Difficult as it is for machines to divine humour, especially sarcasm, from ordinary discourse, it is even more difficult for those firmly entrenched in the regressive left to see anything other than sexism, misogyny, homophobia (sic), Islamophobia (sic), trans*-phobia (sic), ableism (sic), microagreesions (sic), patriarchal oppression, and a plethora of other supposed and manufactured ills even in something as innocuous as wishing someone "good morning." Radical, third wave, intersectional (sic) feminists, social justice (sic) warriors (screaming juvenile whingers/whiners or SJWs), and their fellow travelers are all notoriously dour and humourless. To those who are hopelessly immersed in this crazy world of regressive propaganda and group think (a very funny term that really means unthinking masses) humour that satires them and their vicious, illogical and insane ideology and behaviour is tantamount to a hate crime.
Compared to that, AI humour recognition is a piece of cake.
I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the recent flood of SJWs attempting to force 'Codes of Conduct' onto some of the more high profile projects hosted at Github and elsewhere (eg. PHP, Ruby, Python). From what I've seen, Github may be complicit in this and it may explain why they are slow to respond. Many frustrated developers want a way to shut them down and keep them out. Eric S. Raymond recently wrote in "Why Hackers Must Eject the SJWs" that their infiltration is a clear and present danger to the meritocracy that is hacker culture, the very culture that built the Internet. I agree whole heartedly with him on this.
If Github doesn't deal with the SJW infestation hackers could and should set up another service that will keep them out. In other words, hackers need a "SJW Free Safe Space."
Many years ago I compared the general economic forecasts of economists to those of the astrologers in what when then American Astrology magazine, a semi-scholarly attempt at presenting astrology as a legitimate field of scientific inquiry. I followed each of their predictions form five years. The results revealed that economists were right less than 1% of the time while astrologers were right about 10% of the time. Since we all know that astrology is bogus the results say a lot about economists. Maybe it's time to do the study again.
Of course Edward Hadas' grasp of economics is questionable, he's an economist. The field of Economics long ago retreated from the reality of economics when it transformed itself from an honest inquiry of human economic behaviour into the netherworld of suspect and irrational ideology.
As far a civility goes, some have argued that civility is really a form of censorship ('political' correctness) that actually discourages and even prohibits open discourse of important subjects and issues. See the article by Randal Kennedy, "The Case Against Civility," The American Prospect, republished December 19, 2001.
Corporations may constantly, insistently and annoyingly claim that their products are innovative when clearly they are not but, for me, the word that is abused the most would also rank up there with most overused as well. I am referring to the word, experience.
During the last number of years, the word 'experience' has been popping every everywhere associating itself with products and corporations. Corporation XyZ no longer talks of quality products at a fair price but offer us an "XyZ experience." Customer service representatives are pleased to give us a great "XyZ experience" instead of courtesy, promptness and (above all) service.
Can the experience. Give me quality and fair prices along with prompt, courteous and effective customer service.
Strange how New Yorkers were initially hostile to the original World Trade Centre buildings when they were built. With time that hostility was muted down to mere indifference. The only people who seemed to actually like them were the tourists. It wasn't until they were destroyed that they became 'iconic' and a 'symbol of American freedom and ingenuity' even for New Yorkers too. Living historical revisionism in action.
I suspect that freedom of speech was somewhat freer during the NS-Zeit in Germany than it is currently anywhere under 'political' correctness. Anyway, so-called 'hate-speech' laws is not really an attempt to stop the hate but an attempt to control political discussion about those subjects that the alleged haters care about. These tend to be focused around immigration, migrant workers and refugees. If you can control and manage what people talk about on a particular subject, you can also control the outcome. This is what 'political' correctness is really all about.
Someone said that cars would never catch on because they were too noisy and smelly. Someone said that television would never catch on because movies were so much better. Someone even said that nobody needs more than 640K in a personal computer. Just look where we are now.
All you need to do is give someone a fun today to play with and they'll find a way of doing something interesting, perhaps even useful, with it.
I guess that's why the world is in so much trouble. I agree, people don't consider the morality of things and that is the problem. Morality does factor in all of my decisions and I try always to do the right thing. I don't always make the right choices, but who does? There are many people, however, who do try factor morality into the situations in their lives. There are many people who do not drive cars because they don't want to contribute to global warming and the over consumption of fossil fuels. There are people who are fighting against 'globalism' (global capitalism) which is a good and noble cause; unfortunately many of them are proponents of socialistism which is as great an evil, if not greater, than globalism. I personally consider both global capitalism and international socialism as immoral systems.
The vast majority do not of people don't care about morality. They just want to live their lives in whatever way they want mired in decadent consumerism and becoming grossly and angerously obese in the process. Just take a look at today's North American youth: fat and out of shape addicted to to a lifestyle that is idle and complacent. I wouldn't be surprised if there will be an outbreak of gout as these kids become adults over the next deacde. The fruits of a decadent and immoral consumerist lifestyle.
If people factored morality into their technology decisions Microsoft would long ago been swept off the fact of the economic world by outraged consumers intent on punishing them for their illegal and immoral activities and perhaps because of GNU/Linux proprietary software would only be a distant unpleasant memory.
You may not consider these things to be moral problems but they are. In fact, any decision we make that affects the health and well being of ourselves or others is always a moral question and insofar as it affects other people it is political also. Too few people understand this and that is at the heart of the problem with our society.
For me the issue has always been more about the morality than the technology. Proprietary vs Free/Open Source. Monopoly vs diversity. Most importantly I consider the nature of the people/companies delivering the products. We all know that Microsoft software is incredibly unrealiable, insecure and too big and slow, but even if they were delivering the best software in the world I would never buy or use it if I had the choice. It is because I object to and abhor their business practices.
Microsoft itself has been mired in legal problems almost from its inception. It is probably the most sued company on the planet and it has been convicted of economic crimes in many different countries. They then simply ignore whatever legal judgements against them using their incredible financial clout to challenge whatever the courts rule. They seem to be completely immoral. It is for moral reasons more than anything else that keeps me away from using their software.
Yes, technology is important, but morality is even more important.
I agree with this but, really, when was the last time Hollywood came up with a new and original idea? It's all remakes, sequels and unimaginative renditions of comic books chock full of tecnhological wizardry instead of anything that has any artistic merit. They would rather take advantage of a previous success milking it until it dries up completely before moving on to exploit something else that has already been done. Very few people seem to have a voice or a vision about anything in the entertainment industry these days. For them, if an idea made money in the past, it must be able to make money again.
If there is anything that can be said about today's Hollywood is that they have turned mediocrity into a virtue and the mundane into an art form. Star Trek has run it's course and there really isn't anything else to say in the genre. It's time for us to move on and leave the Federation and the universe that it created to history. Don't expect Hollywood to come up with it though.
The plaintiff Nees, said, "I don't see why they spent all of that time and money when they knew it would be in vain. They knew the law wasn't on their side, yet they continued to fight."
Ask Microsoft. They are constantly suing and being sued regardless of their guilt or innocence or even the law. They have all the money and the people suing them usually don't. They can hold out for years until their opponent's money runs out. If they lose in court, they simply appeal and in the end, when and if an appeal goes against them, they simply ignore it. Then the whole process starts all over again. Meanwhile, they keep raking in their ill gotten gains.
I guess the Kokomo mayor thought he might be able to bluff his way through this one. In the end, he probably decided that the political fallout from not complying with the law or appealing the court's decision would be too great. A politician's thinking process is unlike that of a kleptocrat's, errr I mean executives of a major corporation. The executive worries only about money. The politician worries about votes.
In any programming project the choice of language always becomes an issue. One choice is, for me, easy. I would never choose a language that in any way supports Microsoft. Period. That means no ASP, no C# or anything else that M$ may have up its sleeve, including M$ extensions to things that they have `embraced.'
It's the moral thing to do. Each time I choose Free Software, make Free Software or contribute to Free Software we all grow just a little bit more free.
It would be nice if everyone who received an invite would send them back with the little note, "I've converted to Linux. I'm not your slave anymore."
That would be very nice indeed.
Re:I Agree with Monkey Boy. Where's OS Innovation?
on
Ballmer on Innovation
·
· Score: 1
Exactly. Joe Windows, as "Rick and Roll" calls him, isn't worth the effort. They are coming to us in droves because of what we offer -- plain ordinary freedom. If ever Joe Windows decides that he wants freedom he will choose to join us.
The "big guys" are addressing our needs now because they see a powerful growing market. Microsoft has only one direction to go, down.
Joe Windows is worth only our disdain. He is the slave who supports the slaver system.
In science you don't simply show the results of your research, you also describe you arrived at them. Science has always been like that. With more and more science becoming dependent on computers, it naturally means that one must describe the algorithms used to arrive at those results.
The easiest way to do that is to show the source code.
These "closed source" scientists need to remember their high school math teacher's admonitions to show their work.
It doesn't really matter what system of government there is, it always boils down to government of special interests, by special interests, for special interests.
Science Includes Philosphy, Mathematics, Rhetoric
on
The Unknown Newton
·
· Score: 1
We must remember that the fields of study which we today Science are really very limited in its scope compared to what was considered science in Newton's time and before.
In the broadest sense, Science or scientia is simply knowledge. In classical terms, the four main branches of Science were Mathematics, Philosphy, Rhetoric, and the so-called Practical Sciences.
It is only in recent centuries that we have divorced the more esoteric disciplines from Science and reduced it to the Practical, that is to say, the Empirical Sciences. When we talk about Science today, we are really talking about only the Empirical disciplines.
Science in the truest sense embraces all knowledge and not just the practical, and that was reflected in the way they viewed it.
While I have great respect for Dr. Mandelbrot, it seems that he has become yet another victim of the "financial markets have patterns" scam. And that's what it is, a scam.
Issac Newton once fell for the falacy that Astrology can predict the course of history because he exagerated the importance of the very gravity he helped identify and name. Berating former student and long time friend Sir Edmund Halley who questioned Newtons adherence to the `science', Newton quipped, "I have studied it, Sir. You have not!"
It seems that Dr. Mandelbrot has confused the real world with the similarities in patterns which can be found in the equations of the very fractals he invented. The real world doesn't work that way. Just because it looks like there is a correlation, doesn't mean there is one.
As it turns out, all of the empirical sciences themselves are pretty poor in explaining a great many things. The closer one looks at nature, the more theories get thrown out the window. Just as Ptolomey gave way to Copernicus and then to Kepler and Einstein, and even now with visible and measurable matter thought to occupy less than one quarter of the universe, the success of science has at best been illusary. The more we think we know, the more we are confronted by things we do not.
Science is an asymtotic persuit in which the ultimate truths can never be known. Predicting the financial markets may just be one of those things.
The problem is that SCO, Microsoft or any other company have even worse problems.
Unless and until a company has in place a development process that conforms to independent and internationally recognized standards such as ISO-9000 and has been certified as such you have no guarantee that what they are doing conforms to good engineering practices.
The truth is Linux development has always been open. SCO and other private companies keep their development process secret. Who knows what they are hiding behind all that secrecy.
For my money, I'd like to see Linux development conform to ISO-9000.
... so does it matter which pile you place it on or in what order you dole out the stuff?
Sure, this generation is brain damaged. What do you expect when their parents were all doing drugs at Woodstock and other dubious places? Brain damaged music for brain damaged people.
Real music is Beethoven and Schubert and Mozart and Wagner.
Yet another contribution to that age old conundrum. Other posters have weighed in on whether they like it or not, and whether it is even a new genre citing similar approaches going back over a hundred years.
An Anonymous Coward dismissed it entirely saying it was not even literature. Isn't it, though?
The one point that caught my eye was the last sentence. "Mr. Brown is marketing..." That said it all.
Is it art, or marketing ploy? Considering that even television commericals are considered by some to be art, one wonders.
I've always been in the "art for art's sake school." The fact that Mr. Brown is marketing his 'genre' diminishes the value of his 'literature', at least for me. But does that mean that it's not art?
Slashdot Mirror
Difficult as it is for machines to divine humour, especially sarcasm, from ordinary discourse, it is even more difficult for those firmly entrenched in the regressive left to see anything other than sexism, misogyny, homophobia (sic), Islamophobia (sic), trans*-phobia (sic), ableism (sic), microagreesions (sic), patriarchal oppression, and a plethora of other supposed and manufactured ills even in something as innocuous as wishing someone "good morning." Radical, third wave, intersectional (sic) feminists, social justice (sic) warriors (screaming juvenile whingers/whiners or SJWs), and their fellow travelers are all notoriously dour and humourless. To those who are hopelessly immersed in this crazy world of regressive propaganda and group think (a very funny term that really means unthinking masses) humour that satires them and their vicious, illogical and insane ideology and behaviour is tantamount to a hate crime.
Compared to that, AI humour recognition is a piece of cake.
I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the recent flood of SJWs attempting to force 'Codes of Conduct' onto some of the more high profile projects hosted at Github and elsewhere (eg. PHP, Ruby, Python). From what I've seen, Github may be complicit in this and it may explain why they are slow to respond. Many frustrated developers want a way to shut them down and keep them out. Eric S. Raymond recently wrote in "Why Hackers Must Eject the SJWs" that their infiltration is a clear and present danger to the meritocracy that is hacker culture, the very culture that built the Internet. I agree whole heartedly with him on this.
If Github doesn't deal with the SJW infestation hackers could and should set up another service that will keep them out. In other words, hackers need a "SJW Free Safe Space."
Many years ago I compared the general economic forecasts of economists to those of the astrologers in what when then American Astrology magazine, a semi-scholarly attempt at presenting astrology as a legitimate field of scientific inquiry. I followed each of their predictions form five years. The results revealed that economists were right less than 1% of the time while astrologers were right about 10% of the time. Since we all know that astrology is bogus the results say a lot about economists. Maybe it's time to do the study again.
Of course Edward Hadas' grasp of economics is questionable, he's an economist. The field of Economics long ago retreated from the reality of economics when it transformed itself from an honest inquiry of human economic behaviour into the netherworld of suspect and irrational ideology.
As far a civility goes, some have argued that civility is really a form of censorship ('political' correctness) that actually discourages and even prohibits open discourse of important subjects and issues. See the article by Randal Kennedy, "The Case Against Civility," The American Prospect, republished December 19, 2001.
http://prospect.org/article/state-debate-case-against-civility
Corporations may constantly, insistently and annoyingly claim that their products are innovative when clearly they are not but, for me, the word that is abused the most would also rank up there with most overused as well. I am referring to the word, experience.
During the last number of years, the word 'experience' has been popping every everywhere associating itself with products and corporations. Corporation XyZ no longer talks of quality products at a fair price but offer us an "XyZ experience." Customer service representatives are pleased to give us a great "XyZ experience" instead of courtesy, promptness and (above all) service.
Can the experience. Give me quality and fair prices along with prompt, courteous and effective customer service.
Strange how New Yorkers were initially hostile to the original World Trade Centre buildings when they were built. With time that hostility was muted down to mere indifference. The only people who seemed to actually like them were the tourists. It wasn't until they were destroyed that they became 'iconic' and a 'symbol of American freedom and ingenuity' even for New Yorkers too. Living historical revisionism in action.
I suspect that freedom of speech was somewhat freer during the NS-Zeit in Germany than it is currently anywhere under 'political' correctness. Anyway, so-called 'hate-speech' laws is not really an attempt to stop the hate but an attempt to control political discussion about those subjects that the alleged haters care about. These tend to be focused around immigration, migrant workers and refugees. If you can control and manage what people talk about on a particular subject, you can also control the outcome. This is what 'political' correctness is really all about.
Someone said that cars would never catch on because they were too noisy and smelly. Someone said that television would never catch on because movies were so much better. Someone even said that nobody needs more than 640K in a personal computer. Just look where we are now.
All you need to do is give someone a fun today to play with and they'll find a way of doing something interesting, perhaps even useful, with it.
I guess that's why the world is in so much trouble. I agree, people don't consider the morality of things and that is the problem. Morality does factor in all of my decisions and I try always to do the right thing. I don't always make the right choices, but who does? There are many people, however, who do try factor morality into the situations in their lives. There are many people who do not drive cars because they don't want to contribute to global warming and the over consumption of fossil fuels. There are people who are fighting against 'globalism' (global capitalism) which is a good and noble cause; unfortunately many of them are proponents of socialistism which is as great an evil, if not greater, than globalism. I personally consider both global capitalism and international socialism as immoral systems.
The vast majority do not of people don't care about morality. They just want to live their lives in whatever way they want mired in decadent consumerism and becoming grossly and angerously obese in the process. Just take a look at today's North American youth: fat and out of shape addicted to to a lifestyle that is idle and complacent. I wouldn't be surprised if there will be an outbreak of gout as these kids become adults over the next deacde. The fruits of a decadent and immoral consumerist lifestyle.
If people factored morality into their technology decisions Microsoft would long ago been swept off the fact of the economic world by outraged consumers intent on punishing them for their illegal and immoral activities and perhaps because of GNU/Linux proprietary software would only be a distant unpleasant memory.
You may not consider these things to be moral problems but they are. In fact, any decision we make that affects the health and well being of ourselves or others is always a moral question and insofar as it affects other people it is political also. Too few people understand this and that is at the heart of the problem with our society.
For me the issue has always been more about the morality than the technology. Proprietary vs Free/Open Source. Monopoly vs diversity. Most importantly I consider the nature of the people/companies delivering the products. We all know that Microsoft software is incredibly unrealiable, insecure and too big and slow, but even if they were delivering the best software in the world I would never buy or use it if I had the choice. It is because I object to and abhor their business practices.
Microsoft itself has been mired in legal problems almost from its inception. It is probably the most sued company on the planet and it has been convicted of economic crimes in many different countries. They then simply ignore whatever legal judgements against them using their incredible financial clout to challenge whatever the courts rule. They seem to be completely immoral. It is for moral reasons more than anything else that keeps me away from using their software.
Yes, technology is important, but morality is even more important.
I agree with this but, really, when was the last time Hollywood came up with a new and original idea? It's all remakes, sequels and unimaginative renditions of comic books chock full of tecnhological wizardry instead of anything that has any artistic merit. They would rather take advantage of a previous success milking it until it dries up completely before moving on to exploit something else that has already been done. Very few people seem to have a voice or a vision about anything in the entertainment industry these days. For them, if an idea made money in the past, it must be able to make money again.
If there is anything that can be said about today's Hollywood is that they have turned mediocrity into a virtue and the mundane into an art form. Star Trek has run it's course and there really isn't anything else to say in the genre. It's time for us to move on and leave the Federation and the universe that it created to history. Don't expect Hollywood to come up with it though.
The plaintiff Nees, said, "I don't see why they spent all of that time and money when they knew it would be in vain. They knew the law wasn't on their side, yet they continued to fight."
Ask Microsoft. They are constantly suing and being sued regardless of their guilt or innocence or even the law. They have all the money and the people suing them usually don't. They can hold out for years until their opponent's money runs out. If they lose in court, they simply appeal and in the end, when and if an appeal goes against them, they simply ignore it. Then the whole process starts all over again. Meanwhile, they keep raking in their ill gotten gains.
I guess the Kokomo mayor thought he might be able to bluff his way through this one. In the end, he probably decided that the political fallout from not complying with the law or appealing the court's decision would be too great. A politician's thinking process is unlike that of a kleptocrat's, errr I mean executives of a major corporation. The executive worries only about money. The politician worries about votes.
In any programming project the choice of language always becomes an issue. One choice is, for me, easy. I would never choose a language that in any way supports Microsoft. Period. That means no ASP, no C# or anything else that M$ may have up its sleeve, including M$ extensions to things that they have `embraced.'
It's the moral thing to do. Each time I choose Free Software, make Free Software or contribute to Free Software we all grow just a little bit more free.
It would be nice if everyone who received an invite would send them back with the little note, "I've converted to Linux. I'm not your slave anymore."
That would be very nice indeed.
Exactly. Joe Windows, as "Rick and Roll" calls him, isn't worth the effort. They are coming to us in droves because of what we offer -- plain ordinary freedom. If ever Joe Windows decides that he wants freedom he will choose to join us.
The "big guys" are addressing our needs now because they see a powerful growing market. Microsoft has only one direction to go, down.
Joe Windows is worth only our disdain. He is the slave who supports the slaver system.
In science you don't simply show the results of your research, you also describe you arrived at them. Science has always been like that. With more and more science becoming dependent on computers, it naturally means that one must describe the algorithms used to arrive at those results.
The easiest way to do that is to show the source code.
These "closed source" scientists need to remember their high school math teacher's admonitions to show their work.
It doesn't really matter what system of government there is, it always boils down to government of special interests, by special interests, for special interests.
In the broadest sense, Science or scientia is simply knowledge. In classical terms, the four main branches of Science were Mathematics, Philosphy, Rhetoric, and the so-called Practical Sciences.
It is only in recent centuries that we have divorced the more esoteric disciplines from Science and reduced it to the Practical, that is to say, the Empirical Sciences. When we talk about Science today, we are really talking about only the Empirical disciplines.
Science in the truest sense embraces all knowledge and not just the practical, and that was reflected in the way they viewed it.
Issac Newton once fell for the falacy that Astrology can predict the course of history because he exagerated the importance of the very gravity he helped identify and name. Berating former student and long time friend Sir Edmund Halley who questioned Newtons adherence to the `science', Newton quipped, "I have studied it, Sir. You have not!"
It seems that Dr. Mandelbrot has confused the real world with the similarities in patterns which can be found in the equations of the very fractals he invented. The real world doesn't work that way. Just because it looks like there is a correlation, doesn't mean there is one.
As it turns out, all of the empirical sciences themselves are pretty poor in explaining a great many things. The closer one looks at nature, the more theories get thrown out the window. Just as Ptolomey gave way to Copernicus and then to Kepler and Einstein, and even now with visible and measurable matter thought to occupy less than one quarter of the universe, the success of science has at best been illusary. The more we think we know, the more we are confronted by things we do not.
Science is an asymtotic persuit in which the ultimate truths can never be known. Predicting the financial markets may just be one of those things.
Don't forget that Alvin was also responsible for helping Dr. Robert Ballard to find the wreck of the Titanic.
Unless and until a company has in place a development process that conforms to independent and internationally recognized standards such as ISO-9000 and has been certified as such you have no guarantee that what they are doing conforms to good engineering practices.
The truth is Linux development has always been open. SCO and other private companies keep their development process secret. Who knows what they are hiding behind all that secrecy.
For my money, I'd like to see Linux development conform to ISO-9000.
Really? That's how C++ got started.
Sure, this generation is brain damaged. What do you expect when their parents were all doing drugs at Woodstock and other dubious places? Brain damaged music for brain damaged people.
Real music is Beethoven and Schubert and Mozart and Wagner.
No, this post is not a troll, just a rant.
Yet another contribution to that age old conundrum. Other posters have weighed in on whether they like it or not, and whether it is even a new genre citing similar approaches going back over a hundred years.
..." That said it all.
An Anonymous Coward dismissed it entirely saying it was not even literature. Isn't it, though?
The one point that caught my eye was the last sentence. "Mr. Brown is marketing
Is it art, or marketing ploy? Considering that even television commericals are considered by some to be art, one wonders.
I've always been in the "art for art's sake school." The fact that Mr. Brown is marketing his 'genre' diminishes the value of his 'literature', at least for me. But does that mean that it's not art?