It seems to me that what you are complaining about is the fact that the solution doesn't just pop automatically out of the problem description.
"are there better notations out there that can further streamline the path from requirements to coding" is another way of saying, "I can draw a UML diagram, but I still need to think, isn't there some other way of doing it that cuts out the need to actually think entirely".
Well, no, there isn't. Furthermore, there never will be. I could say a lot more about this, but I won't. http://www.melloworld.com/Reciprocality/r0/index.h tml might give you an idea where I'm coming from, but frankly I doubt it, I think you're probably beyond help.
> The argument that the chances of Evolution creating eyes is too low to happen is only made by people who do not understand how evolution works, how statistics work, or have a bias against evolution for personal reasons.
I understand statistics fine thanks. I used to completely buy evolution as a theory. What changed my mind was working for two solid years with genetic algorithms. [I was solving a scheduling problem for a large aluminum factory]GAs work a lot better than random search, for many problems they are the best algorithm currently known. For some problems simulated annealing, or regular optimization techniques work better. GAs are not *anything* like as good at solving problems as people [especially darwinists] suppose. I suggest you try solving some simple design problems with GAs yourself. It's not that difficult to get started with. Depending on the efficiency of your encoding and the complexity of your domain ymmv. However, after finding it took 2000 generations with a population of 200,000 to find a good solution to a 2000bit[genome] problem I began to seriously doubt that apes could evolve into humans given the population/generations/bit length [genome]. I know there is only a 2% difference in DNA, but given the size of the problem - that is huge.
Anyway, don't assume that everybody who doubts evolution simply has an inferior understanding to yours. I'm not saying god is involved, simply that proposed mechanism is insufficient, there is something crucial that we don't understand yet.
I don't know what argument you are trying to defeat with your first paragraph, but it's certainly not related to the post you were replying to. It's a Johnnie Cochran style argument [demonstrate some unrelated argument is ridiculous].
> Remember, also, that natural selection is not a random process
Yes, yes, yes, everybody understand that. The point is that, although not random, evolution is supposed to be based upon natural selection coupled with randomness. I have used genetic algorithms extensively to solve real world problems, and sure - it is better than random search. However, GaS are not nearly as good as they would need to be to solve the problem they have supposedly solved. The survival of the fittest/sexiest, mutation and cross selection mechanism that is supposed to account for evolution falls far of the mark. Working with GAs, you get a feel for the complexity of problem that can be solved, with a given population in a given number of generations. The commonly excepted theory of how evolution works is just plain fucking wrong. There is something much more interesting going on. I'm not saying it's God, just that we have no idea what the mechanism really is.
But can a chihauhau interbreed with a saint bernard ? If the chihauhau was the bitch it would look like the saint bernard was playing with a hand[..] puppet. The other way round would look pretty darn silly too.. "take it all, bitch". Oh well, it's Friday...
oh please... SGI had fix and continue plus debuggers way better than VS7 8 years ago. Proper interactive debugging (type call blabla::XX(5,8) to step into member function etc and purify hasn't improved since rational bought it.
Yeah well, you're a fuckwit. And the fuckwit who modded you as informative is even more of a fuckwit. He never claimed java was similar to javascript, the context he mentioned java in was trying to avoid people taking him seriously, ie he was talking to idiots. Waste of time really, oh fuck...
Speed is irrelevent. Imagine having a conversation with an intelligent alien who lived 100 light years away. The speed of his response is independent of the intelligence of his answers. All Turing machines are equivalent. So, either you can simulate human brain on a pocket calculator (given enough memory), or you can't simulate human brain on any number of beowulf clusters of supercomputers. Personally I suspect that we can't simulate human brain on a pocket calculator, but who knows...
Amen. Uh, I need to work on the gardening thing.. but seriously planning to.
Cooking goes so naturally with coding it's amazing to me that there's this pizza/burger geek thing. Something you can smell, touch, taste, see is perfect antidote to abstraction of coding, but combination of inventiveness and perpetually expanding knowledge are in common.
Thanks for the tip. I feel for you man.. I was in that situation for a while. SF has a few decent Indian's but they wouldn't know a decent naan if you smacked 'em with it. Check out Sue's Indian if you're in bay area.
BTW, flights are a lot less than $800 most the time now.
Using a base system of 10 is a poor choice, it may have made sense when the most convenient thing to keep track of a number was your fingers, but now the most convenient thing is a laptop, so we would be better off with base 12 or 16.
Another thing - the fucking metric system, is just not natural. The imperial system is inherited from measures that felt right in antiquity, rather than some arbitrary division based upon a bad original decision (a base 10 number system). And yes, I *was* brought up to use the metric system. Actually, I prefer meters to yards, a yard is supposed to be an average stride, but people are taller now. A pint is a sensible amount to drink when you're thirsty. Inches, pounds, pints and miles are just *right*.
I suspect that apart from the superficial explanation for imperial measures, there is something intrinsically better about them that we no longer have the science to explain. Some principle equivalent to the golden mean. One day we will rediscover the principles on which they are based.
So anyway, there's no way we're going to change time but if we really wanted to make a sacrifice along those lines, change the number system to base 12 or 16 and then the metric system can be consigned to the garbage bin where it belongs.
Using a base system of 10 is a poor choice, it may have made sense when the most convenient thing to keep track of a number was your fingers, but now the most convenient thing is a laptop, so we would be better off with base 12 or 16.
Another thing - the fucking metric system, is just not natural. The imperial system is inherited from measures that felt right in antiquity, rather than some arbitrary division based upon a bad original decision (a base 10 number system). And yes, I *was* brought up to use the metric system. Actually, I prefer meters to yards, a yard is supposed to be an average stride, but people are taller now. A pint is a sensible amount to drink when you're thirsty. Inches, pounds, pints and miles are just *right*.
I suspect that apart from the superficial explanation for imperial measures, there is something intrinsically better about them that we no longer have the science to explain. Some principle equivalent to the golden mean. One day we will rediscover the principles on which they are based.
So anyway, there's no fucking waay we're going to change time but if we really wanted to make a sacrafice along those lines, change the number system to base 12 or 16 and then the metric system can be consigned to the garbage bin where it belongs.
> Or worse, Company A not release their cure for cancer until they have found a way of having it not be undone by this technique?
This sentance shows that you've bought the propoganda that the pro gene patenting companies have been spinning. Gene patents are not drugs, they may be useful for creating drugs, but an actual drug would be independently patentable. In fact, the existence of gene patents simply makes it impossible for anybody else to develop the drugs unless they pay extortionate fees to the carpet baggers. It's a lot easier to obtain a gene patent than to figure out what to do with it.
> which only serve to perpetrate more poor individuals
OK, but what do you propose doing instead ?
I guess if one stopped "perpetrating" poor people, they would die out or at least be less likely to reproduce. This would raise living standards, and would lessen the poverty gap. In fact, why not irradicate poverty entirely by just shooting everybody beneath the poverty line.
Maybe I'm overreacting, but I'm not sure what you really mean by "perpetrate more poor individuals".
> As does everywhere. It's a matter of what you can swallow, and what makes your stomach turn. Currently the UK governemnt polices make me vomit.
Me too. Actually the restrictions are so meaningless that I'm beginning to think these changes might be a good thing ! They just don't go quite far enough. When I can find out who Cherie Blair has been in contact with in the last week, which websites Jack Straw's children visit etc then I'll feel like we're on a level playing field.
We're almost there. We just need to open things up a tiny bit more. There are virtually no meaningful restrictions left, so why not go the whole hog. We just need to take it a *tiny* bit further. When I can get a list of all the people Cherie Blair has been in conact with over the last week, when I can review which websites Jack Straw's children have been looking at, then I'll feel like we're on a level playing field. I'm willing to bet that politicians have got more to hide than I do, for the simple reason that nobody really cares what I do.
Have fun working in the US, everybody should live abroad for a few years at least. It opens your mind, and you are enslaved far more effectively by your preconceptions than by any laws.
You're wrong about there being nothing you can do though. Liberty is never handed to anybody on a plate, it sometimes gets built into a system after years of bitter struggle. It's in the nature of governments to erode whatever freedoms have previously been won. Governments like to govern. Left to their own devices they will eventually decide when you should take shit. Write to your MP, go on a march, make some noise for fuck's sake.
The US has it's own problems, for instance they seem to have just decided that there's no need to bother with evidence or trials anymore, just declare that someone was thinking about doing something bad and you can lock them up for ever without trial. All that in a country that already locks up a higher proportion of its population than anywhere except Russia.
You probably overestimate the difference between being a slave and working in a sweat shop. An economic position where one must work hard for 18 hours purely to survive is pretty close to slavery. I suspect that the workers would be better off if they really were slaves - the owners would then have more incentive to invest in training and would be inclined to take better care of actual property.
You're right up to a point. It is worse for those working in sweatshops for you to simply boycott sweatshops' products.
People used to argue that it would be wrong to boycott slave manafactured products because unless the slaves were productive and profitable they would probably be executed. Again, it's a reasonable argument, but it misses the point slightly.
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woah, when did i turn into such an asshole, mmm grouchy today
It seems to me that what you are complaining about is the fact that the solution doesn't just pop automatically out of the problem description.
h tml might give you an idea where I'm coming from, but frankly I doubt it, I think you're probably beyond help.
"are there better notations out there that can further streamline the path from requirements to coding" is another way of saying, "I can draw a UML diagram, but I still need to think, isn't there some other way of doing it that cuts out the need to actually think entirely".
Well, no, there isn't. Furthermore, there never will be. I could say a lot more about this, but I won't. http://www.melloworld.com/Reciprocality/r0/index.
> The argument that the chances of Evolution creating eyes is too low to happen is only made by people who do not understand how evolution works, how statistics work, or have a bias against evolution for personal reasons.
I understand statistics fine thanks. I used to completely buy evolution as a theory. What changed my mind was working for two solid years with genetic algorithms. [I was solving a scheduling problem for a large aluminum factory]GAs work a lot better than random search, for many problems they are the best algorithm currently known. For some problems simulated annealing, or regular optimization techniques work better. GAs are not *anything* like as good at solving problems as people [especially darwinists] suppose. I suggest you try solving some simple design problems with GAs yourself. It's not that difficult to get started with. Depending on the efficiency of your encoding and the complexity of your domain ymmv. However, after finding it took 2000 generations with a population of 200,000 to find a good solution to a 2000bit[genome] problem I began to seriously doubt that apes could evolve into humans given the population/generations/bit length [genome]. I know there is only a 2% difference in DNA, but given the size of the problem - that is huge.
Anyway, don't assume that everybody who doubts evolution simply has an inferior understanding to yours. I'm not saying god is involved, simply that proposed mechanism is insufficient, there is something crucial that we don't understand yet.
I don't know what argument you are trying to defeat with your first paragraph, but it's certainly not related to the post you were replying to. It's a Johnnie Cochran style argument [demonstrate some unrelated argument is ridiculous].
> Remember, also, that natural selection is not a random process
Yes, yes, yes, everybody understand that. The point is that, although not random, evolution is supposed to be based upon natural selection coupled with randomness. I have used genetic algorithms extensively to solve real world problems, and sure - it is better than random search. However, GaS are not nearly as good as they would need to be to solve the problem they have supposedly solved. The survival of the fittest/sexiest, mutation and cross selection mechanism that is supposed to account for evolution falls far of the mark. Working with GAs, you get a feel for the complexity of problem that can be solved, with a given population in a given number of generations. The commonly excepted theory of how evolution works is just plain fucking wrong. There is something much more interesting going on. I'm not saying it's God, just that we have no idea what the mechanism really is.
But can a chihauhau interbreed with a saint bernard ? If the chihauhau was the bitch it would look like the saint bernard was playing with a hand[..] puppet. The other way round would look pretty darn silly too.. "take it all, bitch". Oh well, it's Friday...
Excellent, now I can just wear a braclet or elegent neclace instead of walking around with the shrunken heads of my enemies tied on a string.
One can't fault the convenience factor, but
I don't know, I don't think it will have quite the same, er, impact.
oh please... SGI had fix and continue plus debuggers way better than VS7 8 years ago. Proper interactive debugging (type call blabla::XX(5,8) to step into member function etc and purify hasn't improved since rational bought it.
Have you read Gurdjieff ? His ideas on automatism are similar to yours. You might also want to look at www.reciprocality.org
As for LSD being the most powerful drug ever... you should check out salvia.
Yeah well, you're a fuckwit. And the fuckwit who modded you as informative is even more of a fuckwit. He never claimed java was similar to javascript, the context he mentioned java in was trying to avoid people taking him seriously, ie he was talking to idiots. Waste of time really, oh fuck...
sure.. to take one example there are a lot atheists and a lot of believers. One group at least is wrong.
Speed is irrelevent. Imagine having a conversation with an intelligent alien who lived 100 light years away. The speed of his response is independent of the intelligence of his answers. All Turing machines are equivalent. So, either you can simulate human brain on a pocket calculator (given enough memory), or you can't simulate human brain on any number of beowulf clusters of supercomputers. Personally I suspect that we can't simulate human brain on a pocket calculator, but who knows...
Amen. Uh, I need to work on the gardening thing.. but seriously planning to.
Cooking goes so naturally with coding it's amazing to me that there's this pizza/burger geek thing. Something you can smell, touch, taste, see is perfect antidote to abstraction of coding, but combination of inventiveness and perpetually expanding knowledge are in common.
Thanks for the tip. I feel for you man.. I was in that situation for a while. SF has a few decent Indian's but they wouldn't know a decent naan if you smacked 'em with it. Check out Sue's Indian if you're in bay area.
BTW, flights are a lot less than $800 most the time now.
Very clever. Except that ext3 is less stable than ReiserFS.
Using a base system of 10 is a poor choice,
it may have made sense when the most convenient thing to keep track of a number was your fingers, but now the most convenient thing is a laptop, so we would be better off with base 12 or 16.
Another thing - the fucking metric system, is just not natural. The imperial system is inherited from measures that felt right in antiquity, rather than some arbitrary division based upon a bad original decision (a base 10 number system). And yes, I *was* brought up to use the metric system. Actually, I prefer meters to yards, a yard is supposed to be an average stride, but people are taller now. A pint is
a sensible amount to drink when you're thirsty. Inches, pounds, pints and miles are just *right*.
I suspect that apart from the superficial explanation for imperial measures, there is something intrinsically better about them that we no longer have the science to explain. Some principle equivalent to the golden mean. One day we will rediscover the principles on which they are based.
So anyway, there's no way we're going to change time but if we really wanted to make a sacrifice along those lines, change the number system to base 12 or 16 and then the metric system can be consigned to the garbage bin where it belongs.
Using a base system of 10 is a poor choice,
it may have made sense when the most convenient thing to keep track of a number was your fingers, but now the most convenient thing is a laptop, so we would be better off with base 12 or 16.
Another thing - the fucking metric system, is just not natural. The imperial system is inherited from measures that felt right in antiquity, rather than some arbitrary division based upon a bad original decision (a base 10 number system). And yes, I *was* brought up to use the metric system. Actually, I prefer meters to yards, a yard is supposed to be an average stride, but people are taller now. A pint is a sensible amount to drink when you're thirsty. Inches, pounds, pints and miles are just *right*.
I suspect that apart from the superficial explanation for imperial measures, there is something intrinsically better about them that we no longer have the science to explain. Some principle equivalent to the golden mean. One day we will rediscover the principles on which they are based.
So anyway, there's no fucking waay we're going to change time but if we really wanted to make a sacrafice along those lines, change the number system to base 12 or 16 and then the metric system can be consigned to the garbage bin where it belongs.
yeah, what the fuck is up with that.
The l isn't silent in island anyway, the s is. So what vosvo ? Even if it was that would make about as much sense as my toejam, as it is though...
> Or worse, Company A not release their cure for cancer until they have found a way of having it not be undone by this technique?
This sentance shows that you've bought the propoganda that the pro gene patenting companies have been spinning. Gene patents are not drugs, they may be useful for creating drugs, but an actual drug would be independently patentable. In fact, the existence of gene patents simply makes it impossible for anybody else to develop the drugs unless they pay extortionate fees to the carpet baggers. It's a lot easier to obtain a gene patent than to figure out what to do with it.
> which only serve to perpetrate more poor individuals
OK, but what do you propose doing instead ?
I guess if one stopped "perpetrating" poor people, they would die out or at least be less likely to reproduce. This would raise living standards, and would lessen the poverty gap. In fact, why not irradicate poverty entirely by just shooting everybody beneath the poverty line.
Maybe I'm overreacting, but I'm not sure what you really mean by "perpetrate more poor individuals".
LA used to have a wonderful train system.
The trains were all bought up by oil/car companies who drove them all into the sea.
Or at least, that's what I heard, but cannot find any url.
> As does everywhere. It's a matter of what you can swallow, and what makes your stomach turn. Currently the UK governemnt polices make me vomit.
Me too. Actually the restrictions are so meaningless that I'm beginning to think these changes might be a good thing ! They just don't go quite far enough. When I can find out who Cherie Blair has been in contact with in the last week, which websites Jack Straw's children visit etc then I'll feel like we're on a level playing field.
We're almost there. We just need to open things up a tiny bit more. There are virtually no meaningful restrictions left, so why not go the whole hog. We just need to take it a *tiny* bit further. When I can get a list of all the people Cherie Blair has been in conact with over the last week, when I can review which websites Jack Straw's children have been looking at, then I'll feel like we're on a level playing field. I'm willing to bet that politicians have got more to hide than I do, for the simple reason that nobody really cares what I do.
Have fun working in the US, everybody should live abroad for a few years at least. It opens your mind, and you are enslaved far more effectively by your preconceptions than by any laws.
You're wrong about there being nothing you can do though. Liberty is never handed to anybody on a plate, it sometimes gets built into a system after years of bitter struggle. It's in the nature of governments to erode whatever freedoms have previously been won. Governments like to govern. Left to their own devices they will eventually decide when you should take shit. Write to your MP, go on a march, make some noise for fuck's sake.
The US has it's own problems, for instance they seem to have just decided that there's no need to bother with evidence or trials anymore, just declare that someone was thinking about doing something bad and you can lock them up for ever without trial. All that in a country that already locks up a higher proportion of its population than anywhere except Russia.
You probably overestimate the difference between being a slave and working in a sweat shop. An economic position where one must work hard for 18 hours purely to survive is pretty close to slavery. I suspect that the workers would be better off if they really were slaves - the owners would then have more incentive to invest in training and would be inclined to take better care of actual property.
You're right up to a point. It is worse for those working in sweatshops for you to simply boycott sweatshops' products.
People used to argue that it would be wrong to boycott slave manafactured products because unless the slaves were productive and profitable they would probably be executed. Again, it's a reasonable argument, but it misses the point slightly.
Weird, I thought the Chinese government system changed slightly a few decades ago. Remind me, which dynasty are we they in now ?