Dude, I've gotta say that HTML::Mason is the greatest thing I've ever seen. My goodness.
If you're unfamiliar with it, here's the idea: It's similar to embed_perl but more powerful. You create "components" which are perl, or html, or both. Plus you can do the nifty stuff that mod_perl allows you to do...like creating a default handler and using the filename given as an argument to it.
This is a late post...I know. But you're right. I stand corrected. I still have problems with RMS's philosophy, but they weren't expressed well here, and they can't be articulated in so few words. But you (and others) make good points that I should have thought about before posting.
I get your point (I don't agree, but that's another issue), but you don't get mine. Mine was not about whether or not morals exist, it was about RMS's statement that:
Even supposing that the aforementioned gods exist, and that the believers really know what the gods think, that still does not provide certainty, because any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong.
And why I think that statement is ridiculous.
You can't suppose that the "aforementioned gods exist" by claiming they don't exist. (And if absolute morals don't exist, gods who give us absolute morals don't exist either.)
And besides, aren't you advocating throwing away *billions* of dollars on an ethical standard (close private corporate tyrannies) which we are quite *certain* is WRONG!?
*You* may be certain, but RMS isn't. He claims that you can't be certain.
I think you are the one misunderstanding his argument. I think Free (and Open Source) Software is a good thing. I do not want to be tied into proprietary solutions. That certainly could result in throwing away billions of dollars. However, RMS's point was that the utility of using Free Software isn't the issue, and is the point of the Open Souce movement, rather than the Free Software movement. If RMS's view, utility is unimportant. The ethics are all that matter. My point was just that that seems to be a silly stance to take (and most people..especially the people whose descisons matter most... *won't* take it) when you claim that you cannot be certain of the ethics.
Hm, so you *are* certain of the worth of "millions of dollars?" That the pursuit of money is unquestionably valuable?
No, I'm certainly not. However, that wasn't my point (after rereading my original post, I realized I hadn't made my point clear at all). The point is that money *is* valuable to most people (if it wasn't, it wouldn't *be* money). Given a good enough reason, most people will give up money. In the absence of such a reason, people will choose to have money and the things (comfort, power, etc.) that go with it.
Sidenote: I really gave RMS too much credit in my original post. He may have sacrificed the comfort that comes with money, but not the power.
Anyway, my point is just that an ethical system whose greatest promoter is uncertain of is probably not a good enough reason to convince people to give up their money.
...and not a very good one. The thing is, his beliefs...etc, all come down do his philosophy.
Let's see: The Free Software Movement raises issues of freedom, community, principle, and ethics, which the Open Source Movement studiously avoids.
Compared with:
Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics.
Oh, yes. I read his little disclaimer at the end. However, are you willing to throw away millions of dollars to adhere to an ethical standard of which you aren't certain? RMS apparently is (or at least on a smaller scale), and I do admire him for that, but I'm not, and most others aren't.
Oh, yeah. And the belief that gods can't be certain about ethics is one of the silliest things I've ever heard. If morals exist outside our heads, then they have to come from somewhere. If, as many religions do, we call the source of those morals "God," then how can "God" be uncertain? I admit I'm fuzzing over the diff between ethics and morals here, but if that same God created the universe and all its laws and inhabitants, then ethics would present no difficulty as well.
RMS is taking a stance that says, "This is the most important because it is right. Sacrifice everything for it," but he then goes on to say, you can't be sure what is right! Not only is he a bad philosopher, but he is incredibly naive about human nature.
Farmers are in no danger of becoming unnecessary! We all need food to live, and they are our suppliers. There is no need to "keep them alive" with subsidies and so forth.
If by this, you mean that the farming industry is in no danger of becoming unnecessary, I agree with you. However, if you mean that each farmer's job is in no danger of becoming unnecessary, you are mistaken. As technology advances, and we develop better farming methods, we need less farmers.
This thread has hit on one of my pet peeves. I grew up in a rural area, and many people there live off of farming subsidies. When I said that subsidising an entire industry is the stupidest fucking thing I had ever heard of, I just about got my ass kicked. Problem is, farmers all vote, and politcal rethoric about "the way of life" of the small farmer seems to sway a lot of folks (did I mention that Democracy doesn't work?).
Look at your phone bill next time you get it. Your paying for someone else's phone access. Why? How is that ethical? Don't ask me. But to pay for others Internet access doesn't seem ethical. Supplying Internet access to everyone, even those in rural areas could cause democratic governments to run more efficiently, but the very fact that we're subsidizing the farming industry indicates that efficiency is not a concern of a lot of voters.
Instead, I'm not sure exactly what he was telling us.
I'm pretty sure what he was telling us. In fact, I ran the article through babelfish (bullshit-->english), and here's what it said:
"Ha ha! You Open Source people think you're so smart! I'll feed you this line about how we have to change the system, and very few of you will notice that I didn't say a damn thing about what we're going to do with our patent! "
If he were at all serious, he would have promised to let the 1-click patent expire in a couple years.
It really saddens me that most of/.'s readership seems to wowed by corporate-speak to notice this.
Everybody wins, except for those people who still don't buy MS products.
No, the people who buy MS products don't even win. Many of them, because they get so locked onto Microsoft, will never have the power and efficiency that other operating systems provide. Most of those people will become especially dependent on the mouse (most people I know who use shortcut keys in Windows come from a UNIX background).
Actually, as a Christian, I find infidels.org to be a really well-done site. Read their essay on freethinkers -- while I don't agree with a lot of it, at least it's not written by bigots who assume that the fact they call themselves nontheists makes them superior to theists.
By definition, a religion is based on faith. What is faith? Unquestioning belief.
No, faith is not just unquestioning belief. The best definition I have heard is "belief put into action." We all have faith in something. For some it's their spouses. Do you really mean to say that scientists should not have faith in their spouses, if they are married? We all have faith in the laws of physics. How do you know they won't all change tomorrow? Faith is not exclusive to religion, but most religions involve faith.
I put my faith in Christ after a series of questions. When I was a teenager, I started asking them. Why does life seem empty to some of the most intelligent, insightful people who have ever lived? Why does our society tell us that money is a bad thing to live for and then look down upon those who abandon it for another pursuit? And so on...
Hoo hoo! Glad someone else here has heard of it. Saw the story...thought "There's been one at the NCSA since before I was here." Truly aweomse experience, but with one caveat:
Take Dramamine before you use it.
Hey...did you notice the barf bag on the door at the one at Beckman?
I can get newbies to run vi. Here's how: I tell them that the standard UNIX text editor is ed. I get them to fire it up. I try to hide my laughter. Sometimes, I have a hidden camera. Nothing beats videotaping a newbie's first session with ed! Then I say, "A lot of people prefer vi to ed." Hey, it's true! They always say, "What's vi?" "I say, it's name comes from 'visual editor.'" As soon as the word "visual" escapes my lips, I can see their eyes light up. They fire it up. I say, "press i." And they're in heaven!
If I'm feeling really nice, I tell them about Emacs.
The wierd thing about this, is that deaths seem to be the only form of continuity in The Simpsons.
For example, when Bleeding Gums Murphy Died, he stayed dead. Also, when the Marvin Monroe Memorial wing appeared at the hospital, we saw no more Marvin Monroe.
Other than that, The Simpsons seems to have no sense of continuity (other than the characters changing somewhat). The Simpsons even make fun of this aspect, like at the end of The Principal and The Pauper (where Skinner turns out to be an imposter) and they say "No one shall ever speak of this again," or something to that effect.
Also, keep in mind that the numbers are used for the season in which the episode is produced, rather than when it is aired. The first few episodes every fall were actually produced in the previous season, so they will have the lower numbers.
But what if ad agencies realize that there is an opportunity to truly blur the line between advertising and reality?
This already happens. PR Firms regularly put together news-like segments and distribute them to news agencies. The news agencies then air those segments (they look professianally done) in their evening news broadcasts. Pharmaceutical companies really take advantage of this sort of thing. Often, on the nightly news, there will be a segment about some new drug breakthrough. That segment will have been put together by the PR Firm that the pharmaceutical company has hired.
There was a really good program on NPR a few months ago about PR firms that discussed this stuff. I tried searching the archives but couldn't find it.
This is the worst karma-whoring I've ever seen! First, you post a factually incorrect post that gets moderated up to +5. Then, you post the correction, and ask the moderators to moderate the correction up as well! Wouldn't it make more sense to ask the moderators to moderate the original post down into the ground?
Alright, here's my proposal for sensible porn-blocking... open fire, please, and flame it as much as you want.
Ok. =) No, you make good points...here is the problem I see with your proposed solution (even if it is better than what most people are considering):
1) I approve of kids (18 and under) being "sheltered" by public libraries, but censorware should have an OFF button. If library card numbers were used as login ID's, your age would be known when you logged on.
For most people on/., implementing something like that would be trivial. However, AFAIK, most libraries don't employ sysadmins, and implementing this would require them to hire someone with more expertise. No problem for larger librairies, but for small ones (like my hometown, where the librarian makes $8/hour), that would be a big expense.
4) Most importantly, I feel that too little censorship is better than too much. There should be quick and easy ways for a librarian to override the blacklist so Johnny can do a project on syphillis for his high-school health class. Photos of genitalia may be important to the project. Oh well.
I totally agree. However, if Holland, MI is anything like my hometown (and it sounds like it is), it would be a fight to be able to get away with using pictures of genitalia even in a health class.
The best idea I think I've heard is to moniter children's net use, and mail a log to the cardholders (usually parents). Then parents can decide for their own children.
Plato would agree. You raise an intersting point (as well as one of the modern uses for good philosophy, as oppsosed to all the Nietzche, Sarte crap that seems to be so popular with the kids these days): what is the difference between a discovery and an invenction? Did velco exist before it was discovered/invented?
"Inventions can be patented but discoveries cannot" seems like a really simple guideline, but it isn't so simple.
So are any patends valid? It seems that it would take much more than a law degree to answer that question.
So? By and large that's an undesirable feature. Any language that forces the programmer to overload the commonly used operators forces the reader of the program to disambiguate those overloaded operators.
Man, where were you my freshman year when I took C++? When we learned about operator overloading, I said that that's the stupidest thing I'd ever heard of. Everyone thought I was crazy.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be such a bigot.
Just because someone uses a southern dialect doesn't mean that they're a moron...or a redneck.
Dude, I've gotta say that HTML::Mason is the greatest thing I've ever seen. My goodness.
If you're unfamiliar with it, here's the idea: It's similar to embed_perl but more powerful. You create "components" which are perl, or html, or both. Plus you can do the nifty stuff that mod_perl allows you to do...like creating a default handler and using the filename given as an argument to it.
Check out www.masonhq.com for more info on it.
This is a late post...I know. But you're right. I stand corrected. I still have problems with RMS's philosophy, but they weren't expressed well here, and they can't be articulated in so few words. But you (and others) make good points that I should have thought about before posting.
I get your point (I don't agree, but that's another issue), but you don't get mine. Mine was not about whether or not morals exist, it was about RMS's statement that:
Even supposing that the aforementioned gods exist, and that the believers really know what the gods think, that still does not provide certainty, because any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong.
And why I think that statement is ridiculous.
You can't suppose that the "aforementioned gods exist" by claiming they don't exist. (And if absolute morals don't exist, gods who give us absolute morals don't exist either.)
And besides, aren't you advocating throwing away *billions* of dollars on an ethical standard (close private corporate tyrannies) which we are quite *certain* is WRONG!?
*You* may be certain, but RMS isn't. He claims that you can't be certain.
I think you are the one misunderstanding his argument. I think Free (and Open Source) Software is a good thing. I do not want to be tied into proprietary solutions. That certainly could result in throwing away billions of dollars. However, RMS's point was that the utility of using Free Software isn't the issue, and is the point of the Open Souce movement, rather than the Free Software movement. If RMS's view, utility is unimportant. The ethics are all that matter. My point was just that that seems to be a silly stance to take (and most people..especially the people whose descisons matter most... *won't* take it) when you claim that you cannot be certain of the ethics.
Hm, so you *are* certain of the worth of "millions of dollars?" That the pursuit of money is unquestionably valuable?
No, I'm certainly not. However, that wasn't my point (after rereading my original post, I realized I hadn't made my point clear at all). The point is that money *is* valuable to most people (if it wasn't, it wouldn't *be* money). Given a good enough reason, most people will give up money. In the absence of such a reason, people will choose to have money and the things (comfort, power, etc.) that go with it.
Sidenote: I really gave RMS too much credit in my original post. He may have sacrificed the comfort that comes with money, but not the power.
Anyway, my point is just that an ethical system whose greatest promoter is uncertain of is probably not a good enough reason to convince people to give up their money.
...and not a very good one. The thing is, his beliefs...etc, all come down do his philosophy.
Let's see: The Free Software Movement raises issues of freedom, community, principle, and ethics, which the Open Source Movement studiously avoids.
Compared with:
Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics.
Oh, yes. I read his little disclaimer at the end. However, are you willing to throw away millions of dollars to adhere to an ethical standard of which you aren't certain? RMS apparently is (or at least on a smaller scale), and I do admire him for that, but I'm not, and most others aren't.
Oh, yeah. And the belief that gods can't be certain about ethics is one of the silliest things I've ever heard. If morals exist outside our heads, then they have to come from somewhere. If, as many religions do, we call the source of those morals "God," then how can "God" be uncertain? I admit I'm fuzzing over the diff between ethics and morals here, but if that same God created the universe and all its laws and inhabitants, then ethics would present no difficulty as well.
RMS is taking a stance that says, "This is the most important because it is right. Sacrifice everything for it," but he then goes on to say, you can't be sure what is right! Not only is he a bad philosopher, but he is incredibly naive about human nature.
Dude, we've been able to do callbacks for a lot longer than the release of 5.6. I use them all the time. They're great when writing parsers:
/. removes formatting with preview...
my $handler = {
'this' => \&this_handler,
'that' => \&that_handler
}
# some other stuff
$handler->{$value}->($arg1, $arg2)
where $value can be 'this' or 'that' forgive me if the formatting's wrong...it's lovely how
Farmers are in no danger of becoming unnecessary! We all need food to live, and they are our suppliers. There is no need to "keep them alive" with subsidies and so forth.
If by this, you mean that the farming industry is in no danger of becoming unnecessary, I agree with you. However, if you mean that each farmer's job is in no danger of becoming unnecessary, you are mistaken. As technology advances, and we develop better farming methods, we need less farmers.
This thread has hit on one of my pet peeves. I grew up in a rural area, and many people there live off of farming subsidies. When I said that subsidising an entire industry is the stupidest fucking thing I had ever heard of, I just about got my ass kicked. Problem is, farmers all vote, and politcal rethoric about "the way of life" of the small farmer seems to sway a lot of folks (did I mention that Democracy doesn't work?).
Look at your phone bill next time you get it. Your paying for someone else's phone access. Why? How is that ethical? Don't ask me. But to pay for others Internet access doesn't seem ethical. Supplying Internet access to everyone, even those in rural areas could cause democratic governments to run more efficiently, but the very fact that we're subsidizing the farming industry indicates that efficiency is not a concern of a lot of voters.
Instead, I'm not sure exactly what he was telling us.
/.'s readership seems to wowed by corporate-speak to notice this.
I'm pretty sure what he was telling us. In fact, I ran the article through babelfish (bullshit-->english), and here's what it said:
"Ha ha! You Open Source people think you're so smart! I'll feed you this line about how we have to change the system, and very few of you will notice that I didn't say a damn thing about what we're going to do with our patent! "
If he were at all serious, he would have promised to let the 1-click patent expire in a couple years.
It really saddens me that most of
Yeah, cause if it was, instead of cracking it, people could just look at the freakin' patent!
Everybody wins, except for those people who still don't buy MS products.
No, the people who buy MS products don't even win. Many of them, because they get so locked onto Microsoft, will never have the power and efficiency that other operating systems provide. Most of those people will become especially dependent on the mouse (most people I know who use shortcut keys in Windows come from a UNIX background).
Actually, as a Christian, I find infidels.org to be a really well-done site. Read their essay on freethinkers -- while I don't agree with a lot of it, at least it's not written by bigots who assume that the fact they call themselves nontheists makes them superior to theists.
By definition, a religion is based on faith. What is faith? Unquestioning belief.
No, faith is not just unquestioning belief. The best definition I have heard is "belief put into action." We all have faith in something. For some it's their spouses. Do you really mean to say that scientists should not have faith in their spouses, if they are married? We all have faith in the laws of physics. How do you know they won't all change tomorrow? Faith is not exclusive to religion, but most religions involve faith.
I put my faith in Christ after a series of questions. When I was a teenager, I started asking them. Why does life seem empty to some of the most intelligent, insightful people who have ever lived? Why does our society tell us that money is a bad thing to live for and then look down upon those who abandon it for another pursuit? And so on...
Hoo hoo! Glad someone else here has heard of it. Saw the story...thought "There's been one at the NCSA since before I was here." Truly aweomse experience, but with one caveat:
Take Dramamine before you use it.
Hey...did you notice the barf bag on the door at the one at Beckman?
I can get newbies to run vi. Here's how:
I tell them that the standard UNIX text editor is ed. I get them to fire it up. I try to hide my laughter. Sometimes, I have a hidden camera. Nothing beats videotaping a newbie's first session with ed! Then I say, "A lot of people prefer vi to ed." Hey, it's true! They always say, "What's vi?" "I say, it's name comes from 'visual editor.'" As soon as the word "visual" escapes my lips, I can see their eyes light up. They fire it up. I say, "press i." And they're in heaven!
If I'm feeling really nice, I tell them about Emacs.
The wierd thing about this, is that deaths seem to be the only form of continuity in The Simpsons.
For example, when Bleeding Gums Murphy Died, he stayed dead. Also, when the Marvin Monroe Memorial wing appeared at the hospital, we saw no more Marvin Monroe.
Other than that, The Simpsons seems to have no sense of continuity (other than the characters changing somewhat). The Simpsons even make fun of this aspect, like at the end of The Principal and The Pauper (where Skinner turns out to be an imposter) and they say "No one shall ever speak of this again," or something to that effect.
Also, keep in mind that the numbers are used for the season in which the episode is produced, rather than when it is aired. The first few episodes every fall were actually produced in the previous season, so they will have the lower numbers.
It'd better not be me. But then, I'm not that regular.
But what if ad agencies realize that there is an opportunity to truly blur the line between advertising and reality?
This already happens. PR Firms regularly put together news-like segments and distribute them to news agencies. The news agencies then air those segments (they look professianally done) in their evening news broadcasts. Pharmaceutical companies really take advantage of this sort of thing. Often, on the nightly news, there will be a segment about some new drug breakthrough. That segment will have been put together by the PR Firm that the pharmaceutical company has hired.
There was a really good program on NPR a few months ago about PR firms that discussed this stuff. I tried searching the archives but couldn't find it.
This is the worst karma-whoring I've ever seen! First, you post a factually incorrect post that gets moderated up to +5. Then, you post the correction, and ask the moderators to moderate the correction up as well! Wouldn't it make more sense to ask the moderators to moderate the original post down into the ground?
Alright, here's my proposal for sensible porn-blocking... open fire, please, and flame it as much as you want.
/., implementing something like that would be trivial. However, AFAIK, most libraries don't employ sysadmins, and implementing this would require them to hire someone with more expertise. No problem for larger librairies, but for small ones (like my hometown, where the librarian makes $8/hour), that would be a big expense.
Ok. =) No, you make good points...here is the problem I see with your proposed solution (even if it is better than what most people are considering):
1) I approve of kids (18 and under) being "sheltered" by public libraries, but censorware should have an OFF button. If library card numbers were used as login ID's, your age would be known when you logged on.
For most people on
4) Most importantly, I feel that too little censorship is better than too much. There should be quick and easy ways for a librarian to override the blacklist so Johnny can do a project on syphillis for his high-school health class. Photos of genitalia may be important to the project. Oh well.
I totally agree. However, if Holland, MI is anything like my hometown (and it sounds like it is), it would be a fight to be able to get away with using pictures of genitalia even in a health class.
The best idea I think I've heard is to moniter children's net use, and mail a log to the cardholders (usually parents). Then parents can decide for their own children.
It's not a LinuxOne site, it's pr0n.
In case you were wondering why that post was moderated as a "Troll." Thought those of you at work might especially appreciate the warning.
Plato would agree. You raise an intersting point (as well as one of the modern uses for good philosophy, as oppsosed to all the Nietzche, Sarte crap that seems to be so popular with the kids these days): what is the difference between a discovery and an invenction? Did velco exist before it was discovered/invented?
"Inventions can be patented but discoveries cannot" seems like a really simple guideline, but it isn't so simple.
So are any patends valid? It seems that it would take much more than a law degree to answer that question.
Right on! Moderators...moderate that one up!
So? By and large that's an undesirable feature. Any language that forces the programmer to overload the commonly used operators forces the reader of the program to disambiguate those overloaded operators.
Man, where were you my freshman year when I took C++? When we learned about operator overloading, I said that that's the stupidest thing I'd ever heard of. Everyone thought I was crazy.
5 + 7 = 57