I read this story last night on CNN, and I said to myself, "Gee, I`ll bet Jon Katz writes an `article` on this one."
I often wonder how it must be to waste one`s life away writing poor commentary. Actually, I got a little feel of it writing this post. Man, it must suck to be Jon Katz.
While you may find objects providing these sorts of things in C or C++, I doubt the implementation will be anywhere near as clean as Perl.
Perl was designed to handle the sorts of things that are often required in CGI programming. Processing text and like is done with much greater ease in Perl than in any other language I have seen.
While C is not as high level as Perl, it is certainly very high level. C++ is also a very high level language.
C encourages a structural approach to programming and is good for projects requiring a fine level of control over many things. It provides a good balance between low level control and high level abstraction.
C++ encourages an object oriented approach to programming. Object Oriented Programming has shown to be effective in reducing the complexity of very large projects, but has not been proven a superior method for smaller systems.
Perl is in a class of its own. Although full-blown development rarely happens in Perl, it is quite commonly used in CGI programming and many other scenarios for good reason.
I would stick with Perl. Performance issues are of little concern in this case. One might argue that assembly language is the best solution to everything, as it is quite low level and very fast. We all know that there are many more variables in the equation than that.
*sniff* I'm being repressed! Everybody hates me, and it is so unfair. Honest. No matter what I do, they are out to get me. It's because I'm a Christian, so everybody makes fun of me all the time. And I'm a geek too, and that's bad so everybody blames everything on me. I am on the verge of extinction because there is a mass conspiracy plotting my doom, and I am being shunned by society.
Plus I claim exclusive rights to Rigel, the martian moon Deimos, and any planetary system found in the Greater Magelanic Cloud.
I demand that all governments remove any of their space junk that they have put on my moon. And destroy any probes that may be travelling in my space. Otherwise, I will have to start charging royalty fees.
Not to mention that I have a patent on the cloud patterns on Jupiter. It pisses me off to see people publishing pictures of them without me knowing.
Yeah, and don't forget Jehova's Witnesses, Christian Scientists and 7th Day Adventists.
Many of these denominations get along about as well as cats in a bag. Of course, Katz has to stir things up with his pointless commentary.
I'm betting Katz doesn't have an editor. Any self respecting journal would never let such a poor piece work be published.
All of the famous despots lacked an editor. Without moderation, any fool can push their ideas as doctrine. Mr. Katz is on the high-road -- only because he has some influential buddies that happen to run a fairly popular web site.
Luckily these guys thought about moderation, and clearly Jon's opinions are met with contemptuos regard. I wonder when the Slashdot publishers will catch on and remove Jon "Fallacy" Katz from the regular articles in favor of more intelligent thought.
Of course, Jon's articles never fail to arouse heated discussion. I'd just rather my neurons be spent on worthier content. I suppose I could always turn him off. I'm just pissed that this awful mediocrity is allowed to masquerade on a respectable site when there are so many intelligent people (being ignored) who actually have something nice to say.
Once again, Katz has managed to bastardize another completely irrelevant topic. He makes his usual sweeping generalizations, the regular slew of subtle jabs at organized religions, unfounded assertions and the rest of the rhetoric.
The only appeal he has is to the rest of the fanatics who share his views - all in the name of freedom, or "freethinking" or whatever it is called these days.
You would be hard pressed to find any scholarly material in any Katz article. The fact that this is perpetuated on Slashdot seems to indicate the philosophical agenda that the directors of this site would like to push as a subscript to whatever else it claims as its goal.
Katz's articles are clearly propaganda, designed to taint the minds of those who read them in a way that corresponds with his own viewpoints. Of course, Slashdot has never been noted for presenting any sort of material on equal grounds.
Bias is the name of the game here, and Katz is only fooling himself if he supposes that thought can ever be truly free.
I don't mind Slashdot's technological bias, as I happen to agree with it. However, I would suggest getting Mr. Katz an editor before letting him post this sort of inflamatory article dealing with the subject of religion.
No, Corel didn't do the Unix port of WP. It was done by another company in Provo (which I don't recall the name). I went to their web page recently and noticed that they appear to be out of business.
I worked on the DEC Alpha port of the Suite 8 while I was there. Most of that port was actually done by Millenium Computer Corp. in Rochester New York. After that I started on Suite 9 for Intel, but the install wasn't going anywhere (so I kludged most of it with Perl:-) ). I haven't heard anything about Suite 9 since I left. Maybe they scrapped it (I've heard rumors of Corel Office 2000).
The reality of Utah is that IT jobs pay around 35% less than the national average - or so I've heard. Corel employees were probably getting paid 15% or more higher than the national average. No doubt these were leftovers from the good ol' WP days when they could afford outrageous wages. Apparently Novell and Corel could not afford these wages, as I understand Corel cut costs by $30M just by shutting down the Orem office.
Cost of living is still considerably cheaper than in California, and work here is pretty good. I'm interviewing at Novell for a position - and I know they treat their employees well.
Unfortunately, not too much Unix around. Right now I'm working for a research company, and we run Solaris 2.5, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux.
No, as I mentioned in my post, I left Corel 2 months before they shut down. I accepted a position at another company for a small $26K raise, and so left with no bitterness.
I cannot say the same of other employees who worked there.
Not completely true. There are often times when including lots of data, that the MIDI data lines becomes saturated. This can happen, for example, during glissandos (sp) and lots of change data (eg. pitch bend). There are far too many events occuring for the lines to handle the data throughput. The events can occur at their max frequency until the lines are more quiet, or sometimes events can be skipped. The point is that the MIDI specs aren't globally useful for large multi-channel very eventful music sequencing.
There are ways around this, usually by running a MIDI thinning program through MIDI data files to reduce successive events (ie, change pitch bend from 88 positions to 12, without much noticable differences). However, this may not be suitable for all purposes.
I disagree. For a single instrument, MIDI's default resolution is more than sufficient. It is true that many multiple channels transmitting thousands of simultaneous messages can bog down the system.
However, this scenario is unlikely in a professional setup. My arguments are as follows:
1) Modern MIDI interfaces often use USB, Parallel, or serial ports. These are capable of much higher resolutions regardless of whether or not they are currently implemented.
2) There are quite a few multi port MIDI interfaces out there. My MTP-AV does 128 channels, with 16 MIDI ports. There is no lack of MIDI bandwidth. Ins and outs may be routed however you like.
3) Professionals tend to record on multi-track equipment. It's not even necessary to perform the whole song at the same time. You can get full mixes from a little synth with limited polyphony in this manner.
I rarely (if ever) encounter complete saturation of the MIDI port even under full 16 channel operation. The only thing that chokes it are large sysx banks, which I generally transmit ahead of time anyway.
I used to work for Corel Corporation U.S., back when there was still a Corel U.S. to work for. Last March the company sent out the quarterly earnings summary, and I just happened to notice that, financially, the company was just half of what it was a year before. This helped me decide to take another position at a different company, in spite of the assurances of my team leaders at Corel.
Employee morale was already at an all time low, but folks failed to see the inevitable. The WordPerfect Suite 9 install was being moved to Ottawa, where there were only three developers working overtime on it. These guys were soon burned out, looking for jobs elsewhere.
Two months after I left, Corel shut down what was left of the old WordPerfect campus, leaving only a small skeleton crew on contract for a few months to tidy things up. It was a necessary move for Corel; they just couldn't afford the over-paid legacy WordPerfect crew anymore, but the decision has pretty much been the death knell for the Corel Office suite.
Which is why I believe they grabbed onto the Linux trend, as an alternate source of revenue and a chance to start anew with a fresh product.
As for the allegations that Dr. Cowpland has been involved in illegal business practices, I would not be surprised if they did turn out to be substantiated. Most former employees of Corel would probably feel the same way, I suspect.
Dr. Cowpland may be rich and smart, and he certainly wouldn't have any qualms about going to any length to make an extra buck.
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It simply specifies requirements for an interface with an electronic musical instrument, nothing more.
Obviously MIDI is already widely used to record real time sequences from live musicians (we've had MIDI sequencers for years, right?). Naturally, MIDI is quite a sufficient protocol to faithfully record all of the nuances that a human could put into music.
The idea of using a computer to actually generate music is not a new one at all. The idea of having a computer make music that sounds human is not a new idea either. Certainly MIDI would be a prime choice as a vehicle for trnsmitting the computer's musical ideas to device capable of reproducing musical timbres. Perhaps a sampler or a synthesizer, or even to play a real instrument.
MIDI is also used for a number of other things. Controlling lights and curtains, for example. My guitar amp has MIDI in and out on it so that I can control EFX parameters during a performance. MIDI is used for a number of synchronization codes - SMPTE, MTC, and others.
I don't know of a music studio around that isn't dependent on MIDI in one form or another.
Of course, I always thought musicians were trying to emulate computers.
Generally Universities have a better track record. My best employees both have 4-year degrees from a local University, and both of them have taken serious course studies in computational theory and the like.
Unfortunately, UVSC's course is also a 4-year program. It is nowhere the calibre of the local University.
My job training, although pretty good, is obviously going to be limited in certain areas. I've had to pick up what I can from my 2 college grads, and learn the rest on my own. Not an easy task.
As for the rest, who knows =) The four gospels themselves don't even agree on everything, and what we now consider the Bible was pretty much arbitrarily decided upon (with a bunch of just-as-good books being thrown out, now making up the apocrypha).
Yes, I've heard about the apocrypha and read some summaries of what the various books are about. I was interested in whichever creed it was at the time that decided on which books to canonize for the Bible. There was an awful lot of argument behind the whole thing, but "arbitrarily selected" is just as well said.:)
Now, don't get me wrong. I still look at the Bible as a religious text, and I accept that its books were inspired (except maybe the "Song of Solomon." Ick, I don't like that one). I just think that the Bible has culture and humanity written all over it, too.
Of course, when I start talking about my own beliefs, they tend to get equally blasted by others not of my faith.:-)
Ok, I agree with a lot of the posts I've read so far on the "shortage" of IT professionals. What is the term money people use with regards to a market... artificially inflated?
That's how I view the high-tech job market right now. Last semester I was browsing through the CS/IS books at UVSC, where I go to school. What was the text being used for CS 425? Sam's Club "Teach yourself C++ in 21 Days." At UVSC, Discrete Mathematics is covered in 1 semester. And we only looked at about 5% of the textbook, which I paid a hefty $50 for.
I'm an IT manager for my company, and I've interviewed a lot of kids with 2 year associates degrees from various colleges. What do they learn? Crash course in Microsoft VB, ASP, Office, etc.
It seems that even our scholastic training (from many institutions) is superficial in this area, designed only to "artificially inflate" a job market.
Although there may be plenty of people out there pretending to be programmers and administrators, when was the last time you ran across a real programmer -- someone with real experience who actually understands the "whys" of programming?
True programmers transcend any specific language or platform. They don't break down in tears when they are asked to write something outside of their native Visual Basic.
Yes, that sounds right. However, in my version of the Bible, the part about "let there be light" and then dividing the light and the dark come in verses 3-5, whereas the part about putting in the plants and stuff doesn't come until verse 11.
But it seems like verses 14-16 is a repeat of 3-5. This time, though, it is specifically talking about the sun, moon and stars -- and does indeed appear that they were clearly created after the plants and stuff. Wow, I never read it that closely before.:-)
Ooo, here's another juicy bit in Bible I just stumbled across in verse 26: "And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness...
Cool, what would the fundamentalists think about the evident plurality of Gods as expressed in this particular verse?
Of course, how many different versions of the Bible are there to choose from now? Last I counted, there were 15. Which one is the "gospel" truth?:)
Hope I didn't offend too many fundamentalists out there... remember, I'm a theist too.
Ok, I'll admit that I'm a theist, and a rather naive one at that.
The first time I came accross the term "Creationism" was as I started delving into science and reading about evolutionary theory, etc.
Personally, I think it's quite interesting, our theories and ideas with respect to how the earth came about, and where the moderm man came from. Plus, the evidences for these things do indeed provide some good material for thought.
But that doesn't kick out the idea of a God, does it? I mean, if I was God, and I had to explain the whole thing to an ancient Human trying to write the book of Genesis, I wouldn't start out with "First, there were these microbes...." No, I'd say something like "OK, day one - organize some matter, day two - provide some light, etc." Plus, imagine how Moses woulda felt if God went and told him that, ultimately, his human body is a descendant of some pond scum or something.:) Not terribly enobling.
Now, I realize that this kind of talk is heresy to some fundamentalist types out there. But, after all, just what IS Creationism anyway? Couldn't it be evolution after all?
with biological evolutionary theory. The only part I would revise is where some folks start talking about people coming from monkeys. My observations have led me to the conclusion that monkeys actually came from people.
Procedural textures. L-systems. Iterative fractals. Stochastic rendering. Ray-tracing. CSG. Blobs. Splines. NURBS. People like Kenton Musgrave have been working on this kind of stuff for years and years. Ever see a Pixar film? Most of that stuff is modelled with procedural algorithms, not polygons and texture maps. Render Man and BMRT both use procedural techniques. Not to mention programs like Bryce, 3ds Max, Lightwave, POV-Ray, Vue d' Esprit, Radiance, and others.
So... Silicon Valley isn't seeing aything they haven't seen before.
Rather than trying to beat Microsoft at everything, why not invent new stuff that nobody has thought of before? I think that is a great way to make an OS really succesfull, especially if the new apps are something that folks can really use.
What a fine picture of atheism you paint. "Weak-minded xtians" sounds a lot like "Low-life Jews." Kill the retards? Only the little children declared "normal" by science and atheism have the right to live?
Just what is suffering by your definition, anyway?
I don't think I have ever read such incredible selfishness before. But I think I can understand what must have gone through the minds of Hitler, and Pol Pot, and the Leaders of the Shining Path, and the various Death Squads still roaming Latin America and other areas of the world. It must be very similar to what I am seeing in your post.
Perhaps suffering is physical pain. To me, greater suffering is knowing I am of no value to the world as a human being. Knowing that only the genetically superior can rationally claim the right to live, and hence their only value to society.
How can a handicapped child ever know she is suffering, having never known anything differet? How can you ever be really sure you are happy, having never felt real sadness? How can there be pleasure if you have never experienced pain?
And the atheist claims that human reasoning is the only absolute in the universe, having never felt faith.
Tell me, who is disillusioned? I'd rather live as a retarded Christian than be in the bodage of fanatic atheism. You bring shame on your fellow atheists who do not share your views, and damage their cause.
I'm damn glad people like you are the Minority, and I hope that we never see people like this in power in the United States.
In June of 1992 you gave a speach to the Library Information Technology Association in San Francisco. In the speach you said, "The nature of our society strongly affects the nature of our technology." You brought up some very interesting points about commodities, the profusion of information, and controlling human attention. This led to to some intriguing commentary about the "Singularity" and the "human condition," and finally your idea on "Deep Archiving" for future civilizations.
Since that time we have seen technological explosions affecting human communications and the further dissemination of data. Also, such phenomenon as the Open Source movement are taking hold, perhaps bringing back a little of the old "Free as Air, Free As Water, Free As Knowledge" ideal.
Now, more than ever, we are experiencing a global interconnectedness, particularly at the Cyberpunk subculture level.
Given these developments, what now have you to say about the complete transfomation of the human condition? Any further insight or predictions?
Slashdot Mirror
Some of them, anyway. Why not put some of Gimp's art on there? Maybe a screenshot of Linux in action too.
Or go for some abstract look portraying openness. But if it's a graphics mag, then we need to show off Linux's eye candy.
I read this story last night on CNN, and I said to myself, "Gee, I`ll bet Jon Katz writes an `article` on this one."
I often wonder how it must be to waste one`s life away writing poor commentary. Actually, I got a little feel of it writing this post. Man, it must suck to be Jon Katz.
And they've been missing out all these years. The only thing I use my Windows box for is playing games.
I am skeptical about Microsoft's success in the console world against established vendors like Nintendo, Sony, and Sega. Who knows.
The power of perl is:
1) Regular expressions
2) Variable interpolation
3) eval
4) Associative arrays
While you may find objects providing these sorts of things in C or C++, I doubt the implementation will be anywhere near as clean as Perl.
Perl was designed to handle the sorts of things that are often required in CGI programming. Processing text and like is done with much greater ease in Perl than in any other language I have seen.
While C is not as high level as Perl, it is certainly very high level. C++ is also a very high level language.
C encourages a structural approach to programming and is good for projects requiring a fine level of control over many things. It provides a good balance between low level control and high level abstraction.
C++ encourages an object oriented approach to programming. Object Oriented Programming has shown to be effective in reducing the complexity of very large projects, but has not been proven a superior method for smaller systems.
Perl is in a class of its own. Although full-blown development rarely happens in Perl, it is quite commonly used in CGI programming and many other scenarios for good reason.
I would stick with Perl. Performance issues are of little concern in this case. One might argue that assembly language is the best solution to everything, as it is quite low level and very fast. We all know that there are many more variables in the equation than that.
Hey, I'm sure there's a list of penguin names on the Internet someplace.
I suggest the name of the rocket that sends the probe into orbit be called the "Penguin Pumper."
*sniff* I'm being repressed! Everybody hates me, and it is so unfair. Honest. No matter what I do, they are out to get me. It's because I'm a Christian, so everybody makes fun of me all the time. And I'm a geek too, and that's bad so everybody blames everything on me. I am on the verge of extinction because there is a mass conspiracy plotting my doom, and I am being shunned by society.
Plus I have diarrhea.
Plus I claim exclusive rights to Rigel, the martian moon Deimos, and any planetary system found in the Greater Magelanic Cloud.
I demand that all governments remove any of their space junk that they have put on my moon. And destroy any probes that may be travelling in my space. Otherwise, I will have to start charging royalty fees.
Not to mention that I have a patent on the cloud patterns on Jupiter. It pisses me off to see people publishing pictures of them without me knowing.
Yeah, and don't forget Jehova's Witnesses, Christian Scientists and 7th Day Adventists.
Many of these denominations get along about as well as cats in a bag. Of course, Katz has to stir things up with his pointless commentary.
I'm betting Katz doesn't have an editor. Any self respecting journal would never let such a poor piece work be published.
All of the famous despots lacked an editor. Without moderation, any fool can push their ideas as doctrine. Mr. Katz is on the high-road -- only because he has some influential buddies that happen to run a fairly popular web site.
Luckily these guys thought about moderation, and clearly Jon's opinions are met with contemptuos regard. I wonder when the Slashdot publishers will catch on and remove Jon "Fallacy" Katz from the regular articles in favor of more intelligent thought.
Of course, Jon's articles never fail to arouse heated discussion. I'd just rather my neurons be spent on worthier content. I suppose I could always turn him off. I'm just pissed that this awful mediocrity is allowed to masquerade on a respectable site when there are so many intelligent people (being ignored) who actually have something nice to say.
Once again, Katz has managed to bastardize another completely irrelevant topic. He makes his usual sweeping generalizations, the regular slew of subtle jabs at organized religions, unfounded assertions and the rest of the rhetoric.
The only appeal he has is to the rest of the fanatics who share his views - all in the name of freedom, or "freethinking" or whatever it is called these days.
You would be hard pressed to find any scholarly material in any Katz article. The fact that this is perpetuated on Slashdot seems to indicate the philosophical agenda that the directors of this site would like to push as a subscript to whatever else it claims as its goal.
Katz's articles are clearly propaganda, designed to taint the minds of those who read them in a way that corresponds with his own viewpoints. Of course, Slashdot has never been noted for presenting any sort of material on equal grounds.
Bias is the name of the game here, and Katz is only fooling himself if he supposes that thought can ever be truly free.
I don't mind Slashdot's technological bias, as I happen to agree with it. However, I would suggest getting Mr. Katz an editor before letting him post this sort of inflamatory article dealing with the subject of religion.
No, Corel didn't do the Unix port of WP. It was done by another company in Provo (which I don't recall the name). I went to their web page recently and noticed that they appear to be out of business.
:-) ). I haven't heard anything about Suite 9 since I left. Maybe they scrapped it (I've heard rumors of Corel Office 2000).
I worked on the DEC Alpha port of the Suite 8 while I was there. Most of that port was actually done by Millenium Computer Corp. in Rochester New York. After that I started on Suite 9 for Intel, but the install wasn't going anywhere (so I kludged most of it with Perl
The reality of Utah is that IT jobs pay around 35% less than the national average - or so I've heard. Corel employees were probably getting paid 15% or more higher than the national average. No doubt these were leftovers from the good ol' WP days when they could afford outrageous wages. Apparently Novell and Corel could not afford these wages, as I understand Corel cut costs by $30M just by shutting down the Orem office.
Cost of living is still considerably cheaper than in California, and work here is pretty good. I'm interviewing at Novell for a position - and I know they treat their employees well.
Unfortunately, not too much Unix around. Right now I'm working for a research company, and we run Solaris 2.5, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux.
No, as I mentioned in my post, I left Corel 2 months before they shut down. I accepted a position at another company for a small $26K raise, and so left with no bitterness.
I cannot say the same of other employees who worked there.
Not completely true. There are often times when including lots of data, that the MIDI data lines becomes saturated. This can happen, for example, during glissandos (sp) and lots of change data (eg. pitch bend). There are far too many events occuring for the lines to handle the data throughput. The events can occur at their max frequency until the lines are more quiet, or sometimes events can be skipped. The point is that the MIDI specs aren't globally useful for large multi-channel very eventful music sequencing.
There are ways around this, usually by running a MIDI thinning program through MIDI data files to reduce successive events (ie, change pitch bend from 88 positions to 12, without much noticable differences). However, this may not be suitable for all purposes.
I disagree. For a single instrument, MIDI's default resolution is more than sufficient. It is true that many multiple channels transmitting thousands of simultaneous messages can bog down the system.
However, this scenario is unlikely in a professional setup. My arguments are as follows:
1) Modern MIDI interfaces often use USB, Parallel, or serial ports. These are capable of much higher resolutions regardless of whether or not they are currently implemented.
2) There are quite a few multi port MIDI interfaces out there. My MTP-AV does 128 channels, with 16 MIDI ports. There is no lack of MIDI bandwidth. Ins and outs may be routed however you like.
3) Professionals tend to record on multi-track equipment. It's not even necessary to perform the whole song at the same time. You can get full mixes from a little synth with limited polyphony in this manner.
I rarely (if ever) encounter complete saturation of the MIDI port even under full 16 channel operation. The only thing that chokes it are large sysx banks, which I generally transmit ahead of time anyway.
I used to work for Corel Corporation U.S., back when there was still a Corel U.S. to work for. Last March the company sent out the quarterly earnings summary, and I just happened to notice that, financially, the company was just half of what it was a year before. This helped me decide to take another position at a different company, in spite of the assurances of my team leaders at Corel.
Employee morale was already at an all time low, but folks failed to see the inevitable. The WordPerfect Suite 9 install was being moved to Ottawa, where there were only three developers working overtime on it. These guys were soon burned out, looking for jobs elsewhere.
Two months after I left, Corel shut down what was left of the old WordPerfect campus, leaving only a small skeleton crew on contract for a few months to tidy things up. It was a necessary move for Corel; they just couldn't afford the over-paid legacy WordPerfect crew anymore, but the decision has pretty much been the death knell for the Corel Office suite.
Which is why I believe they grabbed onto the Linux trend, as an alternate source of revenue and a chance to start anew with a fresh product.
As for the allegations that Dr. Cowpland has been involved in illegal business practices, I would not be surprised if they did turn out to be substantiated. Most former employees of Corel would probably feel the same way, I suspect.
Dr. Cowpland may be rich and smart, and he certainly wouldn't have any qualms about going to any length to make an extra buck.
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It simply specifies requirements for an interface with an electronic musical instrument, nothing more.
Obviously MIDI is already widely used to record real time sequences from live musicians (we've had MIDI sequencers for years, right?). Naturally, MIDI is quite a sufficient protocol to faithfully record all of the nuances that a human could put into music.
The idea of using a computer to actually generate music is not a new one at all. The idea of having a computer make music that sounds human is not a new idea either. Certainly MIDI would be a prime choice as a vehicle for trnsmitting the computer's musical ideas to device capable of reproducing musical timbres. Perhaps a sampler or a synthesizer, or even to play a real instrument.
MIDI is also used for a number of other things. Controlling lights and curtains, for example. My guitar amp has MIDI in and out on it so that I can control EFX parameters during a performance. MIDI is used for a number of synchronization codes - SMPTE, MTC, and others.
I don't know of a music studio around that isn't dependent on MIDI in one form or another.
Of course, I always thought musicians were trying to emulate computers.
Generally Universities have a better track record. My best employees both have 4-year degrees from a local University, and both of them have taken serious course studies in computational theory and the like.
Unfortunately, UVSC's course is also a 4-year program. It is nowhere the calibre of the local University.
My job training, although pretty good, is obviously going to be limited in certain areas. I've had to pick up what I can from my 2 college grads, and learn the rest on my own. Not an easy task.
As for the rest, who knows =) The four gospels themselves don't even agree on everything, and what we now consider the Bible was pretty much arbitrarily decided upon (with a bunch of just-as-good books being thrown out, now making up the apocrypha).
:)
:-)
Yes, I've heard about the apocrypha and read some summaries of what the various books are about. I was interested in whichever creed it was at the time that decided on which books to canonize for the Bible. There was an awful lot of argument behind the whole thing, but "arbitrarily selected" is just as well said.
Now, don't get me wrong. I still look at the Bible as a religious text, and I accept that its books were inspired (except maybe the "Song of Solomon." Ick, I don't like that one). I just think that the Bible has culture and humanity written all over it, too.
Of course, when I start talking about my own beliefs, they tend to get equally blasted by others not of my faith.
Ok, I agree with a lot of the posts I've read so far on the "shortage" of IT professionals. What is the term money people use with regards to a market... artificially inflated?
That's how I view the high-tech job market right now. Last semester I was browsing through the CS/IS books at UVSC, where I go to school. What was the text being used for CS 425? Sam's Club "Teach yourself C++ in 21 Days." At UVSC, Discrete Mathematics is covered in 1 semester. And we only looked at about 5% of the textbook, which I paid a hefty $50 for.
I'm an IT manager for my company, and I've interviewed a lot of kids with 2 year associates degrees from various colleges. What do they learn? Crash course in Microsoft VB, ASP, Office, etc.
It seems that even our scholastic training (from many institutions) is superficial in this area, designed only to "artificially inflate" a job market.
Although there may be plenty of people out there pretending to be programmers and administrators, when was the last time you ran across a real programmer -- someone with real experience who actually understands the "whys" of programming?
True programmers transcend any specific language or platform. They don't break down in tears when they are asked to write something outside of their native Visual Basic.
Yes, that sounds right. However, in my version of the Bible, the part about "let there be light" and then dividing the light and the dark come in verses 3-5, whereas the part about putting in the plants and stuff doesn't come until verse 11.
:-)
:)
But it seems like verses 14-16 is a repeat of 3-5. This time, though, it is specifically talking about the sun, moon and stars -- and does indeed appear that they were clearly created after the plants and stuff. Wow, I never read it that closely before.
Ooo, here's another juicy bit in Bible I just stumbled across in verse 26: "And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness...
Cool, what would the fundamentalists think about the evident plurality of Gods as expressed in this particular verse?
Of course, how many different versions of the Bible are there to choose from now? Last I counted, there were 15. Which one is the "gospel" truth?
Hope I didn't offend too many fundamentalists out there... remember, I'm a theist too.
Ok, I'll admit that I'm a theist, and a rather naive one at that.
:) Not terribly enobling.
The first time I came accross the term "Creationism" was as I started delving into science and reading about evolutionary theory, etc.
Personally, I think it's quite interesting, our theories and ideas with respect to how the earth came about, and where the moderm man came from. Plus, the evidences for these things do indeed provide some good material for thought.
But that doesn't kick out the idea of a God, does it? I mean, if I was God, and I had to explain the whole thing to an ancient Human trying to write the book of Genesis, I wouldn't start out with "First, there were these microbes...." No, I'd say something like "OK, day one - organize some matter, day two - provide some light, etc." Plus, imagine how Moses woulda felt if God went and told him that, ultimately, his human body is a descendant of some pond scum or something.
Now, I realize that this kind of talk is heresy to some fundamentalist types out there. But, after all, just what IS Creationism anyway? Couldn't it be evolution after all?
Well, golly. I, um... was just trying to be helpful.
with biological evolutionary theory. The only part I would revise is where some folks start talking about people coming from monkeys. My observations have led me to the conclusion that monkeys actually came from people.
Procedural textures. L-systems. Iterative fractals. Stochastic rendering. Ray-tracing. CSG. Blobs. Splines. NURBS. People like Kenton Musgrave have been working on this kind of stuff for years and years. Ever see a Pixar film? Most of that stuff is modelled with procedural algorithms, not polygons and texture maps. Render Man and BMRT both use procedural techniques. Not to mention programs like Bryce, 3ds Max, Lightwave, POV-Ray, Vue d' Esprit, Radiance, and others.
So... Silicon Valley isn't seeing aything they haven't seen before.
Rather than trying to beat Microsoft at everything, why not invent new stuff that nobody has thought of before? I think that is a great way to make an OS really succesfull, especially if the new apps are something that folks can really use.
What a fine picture of atheism you paint. "Weak-minded xtians" sounds a lot like "Low-life Jews." Kill the retards? Only the little children declared "normal" by science and atheism have the right to live?
Just what is suffering by your definition, anyway?
I don't think I have ever read such incredible selfishness before. But I think I can understand what must have gone through the minds of Hitler, and Pol Pot, and the Leaders of the Shining Path, and the various Death Squads still roaming Latin America and other areas of the world. It must be very similar to what I am seeing in your post.
Perhaps suffering is physical pain. To me, greater suffering is knowing I am of no value to the world as a human being. Knowing that only the genetically superior can rationally claim the right to live, and hence their only value to society.
How can a handicapped child ever know she is suffering, having never known anything differet? How can you ever be really sure you are happy, having never felt real sadness? How can there be pleasure if you have never experienced pain?
And the atheist claims that human reasoning is the only absolute in the universe, having never felt faith.
Tell me, who is disillusioned? I'd rather live as a retarded Christian than be in the bodage of fanatic atheism. You bring shame on your fellow atheists who do not share your views, and damage their cause.
I'm damn glad people like you are the Minority, and I hope that we never see people like this in power in the United States.
Bruce-
In June of 1992 you gave a speach to the Library Information Technology Association in San Francisco. In the speach you said, "The nature of our society strongly affects the nature of our technology." You brought up some very interesting points about commodities, the profusion of information, and controlling human attention. This led to to some intriguing commentary about the "Singularity" and the "human condition," and finally your idea on "Deep Archiving" for future civilizations.
Since that time we have seen technological explosions affecting human communications and the further dissemination of data. Also, such phenomenon as the Open Source movement are taking hold, perhaps bringing back a little of the old "Free as Air, Free As Water, Free As Knowledge" ideal.
Now, more than ever, we are experiencing a global interconnectedness, particularly at the Cyberpunk subculture level.
Given these developments, what now have you to say about the complete transfomation of the human condition? Any further insight or predictions?