christian" literature to know the truth: You people are bigots. You hate everybody but your own little group, and you'd throw us all in prison if you could.
"I like you, but I don't like some of the things you do."
Crap. Are all "Christians" pathological liars? Sometimes I get that impression. "Christians" don't want to "help" gays, not even by their own insane definition of "help". They want to deny gays their plain rights under the Constitution. They want to physically "punish" gays and throw them in prison. Some have advocated concentration camps (I am NOT making this up). Most advocate Chairman Mao-style reeducation. Predictably enough, you're speaking in very vague terms about the details of your "intolerance"; would you care to clarify? What are the details, please? Who's your role model, Mao or Hitler? Be specific.
You've benefitted enormously from tolerance yourself, by the way. You are a clearly irrational member of a lunatic fringe cult, yet you're allowed to practice your odd rituals and profess your bizarre beliefs entirely unmolested. But we're not going to take orders from you. Why should we? The world is full of nut cults. One's as good as the next. What makes yours so special? Nothing at all, so don't go demanding any special privileges that the Hare Krishnas don't get. Enjoy your little hobby in peace, but leave the rest of us alone.
As for your unwillingness to "tolerate" that which the voices in your head call "sinful", you can talk all you like, but if you try to implement your holy intolerance you stand a fair chance of being thrown in jail for aggravated assault, homicide, or whatever. And rightly so. When you stop talking and start acting, you'll be just one more common criminal. Every common criminal has an excuse and a sad story. Every rapist or murderer claims his victim made him do it. It won't help you any more than it helps them.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Look, it's imperative that we Protect the Children, right? Since children are the property of their parents (this is a free market economy, my friends), it's up to their parents to decide from what they need to be protected. (Of course, if the parents are deranged or abnormal -- be they atheists, homosexuals, communists, Jews, or simply unwilling to protect their childrens' innocence -- then obviously their children must be protected from them.) Since it's impractical for parents to monitor their children every single moment of their lives, all children must be protected from all things that any parents might find objectionable (not counting atheist parents, of course).
So this library thing is an unmixed blessing. We're Protecting the Children, and if you're opposed to that, then by a simple process of elimination you're obviously trying to Corrupt the Children, and you should be in prison. (In prison, that is, along with all the children being tried and sentenced as adults at the behest of the right wing. Since prisons are a Good Thing and a Positive Moral Influence, it can safely be assumed that the prisons will Preserve the Innocence of these young inmates.)
Okay, now we've disposed of that issue and we can move on to the real meat of the matter: A lot of so-called "civil libertarians" (obviously these people aren't real capital-L Libertarians, because they're atheists etc.), adults should not be subjected to the restrictions that are placed on children, because adults are presumably able to handle things better than kids are. Naturally, it's obvious to any thinking person that Protecting the Children is so important that any sacrifice of the rights of adults is a small price to pay for Preserving the Innocence of Childhood; furthermore, most of those freedoms that you're giving up are not necessary anyway, and no decent person would want them. Still, a lot of people refuse to recognize these obvious facts and another approach is called for. So here it is:
Adults don't exist. There is no such thing as an adult. All this whining liberal babble about the rights of adults vs. those of children is meaningless, because everybody is a child, and therefore everybody's innocence must be preserved at absolutely any cost whatsoever. I can prove this by a simple exercise of inductive reasoning, as follows:
A child is anybody between the ages of -0.75 years and 18 years, right? Right. And as we know, A == A. True is true and false is false; if you are a child, you are a child. Period. Therefore, a child one day old is precisely as much of a child as a child who is 17 years, 11 months, and 29 days old. If either one of those innocent children walks into an R movie and sees a tit, the Precious Irreplaceable Innocence of that child will be hopelessly compromised. But let's stop and think here for a moment: In the case of that second child, what exactly happens to him or her on his or her 18th birthday? Any dramatic changes? No, of course not. S/he is just one day older, that's all. There's nothing magical about that. It's just common sense. So if a child is legally and morally equivalent to a newborn infant one day, and if nothing changes overnight, then that child is still legally and morally equivalent to a newborn infant the next morning! The notion that childhood ends on ones 18th birthday is thereby shown to be an absurdity. The change must be happening later on! But when? The day after one's 18th birthday? No, that can't be true, because the same reasoning applies. And you can take that reasoning and apply it day by day -- or better yet minute by minute -- throughout any given child's life up until the moment he or she dies and is gathered up into the arms of Jesus (unless of course s/he is an atheist or a Jew or a Democrat or something, in which case of course s/he will be deservedly condemned to roast for all eternity in the flames of Hell etc. etc.).
And there you have it: There is no such thing as an "adult". It's an imaginary state of being, and any legal reasoning which takes it into account must be considered null and void. This includes most of the Constitution (not counting the Second Amendment, of course).
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
He's putting down OSS and Linux. Very subtly but it's there. I suggest after you've "cooled off" that you re-read the article in it's entirety. Very carefully.
I swore off Kabbalism for Lent, so would you be kind enough to give any examples of what you're referring to?
Anyhow, it's called "free software", not "OSS" (an acronym which upleasantly refers also to a predecessor of the CIA, IIRC).
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
What "negativity and subtile [sic] comments"? He said some good things about Linux, and the bad things he said (about library versions and installing software) are simply true, in my experience. It wasn't a "subtle comment" anyway. He just said "this part sucks", basically. There's nothing subtle about that. Relax -- or, if you'd prefer not to relax, would you be kind enough to provide some examples from his essay?
. . . every now and then he makes a stab at Linux and it's users.
Again, I'd like to see some examples. Yeah, he mentioned in passing that there are a lot of mindless flamers who advocate Linux. So? Read Slashdot and tell me otherwise. It's a fact. However, he spent a lot more time thanking -- and responding to -- those who wrote thoughtful and resaonable responses.
The Linux Bunker Mentality (TM) becomes increasingly annoying and unforgivable as Linux becomes less of an underdog.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Unless you're a busy surgeon, hamburger flipper, etc. if you ask a question that has already been answered in a way that generally applies to all questions of the same kind, read damn it.
We're not your babysitters. Be an adult.
I'm a little bit unclear about which part of his post you're talking about here. Having twice read both your post and his post, I'm afraid I'm going to have to fall back on asking. Go ahead and flame me.
I don't know what you're screaming about. Take a chill pill.
Right back atcha. Your post is an obscene rant. His isn't.
do you know what a fucking kernel is? It has nothing to do with the WINDOW MANAGERS.
He never said it did have anything to do with window managers. He was talking about how the free software paradigm has led to a profusion of X11 window managers. This is good because I can choose my favorite, and it's good because diversity tends to lead to technical excellence. Blah blah blah; we've all heard all the arguments in favor of free software. However, it takes a religious fanatic to claim that something is perfect, and that goes for free software as much as anything else. Refusing to recognize potential pitfalls in a development process is a short road to hell; read Fred Brooks, or just get involved in a non-trivial project. If you already have been involved in such a project, think about what I'm saying. It's a genuine issue. If you're serious about free software -- and I gather that you are -- you won't do the cause any favors by willfully ignoring its failings.
It amazes me how opportunity scares you freaks. You love being stuck in a stiff frame of mind.
It's amazing how a free exchange of ideas scares "you freaks" (whoever "you freaks" may be; I'm willing to define "you freaks" as "people who flame anybody who tries to make them think"). You want a "stiff frame of mind"? Here's one: Try mindlessly flaming people who use operating systems other than your favorite. That's about as stiff as it gets.
at least I'm not living in your self-created House of Usher.
No, you're living in an entirely different "self-created House of Usher": One where all the "answers" are already known, and "debate" is a matter of reciting them in a loud voice.
. . . we wonder why this country's going commie in a few years
Who's this "we"? Given the ongoing swing to the right in US politics (I assume you're talking about the US), you must be spend a lot more time swallowing right-wing christian [sic] and "libertarian" [sic] propaganda than looking at the world around you and drawing your own conclusions. Gee, it sounds like your approach to politics is a lot like your approach to software: Revealed truth. What that has to do with literacy, I'm unable to imagine. The simple fact is that red-baiters in the US have always been violently opposed to education and the free exchange of information, and for damned good reasons: When you've got nothing to sell but snake oil, it pays to keep the marks ignorant.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Speaking as one who prefers the GPL . . .
on
Feature:GPL vs BSD
·
· Score: 2
. . . it seems unfair to frame the debate in GPL terms, from the GPL point of view, and I think the essay above drifts off in that direction a bit. Even if it were perfect, though, I really can't see how it could result in anything but yet another moronic flamewar.
So why bother? As the man says: Choose your favorite. I know it's heretical to say this on Slashdot, but choice is a good thing. Being able to choose between GNOME and KDE is a good thing; being able to choose between BSD and Lignux (or between Linux and Lignux, for that matter:) is a good thing -- and to hell with all the zealots who preach otherwise.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Hey, that's pretty cool. If that phrase didn't embody what it describes, it would be completely meaningless. It's a shame you'll never get the joke . . .
. . . a futile argument, which I am invariably bound to win anyway,
Can you actually quantify the nature of your "victory"? . . . while accounting for the fact that every one of your statements is fallacious, irrelevant, and/or blatantly contrary to fact . . . ?
Einstein's conjecture (I chose that term wisely)
You chose that term just as foolishly as you choose everything else. You started off trying to claim that it was a fact (though you backed off to "'sound' working hypothesis" when you started to realize how wrong you were) when, yes, a "conjecture" is the best you can reasonably call it -- and a silly conjecture at that.
while your pathetic little anecdotal excursions into 19th century literature (which are flawed in their own right)
Since you know nothing of the subject, I can understand very well why you make no attempt to justify that statement. You seem to be trying to deny the existence of George Elliot, George Sand (both of whom were women writing under male names, so as not to be dismissed on account of their gender), Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, H.D., Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Stein, Nicola Griffith, and about four hundred others. I'm sorry, but these books exist, okay? They're on my shelf, big as life. Are you going to claim that somebody else wrote them? Or are you going to claim that Einstein said ("so it must be true!"(TM)) that their work -- which you've never read, nor in your ignorance even heard of in most cases -- was of no worth?
In short, you babble a lot, and God knows you repeat yourself endlessly, but you are absolutely incapable of putting together a credible defense of anything you say. You can't even give a coherent account of why you believe these things, let along why I should agree with you. All you can do is doggedly and proudly demonstrate your wretched lack of irony by attacking my nick. It's almost as if you're afraid that I'll mistake you for an intelligent person, and you're eager to set me straight on that point. If so, let me reassure you: I got the message a long time ago.
"If it didn't happen yesterday, it can't happen tomorrow", . . . can indeed serve as a sound working hypothesis
You're blind drunk, aren't you? The history of science is more tangential to this discussion than you think, but if you knew anything about it, you'd be aware that the last gasp of any dying paradigm is just that: "It didn't happen yesterday!" And it's always backed up with the argument from authority.
you not surprisingly managed to trivialize my position into "Nya, nya, nya! Boys are smarter than girls",
Er, no. I'd say that you trivialized it yourself, but that would imply that it wasn't trivial to begin with.:)
our twisted little 'mind' is defying all logic by perverting this approach into "If it didn't happen yesterday, it will surely happen tomorrow",
Jesus Christ! Any local high school in your area is bound to offer remedial reading classes for night students. Check it out. You'll be glad you did.
What I've been saying all along is that Einstein's conjecture is insupportable, and that your attempts to support it are irrational and free of fact. You've consistently failed to address any of the points I've raised. You would know better than I why this should be so, but that's another issue. The point here is that I've simply been saying that you've failed utterly to provide any valid reasons at all for anybody to take your "conjecture" seriously. Based on history, it seems likely that women are perfectly capable of doing theoretical physics; given the career of Marie Curie, it seems more than just "likely". Did I say "surely"? No, of course not. Perhaps Curie was an aberration of some kind; perhaps "she" was a transvestite. I never met the woman. The thing is, it's easy to prove that something exists; all you need to do is provide an example (e.g. Curie in this case, a sticking point which you've tried desperately to ignore). Proving that something does not and can not exist is another matter entirely, though. It can be done in mathematics, but that brings us to some clever ideas Kant had about the nature of truth, which are over your head anyway. In a nutshell, the ground rules for mathematics are fully known, because we are the ones who defined them, just as the syntax of C is fully known: You can look at the source for the compiler. This is not true of biology, sociology, or any of the other disciplines which are relevant to this discussion. So here you are: You're just barely bright enough to realize that a negative proof is not going to happen by any honest means, so you're resorting to fallacies and name-calling. This is not an entirely bad premise for a Monty Python sketch, but for any other purpose it's got some flaws.
you're indeed utterly incapable of following my arguments,
It's nice to see you continuing your perfect record of never even attempting to back up anything you say. While we're here, though, you should be aware that "arguments" is what we call a "plural". This means that it implies that there is more than one. Therefore, I laugh. You have one argument. It is the argument from authority. It is silly. You are a fool. Are those sentences short enough for you? I tried not to use any big, scary words that might frighten you off.
I'll say it again: The fact that you're too dumb to admit your error doesn't make you right. The possibility that you're too brainless even to recognize your error is not interesting to me. In fact, it's too depressing to contemplate, so I'm going to assume that you known damn well how idiotic your nonsense is.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
I was arguing that Einstein was acquainted with a woman who could be considered the most talented female physisist ever, yet Einstein still maintained that women are unsuited for theoretical physics.
If you want to evaluate Marie Curie's competence as a theoretical physicist, there is one and only one valid way to do that: Learn theoretical physics, read her papers, and base an informed opinion on the actual quality of her work. Not her chromosomes; her work. I doubt that you are capable of doing that; if you were, you wouldn't need logical fallacies to "prove" your point. You'd have the facts.
It may well be that Einstein, like you, had an emotional problem with recognizing the value of work done by women; as I demonstrated at the beginning of this thread, even somebody as bright as Einstein is capable of having blind spots. He was a human being just like the rest of us, except for the fact that he had some very profound insights into the nature of how things work.
You might say that he didn't argue from authority but from personal experience.
Where did you learn to read? Did you learn to read? You are arguing from authority. Not Einstein, you. You are telling me that "Einstein said it, so it must be true". You're wrong. If Einstein said it, it might be true, or it might not; the proximity of Einstein's name does not impart a quality of "truth" to things. Had Einstein taken the trouble to try to prove this, then we could look at his proof and evaluate that. But he didn't. He just shot his mouth off.
You asked why it would be relevant if you could point us to a woman who has made a significant contribution to theoretical physics.
Again, your reading comprehension is shockingly poor. I said that it was irrelevant that you could not point to a woman (other than Curie, who demolishes your entire thesis) who had made a "significant contribution to theoretical physics". I provided a very close analogy: When women were rarely taught to read, they made very little contribution to literature. If you had been alive in 1800, you would be yammering with equally self-assured illogic that women were incapable of writing novels. In 1800, the evidence for "male superiority" in that field was identical to your current evidence for "male superiority" in the field of theoretical physics. You're a regular warehouse of logical fallacies: "If it didn't happen yesterday, it can't happen tomorrow". I'm sorry, but that's pure nonsense, of the "man was not meant to fly" variety.
I never bragged about anything, least of all the accomplishments of my 'group' (assuming you're talking about males vs. females),
Your entire thesis could be stated as follows: "Nya, nya, nya! Boys are smarter than girls". Which is just plain pathetic.
especially considering that you seem to be part of the same group,
I am (I'm also white, middle-class, well-educated, and from the Northeast -- the whole nine yards:). And I'm saying that my worth is determined not by that crap, but by what I do. I have no interest in trying to share credit for the accomplishments of others. I'd rather accomplish things on my own. It's a lot more fun -- at least it is if one is capable of it. I understand the position you're in, but due to your generally noxious personality I have very little sympathy.
But since you're not a theoretical physicist (your incoherent drivel is a dead giveaway),
You're really addicted to that fallacy, aren't you? Heh. Since you can't effectively dispute anything I've said, you're desperately trying to find cheap excuses to ignore it entirely -- based on the imaginary qualities of a "group" to which you presume I belong. This is called "grasping at straws". You do it very gracefully. You must have a lot of practice.
. . . his conjecture seems to be safe for now.
As I've demonstrated, his conjecture is ludicrous. Furthermore, O Man of Science, do you know what a "conjecture" is? It's not something that's considered proven, for starters. If you knew that, you wouldn't have used the word, of course; but in your ignorance and confusion you've accidentally said something rational:)
Don't even dream that you might stand a chance of arguing me into the ground
You seem to be deriving some kind of comfort from the fact that you're too dumb to know when you've made an ass of yourself. Well, hey, if that's all you've got, go ahead and enjoy it. God knows it's not much.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Yes, and I made it quite clearly. If you're too stupid to grasp it, that's not my problem, but here it is again: The mere fact that Einstein said it, doesn't make it true. Einstein himself would back me up on that, by the way. He was a theoretical physisict, not a priest. He wasn't into "revealed truth". He was into proof. The argument from authority is not proof.
it's safe to assume that Einstein knew what he was talking about when he referred to women as unsuited for theoretical physics, considering that he was in contact with all the important physicists of his time (including Marie Curie btw)
At that time most universities would not accept women as students. So how were they to get into the field? At that time, women were considered "incapable" of doing a great number of things which they have since started doing in large numbers, and quite successfully. At that time, there were surgeons as eminent in their fields as Einstein was in his, who declared that women weren't capable of doing surgery. Well, we've since found that that was a total crock. This is also true of any other profession you can name. In the eighteenth century and earlier, women were considered incapable of producing literature. By 1875 that particular notion had been laughed off the face of the earth.
Incidentally, are you trying to claim that Curie was incompetent? Or what?
Basically, you're drunk either way.
Instead of boring me to death in an effort to convince me that Einstein was an idiot,
You have successfully convinced me that you are an idiot, and that facts and logic bore you. Read my post again. I said that Einstein rejected Heisenberg's conclusions for emotional reasons. He did. This is a fact. Nobody said that Einstein was an idiot. I said that Einstein was fallible, which is, in fact, true. To back myself up, I provided a well-known example.
Can you point us to _any_ woman who has made a significant contribution to theoretical physics that approaches the works of Einstein, Newton, Maxwell, Heisenberg or just about everyone else whose name is still being taught at universities today?
Can you tell me why that would be relevant? (I know you can't -- it's a joke, see?:) But seriously, how many theoretical physicists of that stature have appeared since it was legally possible (and socially acceptable) for women to go into that field? Stephen Hawking, there's one. Virginia Woolf asked rhetorically why there were no women on the Elizabethan literary scene (she missed Aphra Behn, though) -- and immediately answered her own question by participating, along with other women, in a literary movement of arguably similar stature. You've never heard of Virginia Woolf, I'm sure -- but that tells me a lot more about your inadequacies than it tells me about hers.
In other words, anecdotal evidence isn't worth much -- but you have anecdotal evidence which is completely tangential, while I have anecdotal evidence which is very much to the point. Get it? No, you don't get it. You don't get much, do you?
It's a commonly observed fact that people who brag about the accomplishments of "their" group never seem to have any accomplishments of their own to brag about. Gee, what an odd coincidence. If your failings in logic and reading comprehension are anything to go by, you're a perfect example.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
So much for Einstein's "feelings" -- or yours or mine, for that matter. Everybody's a fool outside his own field, and Eintstein was not a biologist. As demonstrated by my subject line, Einstein was even capable of developing blind spots within his field, on occasion.
Einstein's theories aren't credible because "Einstein was a genius"; we consider him a genius because his theories are credible on their own merits. If theories A through G (relativity, etc.) are credible on their own merits, it does not necessarily follow that theory Y must be credible, nor does it imply any justification for blowing off proving that one just because we liked the others so much.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
years of Women's Studies have been [un]able to disprove said conjecture.
Heh.
"Women's Studies" has absolutely nothing to do with correlating brain size to intelligence. That's, like, a different field, Beavis.
Furthermore, you should bear in mind that we're talking about averages in this case. If you take two roughly identical standard distribution curves and offset one by, say, 5%, you've still got a hell of a lot more overlap than anything else. If you take one man and one woman at random from the general population, the odds are only slightly less than even that her brain will be bigger. All of this breaks down into pure gibberish when you talk about individuals. Contrary to your fond hopes of sharing credit for Einstein's work on the basis of shared gender, you and Einstein are both individuals (very, very different individuals) -- and scientific breakthroughs are made by individuals, not by genders.
Brain size doesn't correlate well with intelligence anyway. The fact that Einstein had a larger-than-average brain is what's called "anecdotal evidence". As an isolated factoid, it tells us nothing worth getting excited about. I once knew somebody whose standardized test scores were all in the 99% percentile; our anthropology professor asked him to stand up in class one day as an example of somebody with an unusually small skull. That doesn't prove anything either. It does suggest that our anthropology professor had a weird sense of humor, but we knew that already.
You should read a book called Yes, We Have No Neutrons by A. K. Dewdney; it's a brief and fun overview'n'debunking of pseudoscience. He clobbers the brain-size fetishists along with Freud, Murray'n'Herrnstein, and a few other deserving targets. I'm afraid he goes after CETI as well, but it's all in good fun.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Niven and Pournelle's demonstration of the Flying Elephant Menace irrefutably proved the necessity of feeding n trillion dollars every year to Lockheed et al. in exchange for giant space phasers and LePage Glue Guns.
Don't knock those guys, they're scientists.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
I don't see why we all just colaborate on furthuring KDE current technology position.
As far as I can tell, you're pissed off because people are working on the project they prefer, and using the software they prefer -- rather than working on what you tell them to.
Miguel Icaza and Red Hat sound more like Bill Gates day by day.
You shouldn't be drinking so early in the day. It's bad for your liver.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
A computer operating system isn't a natural, unavoidable monopoly like the phone company.
There's an argument that it is something of a "natural monopoly", because of compatibility issues. Once you've spent thousands of dollars on software to run on OS Foo (much of which may be available for that OS only), and once all of your friends and business partners are using Foo, switching to OS Bar can be impractical and expensive, even if Bar has tremendous technical superiority. The quality of the operating system itself is not the only issue.
There is no need to regulate a free market for software unless some companies break the law.
IMHO there is no need to regulate any free market unless it coagulates and becomes un-free, or unless mindless, irresponsible cretinism (a.k.a. free enterprise) in that area is too destructive to be tolerated, as in the case of finance. I mean, if upper management at Pepsico is a bunch of babbling morons, that's okay, because Crystal Pepsi is harmless. By contrast, the securities industry is very heavily regulated because those morons are genuinely dangerous.
Anybody who actually gives a rat's ass about money is a hopeless mental and moral cripple, and can't be trusted with anything important. Pepsi, for example, isn't important. Let 'em do as they please! Are operating systems important? Only in a practical sense, but I guess you could argue that practicality is enough.
Who really cares, anyway?
As for merely breaking the law, that in and of itself doesn't call for regulating the market; it calls for imposing penalties on the guilty party.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Damn, this morning I got to be a moderator for something boring (I can't even remember what), and now I'm not a moderator when it would come in handy. Not that the above post says anything that hasn't been said before ad nauseam, but it's the principle of the thing.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Why don't you use the CygWin port (it includes egcs) for Win32?
Mmm, yeah, egcs does namespaces, which mingw32 (or at least the version I have) does not.
mingw32, if you haven't run into it, is yet another win32 port, which uses the MS c runtime which comes with windows. I don't have the URL handy. Last I looked at the page (months ago) there was some kind of talk there about folding egcs into it.
Anyhow, I do have cygwin at work, but I haven't bothered at home (the difference is the T1:), and also that I have Linux and BeOS at home). It's cool, I really like it. Still, I'm not so sure about the morality of providing a good command line shell in windows; it makes it easier to keep using it. OTOH I do windows development, so Linux isn't really an option for doing that. So cygwin is really just making my life easier. It's cool to be able to conveniently tar/gzip things to send to friends who don't do windows.
But why do I still use MSVC for my own stuff? Well, I like to make sure things are portable. I try to make everything compile with both gcc and MSVC. I also like MSVC's text editor. I just do, deal with it:) It's also neat to compare the behavior of the two when you get into relatively dark corners like member templates and whatnot. They're both broken in different ways! It's cool to find what works with both. Maybe I need to get a life.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Consider trying to write an 8-part jazz piece with all parts going in all directions.
Notwithstanding the fact that I'm a lousy f*cking singer:), I think that's relevant. You can do two things at once, and sort of focus more on one than the other, but still be keeping an eye on both. Likewise singing along with the radio while driving in traffic. The driving part itself involves watching other cars, mirrors, shifting, steering, turning up the radio, etc . . . None of this is entirely on "automatic", and you're not really "focusing" on any one to the exclusion of others. Actually, I guess practice is crucial to all of this, and "practice" means, essentially, not having to think.
Hmmm . . .
Never mind.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Failing that, can you at least name some things which in your opinion might make one compiler better than another?
I mean, I've used both and for most of my purposes I don't see much difference, except that cl.exe knows to name the executable after the file with main() in it, but with gcc I have to tell it "-o exename". I hope you don't think that's a major issue. Innocent and poetic soul that I am, I don't pay much attention to the size of the executables these things barf up.
Or are you just rattling people's cages? If so, you can do better, I'm sure. Try gun control. That's always a good one. Here's an example:
"GCC was obviously designed by a whining, socialist liberal gun-control advocate. That's why it doesn't support namespaces: Because the liberals want to force us all to live together and be equal."
:)
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
The main one I have noticed was that they managed to break some system DLLs like MSVCRT.DLL.
Um, yeah, I may have heard something like that . . . Or maybe i heard about an entirely different instance of them breaking system dll's.:)
the breakage (changes in the behavior of malloc/free)
What kind of changes?
MSVC++ 6.0 SP2 seems to fix that problem . ..
What SP are they up to by now? IIRC SP2 was this winter, for a product released around October or something. Wow.
using cut-and-paste while debugging crashes the debugger
To be fair, that's just the IDE, not the compiler -- but it's still hilarious. MSVC6 is supposed to let you edit and recompile on the fly while debugging, isn't it? That almost sounds useful.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Slashdot Mirror
He never stated christianity should be a state religion
He didn't use those exact words, I suppose. He wants the decent, honest people of America to be forced -- by law, as far as I can tell -- to live according to the dictates of his bizarre superstitions. That's called a theocracy. The comparison to Iran was reasonable and appropriate, especially right now given the political situation in Iran. Watch the news from Iran closely; that's where we'll be too, twenty years after the Christians take over.
. . . the valid points of his argument
There weren't any. It was all just the usual "protect-the-children" hysteria, with no attempt made to quantify the damage that's allegedly being done, much less establish any causal link between the alleged damage and the alleged cause.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . although both of them aptly poked fun at the endless talmudic yammering that usually passes for discussion on Slashdot -- this discussion being a perfect example.
As for those who thought Hashnot was "too childish", I liked it and I'm an S. J. Perelman fan, so there.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Jesus, Christiansen, grow up already. Stallman may be an annoying monomaniac about software, but software is at least interesting -- you on the other hand are an annoying monomaniac about Stallman, which is just plain childish. Fine, you hate the guy. We got the picture. Grow out of it already.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . keep the ACLU out of it. Let people think for themselves and raise their own children.
In other words, you want LOCAL governments to engage in censorship. As if there were "good" censorship and "bad" censorship. The ACLU wants nobody to engage in censorship -- not the feds, not Fort Dodge IA, nobody. You want local tyrrany; Libby Dole wants federal tyranny; in my book, you're pretty much equal. The Constitution seems to agree with my view, though with a big enough majority you could probably get that changed.
Hooray for the ACLU, and to hell with all tyrants everywhere.
But I wouldn't tell you what to do, because it would set the precedent that you could tell me what to do.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but you seem to be saying that you have no problem at all with telling me what to do, if I happen to live in your community. Sure, that's a lot better than you coming to Cambridge and getting on my case in my community, and it's arguable that if I don't like the way Fort Dodge works, I don't have to live there (not that you necessarily live there, but we may as well both use the same examples). By the same token, though, you can leave the USA, too, if you don't like things there (this is a not-so-gentle hint to all the Christians out there, by the way). One could argue that all tax-paying citizens have an equal claim not to be pushed around by the community, be it a national community or a local one.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . wanted homosexuals stoned to death, along with adulterous women. He didn't want us to eat pork, either. Jesus was into tolerance -- as in "Go, and sin no more" -- but you and the rest of the thugs who call themselves "Christians" these days aren't much interested in what Jesus said, as far as I can tell. One of the very few areas where Jesus was more strict than the OT was divorce: He was against it, unconditionally. Modern evangelical US protestants think divorce is permissible, of course. Undesirable maybe, but certainly permissible.
Don't just talk about the Bible, read it.
. . . whom Christians serve
Most Christians serve political Ayatollahs like Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson. The Bible is just an excuse, and an empty symbol.
I think you folks have a very skewed idea of what Christianity is and who Christians are.
I pay close attention to the Christian right, along with the Aryan Nation crowd and all the rest. Sporadically violent fringe lunatics make me nervous, and I feel better if I know what they're up to.
I can't tolerate things that are wrong (sinful), but I can still love those who do wrong.
You should've put "wrong" in quotes, because your twisted notion of "wrong" has nothing to do with community standards in the United States, nor very damn much to do with Christ's teachings either (whence most of those community standards came, by the way). Don't give us this bullshit about "loving the sinner but hating the sin", either. Nobody believes that hypocritical nonsense. I've seen enough "Christian" literature to know the truth: You people are bigots. You hate everybody but your own little group, and you'd throw us all in prison if you could.
"I like you, but I don't like some of the things you do."
Crap. Are all "Christians" pathological liars? Sometimes I get that impression. "Christians" don't want to "help" gays, not even by their own insane definition of "help". They want to deny gays their plain rights under the Constitution. They want to physically "punish" gays and throw them in prison. Some have advocated concentration camps (I am NOT making this up). Most advocate Chairman Mao-style reeducation. Predictably enough, you're speaking in very vague terms about the details of your "intolerance"; would you care to clarify? What are the details, please? Who's your role model, Mao or Hitler? Be specific.
You've benefitted enormously from tolerance yourself, by the way. You are a clearly irrational member of a lunatic fringe cult, yet you're allowed to practice your odd rituals and profess your bizarre beliefs entirely unmolested. But we're not going to take orders from you. Why should we? The world is full of nut cults. One's as good as the next. What makes yours so special? Nothing at all, so don't go demanding any special privileges that the Hare Krishnas don't get. Enjoy your little hobby in peace, but leave the rest of us alone.
As for your unwillingness to "tolerate" that which the voices in your head call "sinful", you can talk all you like, but if you try to implement your holy intolerance you stand a fair chance of being thrown in jail for aggravated assault, homicide, or whatever. And rightly so. When you stop talking and start acting, you'll be just one more common criminal. Every common criminal has an excuse and a sad story. Every rapist or murderer claims his victim made him do it. It won't help you any more than it helps them.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Look, it's imperative that we Protect the Children, right? Since children are the property of their parents (this is a free market economy, my friends), it's up to their parents to decide from what they need to be protected. (Of course, if the parents are deranged or abnormal -- be they atheists, homosexuals, communists, Jews, or simply unwilling to protect their childrens' innocence -- then obviously their children must be protected from them.) Since it's impractical for parents to monitor their children every single moment of their lives, all children must be protected from all things that any parents might find objectionable (not counting atheist parents, of course).
So this library thing is an unmixed blessing. We're Protecting the Children, and if you're opposed to that, then by a simple process of elimination you're obviously trying to Corrupt the Children, and you should be in prison. (In prison, that is, along with all the children being tried and sentenced as adults at the behest of the right wing. Since prisons are a Good Thing and a Positive Moral Influence, it can safely be assumed that the prisons will Preserve the Innocence of these young inmates.)
Okay, now we've disposed of that issue and we can move on to the real meat of the matter: A lot of so-called "civil libertarians" (obviously these people aren't real capital-L Libertarians, because they're atheists etc.), adults should not be subjected to the restrictions that are placed on children, because adults are presumably able to handle things better than kids are. Naturally, it's obvious to any thinking person that Protecting the Children is so important that any sacrifice of the rights of adults is a small price to pay for Preserving the Innocence of Childhood; furthermore, most of those freedoms that you're giving up are not necessary anyway, and no decent person would want them. Still, a lot of people refuse to recognize these obvious facts and another approach is called for. So here it is:
Adults don't exist. There is no such thing as an adult. All this whining liberal babble about the rights of adults vs. those of children is meaningless, because everybody is a child, and therefore everybody's innocence must be preserved at absolutely any cost whatsoever. I can prove this by a simple exercise of inductive reasoning, as follows:
A child is anybody between the ages of -0.75 years and 18 years, right? Right. And as we know, A == A. True is true and false is false; if you are a child, you are a child. Period. Therefore, a child one day old is precisely as much of a child as a child who is 17 years, 11 months, and 29 days old. If either one of those innocent children walks into an R movie and sees a tit, the Precious Irreplaceable Innocence of that child will be hopelessly compromised. But let's stop and think here for a moment: In the case of that second child, what exactly happens to him or her on his or her 18th birthday? Any dramatic changes? No, of course not. S/he is just one day older, that's all. There's nothing magical about that. It's just common sense. So if a child is legally and morally equivalent to a newborn infant one day, and if nothing changes overnight, then that child is still legally and morally equivalent to a newborn infant the next morning! The notion that childhood ends on ones 18th birthday is thereby shown to be an absurdity. The change must be happening later on! But when? The day after one's 18th birthday? No, that can't be true, because the same reasoning applies. And you can take that reasoning and apply it day by day -- or better yet minute by minute -- throughout any given child's life up until the moment he or she dies and is gathered up into the arms of Jesus (unless of course s/he is an atheist or a Jew or a Democrat or something, in which case of course s/he will be deservedly condemned to roast for all eternity in the flames of Hell etc. etc.).
And there you have it: There is no such thing as an "adult". It's an imaginary state of being, and any legal reasoning which takes it into account must be considered null and void. This includes most of the Constitution (not counting the Second Amendment, of course).
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
He's putting down OSS and Linux. Very subtly but it's there. I suggest after you've "cooled off" that you re-read the article in it's entirety. Very carefully.
I swore off Kabbalism for Lent, so would you be kind enough to give any examples of what you're referring to?
Anyhow, it's called "free software", not "OSS" (an acronym which upleasantly refers also to a predecessor of the CIA, IIRC).
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
What "negativity and subtile [sic] comments"? He said some good things about Linux, and the bad things he said (about library versions and installing software) are simply true, in my experience. It wasn't a "subtle comment" anyway. He just said "this part sucks", basically. There's nothing subtle about that. Relax -- or, if you'd prefer not to relax, would you be kind enough to provide some examples from his essay?
. . . every now and then he makes a stab at Linux and it's users.
Again, I'd like to see some examples. Yeah, he mentioned in passing that there are a lot of mindless flamers who advocate Linux. So? Read Slashdot and tell me otherwise. It's a fact. However, he spent a lot more time thanking -- and responding to -- those who wrote thoughtful and resaonable responses.
The Linux Bunker Mentality (TM) becomes increasingly annoying and unforgivable as Linux becomes less of an underdog.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Unless you're a busy surgeon, hamburger flipper, etc. if you ask a question that has already been answered in a way that generally applies to all questions of the same kind, read damn it.
We're not your babysitters. Be an adult.
I'm a little bit unclear about which part of his post you're talking about here. Having twice read both your post and his post, I'm afraid I'm going to have to fall back on asking. Go ahead and flame me.
I don't know what you're screaming about. Take a chill pill.
Right back atcha. Your post is an obscene rant. His isn't.
do you know what a fucking kernel is? It has nothing to do with the WINDOW MANAGERS.
He never said it did have anything to do with window managers. He was talking about how the free software paradigm has led to a profusion of X11 window managers. This is good because I can choose my favorite, and it's good because diversity tends to lead to technical excellence. Blah blah blah; we've all heard all the arguments in favor of free software. However, it takes a religious fanatic to claim that something is perfect, and that goes for free software as much as anything else. Refusing to recognize potential pitfalls in a development process is a short road to hell; read Fred Brooks, or just get involved in a non-trivial project. If you already have been involved in such a project, think about what I'm saying. It's a genuine issue. If you're serious about free software -- and I gather that you are -- you won't do the cause any favors by willfully ignoring its failings.
It amazes me how opportunity scares you freaks. You love being stuck in a stiff frame of mind.
It's amazing how a free exchange of ideas scares "you freaks" (whoever "you freaks" may be; I'm willing to define "you freaks" as "people who flame anybody who tries to make them think"). You want a "stiff frame of mind"? Here's one: Try mindlessly flaming people who use operating systems other than your favorite. That's about as stiff as it gets.
at least I'm not living in your self-created House of Usher.
No, you're living in an entirely different "self-created House of Usher": One where all the "answers" are already known, and "debate" is a matter of reciting them in a loud voice.
. . . we wonder why this country's going commie in a few years
Who's this "we"? Given the ongoing swing to the right in US politics (I assume you're talking about the US), you must be spend a lot more time swallowing right-wing christian [sic] and "libertarian" [sic] propaganda than looking at the world around you and drawing your own conclusions. Gee, it sounds like your approach to politics is a lot like your approach to software: Revealed truth. What that has to do with literacy, I'm unable to imagine. The simple fact is that red-baiters in the US have always been violently opposed to education and the free exchange of information, and for damned good reasons: When you've got nothing to sell but snake oil, it pays to keep the marks ignorant.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . it seems unfair to frame the debate in GPL terms, from the GPL point of view, and I think the essay above drifts off in that direction a bit. Even if it were perfect, though, I really can't see how it could result in anything but yet another moronic flamewar.
So why bother? As the man says: Choose your favorite. I know it's heretical to say this on Slashdot, but choice is a good thing. Being able to choose between GNOME and KDE is a good thing; being able to choose between BSD and Lignux (or between Linux and Lignux, for that matter
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
I always knew there was something funny going on there, and here's the proof.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . there's a place for you, really!
. . . decrepit prose . .
Hey, that's pretty cool. If that phrase didn't embody what it describes, it would be completely meaningless. It's a shame you'll never get the joke . . .
. . . a futile argument, which I am invariably bound to win anyway,
Can you actually quantify the nature of your "victory"? . . . while accounting for the fact that every one of your statements is fallacious, irrelevant, and/or blatantly contrary to fact . . . ?
Einstein's conjecture (I chose that term wisely)
You chose that term just as foolishly as you choose everything else. You started off trying to claim that it was a fact (though you backed off to "'sound' working hypothesis" when you started to realize how wrong you were) when, yes, a "conjecture" is the best you can reasonably call it -- and a silly conjecture at that.
while your pathetic little anecdotal excursions into 19th century literature (which are flawed in their own right)
Since you know nothing of the subject, I can understand very well why you make no attempt to justify that statement. You seem to be trying to deny the existence of George Elliot, George Sand (both of whom were women writing under male names, so as not to be dismissed on account of their gender), Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, H.D., Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Stein, Nicola Griffith, and about four hundred others. I'm sorry, but these books exist, okay? They're on my shelf, big as life. Are you going to claim that somebody else wrote them? Or are you going to claim that Einstein said ("so it must be true!"(TM)) that their work -- which you've never read, nor in your ignorance even heard of in most cases -- was of no worth?
In short, you babble a lot, and God knows you repeat yourself endlessly, but you are absolutely incapable of putting together a credible defense of anything you say. You can't even give a coherent account of why you believe these things, let along why I should agree with you. All you can do is doggedly and proudly demonstrate your wretched lack of irony by attacking my nick. It's almost as if you're afraid that I'll mistake you for an intelligent person, and you're eager to set me straight on that point. If so, let me reassure you: I got the message a long time ago.
"If it didn't happen yesterday, it can't happen tomorrow", . . . can indeed serve as a sound working hypothesis
You're blind drunk, aren't you? The history of science is more tangential to this discussion than you think, but if you knew anything about it, you'd be aware that the last gasp of any dying paradigm is just that: "It didn't happen yesterday!" And it's always backed up with the argument from authority.
you not surprisingly managed to trivialize my position into "Nya, nya, nya! Boys are smarter than girls",
Er, no. I'd say that you trivialized it yourself, but that would imply that it wasn't trivial to begin with.
our twisted little 'mind' is defying all logic by perverting this approach into "If it didn't happen yesterday, it will surely happen tomorrow",
Jesus Christ! Any local high school in your area is bound to offer remedial reading classes for night students. Check it out. You'll be glad you did.
What I've been saying all along is that Einstein's conjecture is insupportable, and that your attempts to support it are irrational and free of fact. You've consistently failed to address any of the points I've raised. You would know better than I why this should be so, but that's another issue. The point here is that I've simply been saying that you've failed utterly to provide any valid reasons at all for anybody to take your "conjecture" seriously. Based on history, it seems likely that women are perfectly capable of doing theoretical physics; given the career of Marie Curie, it seems more than just "likely". Did I say "surely"? No, of course not. Perhaps Curie was an aberration of some kind; perhaps "she" was a transvestite. I never met the woman. The thing is, it's easy to prove that something exists; all you need to do is provide an example (e.g. Curie in this case, a sticking point which you've tried desperately to ignore). Proving that something does not and can not exist is another matter entirely, though. It can be done in mathematics, but that brings us to some clever ideas Kant had about the nature of truth, which are over your head anyway. In a nutshell, the ground rules for mathematics are fully known, because we are the ones who defined them, just as the syntax of C is fully known: You can look at the source for the compiler. This is not true of biology, sociology, or any of the other disciplines which are relevant to this discussion. So here you are: You're just barely bright enough to realize that a negative proof is not going to happen by any honest means, so you're resorting to fallacies and name-calling. This is not an entirely bad premise for a Monty Python sketch, but for any other purpose it's got some flaws.
you're indeed utterly incapable of following my arguments,
It's nice to see you continuing your perfect record of never even attempting to back up anything you say. While we're here, though, you should be aware that "arguments" is what we call a "plural". This means that it implies that there is more than one. Therefore, I laugh. You have one argument. It is the argument from authority. It is silly. You are a fool. Are those sentences short enough for you? I tried not to use any big, scary words that might frighten you off.
I'll say it again: The fact that you're too dumb to admit your error doesn't make you right. The possibility that you're too brainless even to recognize your error is not interesting to me. In fact, it's too depressing to contemplate, so I'm going to assume that you known damn well how idiotic your nonsense is.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
I was arguing that Einstein was acquainted with a woman who could be considered the most talented female physisist ever, yet Einstein still maintained that women are unsuited for theoretical physics.
If you want to evaluate Marie Curie's competence as a theoretical physicist, there is one and only one valid way to do that: Learn theoretical physics, read her papers, and base an informed opinion on the actual quality of her work. Not her chromosomes; her work. I doubt that you are capable of doing that; if you were, you wouldn't need logical fallacies to "prove" your point. You'd have the facts.
It may well be that Einstein, like you, had an emotional problem with recognizing the value of work done by women; as I demonstrated at the beginning of this thread, even somebody as bright as Einstein is capable of having blind spots. He was a human being just like the rest of us, except for the fact that he had some very profound insights into the nature of how things work.
You might say that he didn't argue from authority but from personal experience.
Where did you learn to read? Did you learn to read? You are arguing from authority. Not Einstein, you. You are telling me that "Einstein said it, so it must be true". You're wrong. If Einstein said it, it might be true, or it might not; the proximity of Einstein's name does not impart a quality of "truth" to things. Had Einstein taken the trouble to try to prove this, then we could look at his proof and evaluate that. But he didn't. He just shot his mouth off.
You asked why it would be relevant if you could point us to a woman who has made a significant contribution to theoretical physics.
Again, your reading comprehension is shockingly poor. I said that it was irrelevant that you could not point to a woman (other than Curie, who demolishes your entire thesis) who had made a "significant contribution to theoretical physics". I provided a very close analogy: When women were rarely taught to read, they made very little contribution to literature. If you had been alive in 1800, you would be yammering with equally self-assured illogic that women were incapable of writing novels. In 1800, the evidence for "male superiority" in that field was identical to your current evidence for "male superiority" in the field of theoretical physics. You're a regular warehouse of logical fallacies: "If it didn't happen yesterday, it can't happen tomorrow". I'm sorry, but that's pure nonsense, of the "man was not meant to fly" variety.
I never bragged about anything, least of all the accomplishments of my 'group' (assuming you're talking about males vs. females),
Your entire thesis could be stated as follows: "Nya, nya, nya! Boys are smarter than girls". Which is just plain pathetic.
especially considering that you seem to be part of the same group,
I am (I'm also white, middle-class, well-educated, and from the Northeast -- the whole nine yards
But since you're not a theoretical physicist (your incoherent drivel is a dead giveaway),
You're really addicted to that fallacy, aren't you? Heh. Since you can't effectively dispute anything I've said, you're desperately trying to find cheap excuses to ignore it entirely -- based on the imaginary qualities of a "group" to which you presume I belong. This is called "grasping at straws". You do it very gracefully. You must have a lot of practice.
. . . his conjecture seems to be safe for now.
As I've demonstrated, his conjecture is ludicrous. Furthermore, O Man of Science, do you know what a "conjecture" is? It's not something that's considered proven, for starters. If you knew that, you wouldn't have used the word, of course; but in your ignorance and confusion you've accidentally said something rational
Don't even dream that you might stand a chance of arguing me into the ground
You seem to be deriving some kind of comfort from the fact that you're too dumb to know when you've made an ass of yourself. Well, hey, if that's all you've got, go ahead and enjoy it. God knows it's not much.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Do you have anything resembling a point?
Yes, and I made it quite clearly. If you're too stupid to grasp it, that's not my problem, but here it is again: The mere fact that Einstein said it, doesn't make it true. Einstein himself would back me up on that, by the way. He was a theoretical physisict, not a priest. He wasn't into "revealed truth". He was into proof. The argument from authority is not proof.
it's safe to assume that Einstein knew what he was talking about when he referred to women as unsuited for theoretical physics, considering that he was in contact with all the important physicists of his time (including Marie Curie btw)
At that time most universities would not accept women as students. So how were they to get into the field? At that time, women were considered "incapable" of doing a great number of things which they have since started doing in large numbers, and quite successfully. At that time, there were surgeons as eminent in their fields as Einstein was in his, who declared that women weren't capable of doing surgery. Well, we've since found that that was a total crock. This is also true of any other profession you can name. In the eighteenth century and earlier, women were considered incapable of producing literature. By 1875 that particular notion had been laughed off the face of the earth.
Incidentally, are you trying to claim that Curie was incompetent? Or what?
Basically, you're drunk either way.
Instead of boring me to death in an effort to convince me that Einstein was an idiot,
You have successfully convinced me that you are an idiot, and that facts and logic bore you. Read my post again. I said that Einstein rejected Heisenberg's conclusions for emotional reasons. He did. This is a fact. Nobody said that Einstein was an idiot. I said that Einstein was fallible , which is, in fact, true. To back myself up, I provided a well-known example.
Can you point us to _any_ woman who has made a significant contribution to theoretical physics that approaches the works of Einstein, Newton, Maxwell, Heisenberg or just about everyone else whose name is still being taught at universities today?
Can you tell me why that would be relevant? (I know you can't -- it's a joke, see?
In other words, anecdotal evidence isn't worth much -- but you have anecdotal evidence which is completely tangential, while I have anecdotal evidence which is very much to the point. Get it? No, you don't get it. You don't get much, do you?
It's a commonly observed fact that people who brag about the accomplishments of "their" group never seem to have any accomplishments of their own to brag about. Gee, what an odd coincidence. If your failings in logic and reading comprehension are anything to go by, you're a perfect example.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
So much for Einstein's "feelings" -- or yours or mine, for that matter. Everybody's a fool outside his own field, and Eintstein was not a biologist. As demonstrated by my subject line, Einstein was even capable of developing blind spots within his field, on occasion.
Einstein's theories aren't credible because "Einstein was a genius"; we consider him a genius because his theories are credible on their own merits. If theories A through G (relativity, etc.) are credible on their own merits, it does not necessarily follow that theory Y must be credible, nor does it imply any justification for blowing off proving that one just because we liked the others so much.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Uh, logic? Logic?! Whazzat?"
Hello?!
years of Women's Studies have been [un]able to disprove said conjecture.
Heh.
"Women's Studies" has absolutely nothing to do with correlating brain size to intelligence. That's, like, a different field, Beavis.
Furthermore, you should bear in mind that we're talking about averages in this case. If you take two roughly identical standard distribution curves and offset one by, say, 5%, you've still got a hell of a lot more overlap than anything else. If you take one man and one woman at random from the general population, the odds are only slightly less than even that her brain will be bigger. All of this breaks down into pure gibberish when you talk about individuals. Contrary to your fond hopes of sharing credit for Einstein's work on the basis of shared gender, you and Einstein are both individuals (very, very different individuals) -- and scientific breakthroughs are made by individuals, not by genders.
Brain size doesn't correlate well with intelligence anyway. The fact that Einstein had a larger-than-average brain is what's called "anecdotal evidence". As an isolated factoid, it tells us nothing worth getting excited about. I once knew somebody whose standardized test scores were all in the 99% percentile; our anthropology professor asked him to stand up in class one day as an example of somebody with an unusually small skull. That doesn't prove anything either. It does suggest that our anthropology professor had a weird sense of humor, but we knew that already.
You should read a book called Yes, We Have No Neutrons by A. K. Dewdney; it's a brief and fun overview'n'debunking of pseudoscience. He clobbers the brain-size fetishists along with Freud, Murray'n'Herrnstein, and a few other deserving targets. I'm afraid he goes after CETI as well, but it's all in good fun.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Niven and Pournelle's demonstration of the Flying Elephant Menace irrefutably proved the necessity of feeding n trillion dollars every year to Lockheed et al. in exchange for giant space phasers and LePage Glue Guns.
Don't knock those guys, they're scientists.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
I don't see why we all just colaborate on furthuring KDE current technology position.
As far as I can tell, you're pissed off because people are working on the project they prefer, and using the software they prefer -- rather than working on what you tell them to.
Miguel Icaza and Red Hat sound more like Bill Gates day by day.
You shouldn't be drinking so early in the day. It's bad for your liver.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . but the name-calling only obscures the fundamental importance of the issues he has been raising.
What, you just noticed that? It's not a "but", though. It's the whole point.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
A computer operating system isn't a natural, unavoidable monopoly like the phone company.
There's an argument that it is something of a "natural monopoly", because of compatibility issues. Once you've spent thousands of dollars on software to run on OS Foo (much of which may be available for that OS only), and once all of your friends and business partners are using Foo, switching to OS Bar can be impractical and expensive, even if Bar has tremendous technical superiority. The quality of the operating system itself is not the only issue.
There is no need to regulate a free market for software unless some companies break the law.
IMHO there is no need to regulate any free market unless it coagulates and becomes un-free, or unless mindless, irresponsible cretinism (a.k.a. free enterprise) in that area is too destructive to be tolerated, as in the case of finance. I mean, if upper management at Pepsico is a bunch of babbling morons, that's okay, because Crystal Pepsi is harmless. By contrast, the securities industry is very heavily regulated because those morons are genuinely dangerous.
Anybody who actually gives a rat's ass about money is a hopeless mental and moral cripple, and can't be trusted with anything important. Pepsi, for example, isn't important. Let 'em do as they please! Are operating systems important? Only in a practical sense, but I guess you could argue that practicality is enough.
Who really cares, anyway?
As for merely breaking the law, that in and of itself doesn't call for regulating the market; it calls for imposing penalties on the guilty party.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Thank you.
That post was not a troll. It just wasn't.
Damn, this morning I got to be a moderator for something boring (I can't even remember what), and now I'm not a moderator when it would come in handy. Not that the above post says anything that hasn't been said before ad nauseam, but it's the principle of the thing.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Why don't you use the CygWin port (it includes egcs) for Win32?
Mmm, yeah, egcs does namespaces, which mingw32 (or at least the version I have) does not.
mingw32, if you haven't run into it, is yet another win32 port, which uses the MS c runtime which comes with windows. I don't have the URL handy. Last I looked at the page (months ago) there was some kind of talk there about folding egcs into it.
Anyhow, I do have cygwin at work, but I haven't bothered at home (the difference is the T1
But why do I still use MSVC for my own stuff? Well, I like to make sure things are portable. I try to make everything compile with both gcc and MSVC. I also like MSVC's text editor. I just do, deal with it
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Consider trying to write an 8-part jazz piece with all parts going in all directions.
Notwithstanding the fact that I'm a lousy f*cking singer
Hmmm . . .
Never mind.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Um, what don't you like about gcc?
What do you like about MSVC?
Failing that, can you at least name some things which in your opinion might make one compiler better than another?
I mean, I've used both and for most of my purposes I don't see much difference, except that cl.exe knows to name the executable after the file with main() in it, but with gcc I have to tell it "-o exename". I hope you don't think that's a major issue. Innocent and poetic soul that I am, I don't pay much attention to the size of the executables these things barf up.
Or are you just rattling people's cages? If so, you can do better, I'm sure. Try gun control. That's always a good one. Here's an example:
"GCC was obviously designed by a whining, socialist liberal gun-control advocate. That's why it doesn't support namespaces: Because the liberals want to force us all to live together and be equal."
:)
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
The main one I have noticed was that they managed to break some system DLLs like MSVCRT.DLL.
Um, yeah, I may have heard something like that . . . Or maybe i heard about an entirely different instance of them breaking system dll's.
the breakage (changes in the behavior of malloc/free)
What kind of changes?
MSVC++ 6.0 SP2 seems to fix that problem . .
What SP are they up to by now? IIRC SP2 was this winter, for a product released around October or something. Wow.
using cut-and-paste while debugging crashes the debugger
To be fair, that's just the IDE, not the compiler -- but it's still hilarious. MSVC6 is supposed to let you edit and recompile on the fly while debugging, isn't it? That almost sounds useful.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"