nod:) Peart's actually, from what I've seen, a first rate existentialist philosopher...("Freewill" is the most blatantly existentialist song i've ever heard...ever. just pay attention to the words and you'll be able to pass any college-level existentialism course:P) not to mention a DAMN fine drummer.
just to be a picky philosopher...:P although i enjoyed your post and you're right about most of it, just one minor point (well, major with me) that i'd like to take into contention.
"This _is_ the right approach to life."
It's mainly a Nietzschean thing, but you can find it in a bunch of other places (existentialism, field being, eastern philosophy). There are no facts, only interpretations. The world is not a collection of concrete "things" about which we can speak authoritatively. We, each of us, live within our own perspective and view the world in our own unique way. In the same way, there are no moral facts...what may be perfectly acceptable for one person may be abhorrant for another and _there is no way to say who is right_... in fact, there is no "right" there is only "right for me." This is exactly what Nietzsche meant in the quote i ended my last post on (the one about "the way"). For him, there is only "my way" there exists no "the way"...what is right for him is not necessarily right for anyone else (in an a priori sense), although this does not preclude it from being right for anyone else...in fact it may be right for everyone else, but it does not _have_ to be. (this does bring up some wierd recursive philosophical bullshit about there being a perspective in which there exists "the way" but this is something not even us philosophers like to go into:P)
For some people money may (and maybe _should_) be god, but it does not _have_ to be...THIS is the lie everyone is being fed...we are all made to think that there is stuff that we are _supposed_ to do by order of some holy writ somewhere that is eternal and immutable, but there isn't....the only thing we all must do eventually is die...apart from that, everything else is up to us. It's kinda scary but that's how it is...at least from my perspective *grin*
Like some of the other posters, I've no real wish to rewrite my essay-length post from the first Hellmouth article (subj: Some thoughts...) but seeing some of the responses to this article (most specifically, the one i'm responding to) have made me think a bit further on some points I had missed in my first bit.
Life is not a game. There is no way to win.
Some people persist in trying to live life as if it were a game (most people, in fact), keeping "score" with such things as money, posessions, power, etc. This is all bullshit. Yes, you need money to live off of, and you need money to do things (for the most part) but that is _all_ you need money for. I don't know who said this, but I once saw this quote somewhere: "In 100 years nobody will remember how much I had in my bank account, nobody will remember what kind of car I drove...but in 100 years the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of just one child." This explains, quite nicely, my feelings on all the "we get rich while they work at McDonalds, so we've won" posts. Life is not a competition, life is life. (this is why we have two separate words for these two ideas)
For some people, money, fame, power, etc. may be the things they feel themselves called to chase after...these things may be what makes them truly happy, but what is right for one person is not necessarily right for everyone (or anyone) else. Conforming to non-conformity is still conforming...if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice (any other Rush fans here?:P).
I have the technical ability to be a fairly well paid sys admin, webmaster, whatever and everyone I know boggles at the fact that I'm not...they constantly ask me why I haven't taken some position with some large (or small) company making ~60k a year for doing what is fun and natural for me. No matter how I try, I can't explain to them well enough that the last thing I want is to wake up at age 35 (i'm 22 now) and find that I've become the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (!) type of mindless worker-ant happily trundling along and giving away bits of my life (time) to someone just so I can have a nice car or a nice apartment. For me, I need to take the time and find something that I really love to do, something that I can define by being who I am instead of something that defines me by being what I do. It is also necssary that I can make money at this since I _do_ need to eat:P The key here is that I have come to understand that this approach to life is not for everyone, in fact it may not be right for anyone besides me. That still doesn't change the fact that I'd like people to understand how I feel about it, but that may come (or not) with time.
The greatest bit of advice I have to give is to make sure that while you're so busy trying to beat "them" you don't become them. As with my last post on the first article, I'd like to leave off with a bit of wisdom from a great philosopher...
"'This is my way, where is yours?' I said to those who asked me 'the way,' for 'the way' does not exist. Thus spoke Zarathustra." --Friedrich Nietzsche (from Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)).
First, who I am. I play bass, I wear funny clothes, I run linux, I am the son of deaf parents, I function best at night, I hate beer, I love wine, I have a life-sized Boba Fett cutout in my bedroom, my mp3 playlist is about a day long...I own none of the songs on cd, I listen to wierd music like Clutch, Stamford Prison Experiment, and Frank Sinatra, I have a degree in Philosophy. I am wierd. I am happy.
Sartre once said, in a play he wrote, "Hell is other people." What he meant by this is that everyone (you and me, too) wants everyone else to be like them, and will try (at every chance) to make people like them. Some of us have decent ways of dealing with this (like writing operating systems that are so damn good, you just really really want to use them) and some of us have icky ways of dealing with this (like insulting, deriding, and generally making people feel piss-poor about who they are). As people who are existentially true to ourselves, it is our responsibility to stop everyone else from trying to make us like them...it is our obligation to ourselves to hold fast in the face of whatever may come in order to remain true to our selves.
Being a geek is wonderful, but (I implore you) don't cheapen humanity by shutting yourself off from other people just because they are different. People fear and dislike that which they are not, some (namely jock/white-cap/j. crew disciple/etc. types) run from this by using their popularity with those like them as a spike on which to drive those who are not like them...conversely, others (namely geeks, the outcast, etc.) use their popularity with those like them as a spike to drive between themselves and the rest of humanity. (for the geeks) Have you ever asked a cheerleader/jock out to a movie? I have (she said yes;P) Even if you hate sports, try one or two. I have (hockey roolz:P). (now the jocks) Have you ever asked a geek out to a movie? I have (again, yes;P). Sit down with a couple friends and watch all three Star Wars movies in a row (I have...hehe:P)
Next section, high school. I didn't exactly like high school, but it didn't suck outright (getting up early was the worst of it). Junior high, however was a fscking nightmare. Catholic/private school is generally more easy-going than public school as far as the evil caste system is concerned...there's less stratification, more chance to inter-mingle with those in different circles. In all honesty though...it's high school...it matters about as much as new bicycle tires matter to a fish.
Next, college. College rules. Absolutely and utterly:) I had more fun in three days of college than I had my entire four year tour in the battlegrounds of high school. The walls between "castes" matter less, age matters less, people matter more. I've seen freshman jocks hanging out with senior geeks, senior girls dating freshman guys, and stoners of any year hanging out with anyone who sits on the futon next to them. Go to college...if you hate high school utterly, set your sights on college...make it your holy grail. It is worth it.
And now, Colorado. I am sickened. Ugh. The taking of human life was bad enough to have to endure, but the events that have followed have been nearly as bad. A wise man once said to me "Excuses are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink." This has held true for me to this very day. Something inside those kids went horribly wrong to the point that the taking of a human life seemed like a good idea. This is not normal. This was not cause by the trenchcoats. This was not caused by video games. This was not caused by movies. This was not caused by the opression of the popular. This was not caused by "the system" set up by administrators and counselors and teachers. All of this is just a large pile of bullshit excuses for what really happened, these kids decided to kill. The reason why they did, I cannot say, for I am not them. I've never taken a life so I can't really say what would make a person want to, I can't even postulate on what would make _me_ want to. A friend of mine died about a week and a half ago. He was 18 and his entire life was centered around Street Fighter arcade games. He was damn good at them too. He was the nicest kid I'd ever met and has never, to my knowledge said a word in anger to anyone. He lived in Bridgeport CT, not the greatest neighborhood to live in...that was where he died, shot dead in the street for no reason whatsoever. Not a fight, not a robbery, not even a few angry words...just senseless meaningless death. I'm still trying to figure out why it happened, but unlike those speculating on the tragedy in Colorado, I don't have any easy excuses to turn to.
Last, geeks. Being a geek is great! Being human is even better. Being happy with who you are is the best, though. If I was to speculate at all, I would wager that the killers in the Colorado tragedy were, unconsciously, VERY unhappy with who they were. Maybe they heard that they weren't as cool as everyone else so many times that somewhere in their minds, they started to believe it. In the end though, it was _their_ choice to believe as they wished. Just keep it together and don't let _anyone_ (jocks, teachers, parents, geeks, Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, ANYONE) tell you who you're supposed to be. As for high school, I suggest you heed the advice an ex-girlfriend once gave to me "Don't sweat the petty stuff, pet the sweaty stuff.";)
I'm not perfect, none of us are and none of us will ever be perfect in anyone's eyes. But I'm the best damn me I've ever seen.
"Let us not battle overlong with monsters, lest monsters we become...when you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you." --Friedrich Nietzsche
just a small correction to an otherwise praiseworthy post....it's not just nice that RH has their dist up for free, it's required:)
GPL and all that, ya know
otherwise, i echo your sentiment exactly... even though i didn't pay for my copy of RH5.2 (universities with t1 lines rawk) i probably will buy the next RH release mostly because i want to give something back...even if it's a couple bux to RH, it's still a couple more than they had before and it'll help them pay for raster to keep developing gnome (for a couple hours at least;P)
that having been said...i _like_ free stuff...mostly since i'm so broke, i've forgotten what money looks like...and because of the GPL i don't _have_ to buy RH's dist (or anyone else's for that matter) if i don't want to...but i want to:) I don't need the manuals (HOWTOs rawk), i don't need the cd media (cdr's rawk), and i don't need the support (usenet rawks;P) but i'll probably buy it just the same mostly so that i can feel i'm doing a small part to help the community out...since i can't code anything more advanced than 'hello, world' buying RH's (or anyone else's) dist is one of the small ways i can contribute.
linux, like life, is all about choice. at the risk of sounding too much like RMS, those of us who can't code worth a hill of beans should do all we can to help and support those who _can_ code so that _all_ of us can benefit from having the choices we all hold so dear, choices that the borg up in redmond (and most of the software industry) have been working so long to take away from us. whether you use GNOME or not, whether you use E or WM or fvwm2, whether you use X at all, we should all do our best to support these endeavors so that when the redmonites turn their lazy eyes at us, we will still, no matter what they do, have choices of _our own_ making and not theirs.
the choices micros~1 gives us remind me of a quip attributed to Ford, joking about his Model T, which only came in black: (paraphrasing here) "You can have it in any color you want, as long as it's black."
don't forget that they're also selling support so if you (or anyone else, for that matter) accidentally (or not) tramples your sandcastle they'll help you rebuild it:)
Ontology for beginners (was: He isN'T)
on
Can Linux Do it?
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· Score: 1
/** Preliminary Warning **/ This post is so far off topic as to be nearly back on topic. You have been warned. /** End Preliminary Warning **/
i've found a number of ontological problems in the discussion up to here...
1) "Saying that he's 'a Swede' is like saying that he is ethnically Swedish, which is true." I'd have to disagree here. Strictly speaking, saying that he's a Swede is actually more like saying he was born in Sweden or made a citizen of Sweden. i'll explore this further... *grin*
2) Language != Ethnicity (at least not a priori) I am an american (italian-american to be exact) and I speak english, but it is not my "first" language even though i speak little else. Being that both my parents are deaf, the first language I learned was sign-language. This does not make me deaf (as I am not). Moreover, this does not make me (a priori) a member of the deaf culture/ethnicity (as I am not). Knowing sign, being raised by deaf parents, and constantly interacting with deaf people throughout my life have all contributed to a deeper understanding of the deaf culture than most people have, but I am still not a "member" of the deaf culture.
3) heritage != ethnicity != cultural/national membership strictly speaking, heritage claims are normally expressed as a prefix to one's cultural/national membership (ie. italian-american, african-american, german-irish-chinese-french, etc.) and for any such hyphenated string of national/cultural labels, all but the last label point out ethnic/racial/heritage-based components of a person whereas the last label (and none but) points out that person's nationality. as a corrolary to this, one's heritage need have no effect on one's ethnicity nor one's personality...i know a lot of italian-americans (myself included) who couldn't pass for italian at midnight in a heavy fog irregardless of the situation. going further, one's main/first/natural language (when included, since it's usually implied that someone of, say, american nationality speaks english by default...although this is not always the case and, as such, it should be seen as a connotation only and not a denotation) is usually communicated as a prefix to the above string, delimited by the word "speaking" (ie. swedish-speaking-finn, cantonese-speaking-irish-french-canadian-martian, etc.) and, again, has absolutely no reflection on anything except the language that person uses/has learned as their main/first/natural language. one last bit, just to be complete...unless naturalized, a person living in a country other than their native country is normally expressed (in our lovely hyphenated string) as a suffix, delimited by the string "living-in" (ie. swedish-speaking-finn-living-in-america, cantonese-speaking-irish-french-canadian-martian-l iving-in-the-fiery-pits-of-hell, etc.) and, again, has absolutely nothing to do with anything except for denoting the physical place in which that person currently dwells.
so what, you ask? well, if my argument stands up, that would make Linus a Swedish-speaking-Finn-living-in-America. In an attempt to truncate this to a one-word label of what Linus' nationality is we would first lop off everything after (and including) the words "living-in" which gives us Swedish-speaking-Finn, and then rid ourselves of everything up to and including the word "speaking" which leaves us with Finn, _not_ Swede. Just for clarity if we were to truncate cantonese-speaking-irish-french-canadian-martian-l iving-in-the-fiery-pits-of-hell we would lose the same stuff as above, leaving us with irish-french-canadian-martian, then we would proceed to take our leave of the ancestral modifiers by sending all but the last label to the great void of/dev/null, leaving us with Martian.:)
and how completely does he know the english language?
i'd wager that a spanish-speaking person just learning english might have a tough time correlating words in english with the things they symbolize, too (special note here, I have absolutely no hard facts on the matter, so this is just pure conjecture)
which brings us to the next level of philosophical debate: definitions...in order to proceed, we must first ouline what the necessary and sufficient conditions would be such that, under those conditions, we would both be comfortable labelling someone as "english-speaking"
i'd estimate that less than 20% of computer users have the foggiest idea of what source code is, much less what it means for it to be open/closed...so take ~20% of the % of english-speaking humans who use computers and you've got a relatively small number... i wouldn't exactly call that "plain English"
i, however, _DARE_ you to find me one (just one, mind you) english-speaking person who has absolutely no clue as to what a window is. now _that_ is "plain English"
I definitely enjoyed this movie, one of the better ones i've seen in quite a while. That having been said, I've got to express the opinion that nothing will be able to touch the new Star Wars film. With all the hype/hope surrounding the new one, Lucas has to realize what is expected of him. We, all of us, expect nothing short of an instantaneous filmmaking classic. A film to be set down in the annals of history. I honestly hope it lives up to our hopes and expectations:) The new Star Wars isn't even out, yet in the minds of a great many people, it's already the movie of the year. Hell, people are shelling out 9 bux just to go see the damn _trailer_ for the thing
-dk To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
Slashdot Mirror
nod :) :P) not to mention a DAMN fine drummer.
Peart's actually, from what I've seen, a first rate existentialist philosopher...("Freewill" is the most blatantly existentialist song i've ever heard...ever. just pay attention to the words and you'll be able to pass any college-level existentialism course
-dk
just to be a picky philosopher... :P
... in fact, there is no "right" there is only "right for me." This is exactly what Nietzsche meant in the quote i ended my last post on (the one about "the way"). For him, there is only "my way" there exists no "the way"...what is right for him is not necessarily right for anyone else (in an a priori sense), although this does not preclude it from being right for anyone else...in fact it may be right for everyone else, but it does not _have_ to be. (this does bring up some wierd recursive philosophical bullshit about there being a perspective in which there exists "the way" but this is something not even us philosophers like to go into :P)
although i enjoyed your post and you're right about most of it, just one minor point (well, major with me) that i'd like to take into contention.
"This _is_ the right approach to life."
It's mainly a Nietzschean thing, but you can find it in a bunch of other places (existentialism, field being, eastern philosophy). There are no facts, only interpretations. The world is not a collection of concrete "things" about which we can speak authoritatively. We, each of us, live within our own perspective and view the world in our own unique way. In the same way, there are no moral facts...what may be perfectly acceptable for one person may be abhorrant for another and _there is no way to say who is right_
For some people money may (and maybe _should_) be god, but it does not _have_ to be...THIS is the lie everyone is being fed...we are all made to think that there is stuff that we are _supposed_ to do by order of some holy writ somewhere that is eternal and immutable, but there isn't....the only thing we all must do eventually is die...apart from that, everything else is up to us. It's kinda scary but that's how it is...at least from my perspective *grin*
-dk
Like some of the other posters, I've no real wish to rewrite my essay-length post from the first Hellmouth article (subj: Some thoughts...) but seeing some of the responses to this article (most specifically, the one i'm responding to) have made me think a bit further on some points I had missed in my first bit.
:P).
:P The key here is that I have come to understand that this approach to life is not for everyone, in fact it may not be right for anyone besides me. That still doesn't change the fact that I'd like people to understand how I feel about it, but that may come (or not) with time.
Life is not a game. There is no way to win.
Some people persist in trying to live life as if it were a game (most people, in fact), keeping "score" with such things as money, posessions, power, etc. This is all bullshit. Yes, you need money to live off of, and you need money to do things (for the most part) but that is _all_ you need money for. I don't know who said this, but I once saw this quote somewhere: "In 100 years nobody will remember how much I had in my bank account, nobody will remember what kind of car I drove...but in 100 years the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of just one child." This explains, quite nicely, my feelings on all the "we get rich while they work at McDonalds, so we've won" posts. Life is not a competition, life is life. (this is why we have two separate words for these two ideas)
For some people, money, fame, power, etc. may be the things they feel themselves called to chase after...these things may be what makes them truly happy, but what is right for one person is not necessarily right for everyone (or anyone) else. Conforming to non-conformity is still conforming...if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice (any other Rush fans here?
I have the technical ability to be a fairly well paid sys admin, webmaster, whatever and everyone I know boggles at the fact that I'm not...they constantly ask me why I haven't taken some position with some large (or small) company making ~60k a year for doing what is fun and natural for me. No matter how I try, I can't explain to them well enough that the last thing I want is to wake up at age 35 (i'm 22 now) and find that I've become the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (!) type of mindless worker-ant happily trundling along and giving away bits of my life (time) to someone just so I can have a nice car or a nice apartment. For me, I need to take the time and find something that I really love to do, something that I can define by being who I am instead of something that defines me by being what I do. It is also necssary that I can make money at this since I _do_ need to eat
The greatest bit of advice I have to give is to make sure that while you're so busy trying to beat "them" you don't become them. As with my last post on the first article, I'd like to leave off with a bit of wisdom from a great philosopher...
"'This is my way, where is yours?' I said to those who asked me 'the way,' for 'the way' does not exist. Thus spoke Zarathustra." --Friedrich Nietzsche (from Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)).
-dk
First, who I am. I play bass, I wear funny clothes, I run linux, I am the son of deaf parents, I function best at night, I hate beer, I love wine, I have a life-sized Boba Fett cutout in my bedroom, my mp3 playlist is about a day long...I own none of the songs on cd, I listen to wierd music like Clutch, Stamford Prison Experiment, and Frank Sinatra, I have a degree in Philosophy. I am wierd. I am happy.
;P) Even if you hate sports, try one or two. I have (hockey roolz :P). (now the jocks) Have you ever asked a geek out to a movie? I have (again, yes ;P). Sit down with a couple friends and watch all three Star Wars movies in a row (I have...hehe :P)
:) I had more fun in three days of college than I had my entire four year tour in the battlegrounds of high school. The walls between "castes" matter less, age matters less, people matter more. I've seen freshman jocks hanging out with senior geeks, senior girls dating freshman guys, and stoners of any year hanging out with anyone who sits on the futon next to them. Go to college...if you hate high school utterly, set your sights on college...make it your holy grail. It is worth it.
;)
Sartre once said, in a play he wrote, "Hell is other people." What he meant by this is that everyone (you and me, too) wants everyone else to be like them, and will try (at every chance) to make people like them. Some of us have decent ways of dealing with this (like writing operating systems that are so damn good, you just really really want to use them) and some of us have icky ways of dealing with this (like insulting, deriding, and generally making people feel piss-poor about who they are). As people who are existentially true to ourselves, it is our responsibility to stop everyone else from trying to make us like them...it is our obligation to ourselves to hold fast in the face of whatever may come in order to remain true to our selves.
Being a geek is wonderful, but (I implore you) don't cheapen humanity by shutting yourself off from other people just because they are different. People fear and dislike that which they are not, some (namely jock/white-cap/j. crew disciple/etc. types) run from this by using their popularity with those like them as a spike on which to drive those who are not like them...conversely, others (namely geeks, the outcast, etc.) use their popularity with those like them as a spike to drive between themselves and the rest of humanity. (for the geeks) Have you ever asked a cheerleader/jock out to a movie? I have (she said yes
Next section, high school. I didn't exactly like high school, but it didn't suck outright (getting up early was the worst of it). Junior high, however was a fscking nightmare. Catholic/private school is generally more easy-going than public school as far as the evil caste system is concerned...there's less stratification, more chance to inter-mingle with those in different circles. In all honesty though...it's high school...it matters about as much as new bicycle tires matter to a fish.
Next, college. College rules. Absolutely and utterly
And now, Colorado. I am sickened. Ugh. The taking of human life was bad enough to have to endure, but the events that have followed have been nearly as bad. A wise man once said to me "Excuses are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink." This has held true for me to this very day. Something inside those kids went horribly wrong to the point that the taking of a human life seemed like a good idea. This is not normal. This was not cause by the trenchcoats. This was not caused by video games. This was not caused by movies. This was not caused by the opression of the popular. This was not caused by "the system" set up by administrators and counselors and teachers. All of this is just a large pile of bullshit excuses for what really happened, these kids decided to kill. The reason why they did, I cannot say, for I am not them. I've never taken a life so I can't really say what would make a person want to, I can't even postulate on what would make _me_ want to. A friend of mine died about a week and a half ago. He was 18 and his entire life was centered around Street Fighter arcade games. He was damn good at them too. He was the nicest kid I'd ever met and has never, to my knowledge said a word in anger to anyone. He lived in Bridgeport CT, not the greatest neighborhood to live in...that was where he died, shot dead in the street for no reason whatsoever. Not a fight, not a robbery, not even a few angry words...just senseless meaningless death. I'm still trying to figure out why it happened, but unlike those speculating on the tragedy in Colorado, I don't have any easy excuses to turn to.
Last, geeks. Being a geek is great! Being human is even better. Being happy with who you are is the best, though. If I was to speculate at all, I would wager that the killers in the Colorado tragedy were, unconsciously, VERY unhappy with who they were. Maybe they heard that they weren't as cool as everyone else so many times that somewhere in their minds, they started to believe it. In the end though, it was _their_ choice to believe as they wished. Just keep it together and don't let _anyone_ (jocks, teachers, parents, geeks, Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, ANYONE) tell you who you're supposed to be. As for high school, I suggest you heed the advice an ex-girlfriend once gave to me "Don't sweat the petty stuff, pet the sweaty stuff."
I'm not perfect, none of us are and none of us will ever be perfect in anyone's eyes. But I'm the best damn me I've ever seen.
"Let us not battle overlong with monsters, lest monsters we become...when you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you." --Friedrich Nietzsche
just a small correction to an otherwise praiseworthy post....it's not just nice that RH has their dist up for free, it's required :)
;P)
:) I don't need the manuals (HOWTOs rawk), i don't need the cd media (cdr's rawk), and i don't need the support (usenet rawks ;P) but i'll probably buy it just the same mostly so that i can feel i'm doing a small part to help the community out...since i can't code anything more advanced than 'hello, world' buying RH's (or anyone else's) dist is one of the small ways i can contribute.
GPL and all that, ya know
otherwise, i echo your sentiment exactly...
even though i didn't pay for my copy of RH5.2 (universities with t1 lines rawk) i probably will buy the next RH release mostly because i want to give something back...even if it's a couple bux to RH, it's still a couple more than they had before and it'll help them pay for raster to keep developing gnome (for a couple hours at least
that having been said...i _like_ free stuff...mostly since i'm so broke, i've forgotten what money looks like...and because of the GPL i don't _have_ to buy RH's dist (or anyone else's for that matter) if i don't want to...but i want to
linux, like life, is all about choice.
at the risk of sounding too much like RMS, those of us who can't code worth a hill of beans should do all we can to help and support those who _can_ code so that _all_ of us can benefit from having the choices we all hold so dear, choices that the borg up in redmond (and most of the software industry) have been working so long to take away from us. whether you use GNOME or not, whether you use E or WM or fvwm2, whether you use X at all, we should all do our best to support these endeavors so that when the redmonites turn their lazy eyes at us, we will still, no matter what they do, have choices of _our own_ making and not theirs.
the choices micros~1 gives us remind me of a quip attributed to Ford, joking about his Model T, which only came in black:
(paraphrasing here) "You can have it in any color you want, as long as it's black."
don't forget that they're also selling support :)
so if you (or anyone else, for that matter)
accidentally (or not) tramples your sandcastle
they'll help you rebuild it
/** Preliminary Warning **/
l iving-in-the-fiery-pits-of-hell, etc.) and, again, has absolutely nothing to do with anything except for denoting the physical place in which that person currently dwells.
l iving-in-the-fiery-pits-of-hell we would lose the same stuff as above, leaving us with irish-french-canadian-martian, then we would proceed to take our leave of the ancestral modifiers by sending all but the last label to the great void of /dev/null, leaving us with Martian. :)
This post is so far off topic as to be nearly
back on topic. You have been warned.
/** End Preliminary Warning **/
i've found a number of ontological problems in the discussion up to here...
1) "Saying that he's 'a Swede' is like saying that he is ethnically Swedish, which is true." I'd have to disagree here. Strictly speaking, saying that he's a Swede is actually more like saying he was born in Sweden or made a citizen of Sweden. i'll explore this further... *grin*
2) Language != Ethnicity (at least not a priori)
I am an american (italian-american to be exact) and I speak english, but it is not my "first" language even though i speak little else. Being that both my parents are deaf, the first language I learned was sign-language. This does not make me deaf (as I am not). Moreover, this does not make me (a priori) a member of the deaf culture/ethnicity (as I am not). Knowing sign, being raised by deaf parents, and constantly interacting with deaf people throughout my life have all contributed to a deeper understanding of the deaf culture than most people have, but I am still not a "member" of the deaf culture.
3) heritage != ethnicity != cultural/national membership
strictly speaking, heritage claims are normally expressed as a prefix to one's cultural/national membership (ie. italian-american, african-american, german-irish-chinese-french, etc.) and for any such hyphenated string of national/cultural labels, all but the last label point out ethnic/racial/heritage-based components of a person whereas the last label (and none but) points out that person's nationality. as a corrolary to this, one's heritage need have no effect on one's ethnicity nor one's personality...i know a lot of italian-americans (myself included) who couldn't pass for italian at midnight in a heavy fog irregardless of the situation. going further, one's main/first/natural language (when included, since it's usually implied that someone of, say, american nationality speaks english by default...although this is not always the case and, as such, it should be seen as a connotation only and not a denotation) is usually communicated as a prefix to the above string, delimited by the word "speaking" (ie. swedish-speaking-finn, cantonese-speaking-irish-french-canadian-martian, etc.) and, again, has absolutely no reflection on anything except the language that person uses/has learned as their main/first/natural language. one last bit, just to be complete...unless naturalized, a person living in a country other than their native country is normally expressed (in our lovely hyphenated string) as a suffix, delimited by the string "living-in" (ie. swedish-speaking-finn-living-in-america, cantonese-speaking-irish-french-canadian-martian-
so what, you ask? well, if my argument stands up, that would make Linus a Swedish-speaking-Finn-living-in-America. In an attempt to truncate this to a one-word label of what Linus' nationality is we would first lop off everything after (and including) the words "living-in" which gives us Swedish-speaking-Finn, and then rid ourselves of everything up to and including the word "speaking" which leaves us with Finn, _not_ Swede. Just for clarity if we were to truncate cantonese-speaking-irish-french-canadian-martian-
Thus, by my reasoning, Linus is a Finn.
and how completely does he know the
english language?
i'd wager that a spanish-speaking person
just learning english might have a tough time
correlating words in english with the things
they symbolize, too (special note here, I have
absolutely no hard facts on the matter, so
this is just pure conjecture)
which brings us to the next level of philosophical
debate: definitions...in order to proceed, we
must first ouline what the necessary and
sufficient conditions would be such that, under
those conditions, we would both be comfortable
labelling someone as "english-speaking"
*pout* :(
I was tryin to make a funny
i'd estimate that less than 20% of computer
users have the foggiest idea of what source
code is, much less what it means for it to
be open/closed...so take ~20% of the % of
english-speaking humans who use computers
and you've got a relatively small number...
i wouldn't exactly call that "plain English"
i, however, _DARE_ you to find me one
(just one, mind you) english-speaking
person who has absolutely no clue as to
what a window is. now _that_ is
"plain English"
anyone else get a good laff at the name of the :)
spokesperson from HP defending Intel?
*Mike Borg* ROFL
I definitely enjoyed this movie, one of the better ones i've seen in quite a while. That having been said, I've got to express the opinion that nothing will be able to touch the new Star Wars film. With all the hype/hope surrounding the new one, Lucas has to realize what is expected of him. We, all of us, expect nothing short of an instantaneous filmmaking classic. A film to be set down in the annals of history. I honestly hope it lives up to our hopes and expectations :)
The new Star Wars isn't even out, yet in the minds of a great many people, it's already the movie of the year. Hell, people are shelling out 9 bux just to go see the damn _trailer_ for the thing
-dk
To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
lol! good werk ;P
:P
but you still need the login and pass
baaaaaaaah.... :P
real men compile *grin*
-Gouki