Re:Why do we measure things with money?
on
Star Wars Sickout
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· Score: 1
Every so often you see these headlines: 50m days a year lost due to hangovers, $50 billion lost due to [some fun activity] bla bla bla. It niggled at me for a long time before I figured out just what it was about these headlines that really bothered me. Finally I got it. The idiots making these complaints have got things the wrong way round. Oscar Wilde nailed it when he said "Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
When people moan about how much alcohol or whatever costs the economy, the unspoken assumption is that people ought to get up and go to work every day for the good of the economy. In this philosophy the purpose of humans is to be good little robots, going to work every day in order to raise the GNP or increase stockholder value.
The reason people go to work is to earn the money they need in order to live their lives. If what people want to do with their lives is get raging drunk or watch starwars then that is their choice. For a lot of people, the main reason to go to work is to earn enough money to enjoy themselves. Complaining that they sometimes miss work as a result of a movie or alcohol related injury is like complaining that football players are missing practice due to the match. It's easy to blame alcohol/drugs or whatevr for lost work days, but how about crediting them as one of the motivations for going to work at all.
Re:Why do we measure things with money?
on
Star Wars Sickout
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· Score: 1
> People in the western world (or anywhere in the world) spend less time working than they ever have before. Because of technology, people are gaining free time at a pretty good rate.
Bullshit. People [in US anyway] work 10% more hours now than they did in 1975
Dude, I like terse code as much as the next guy, probably more [especially if he's a java fan], but its also kinda nice to maintain code that doesnt look like line noise. I thought you were joking too. Your example is actually rather kind on max() since it comes from some header somewhere and there may be issues with the way it was defined, even so...
First off, Moore's law may not hold out for another 30 years, let alone 60.
Secondly, how fast does software progress ? Suppose we all had computers 60 billion times faster than we do now. What would we do with them ? run SWING based java applications with tolerable responsiveness, play solitaire faster, run doom 5... [although the frame rate might be a bit low] ok... great,
Intelligence and computing power are orthogonal concepts: suppose you communicated with aliens who were a 100 light years away, would they be less intelligent because it too 200 years to get an answer. Anything you can do on todays supercomputers, you can do on pocket calculator [with enought memory].. it just takes longer.
Lastly, in the long run, computers wont outgrow our brains, they will be integrated with our brains.
Well, it ought to be, at least partially, and in the UK it's closer to being so than most places thanks to the BBC.
I'm fine with continuing to fund BBC in current manner, but you do derive benefit from it even if you never watch it, listen to the radio, or read the website.
The BBC justifies its cost due to its PR benefit alone. The world service enhances UK's reputation abroard and leads via circuitous routes to more money for British companies etc.
Increased obesity levels in US are partly due to excessive advertising for fast food. The strain on the NHS extra commerical channels would have is enough to justify the license fee.
But, you're still right, its better that those who directly use it should pay for it. I just wish that other areas of government spending worked in the same way... for instance, let those who support invasion of Iraq pay for it.
> to get a patent on software you will have to decribe the used algorithm very carefully
Well kinda, but the patents are written by lawyers, not engineers. The engineer sits in a room with patent attorneys and they turn whatever information the engineer gives them into legalese. For 95% of software patents its easier to figure out how to write an equivalent program by just running the actual software and observing its behaviour. Then once you've understood it, you can read the patent and chances are pretty good the original used the same basic algorithms.
The thing is.. the tricky thing about most trutly innovative software is not how you solve the problem, but what problem you choose to solve. You cannot obtain a patent on the problem, so instead companies obtain patents on the solution they used and any other reasonable solutions they can think of at the same time.
You cannot legitametly patent the problem, but you can try [business methods], and since the USPTO uses a "grant now, litigate later" model, patents hugely skew things in favour of large companies.
"same amount of software".. wtf does that mean ? 1000 oracle installations run the same amount of software as a single machin, just different copies of it. And a dual core machine running two different instances may have two different copies in cache.
I dont see what all the fuss is about. The way software is licensed normally is weird.. this is no more weird than normal.
You get a lot of value even using non-multithreaded apps, eg make -j2 almost doubles compile speed on largish projects on a dual processor system even though the compiler is not multithreaded.
Until multiprocessor systems are more widespread, its barely worth the effort. Writing multithreaded apps is a royal pain, and the development tools don't help either. For instance std::string in VC6 is not thread-safe - you dont even find these things out until trying to do multithreaded stuff.
Why bother storing the code as XML. In order for your text editor to present things in a bareable fashion, the text editor has to contain a module that parses whatever language you are using and converts that into XML. So assuming that code exists, if you want to write some tool that prefers xml, just use that code to do a java2xml or whatever2xml conversion first. That way people can use their existing tools for existing work.
This is all entirely possible already, there's no reason at all for people to start doing things differently.
I guess if he had just written his own article as opposed to annotating an article we know and love, it wouldnt have made it to slashdot.
I just don't get the same feeling of insight that the original gave me [I had issues with the original too, but there was enough great stuff in there to make criticism seem petty, I'll write my own article if I feel like saying anything]. NS's might have had some details wrong, but the overall flavour was right, I feel like this has the details right, but somehow misses overall. Just to take one sentance.
> This assumes that ignorant people prefer being ignorant. I was ignorant when I was young. I got over it.
First off, a lot of people *do* like being ignorant. They like the certainty which comes from filtering out facts that disagree with their viewpoint. Secondly, the way I see things is: I thoughtI knew everything when I was young. I got over it, now I know I'm ignorant.
> so long as they've not been told to shut up all their life.
Hey, 11 year olds can be intelligent even if they have been told to shut up all their life. They might not be that well adjusted though, but that would be ok seeing as how they would keep to themselves, of course, you wouldnt want to be around when they stop going tick tick tick.
Where the fuck is Insurgia anyway, and why doesnt the US just close the border to stop all the insurgents getting in ?
Oh wait, what's that.. the insurgents are actually Iraqis fighting against foreign occupiers. Geez, how many bombs do we have to drop on these people before they realise we're their friends ?
Of course, if these had been included other people would be whining about other omissions. Also, it seems to me like there is a severe open source bias in this list. "stuff that matters".. bleh.
Sea levels rising 2 feet in 10 years would cause, I dunno... maybe 3,000,000 deaths [several 100,000 in Bangladesh for a start], so on some scales this would be rather more significant than 9/11. Of course, it depends upon your exchange rate, ie whether you think 1 American life worth is worth 1000 plus foreigners or just a 100 or so.
What makes you think the price will rise gradually ? Everybody I've read who has studied this says prices will rise very abruptly, by this I mean as oil starts to run out, the price rises will be many times greater than the current rate of inflation.
Our attitude to oil consumption is more like the guy falling off a building saying to himself on the way down "so far, so good..." A soft landing is possible, but we better start knitting a parachute sometime soon.
> people don't apply good engineering practices to code
I've heard this argument a lot, but it's wrong.
When engineers make a new airline/bridge/circuit, they model the entire thing on a computer first. The CAD model is an unambiguous model of the plane. Important subsystems in it are modelled and analysed independently and in conjunction with the components around it.
So, if writing software was similar, we would first model the software on a computer. Oh, er, wait a moment. In an important sense, software is a design. The only unambiguous design is the actual software [otherwise we could make the design the programming language]. So, one could have a notion of starting with a fuzzy design and gradually making it clearer, but you can still end up with a bad design.
When someone designs a bad aircraft, the design is modelled, flaws are found and the design is improved. Nobody builds the thing until they feel pretty sure the design is right. However, software is often bad for the same reason that an initial design of anything else is bad. If it was equivalent to an airplane, windows 95 for instance, once designed, would never have been built. However, once the design for a piece of software is complete, one has created the software. The development money has been spent, so the makers will try to get what they can for it. It's *all* design.
High level programming languages are the most elegent way we can think of to describe logic. We can sometimes model the *question* in a better way. That is what a detailed spec, use cases, etc are about.
This could be a good thing. Maybe another Bush term is just what America and the world needs. It's risky, and it's harsh medicine, but the world will probably get through it and America will most likely be ready for a real change afterwards. This may be better than letting Kerry take over a losing hand, having a lame duck presidency only for the neoconservatives to come back refreshed and invigorated 4 years later. America hasnt reaped what it's sowed yet, and it may be better in the long run for Bush to stay in charge while it does.
Slashdot Mirror
Every so often you see these headlines: 50m days a year lost
due to hangovers, $50 billion lost due to [some fun activity]
bla bla bla. It niggled at me for a long time before I figured
out just what it was about these headlines that really bothered
me. Finally I got it. The idiots making these complaints have
got things the wrong way round. Oscar Wilde nailed it when he said
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
When people moan about how much alcohol or whatever costs the economy,
the unspoken assumption is that people ought to get up and go to
work every day for the good of the economy. In this philosophy
the purpose of humans is to be good little robots, going to work every
day in order to raise the GNP or increase stockholder value.
The reason people go to work is to earn the money they need in
order to live their lives. If what people want to do with their lives
is get raging drunk or watch starwars then that is their choice.
For a lot of people, the main reason to go to work is to earn
enough money to enjoy themselves. Complaining that they sometimes
miss work as a result of a movie or alcohol related injury is like
complaining that football players are missing practice due to the match.
It's easy to blame alcohol/drugs or whatevr for lost work days, but how
about crediting them as one of the motivations for going to work at all.
> People in the western world (or anywhere in the world) spend less time working than they ever have before. Because of technology, people are gaining free time at a pretty good rate.
p shots_07072004
Bullshit. People [in US anyway] work 10% more hours now than they did in 1975
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_sna
Dude, I like terse code as much as the next guy, probably more [especially if he's a java fan], but its also kinda nice to maintain code that doesnt look like line noise. I thought you were joking too. Your example is actually rather kind on max() since it comes from some header somewhere and there may be issues with the way it was defined, even so...
First off, Moore's law may not hold out for another 30 years, let alone 60.
Secondly, how fast does software progress ? Suppose we all had computers 60 billion times faster than we do now. What would we do with them ? run SWING based java applications with tolerable responsiveness, play solitaire faster, run doom 5... [although the frame rate might be a bit low] ok... great,
Intelligence and computing power are orthogonal concepts: suppose you communicated with aliens who were a 100 light years away, would they be less intelligent because it too 200 years to get an answer. Anything you can do on todays supercomputers, you can do on pocket calculator [with enought memory].. it just takes longer.
Lastly, in the long run, computers wont outgrow our brains, they will be integrated with our brains.
I'm holding out for Thinking Machine laptops, I'm talking about the 686 prototypes - with the artificial intelligence Risk chip !
> TV is not education, it's not health
Well, it ought to be, at least partially, and in the UK it's closer to being so than most places thanks to the BBC.
I'm fine with continuing to fund BBC in current manner, but you do derive benefit from it even if you never watch it, listen to the radio, or read the website.
The BBC justifies its cost due to its PR benefit alone. The world service enhances UK's reputation abroard and leads via circuitous routes to more money for British companies etc.
Increased obesity levels in US are partly due to excessive advertising for fast food. The strain on the NHS extra commerical channels would have is enough to justify the license fee.
But, you're still right, its better that those who directly use it should pay for it. I just wish that other areas of government spending worked in the same way... for instance, let those who support invasion of Iraq pay for it.
> to get a patent on software you will have to decribe the used algorithm very carefully
Well kinda, but the patents are written by lawyers, not engineers. The engineer sits in a room with patent attorneys and they turn whatever information the engineer gives them into legalese. For 95% of software patents its easier to figure out how to write an equivalent program by just running the actual software and observing its behaviour. Then once you've understood it, you can read the patent and chances are pretty good the original used the same basic algorithms.
The thing is.. the tricky thing about most trutly innovative software is not how you solve the problem, but what problem you choose to solve. You cannot obtain a patent on the problem, so instead companies obtain patents on the solution they used and any other reasonable solutions they can think of at the same time.
You cannot legitametly patent the problem, but you can try [business methods], and since the USPTO uses a "grant now, litigate later" model, patents hugely skew things in favour of large companies.
"same amount of software".. wtf does that mean ? 1000 oracle installations run the same amount of software as a single machin, just different copies of it. And a dual core machine running two different instances may have two different copies in cache.
I dont see what all the fuss is about. The way software is licensed normally is weird.. this is no more weird than normal.
> Who would want to buy hunger?
Someone with a eating disorder. Cannabis works for this [or so I have heard].
You get a lot of value even using non-multithreaded apps, eg make -j2 almost doubles compile speed on largish projects on a dual processor system even though the compiler is not multithreaded.
Until multiprocessor systems are more widespread, its barely worth the effort. Writing multithreaded apps is a royal pain, and the development tools don't help either. For instance std::string in VC6 is not thread-safe - you dont even find these things out until trying to do multithreaded stuff.
Why bother storing the code as XML. In order for your text editor to present things in a bareable fashion, the text editor has to contain a module that parses whatever language you are using and converts that into XML. So assuming that code exists, if you want to write some tool that prefers xml, just use that code to do a java2xml or whatever2xml conversion first. That way people can use their existing tools for existing work.
This is all entirely possible already, there's no reason at all for people to start doing things differently.
have you ever seen a st. bernard smile, you need to mop the floor afterwards.
Ok, yes, 3 sentances, sue me.
I guess if he had just written his own article as opposed to annotating an article we know and love, it wouldnt have made it to slashdot.
I just don't get the same feeling of insight that the original gave me [I had issues with the original too, but there was enough great stuff in there to make criticism seem petty, I'll write my own article if I feel like saying anything]. NS's might have had some details wrong, but the overall flavour was right, I feel like this has the details right, but somehow misses overall. Just to take one sentance.
> This assumes that ignorant people prefer being ignorant. I was ignorant when I was young. I got over it.
First off, a lot of people *do* like being ignorant. They like the certainty which comes from filtering out facts that disagree with their viewpoint. Secondly, the way I see things is: I thoughtI knew everything when I was young. I got over it, now I know I'm ignorant.
> so long as they've not been told to shut up all their life.
Hey, 11 year olds can be intelligent even if they have been told to shut up all their life. They might not be that well adjusted though, but that would be ok seeing as how they would keep to themselves, of course, you wouldnt want to be around when they stop going tick tick tick.
Sure there are. If only all those damn non-Iraqi's would stay out of Iraq where they don't belong, then there wouldn't be a problem.
Where the fuck is Insurgia anyway, and why doesnt the US just close the border to stop all the insurgents getting in ?
Oh wait, what's that.. the insurgents are actually Iraqis fighting against foreign occupiers. Geez, how many bombs do we have to drop on these people before they realise we're their friends ?
Is there a point in there ?
Of course, if these had been included other people would be whining about other omissions. Also, it seems to me like there is a severe open source bias in this list. "stuff that matters" .. bleh.
Sea levels rising 2 feet in 10 years would cause, I dunno... maybe 3,000,000 deaths [several 100,000 in Bangladesh for a start], so on some scales this would be rather more significant than 9/11. Of course, it depends upon your exchange rate, ie whether you think 1 American life worth is worth 1000 plus foreigners or just a 100 or so.
http://www.homle.com/aer/2004election_by_iq.png
You know, it is actually possible to pinpoint where the idiots live.
What makes you think the price will rise gradually ? Everybody I've read who has studied this says prices will rise very abruptly, by this I mean as oil starts to run out, the price rises will be many times greater than the current rate of inflation.
Our attitude to oil consumption is more like the guy falling off a building saying to himself on the way down "so far, so good..." A soft landing is possible, but we better start knitting a parachute sometime soon.
Wikipedia is a community effort.
If we replace the word "community" with the word "committee" the problem is obvious.
> people don't apply good engineering practices to code
I've heard this argument a lot, but it's wrong.
When engineers make a new airline/bridge/circuit, they model the entire thing on a computer first. The CAD model is an unambiguous model of the plane. Important subsystems in it are modelled and analysed independently and in conjunction with the components around it.
So, if writing software was similar, we would first model the software on a computer. Oh, er, wait a moment. In an important sense, software is a design. The only unambiguous design is the actual software [otherwise we could make the design the programming language]. So, one could have a notion of starting with a fuzzy design and gradually making it clearer, but you can still end up with a bad design.
When someone designs a bad aircraft, the design is modelled, flaws are found and the design is improved. Nobody builds the thing until they feel pretty sure the design is right. However, software is often bad for the same reason that an initial design of anything else is bad. If it was equivalent to an airplane, windows 95 for instance, once designed, would never have been built. However, once the design for a piece of software is complete, one has created the software. The development money has been spent, so the makers will try to get what they can for it. It's *all* design.
High level programming languages are the most elegent way we can think of to
describe logic. We can sometimes model the *question* in a better way.
That is what a detailed spec, use cases, etc are about.
This could be a good thing. Maybe another Bush term is just what America and the world needs. It's risky, and it's harsh medicine, but the world will probably get through it and America will most likely be ready for a real change afterwards. This may be better than letting Kerry take over a losing hand, having a lame duck presidency only for the neoconservatives to come back refreshed and invigorated 4 years later. America hasnt reaped what it's sowed yet, and it may be better in the long run for Bush to stay in charge while it does.