While imperative languages often have some functional aspects, they're not "pure." And functional programming is all about purity.:-) Just because I can do things like "map" in Ruby or python doesn't make the language functional. One problem that Python has as far as functional programming is that it doesn't optimize tail recursion. Which is very common in functional languages.
You should try to learn Haskell if you ever get a chance. I'm about 2 weeks into it and it is blowing my mind coming from Ruby and Python. Normally I can pick up languages pretty easily, but this.... this is just insane. It is like learning to program all over again. You aren't getting the full experience if you're just using a few functional aspects of a imperative language.
Doesn't Wine on the Mac use X? Or does it translate to Cocoa? X apps on a Mac are aweful. Though sometimes handy... such as in the case of managing VMware Server from a Mac workstation by running the Linux admin tool and displaying locally.
IIRC, Apple did this when they moved from their old OS to their current one and it did wonders to ease the transition while still allowing Apple to break free of the shackles of backwards compatibility.
But it wasn't exactly seamless. I mean, when you were running an Classic app, you knew it and there were various inconsistencies. It was acceptable only because you had a run a few major apps such as Quark or whatever in Classic. But with Windows, you'd pretty much be running EVERYTHING in this Win32 "classic" mode. There's just so much crap out there that your average Windows user has come to depend on.
Also, consider how long WIndows XP has been alive. Shit, XP is, what 6 years old now and it is STILL the dominant version of WIndows out there? Developers will be forced to continue targeting it and almost everything will run in Classic on the latest Windows. Apple only had to get a few key developers on board (Adobe, Quark, and a few others) to drive the migrations to OS X. Microsoft has hundreds. I think Microsoft is stuck with Win32 for the foreseeable future.
Can somebody tell me what is so god damn difficult about implementing reliable electronic voting? It is 2008, for christ's sake! How hard can it be to take a vote, log it to a central database, and print a freakin reciept!? This is like 40 year old technology, people. We've been trusting ATM's to do much more complex things for decades. WTF?
> Sorry, I don't get this. Java has been succesful at this (as well as other languages that can run on top of the JavaVM)
Not as a general purpose user applications. Java's popularity is primarily server-side.
> Flash has been succesful,
And it runs in you web browser and generally uses HTTP to communicate with servers.
> heck, even Linux and stuff like MAME is spreading all over with some effort.
What in the world does MAME have to do with anything?
> Let's not talk about enabling things in different ways, let's talk instead about how, after all these years with ever-increasing hardware performance, we're building layers upon layers of inefficient software so we can have crappy application performance all over again. Trying to run applications with Javascript in a browser on a mobile phone, can it get more wasteful than that?
No argument here. I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T have a better common application platform besides the web browser and javascript. I'm just saying that the web browser seems to be what we have to work with when it comes to getting a new service out to the masses. Sadly, the best technologies don't often win, especially when the field is already well established. We end up with the lowest common denominator.
> Use Java, it's not perfect, but it's widespread, it gets the job done and is reasonably fast.
I've experienced nothing but trouble with Java applications. They tend to be very picky about what version of the VM you're running. On Linux, what a lot of vendors end up doing is shipping their own version of the VM with the application. At least they used to. I haven't used Java much on Linux lately. Java is spoiled for me. The really successful Java applications such as Azureus and Limewire are bloated and slow. I'd much rather use a native application. Usually I prefer smaller apps that do a single thing well. LIke for torrents, I use uTorrent on Windows and Transmission on OS X. There's no need for Java apps.
Why can't we leave the web alone, use it for what we use it for now and develop a new rich application protocol if that is what people want. It might end up replacing the web like the web replaced gopher, which replaced Archie before it, or it might become an addition to the suite of internet protocols. Why does my web browser have to be all things to all people?
Because getting a fundamentally new common runtime environment and/or protocol to all people is f'ing hard. Especially now that the 'net has matured. With maturity comes momentum and inertia.
As for me personally, maybe I am (just a collection of memories). As in, what is your personality except learned responses to stimuli? I don't believe it's qualitatively different. No soul or anything. So what am I except my stored programming?
Certainly that is the ultimate question... "What am I?" Having personally experienced various hallucinogenic states that might be described as "ego-loss," I might suggest that there is something higher, more fundamental than mere personality traits. I hesitate to say "soul" because that is just so loaded with specific religious connotations. But I feel like there is a perspective... a point of view that has no inherent properties, dimensions, or personality.
Are you sure "you", the conscious feelings, aren't just rebuilt when needed from your memories?
Certainly my conscious feelings are rebuilt when needed. I just think there is something that is experiencing those feelings.
Maybe you are only the bias between what could be done and what your memories incline you to do.
Yes, I think "bias" might be a good word for it.
You might be right that I don't have a specific consciousness but instead merely create a running dialog in my head of what I'd have had to be thinking to justify my actions.
No, i don't think I am right about that. Normally you may only identify with your thoughts and rationalizations. But I think if you can manage to quiet those thoughts, you might find that there is something else experiencing them. And the act of experiencing causes more thoughts... but ultimately you are not your thoughts.
Well, so it's subjective. If you think you die when you sleep, you'll be the type who dies during a braintape. Instead, if you feel your consciousness continues through minor inconveniences you'll happily "survive".
You're still looking at it objectively. You're talking about what someone else might think. What would *you* experience? Whether not you believe "you" die when you sleep, the fact remains that when you wake up in the morning, there is a subjective consciousness that continues to be aware. Or at least I assume this is the case. Maybe you (and I am talking about you specifically) don't really have a self-aware subjective consciousness and are no more than a set of memories and personality traits acting out a life. I hope this is not true, but I'm starting to suspect that it is based on how closely associate your sense of self with a specific set of memories and personality traits. Don't make me think solipsist thoughts! It makes me feel lonely.;-)
So no, in an objective way that you could show the continuity of any given brain wave, the clone is not thinking your thoughts. But they're identical (in the beginning) to yours, so does it matter?
Of course it matters! You're just creating a twin that branches off later than normal. That's not at all the same as giving me immortality.
OK, so which "you" is you, the "you" you are now or the "you" you were this morning? Why should time be different than space? You are constantly changing, yet you consider the entire continuum from cradle to grave to be "you". Why not consider a copy "you"?
The question isn't whether or not I consider a copy of me to be me. The question is whether or not I can exerience being both at the same time. As far as I know, I can only subjectively experience being one person at a time. I never subjectively experience, in real time, being my copy. A copy of me would be separate person for all intents and purposes.
Especially if you can merge back at some point?
Why don't I try merging with you? You probably wouldn't like that much, woudl you? Especially if it was your body that had to be tossed out after the merge.
Wouldn't you be concerned about killing the copy? Would you try merging two identical twins together? Identical twins are really just copies of each other that branched off much, much earlier. They seem to be two unique people. Wouldn't a copy made from myself now eventually be considered a unique person? Imagine making a copy of yourself and then sending it off to another country to have a life. Then you meet back with it 20 years later. You might fight over which one of you is the REAL you. Wouldn't that be awkward?
What, in your opinion, would make a copy of you significantly different than a genetic twin of you? What if you were copied when you were very young? Maybe too young to even remember it happening. WOuld you still consider your copy to be you?
I'm not, you are just having trouble seeing my perspective (not being me!) - my answer is that they are both "you", just like your mother's baby was you even though you don't share any memories with it...
That's just it. I have no trouble seeing it from your perspective. This is one of those rare cases where I am unable to see it from my own perspective. As strange as that may sound. I simply cannot conceive of being two people at the same time. I know what it is like to have past versions of me. That's no problem because those versions of me no longer exist. There was never a point when two or more of those versions had to occupy the same moment in time.
You try it. Try to imagine what it wold be like to make a copy of yourself. It sounds like you've only really considered what it would look like from the outside. From an objective perspective. Try thinking of it subjectively.
I don't see the "Which branch gets your subjective consciousness" question in your original post. You asked if they believed copies would share a brain or not. They clearly answered not, then went on to other things.
I didn't mention branches because you hadn't brought it up yet. I did say consciousness, not brain.
What sort of answer do you want? It seems pretty obvious. If we imagine a ctrl-c/v type copy and paste, the you who existed before the ctrl-c is of course the same one who exists after. And it's similarly easy to see that once I've scanned you, my later making a duplicate won't affect you at all. The 'you' who gets created may or may not know it's different (did everything else get duplicated? did you notice the copying?) but would be a different creature and thus about as likely to share a brain with you as a pine-cone would be.
I didn't say anything about "sharing a brain." I'm talking about subjective consciousness. I'm wondering if you believe it is possible (at least in theory) to transfer your personal, subjective awareness from one brain to another. Personally, I think it would be incredibly cool, but not likely. Simply cloning my mind without transfering my subjective awareness seems rather pointless.
The objective answers seem all too obvious.
But I'm not asking about objective. I'm asking about the subjective.
But the sense of self is subjective. So that's where it gets fuzzy. Some people see brain-taping/cloning as immortality because they'd lose only tiny bits of their life at each death
I suspect that these people haven't really put much thought into the nature of subjective awareness. Unfortunately, I think people tend to identify too closely with they're specific memories and thought habits rather than the more mystical "I" that is able to experience these things.
- others see anything that interrupts their consciousness, even for a second, as true death.
From my perspective, that would be perfectly fine to do - you would indeed have two different "you"s. It could be something akin to reproduction,
I'm talking about from a subjective perspective. If I copy myself (that is to say, "my program") to another body, but am unable to experience that other body, then you can hardly say that "I" have been copied. I've merely been cloned. It is not the same thing.
but most likely that would be outlawed (because it would cause a cascade failure - the only people that would copy themselves obviously like to copy themselves, and so would do so until all resources are taken)
What's the advantage to copying yourself?
My preferred implementation would be that you branch - in that your two running programs are generating experiences/memories, but that you could later rejoin and merge the two datasets (the programs probably don't change much, so you would just have both memories).
You're avoiding my question. Which "branch" gets your subjective consciousness? You can't possibly expect to be able to experience both "yous" at the same time, can you? If so, what is the link between the two that allows you to be two different people at the same time?
If someone millennia from now figures out a way to read brainwaves and decode the original program, and someone finds a way to imprint that onto different hardware (like another body), and someone builds a REALLY big radio telescope, they could point the telescope at a black hole that has reflected your brainwaves from your last moments alive back to Earth, read in your brainwave, and put your program/soul/whatever into a new body.
Ah, but this begs the question of what would happen if you ran your "program" on two or more different bodies at the same time. Presumably if you could copy your program to one new body, you could copy it to many, yes? Would "you" somehow be able to see out of two sets of eyes simultaneously? Or would each copy just act as a clone/twin of you without your actual consciousness? If you guess the former, then you have to figure out what is binding the two brains to allow "you" to experience them at the same time. Which is a bit of a paradox because then you have to admit some kind of higher consciousness that is at least partially independent of the program that you copied to the brains. And that contradicts the original assumption that "you" are just a program running on some hardware.
Experienced hacker types don't bother with such mundane details.:-)
Seriously, I've been building PCs on and off for more than 15 years (oh God, has it been THAT long?). I have nothing to prove by putting yet another motherboard in a case, plugging in a video card, and connecting the hard drive. If I can get someone else to do the based research and put together a suitable system for me, all the better.
Yup, they (Paystar) are not breaking Apples license. However, anyone that trys to get support from Apple for these boxes is going to be in for a bit of a shock.
Last I checked, Psystar makes it pretty clear that the configuraiton is not officially supported by Apple. They seem to be catering specifically to the "hacker" types who don't mind dealing with little details like not being able to run the automatic updates. If they were claiming/implying to be some kind of "official" Mac clone, that would be another story, but they're not.
I use a MBP/OSX (both as a laptop and desktop) so I get why you would want your preferred OSX setup, but really, shouldn't the software accommodate what you want to do with the hardware? For the most part, the same software is available for both platforms. Computers are just tools to be used to accomplish your task.
I hear this sentiment a lot.. but what does it really mean? Are there people who aren't using computers as tools to accomplish a task? Is hacking an OS to work on X piece of hardware NOT an appropriate task? What if you enjoy that sort of thing? I know I do at times. That's what Linux was largely about for a long time. It is only fairly recently has the focus in Linux shifted towards end-user usability. Screw the "computers as a tool" mindset! I say have fun. Pick your favorite platform and hack it to make it do what you want... and then hack it some more!
This reminds me of a friend who used to be a bit of a BSD hacker and played around with all kinds of odd hardware like VAXen. Now he just uses Windows because it runs a lot of software that he uses and he doesn't do much fun stuff anymore. He seems depressed and uninspired and frequently complains about how retarded WIndows is.... but it runs his apps. He's given in to this idea that "computers are just tools." It is kind of sad, really.
If you think the vast majority of UNIX applications aren't installed by root, to a system-wide location, or that the vast majority of OS X apps aren't installed to/Applications (also by root), then you're either a fool or delusional.
In OS X, applications don't install to/Applications as root. By default, they merely need the user to be in teh admin group. Which is not the same as being root. A user in teh admin group is still rather limited as far as teh system goes. An admin user can elevate to root, if necessary, but that always requires username and password. Like sudo. But just installing to/Applications does not require elevation.
We should be able to kill 'em. I'd hate to advocate additional regulations but, well, something really should be done.
You mean like spam filtering? Seriously, there's no excuse these days to be using a mail account that doesn't have decent filtering. You shouldn't be getting more than a few spams a week. I realize that it doesn't solve the problem, but oh well.
given that you have such murky distinctions now that you have "applied physics" (as opposed to theoretical and experimental physics of 20 years ago), 100% engineering is too absolute a statement to reflect reality. What these people do is often bona fide research.
Fair enough, but that still doesn't answer my questions about the future of science. If all scientists do as you suggest is the smartest and work under NDA, where does that leave science education? How can science really flourish if nobody is allowed to talk in detail about what they're workign on? Where's the peer review?
That doesn't mean they agree to be public servants while they do it. Doing what you love and getting paid a shit load of money for it makes it only more fun.
At least being "public servant" is more realistic and rewarding if you don't expect too much of it. What you're promoting is an American Dream that only exists for a very small minority of people. How sad is it to talk to a group of kids whose only dream in the world is to play professional sports or be a movie/pop star when you know that probably none of them in the room will make it?
The real producers of ideas will never be the masters of their works.
Oh? Google is not owned by the people who wrote the page rank paper? Perhaps Ford never made it as a car manufacturer. No, you are right. Steve Jobs could never make profit on his and Woz's designs... too much of a techie... not pratical enough.
Exceptions that prove the rule.
Not all geeks can become successful businessman
Very few, in fact. Generally speaking, it isn't in their nature.
But it takes legal structure to capitalize on an idea to make it possible for a geek to become a success.
Define: success. More often than not, that structure just gets exploited by large, faceless corporations who own the geeks and their work.
Not everyone can negotiate a good deal for what they have to offer. But everyone deserves that chance. And by making it impossible to own ideas for even a little bit, you force all the smart people away from being idea man and into being lawyers and doctors.... ie, the gatekeepers to accessing the "system" that you've set up. If you ever wonder why the pace of innovation has slown down, this is why.
Actually, i haven't noticed a slowdown in innovation. Just a maturing of an industry. What I have noticed is a decline in science education in the US.
In my opinion the difference between Kosher and Organic is that Kosher doesn't pretend to be healthier, only more pious. Organic cannot make that same claim.
Well, pork is considered to be "unclean." Just spiritually unclean? Physically unclean? Who knows.
Anyway, I don't see anything wrong with putting a label on something that says it doesn't have growth hormones. It isn't really for you to judge why someone may or may not want to base their purchase on the label.
I totally agree with you that buying half a cow is a sound investment. I work with pork and half a whole pig in my freezer right now. I was not questioning her decision to save money by buying in bulk. I was instead using the show to illustrate the point that someone who can probably not really afford to spend 10-15% more for groceries is doing so out of a perception that organic is dramatically healthier despite the fact that it has never been shown to be anything better than "as good" as food produced via traditional production systems.
Maybe it just makes people feel better to go down to a local farm and buy an organic half of a cow. Certainly there's something to be said for feeling good about the food you're eating even if, technically, it isn't much different than any other food.
for now this is probably true most places. However, how long do you think that will last. I've already noticed that there are a handful of the more exotic produce that are only available as "Organic" at the Target around the corner (The only dried apricots are the one I first noticed since I love dried apricots). We've reached a point in this country where rhetoric about agriculture is more important that the science used to bring about what was originally called the green revolution (referring to modern agriculture, not the current meaning referring to energy efficiency and recycling). We have companies like McDonalds and KFC dictating terms by which the animals they use have to be grown in an attempt to proactively satisfy the demands of a small, but vocal group of consumers. How long before large grocery chains start making the same demands of produce farmers?
Not soon enough, IMO. It is good to see consumers pushing back against the faceless, amoral corporations putting shit-food on grocery store shelves and restaurant tables. Is the consumer always right? Nope, but I'd rather not leave it to companies like Monsanto to decide what labels are appropriate to put on food and what are not.
This country is probably the most "Health" and "Nutrition" obsessed in the western world, and is yet among the unhealthiest. It's call the "American Paradox."
It is only a paradox if you fail to see who, specifically, is unhealthy and who isn't. I think you'll find that the type of people buying organic foods are, on average, much healthier than those buying heavily processed "junk" foods (for contrast). This isn't to say that the organic food is MAKING them more healthy, just that the type of person who would go out of their way to buy organic/fresh foods is probably eating better. They'd probably just about as healthy if they bought non-organic equivenents. The problem is that there is a much larger section of the population that DOESN'T really care about what they eat until the scale starts tipping over 200lbs or they have their first heart attack. They don't buy fresh/organic foods. They eat a lot of fast food, Yo-Yo diet, etc. This is what makes American unhealthy on average, not the obsession with organic foods or nutrition, per se.
The name comes from what was originally called the "French Paradox" for the opposite reason (they couldn't care less about their fat intake and are, on average, incredibly healthy by comparison to the US).
From what I know about the French, they're much more interested in good, high quality foods (even if it might be fatty or wh
oh, how i am tired of pointing out to everyone who says what you say what they are really saying. grants=tips. wages are things you can negotiate. mathematicians used to work for tips. of them don't anymore. 90% of mathematicians that get ph.d's don't stay in academia. most of the work they do is covered by NDAs. they already figured out that working for you is a losing proposition. congrats on living in your world of "free" information.
We'll see how that works out for Science in general. I'm guessing that the education of new scientists will suffer greatly from having so much research done under NDA. What will they teach in schools if all the really interesting stuff is classified as proprietary trade secrets? Will all of science one day be taught and practiced under the arm of corporate entities. Will scientists even be able to move from on entity to another? I mean, with all that proprietary knowledge and all...
as for the "world hasn't fallen appart yet" comment, the progress which could have been made and hasn't been is kindda hard to measure. but people who work for tips are not likely to be the same people as the ones who carefully think through what is the most useful way to present information to you so that you could do your job in the most useful manner
You're right, they are not the same people. The scientists just come up with the ideas, the engineers put it to use. What you're talking about a world full of 100% engineers and I don't think that is going to help progress.
- they aren't paid to do so. patent doesn't give you ownership as in ownership of a land. it's a limited-time ownership -- in recognition of the fact that ideas can be replicated for free unlike real-world materials. grants are really the ultimate slap in the face though.
You don't suppose it is a slap in the face to find out that corporation X owns every single idea you ever came up with while on the clock? You can be fired in a heartbeat and all your hard work stays neatly tucked away in some corporate lab. At least you know that the work you do under a public grant will be available to anyone no matter where you go after the grant is finished.
they make a statement that the best of people must gravel for money and not be able to sell the products of their live's work whereas the lepricons who use their work get to get wealth off of it.
The best of artists and scientists do what they do because they love doing it. They'll always be grovling for money. If not because of limited grants, then because their jobs are being offshored (yeah, bio-tech can be off-shored too). The real producers of ideas will never be the masters of their works. The masters are the CEO's. The businessmen. Just like in music, successful musicians are not the masters of their work in most cases. The real masters are the record labels.
First off, Kosher is a religious term. The rules around Kosher production and processing of food stem not from science but from scripture. The purveyors of Kosher foods are not lying to anyone.
Neither are purveyors or pesticide free or growth hormone free foods.
They are indicating that if you believe Kosher food is required to get into heaven, then this food will not be what stops you.
So people only have a right to know where their food comes from if it is a matter of heaven and hell?
Why not complain that poor jewish families are being forced to pay a "Kosher Tax" when they don't really need to (scientificaly speaking).
That out of a desire to keep her children healthy she buys organic food whenever possible (in one episode they even went to an organic farm and bought half a cow for their freezer).
FWIW, buying a half cow like that directly from the farmer can actually be a good money saving technique if you happen to eat a lot of beef. This is what my retired (social security only, no pension) inlaws often do. Plus it has the added psychological benefit of knowing where your food comes from. A good lesson for children, IMO. That it is "organic" is only icing on the cake. I think this is great. I wish more people would take the time to think about where their food comes from.
I don't see the problem here.
I have to ask you whether or not you've ever bothered to look into the FDA regulations on food for human consumption. It is illegal to sell any food that is contaminated with dangerous chemicals like pesticides. I'm assuming the hormone reference is to either chicken (which is flat out hilarious, who would want to inject millions of birds with hormones individually even if it were legal. It's totally and urban myth.) or rBST in milk (which has been injected directly into humans during research trials and was found to have no reactivity because Bovine Somatotropin is too different from Human Somatotropin to interact with the hST receptor.) which is probably better for the environment than just about any "Organic" production method because you produce more milk from less cows, so you have less cow shit and the potential for pollution of ground water by it. Both of these urban myths have been debunked several time but no who believes them is willing to investigate them, or believe it when they do come across the truth.
Look, I'm not going to debate the significance of hormones or pesticides in food production. The fact remains that you have to go out of your way to buy organic, which most people don't. The vast majority of food on the shelves is what you would call "normal."
I don't really think the "organic" movement is necessarily about hormones or pesticides. Those are just details. It is more about getting people to THINK about the food they consume. Maybe people will sometimes think wrong. Maybe growth hormones aren't really bad. That isn't the point. The point is to think more about the impact your food purchases have on your health, local and foreign economies. Essentially take control over your own food intake rather than just buy whatever instant, "just add water" crap FDA will allow Kraft to put on the shelves.
hehe... now you invited it. I say fuck the programmers. Outsource their jobs into oblivion
Well that doesn't work. Either way, someone is doing the programming. And it doesn't help the mathematicians anyway. They're even less likely to get royalties for their work if the programmers are in another country.
until they are forced to sell blood to sponsor their programming hobby... or beg a local college for a "job"... forget mortgages. You don't "work" for a living. You just press buttons. Oh, and proletariats of the world unite! yep, I think you've proved who you really are now. But, hey, I am sure someone will come by and call me paranoid because I call you on what you really are.
What did you call me? I think I missed that part. It seems like you hinted at "Communist," but I'm not quite sure.
The question you need to ask yourself is why hasn't the world fallen under the iron fist of Communism because the matheticians aren't getting paid by the programmers to use their work? Fact is that many scientific fields offer the results of their work to the public. And in many ways, that is what keeps science going. Why not bio-science as well?
Someone else will pick up the slack and find ways to improve crop yields without holding producers hostage.
You mean some other fool will come by from whom the "workers" can steal their ideas?
First of all, you're operating from the premise that someone can really "own" an idea in the first place, much less have it "stolen" from them. I'd agree that you can have credit stolen, but ownership? Was never owned in the first place.
Second, you missed the part where I suggested that the research could easily be covered by national and international grants, as many other types of research already are. There is no theft if the expectation from the outset is that the results are free to anyone who wants it.
People have the right to make true statements about their products, even and especially if it's irrational to buy based on that.
This is a problem because of the implied statement as to the safety of other products. It's a scare tactic because the labeling is intentionally misleading.
You're reading too much into it. It is just a statement of fact. Does labeling something as "kosher" imply anything about the safety of non-kosher products? Nope. It just lets Jews know what foods they can buy and what foods they can't. You may not feel that "kosher" has any practical meaning, but some people do. Same way with "organic" or "no growth hormones" labels. It really isn't any of your business.
I used to be a huge fan of the Organic Foods movement because it meant that farmers received more money for their goods. I have never read a reputable article that shows organic to be any healthier for the consumer or the environment, but until recently farmers were getting screwed when they sold their goods so I thought it was a good idea because it was essentially those with too much money that were paying the Organic Tax. The problem is that now people are convinced that it is superior to normally produced food and people who cannot afford the extra money are forced to purchase organic either out of fear, lack of options, or peer pressure (applied by not only friends but half of the talking heads on TV)
Oh give me a break. Who is being "forced" to buy organic foods? All major grocery stores are CHOCK FULL of processed, pesticide/hormone laden foods. One has to go out of their way to buy organic and I don't see that changing any time soon. The "talking heads on TV" don't have nearly as strong effect as the advertisers of processed "instant" foods do.
Besides, the "organic" fad is now giving way to the "buy local" fad. So who cares?
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While imperative languages often have some functional aspects, they're not "pure." And functional programming is all about purity. :-) Just because I can do things like "map" in Ruby or python doesn't make the language functional. One problem that Python has as far as functional programming is that it doesn't optimize tail recursion. Which is very common in functional languages.
You should try to learn Haskell if you ever get a chance. I'm about 2 weeks into it and it is blowing my mind coming from Ruby and Python. Normally I can pick up languages pretty easily, but this.... this is just insane. It is like learning to program all over again. You aren't getting the full experience if you're just using a few functional aspects of a imperative language.
Dude! I finally broke the 640k conventional memory barrier with QEMM386. You should try it!
Doesn't Wine on the Mac use X? Or does it translate to Cocoa? X apps on a Mac are aweful. Though sometimes handy... such as in the case of managing VMware Server from a Mac workstation by running the Linux admin tool and displaying locally.
But it wasn't exactly seamless. I mean, when you were running an Classic app, you knew it and there were various inconsistencies. It was acceptable only because you had a run a few major apps such as Quark or whatever in Classic. But with Windows, you'd pretty much be running EVERYTHING in this Win32 "classic" mode. There's just so much crap out there that your average Windows user has come to depend on.
Also, consider how long WIndows XP has been alive. Shit, XP is, what 6 years old now and it is STILL the dominant version of WIndows out there? Developers will be forced to continue targeting it and almost everything will run in Classic on the latest Windows. Apple only had to get a few key developers on board (Adobe, Quark, and a few others) to drive the migrations to OS X. Microsoft has hundreds. I think Microsoft is stuck with Win32 for the foreseeable future.
Can somebody tell me what is so god damn difficult about implementing reliable electronic voting? It is 2008, for christ's sake! How hard can it be to take a vote, log it to a central database, and print a freakin reciept!? This is like 40 year old technology, people. We've been trusting ATM's to do much more complex things for decades. WTF?
> Sorry, I don't get this. Java has been succesful at this (as well as other languages that can run on top of the JavaVM)
Not as a general purpose user applications. Java's popularity is primarily server-side.
> Flash has been succesful,
And it runs in you web browser and generally uses HTTP to communicate with servers.
> heck, even Linux and stuff like MAME is spreading all over with some effort.
What in the world does MAME have to do with anything?
> Let's not talk about enabling things in different ways, let's talk instead about how, after all these years with ever-increasing hardware performance, we're building layers upon layers of inefficient software so we can have crappy application performance all over again. Trying to run applications with Javascript in a browser on a mobile phone, can it get more wasteful than that?
No argument here. I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T have a better common application platform besides the web browser and javascript. I'm just saying that the web browser seems to be what we have to work with when it comes to getting a new service out to the masses. Sadly, the best technologies don't often win, especially when the field is already well established. We end up with the lowest common denominator.
> Use Java, it's not perfect, but it's widespread, it gets the job done and is reasonably fast.
I've experienced nothing but trouble with Java applications. They tend to be very picky about what version of the VM you're running. On Linux, what a lot of vendors end up doing is shipping their own version of the VM with the application. At least they used to. I haven't used Java much on Linux lately. Java is spoiled for me. The really successful Java applications such as Azureus and Limewire are bloated and slow. I'd much rather use a native application. Usually I prefer smaller apps that do a single thing well. LIke for torrents, I use uTorrent on Windows and Transmission on OS X. There's no need for Java apps.
Because getting a fundamentally new common runtime environment and/or protocol to all people is f'ing hard. Especially now that the 'net has matured. With maturity comes momentum and inertia.
Certainly that is the ultimate question... "What am I?" Having personally experienced various hallucinogenic states that might be described as "ego-loss," I might suggest that there is something higher, more fundamental than mere personality traits. I hesitate to say "soul" because that is just so loaded with specific religious connotations. But I feel like there is a perspective... a point of view that has no inherent properties, dimensions, or personality.
Certainly my conscious feelings are rebuilt when needed. I just think there is something that is experiencing those feelings.
Yes, I think "bias" might be a good word for it.
No, i don't think I am right about that. Normally you may only identify with your thoughts and rationalizations. But I think if you can manage to quiet those thoughts, you might find that there is something else experiencing them. And the act of experiencing causes more thoughts... but ultimately you are not your thoughts.
Cerebrates.
You're still looking at it objectively. You're talking about what someone else might think. What would *you* experience? Whether not you believe "you" die when you sleep, the fact remains that when you wake up in the morning, there is a subjective consciousness that continues to be aware. Or at least I assume this is the case. Maybe you (and I am talking about you specifically) don't really have a self-aware subjective consciousness and are no more than a set of memories and personality traits acting out a life. I hope this is not true, but I'm starting to suspect that it is based on how closely associate your sense of self with a specific set of memories and personality traits. Don't make me think solipsist thoughts! It makes me feel lonely.
Of course it matters! You're just creating a twin that branches off later than normal. That's not at all the same as giving me immortality.
The question isn't whether or not I consider a copy of me to be me. The question is whether or not I can exerience being both at the same time. As far as I know, I can only subjectively experience being one person at a time. I never subjectively experience, in real time, being my copy. A copy of me would be separate person for all intents and purposes.
Why don't I try merging with you? You probably wouldn't like that much, woudl you? Especially if it was your body that had to be tossed out after the merge.
Wouldn't you be concerned about killing the copy? Would you try merging two identical twins together? Identical twins are really just copies of each other that branched off much, much earlier. They seem to be two unique people. Wouldn't a copy made from myself now eventually be considered a unique person? Imagine making a copy of yourself and then sending it off to another country to have a life. Then you meet back with it 20 years later. You might fight over which one of you is the REAL you. Wouldn't that be awkward?
What, in your opinion, would make a copy of you significantly different than a genetic twin of you? What if you were copied when you were very young? Maybe too young to even remember it happening. WOuld you still consider your copy to be you?
That's just it. I have no trouble seeing it from your perspective. This is one of those rare cases where I am unable to see it from my own perspective. As strange as that may sound. I simply cannot conceive of being two people at the same time. I know what it is like to have past versions of me. That's no problem because those versions of me no longer exist. There was never a point when two or more of those versions had to occupy the same moment in time.
You try it. Try to imagine what it wold be like to make a copy of yourself. It sounds like you've only really considered what it would look like from the outside. From an objective perspective. Try thinking of it subjectively.
I didn't mention branches because you hadn't brought it up yet. I did say consciousness, not brain.
I didn't say anything about "sharing a brain." I'm talking about subjective consciousness. I'm wondering if you believe it is possible (at least in theory) to transfer your personal, subjective awareness from one brain to another. Personally, I think it would be incredibly cool, but not likely. Simply cloning my mind without transfering my subjective awareness seems rather pointless.
But I'm not asking about objective. I'm asking about the subjective.
I suspect that these people haven't really put much thought into the nature of subjective awareness. Unfortunately, I think people tend to identify too closely with they're specific memories and thought habits rather than the more mystical "I" that is able to experience these things.
Like sleep?
I'm talking about from a subjective perspective. If I copy myself (that is to say, "my program") to another body, but am unable to experience that other body, then you can hardly say that "I" have been copied. I've merely been cloned. It is not the same thing.
What's the advantage to copying yourself?
You're avoiding my question. Which "branch" gets your subjective consciousness? You can't possibly expect to be able to experience both "yous" at the same time, can you? If so, what is the link between the two that allows you to be two different people at the same time?
Ah, but this begs the question of what would happen if you ran your "program" on two or more different bodies at the same time. Presumably if you could copy your program to one new body, you could copy it to many, yes? Would "you" somehow be able to see out of two sets of eyes simultaneously? Or would each copy just act as a clone/twin of you without your actual consciousness? If you guess the former, then you have to figure out what is binding the two brains to allow "you" to experience them at the same time. Which is a bit of a paradox because then you have to admit some kind of higher consciousness that is at least partially independent of the program that you copied to the brains. And that contradicts the original assumption that "you" are just a program running on some hardware.
Experienced hacker types don't bother with such mundane details. :-)
Seriously, I've been building PCs on and off for more than 15 years (oh God, has it been THAT long?). I have nothing to prove by putting yet another motherboard in a case, plugging in a video card, and connecting the hard drive. If I can get someone else to do the based research and put together a suitable system for me, all the better.
Last I checked, Psystar makes it pretty clear that the configuraiton is not officially supported by Apple. They seem to be catering specifically to the "hacker" types who don't mind dealing with little details like not being able to run the automatic updates. If they were claiming/implying to be some kind of "official" Mac clone, that would be another story, but they're not.
-matthew
I hear this sentiment a lot.. but what does it really mean? Are there people who aren't using computers as tools to accomplish a task? Is hacking an OS to work on X piece of hardware NOT an appropriate task? What if you enjoy that sort of thing? I know I do at times. That's what Linux was largely about for a long time. It is only fairly recently has the focus in Linux shifted towards end-user usability. Screw the "computers as a tool" mindset! I say have fun. Pick your favorite platform and hack it to make it do what you want... and then hack it some more!
This reminds me of a friend who used to be a bit of a BSD hacker and played around with all kinds of odd hardware like VAXen. Now he just uses Windows because it runs a lot of software that he uses and he doesn't do much fun stuff anymore. He seems depressed and uninspired and frequently complains about how retarded WIndows is.... but it runs his apps. He's given in to this idea that "computers are just tools." It is kind of sad, really.
In OS X, applications don't install to
-matthew
You mean like spam filtering? Seriously, there's no excuse these days to be using a mail account that doesn't have decent filtering. You shouldn't be getting more than a few spams a week. I realize that it doesn't solve the problem, but oh well.
Fair enough, but that still doesn't answer my questions about the future of science. If all scientists do as you suggest is the smartest and work under NDA, where does that leave science education? How can science really flourish if nobody is allowed to talk in detail about what they're workign on? Where's the peer review?
At least being "public servant" is more realistic and rewarding if you don't expect too much of it. What you're promoting is an American Dream that only exists for a very small minority of people. How sad is it to talk to a group of kids whose only dream in the world is to play professional sports or be a movie/pop star when you know that probably none of them in the room will make it?
Exceptions that prove the rule.
Very few, in fact. Generally speaking, it isn't in their nature.
Define: success. More often than not, that structure just gets exploited by large, faceless corporations who own the geeks and their work.
Actually, i haven't noticed a slowdown in innovation. Just a maturing of an industry. What I have noticed is a decline in science education in the US.
Well, pork is considered to be "unclean." Just spiritually unclean? Physically unclean? Who knows.
Anyway, I don't see anything wrong with putting a label on something that says it doesn't have growth hormones. It isn't really for you to judge why someone may or may not want to base their purchase on the label.
Maybe it just makes people feel better to go down to a local farm and buy an organic half of a cow. Certainly there's something to be said for feeling good about the food you're eating even if, technically, it isn't much different than any other food.
Not soon enough, IMO. It is good to see consumers pushing back against the faceless, amoral corporations putting shit-food on grocery store shelves and restaurant tables. Is the consumer always right? Nope, but I'd rather not leave it to companies like Monsanto to decide what labels are appropriate to put on food and what are not.
It is only a paradox if you fail to see who, specifically, is unhealthy and who isn't. I think you'll find that the type of people buying organic foods are, on average, much healthier than those buying heavily processed "junk" foods (for contrast). This isn't to say that the organic food is MAKING them more healthy, just that the type of person who would go out of their way to buy organic/fresh foods is probably eating better. They'd probably just about as healthy if they bought non-organic equivenents. The problem is that there is a much larger section of the population that DOESN'T really care about what they eat until the scale starts tipping over 200lbs or they have their first heart attack. They don't buy fresh/organic foods. They eat a lot of fast food, Yo-Yo diet, etc. This is what makes American unhealthy on average, not the obsession with organic foods or nutrition, per se.
From what I know about the French, they're much more interested in good, high quality foods (even if it might be fatty or wh
We'll see how that works out for Science in general. I'm guessing that the education of new scientists will suffer greatly from having so much research done under NDA. What will they teach in schools if all the really interesting stuff is classified as proprietary trade secrets? Will all of science one day be taught and practiced under the arm of corporate entities. Will scientists even be able to move from on entity to another? I mean, with all that proprietary knowledge and all...
You're right, they are not the same people. The scientists just come up with the ideas, the engineers put it to use. What you're talking about a world full of 100% engineers and I don't think that is going to help progress.
You don't suppose it is a slap in the face to find out that corporation X owns every single idea you ever came up with while on the clock? You can be fired in a heartbeat and all your hard work stays neatly tucked away in some corporate lab. At least you know that the work you do under a public grant will be available to anyone no matter where you go after the grant is finished.
The best of artists and scientists do what they do because they love doing it. They'll always be grovling for money. If not because of limited grants, then because their jobs are being offshored (yeah, bio-tech can be off-shored too). The real producers of ideas will never be the masters of their works. The masters are the CEO's. The businessmen. Just like in music, successful musicians are not the masters of their work in most cases. The real masters are the record labels.
Neither are purveyors or pesticide free or growth hormone free foods.
So people only have a right to know where their food comes from if it is a matter of heaven and hell?
Why not complain that poor jewish families are being forced to pay a "Kosher Tax" when they don't really need to (scientificaly speaking).
FWIW, buying a half cow like that directly from the farmer can actually be a good money saving technique if you happen to eat a lot of beef. This is what my retired (social security only, no pension) inlaws often do. Plus it has the added psychological benefit of knowing where your food comes from. A good lesson for children, IMO. That it is "organic" is only icing on the cake. I think this is great. I wish more people would take the time to think about where their food comes from.
I don't see the problem here.
Look, I'm not going to debate the significance of hormones or pesticides in food production. The fact remains that you have to go out of your way to buy organic, which most people don't. The vast majority of food on the shelves is what you would call "normal."
I don't really think the "organic" movement is necessarily about hormones or pesticides. Those are just details. It is more about getting people to THINK about the food they consume. Maybe people will sometimes think wrong. Maybe growth hormones aren't really bad. That isn't the point. The point is to think more about the impact your food purchases have on your health, local and foreign economies. Essentially take control over your own food intake rather than just buy whatever instant, "just add water" crap FDA will allow Kraft to put on the shelves.
Well that doesn't work. Either way, someone is doing the programming. And it doesn't help the mathematicians anyway. They're even less likely to get royalties for their work if the programmers are in another country.
What did you call me? I think I missed that part. It seems like you hinted at "Communist," but I'm not quite sure.
The question you need to ask yourself is why hasn't the world fallen under the iron fist of Communism because the matheticians aren't getting paid by the programmers to use their work? Fact is that many scientific fields offer the results of their work to the public. And in many ways, that is what keeps science going. Why not bio-science as well?
First of all, you're operating from the premise that someone can really "own" an idea in the first place, much less have it "stolen" from them. I'd agree that you can have credit stolen, but ownership? Was never owned in the first place.
Second, you missed the part where I suggested that the research could easily be covered by national and international grants, as many other types of research already are. There is no theft if the expectation from the outset is that the results are free to anyone who wants it.
You're reading too much into it. It is just a statement of fact. Does labeling something as "kosher" imply anything about the safety of non-kosher products? Nope. It just lets Jews know what foods they can buy and what foods they can't. You may not feel that "kosher" has any practical meaning, but some people do. Same way with "organic" or "no growth hormones" labels. It really isn't any of your business.
Oh give me a break. Who is being "forced" to buy organic foods? All major grocery stores are CHOCK FULL of processed, pesticide/hormone laden foods. One has to go out of their way to buy organic and I don't see that changing any time soon. The "talking heads on TV" don't have nearly as strong effect as the advertisers of processed "instant" foods do.
Besides, the "organic" fad is now giving way to the "buy local" fad. So who cares?