A game is only a game when it has rules and the players stick to those rules. We're already into some fierce meaninglessness in this nihilistic modern era. Totally divorced and separated from Nature, we've even lost the ability to fully understand our lost-ness.
Gene manipulation will only make the rules even more wispy and the distance between us and Nature even greater. Many may think this is our destiny--I did--to self-rig ourselves. But I know now it will be our final spastic, shuttering death. Why? Because we MASSIVELY underestimate the difficulty and complexity! Nature has been at this game for some 3 billion years, and She takes Her sweet time. And now in the blink of an eye, we think we're in command of those billions of years of wisdom and experience. Fools rush in where angels take a break. We're soooo delusional! Children playing with fire. Children soon burnt beyond all recognition, dying painfully and slowly.
...at Discipline Global Mobile.
Fripp et. al. has plenty to say about the "industry" and how actually wound up in the hole even when Crimso was (and still is) one of the world's most progressive virtuoso combos.
I say death to the RIAA and all the conventional rip-off organs of the "music industry."
As usual the slaves to scifi and Reagan economics came out in force to roast me. My alarm bells ring when the ENTIRE pharma industry goes lemming over any genetic research they think might fit into one gene-one trait models, i.e., quick, easy money. They go wild trying to find drugs, treatments, gimmicks, etc. which are based on half-baked, race-to-market, regulators-be-damned research. The insane greed and hustling of the pharmas and agri-chems is what's going to do us in, not righteous, honest Professor Quest. Science has never been the enemy, just the greed lurking in its shadows. Science goes slow and methodical, seeking full understanding and elegance. That's never been my problem.
But having said all this, I have become a Luddite. (Thanks to Daniel Quinn's book "Ishmael" etc.) The human race has bet the farm on technology, to the exclusion of the reality-based natural world. We've made an enemy of Mother Earth, and we'll soon pay. Anybody that can shake AIDS viruses and Mad Cow out of her sleeve is someone you don't play games with.
This is the same insanity that pervades the entire genetic engineering field, i.e., the belief that certain traits can be traced back to a single gene. The obvious conclusion of such idiots is that we'll just find a way to tweak gene #123, and reap the benefits. Wrong! Genes and the realities they induce are far, far more complex than anyone can imagine today. Imagine holographic data storage. I'm totally convinced genes work together in a similar fashion to produce traits, and NOT the simplistic one gene-one trait model we currently have. Of course, we understand that sometimes many genes combine to affect a trait, but I'm sure there are very many orders of magnitude of interplay going on that we can't even begin to understand. But the fools will tinker like a boy tearing up a car engine for the first time. Sometime in the distant future we'll begin to understand just how networked genes are, how much of a "systems thing" genetics really are--at the individual level, and at an even more mysterious community level. At some point the stuff C.G. Jung was saying will become understood in a genetic way. But until then we'll undoubtedly wreak chaos....
I know what you're saying on the Tolkien was a RCatholic, but he separated personal belief from his scholarly work completely and absolutely. His whole Silmarilion/LOTR project was an attempt to produce a latter-day Northwest European mythology totally clean of the Christian taint. Christians love to claim Tolkien as one of their own. Too bad. They may get the man himself, but definitely not his work. Tolkien even had a serious falling out with C.S. Lewis when Lewis published the Narnia series. Tolkien found it extremely unprofessional to mix and match NWEuro legend and myth with Xianity. No joke. Read about it in the authorized biography by Humphrey. You have to understand the scholarly arm of things to understand why Tolkien et al were so adamant about keeping Christianity out. The whole object was to understand what NWEurope was BEFORE the Xians. Not even the Icelandic Sagas (the most extensive descriptions of the Norse gods) is fully trusted by the scholars because the author was himself a Christian--as well as other factors. The Xians did a very thorough job of destroying our heritage, and today's scholars have only the barest scraps of information to work with. For example, Tolkien never touched the King Arthur stories, exactly because it was such an obvious nostalgic fiction soaked in the Xian perfume of the times. Sorry, LOTR is very pre-Christian and Tolkien staked his entire reputation on that fact. Again, if you don't believe me just read his authorized biography, his Letters, and T.A. Shippey's "Tolkien, Author of the Century." Don't read that tripe "Focus on the Family" puts out...
Just say the word "pagan".... Anyway, I'm pagan because I realized a long time ago that this Jesus guy was Jewish and talking to the Jews, not to me--no matter what you Xian idiots say. Just ask a Rabbi. They never authorized the Christian theft of Yahweh, and they sure don't appreciate you elevating a rejected reformer to messiah status.
I'm not Jewish. My ancestors came from Northwest Europe. We used to have our own religion. We were very similar to the Native Americans before the Romans and the Christians showed up. Secondly, even if I was Jewish, I'd either emulate him or forget it. This business of "following" Jesus is a bit of a joke. I mean, do you still call 3,000 miles back and fading still "following" Jesus? Today's Christianity is all about weasling your ass into heaven. I'm not interested in heaven. My heaven is right here on Earth, not the destroyed version, but the original Rivendell-Lothlorien version.
The NWEuro people are tired of the alien desert religions. They respond to HP and LOTR because it resonates with them deep inside--despite a lifetime of slimey Xian propaganda and the modern materialism.
I'm in my late forties and I love the Harry Potter series. But then I'm a pagan too, and when I see the "religious right" getting hugely bent out of shape over "Heathen Harry" I can actually see the world get just a little bit back into alignment again. Best of all I love the term "muggle." It describes my religious opponents so well! Some day I'm going to meet Jery Fallwell or Pat Robertson and I'll put on my Hagris accent and say, "And I suppose a great muggle like you is going to...."
The first picture is of the whole sun. The line reads, shot through the "finder telescope." I know of some Norwegians who would remark that only the Swedes would need a finder telescope to find the sun. (LOL)
Why get anywhere near hatred of the Jew? Why not simply say, "I'm not Jewish. I therefore have no affinity to things Jewish."....and let it go at that? I think I know the reason why not. You are still preoccupied with the Jewish cult Christianity. Trying to be a Christian and distance yourself from Jews is like trying to breed a hairless dog: If you ever actually achieve such a "wonderous" thing, hey, it's all yours! You can keep it! But I like wolves....
The U.S. needs to get out of the "empire business". You can't win at that game. Eventually you wind up in the history books, right along with all the others who played and lost.
Tomorrow at 12:00 CST I will stand in my living room, head down, and imagine that you are a few feet away from me. At any time after 12:00 CST you--wherever you are--may laugh your hardest, coldest, most cynical laugh at me. I will stand at humble attention for 10 minutes "receiving" your laughter from afar. Thusly smoted, I will slink off to lick my wounds and regret ever making such a idiotic posting to/. All better now?
The title "Myths to Live By" says it all. But how do we live by a "myth"? Is the valour, honor, bravery, etc. depicted in LOTR just a quaint yuckyuck waiting to be spoofed by professional wise-asses? Am I a fool to want a world like the hobbits or the elves? The poster above you thinks I'm a crack smoker....
If I see "Shogun" I think it's a cool, fasinating story. If I see "Roots" that's great, too. If I see LOTR--warts and all (I didn't like it being filmed in NZland. I would have preferred NoEuro.)--I positively GLOW with excitement! That's because my ancestors are from NoEuro; I'm hardwired to light up when someone strokes my genetic memories. I'm not just being an immature, nutcase, silly romanticist. If you're from NoEuro (basically of Celtic or Germanic origin) you can't help but vibrate at the NoEuro frequency when you get such a strong wack as LOTR provides. Sure, there's elements by and large universal contained therein, but still Tolkien hand-made it for the NoEuro. Go with it. It's more than just "fantasy". It's what C.G. Jung called the collective subconsious trying to talk to you. But as we know, getting in touch with the personal or collective subconsious is fraught with danger. Nazi Germany tried to touch it, and millions died. It's like a pressure cooker, the steam has to be released slowly. (If Huxley's Brave New World really existed, how would you go in and "correct" (socially re-engineer) it?) Cynics may laugh at all this, but I've already been one of the world's most aloof, intellectual, realist-cynics....and it's a dead-end profession--literally NO FUTURE. For starters, check out the book "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn (or his Web site http://www.ishmael.org). LOTR is a standing call to the NoEuro human to do some "roots."
I've never bought the CS degree argument that you need theory, etc. in order to be fit enough to catch the next wave. Believe me, nobody like Oracle or Microsoft is going to come out with something so new and big that it'll take a CS degree to grok it. The real IT world makes the next wave as catchable as possible for their developer base. Hence, good IT jobs are very possible without CS degrees. Look at MS: a study in living totally outside the CS degree.
A CS degree says you can tackle big stuff and not get thrown the first day. If you don't want to do bread-and-butter data management work, but stuff more cutting edge, then yes, the compter as a scientific subject should be in your realm of knowledge. But when as many as 75% of any given CS program's students only want big-buck commercial data management gigs, why torture them with CS theory?
Paul Graham makes some big claims for Lisp/functional programming in some of his essays (see www.paulgraham.com). But logic also dictates that some sort of artificial intelligence will have to come to pass; otherwise, we continue telling the computer each thought to have, hoping we thought of everything, and that those thoughts don't clash and crash. (To be sure, this hand-built, hand-coordinated approach is already pretty much maxed out.) Between Graham and the inevitability of AI's reemergence, Lisp seems like a good bet. Or am I (and Graham) way off?
All retaliation is at least one order of magnitude above what the original wrongdoing called for. The Nazis come to mind, and now this attack today. Violence always escalates because the involved parties believe they will "teach the other side a lesson." The lesson of violence only teaches retaliation at least one order of magnitude too severe.
I'm seeing an "either/or", black-or-white mindset to the issue of free software. True freedom is maximal for all concerned. It's too far of a stretch to insist that when I write software and sell it without the source, I am somehow abridging the buyer's freedom. If I get too big I might someday face monopolist charges, but, for example, Microsoft is not abridging my freedom when it doesn't give me source code any more than Fridigaire is for not giving me the schematics to the refrigerator they just sold me.
I'm involved with Linux and free/open software out of choice, which doesn't (in my mind at least) preclude the existence of others being involved in proprietary software. Laws exist to protect us from monopolists, but until I say so, any property of mine belongs to me--with all the inherent karmic ills of property ownership, too.
A superior product produced by a superior system will prevail; I personally think the Free/Open software system is the best. Yet one's participation therein should be based on personal beliefs, not external coersion. I've been a left-winger for decades now, and I've seen how lame the Left is at getting anything done. It invariably comes down to holier-than-thou posturing and politically correct moralizing. The Right has long since been de-fanged from any serious moralistic coersion, but in the past 20-30 years the Left has simply repeated their mistakes, i.e., this hair-splitting and infighting is typical non-productive leftist behavior.
I've come to a very libertarian attitude about morality and idealism: I have mine and you have yours. I may try to change your mind. I may oppose you and even work against you. But unless you're dangerous and/or truly delusional, I should not disrespect or discount your opinions. People who disrespect and discount others opinions are ramping up for destructive acts. It's a terrible mistake to totally dismiss people simply because they fail a hidden political correctness test. It's done to me all the time, and it hurts. I know a "do what you need to do, brother" attitude doesn't always fit the situation, but always worrying about your own karma first adds civility and even wisdom to life.
Again, I'm involved in Free/Open because it squares with my view of life. I don't need to worry so much about what others are doing.
I've been run over by so many bandwagons in the last 7 years that I don't think I have enough energy left to jump on the J2EE war wagon. I'm older, but I'm going into grad school and I'm not coming out! Still, I have to agree with the author: Linux/Open Source people tend to be purists at the expense of having anything for the real world public. I think.NET has a lot of people worried, and that's good. A few voices have been screaming about getting something for the real world, but I think they're largely ignored by the pencil-necks that just want to hack a kernel onto the erasure of a mechanical pencil. If anything, the author is dead on about the proud, old Unix world chasing MS's tailights on.NET. I say go with Java. It's from a BSD-derived company and started by J. Gosling, a good guy. Why not?
Re:Oh, let's give 'em a hug....
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I think IBM's commercial work with open source is a more accurate barometer. They act as a rich uncle to Linux and many open source projects. They share a garden with the independent open source community. Sure, open source can be slow; the proprietary commercial outfits can throw lots of bodies and money in some direction and get (good?) results faster than open source. But commercial outfits can also augment open source, and indeed they do. But is slow bad? Jerry Mander (something of a Luddite) believes technology should have a much longer ramp-up time. Look at Linux. It coatailed on Unix and suffers far less security and stability-wise. It's simply more mature. The real problems I see are outright theft and open source license violations, as well as non-productive version forking. On the first problem, if MS ever truly stoled, say, GPL code and didn't follow its license, all hell would break loose. This first anti-trust lawsuit didn't arouse great open source passions because it was too weird and vague: browser wars, huh? But if MS started stealing, that's a different story. The second problem is actually more serious because it really has no solution. Recently RH decided to jump in with a Postgres version, and promises not to fork the codebase. But they very easily could have, and, thus, cause chaos among Postgresers. Just look at the latest MySQL flare-up. But IMHO this is exactly the future of our entire economy! I look forward to the day when outsiders with better methods can "corporate raid" anybody's enterprise. If auto production was "open source" somebody could put together a more efficient car and demand the reigns of production. Of course this doesn't work today outside of computers because the means of production with computers are cheap and ubiquitous while auto production costs billions of dollars. Still, the basic open source model of anyone being able to make a better product and then either shift the product's existing direction or morph a new version is a fabulous step in the direction of pure supply and demand. Today's so-called free market only approximates pure supply and demand--far better than communism, but still greatly lacking. The proof is MS itself: today's free market with its emphasis on property rights allows impregnable fiefdoms to be set up, and monopolies and lock-in are inevitable. To some extent they're plugged into supply and demand, but its far slower and clankier than pure supply and demand. W. Brian Arthur (http://www.santafe.edu/arthur/) rocked the classical economics world when he suggested that monopolies and lock-in to less-than-best goods and services is far more prevalent than we want to admit. I think the open source model will triumph by purifying supply and demand. So, to me, open source may have a socialistic tinge to it, but if it improves supply and demand, it trumps today's medieval free market.
Re:Coffe-Beans and Pixie-Dust...
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Communism failed because it used money, and using money forced it into the schizoid position of having to play the profit game (prices > costs = profit) but then again not because it violated Marxist fundamentals. They "cooked the books" (hid the fact that production costs were greater than the prices asked for the finished goods) for as long as they could--until it finally collapsed. I've heard the open source = Marx argument, and at this point it is true that only a small percentage of open source code has been directly monetarily reimbursed. But how many IT professionals write software versus administer it, consult with it, train with it, etc.? How many people are directly in auto manufacturing versus the auto service sector? To many people, nothing changes with open source other than the software is, well, open source! Same fees for consulting, etc., as with proprietary software, just no software costs. Paid software coders? I guarantee that if I was a major contributor to a major open source project, I could write my own ticket at Microsoft, Oracle, etc., because I would be a whiz at what they need too--after a minimum of retraining. Where do you think MS gets its talent? From universities (an exclusive domain of Linux/Unix) and the open source heavy-hitter ranks. Being a successful open source participant is quickly becoming the new comp sci university system anyway. Maybe Python won't replace C++ tomorrow, but good stuff eventually finds its level. At times I work as a coder--in an MS environment--and I use Cygwin's Python and Postgres. The apps practically write themselves. My programs are so short that I probably wouldn't impress any prospective new employer who doesn't also know about Python, my code looks too lightweight! Hey, I'm getting paid for using open source....
Oh, let's give 'em a hug....
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Some of the Allchin insights where he's chastising the MS geeks "money doesn't grow on trees yadayadayada" is the very heart of the difference between corporate and open software. The open software allows much more freedom of exploration. Something that's cool and good will first pick up a small cult following, then get bigger based solely on its merits. Look at Python. I don't really know if using Python alone will revolutionize computing, but not having to worry about profit, instead technology, has given a great language solid legs. Profit is a harsh, blind master. Somebody has to lay down the cash in exchange for something that will in turn do them right on their own profit hunt. But the greater reality is different. I download/investigate a lot of stuff that looks cool, eventually I sort through it and get going in maybe one or two directions. For example, right now I'm looking at Lisp and Python and wondering if doing functional programming in Python offers any advantages. What got me on this path was a/. link to Paul Graham and a series of articles at IBM by David Mertz. This is a much more natural way to handle the evolution of computing and IT. No stampedes, no hype, no sweat. The open source world will progress in a far more natural way, while the corporate world will lurch from one lock-in/safe-bet monopoly technology-for-dummies to the next. The more I hear about super-big IT firms, the more obvious it is that their precarious "skunkworks" nooks and crannies are pale shadows of the greater open source world. Why worry about secretive, proprietary nervous skunkworks-ware just days from the accountants' axes? Microsoft and their ilk will always be a murky world for good technology to ever thrive in. Open source will triumph because their proponents are free people.
Unless I'm missing something, I don't see a true rebuttal. Petreley's basic argument was that MS will always have the option to change.NET whenever it feels like it since it is not truly open source. And MS has a long history of playing crack-the-whip. For example, just when the first PowerMacs were coming out ('94-95?) MS "ported" the latest MS Office over, but intentionally made no adjustments or optimizations. A few months later they apologized for the buggy, slow port and optimized. Reputation damage already done. And the dirty trick sailed under the radar.... Passport or no, this leaves open source contrubutors locked in, and as P-man said, vulnerable. It's no different than creating a Linux version of VC++ or VB when you think about it. But you'll always be the poorer relation. To me, open source is all about catching up and then surpassing the commercial monopolists, not accomodating them. Many may counter that MS wouldn't dare screw over the open sourcerers. How many peaceful, treaty-signing, reservation Indians got slaughtered in the late 19th century and no one noticed/cared until about 100 years later?
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A game is only a game when it has rules and the players stick to those rules. We're already into some fierce meaninglessness in this nihilistic modern era. Totally divorced and separated from Nature, we've even lost the ability to fully understand our lost-ness.
Gene manipulation will only make the rules even more wispy and the distance between us and Nature even greater. Many may think this is our destiny--I did--to self-rig ourselves. But I know now it will be our final spastic, shuttering death. Why? Because we MASSIVELY underestimate the difficulty and complexity! Nature has been at this game for some 3 billion years, and She takes Her sweet time. And now in the blink of an eye, we think we're in command of those billions of years of wisdom and experience. Fools rush in where angels take a break. We're soooo delusional! Children playing with fire. Children soon burnt beyond all recognition, dying painfully and slowly.
...at Discipline Global Mobile. Fripp et. al. has plenty to say about the "industry" and how actually wound up in the hole even when Crimso was (and still is) one of the world's most progressive virtuoso combos. I say death to the RIAA and all the conventional rip-off organs of the "music industry."
As usual the slaves to scifi and Reagan economics came out in force to roast me. My alarm bells ring when the ENTIRE pharma industry goes lemming over any genetic research they think might fit into one gene-one trait models, i.e., quick, easy money. They go wild trying to find drugs, treatments, gimmicks, etc. which are based on half-baked, race-to-market, regulators-be-damned research. The insane greed and hustling of the pharmas and agri-chems is what's going to do us in, not righteous, honest Professor Quest. Science has never been the enemy, just the greed lurking in its shadows. Science goes slow and methodical, seeking full understanding and elegance. That's never been my problem.
But having said all this, I have become a Luddite. (Thanks to Daniel Quinn's book "Ishmael" etc.) The human race has bet the farm on technology, to the exclusion of the reality-based natural world. We've made an enemy of Mother Earth, and we'll soon pay. Anybody that can shake AIDS viruses and Mad Cow out of her sleeve is someone you don't play games with.
This is the same insanity that pervades the entire genetic engineering field, i.e., the belief that certain traits can be traced back to a single gene. The obvious conclusion of such idiots is that we'll just find a way to tweak gene #123, and reap the benefits. Wrong! Genes and the realities they induce are far, far more complex than anyone can imagine today. Imagine holographic data storage. I'm totally convinced genes work together in a similar fashion to produce traits, and NOT the simplistic one gene-one trait model we currently have. Of course, we understand that sometimes many genes combine to affect a trait, but I'm sure there are very many orders of magnitude of interplay going on that we can't even begin to understand. But the fools will tinker like a boy tearing up a car engine for the first time. Sometime in the distant future we'll begin to understand just how networked genes are, how much of a "systems thing" genetics really are--at the individual level, and at an even more mysterious community level. At some point the stuff C.G. Jung was saying will become understood in a genetic way. But until then we'll undoubtedly wreak chaos....
I know what you're saying on the Tolkien was a RCatholic, but he separated personal belief from his scholarly work completely and absolutely. His whole Silmarilion/LOTR project was an attempt to produce a latter-day Northwest European mythology totally clean of the Christian taint. Christians love to claim Tolkien as one of their own. Too bad. They may get the man himself, but definitely not his work. Tolkien even had a serious falling out with C.S. Lewis when Lewis published the Narnia series. Tolkien found it extremely unprofessional to mix and match NWEuro legend and myth with Xianity. No joke. Read about it in the authorized biography by Humphrey. You have to understand the scholarly arm of things to understand why Tolkien et al were so adamant about keeping Christianity out. The whole object was to understand what NWEurope was BEFORE the Xians. Not even the Icelandic Sagas (the most extensive descriptions of the Norse gods) is fully trusted by the scholars because the author was himself a Christian--as well as other factors. The Xians did a very thorough job of destroying our heritage, and today's scholars have only the barest scraps of information to work with. For example, Tolkien never touched the King Arthur stories, exactly because it was such an obvious nostalgic fiction soaked in the Xian perfume of the times. Sorry, LOTR is very pre-Christian and Tolkien staked his entire reputation on that fact. Again, if you don't believe me just read his authorized biography, his Letters, and T.A. Shippey's "Tolkien, Author of the Century." Don't read that tripe "Focus on the Family" puts out...
Just say the word "pagan".... Anyway, I'm pagan because I realized a long time ago that this Jesus guy was Jewish and talking to the Jews, not to me--no matter what you Xian idiots say. Just ask a Rabbi. They never authorized the Christian theft of Yahweh, and they sure don't appreciate you elevating a rejected reformer to messiah status.
I'm not Jewish. My ancestors came from Northwest Europe. We used to have our own religion. We were very similar to the Native Americans before the Romans and the Christians showed up. Secondly, even if I was Jewish, I'd either emulate him or forget it. This business of "following" Jesus is a bit of a joke. I mean, do you still call 3,000 miles back and fading still "following" Jesus? Today's Christianity is all about weasling your ass into heaven. I'm not interested in heaven. My heaven is right here on Earth, not the destroyed version, but the original Rivendell-Lothlorien version.
The NWEuro people are tired of the alien desert religions. They respond to HP and LOTR because it resonates with them deep inside--despite a lifetime of slimey Xian propaganda and the modern materialism.
I'm in my late forties and I love the Harry Potter series. But then I'm a pagan too, and when I see the "religious right" getting hugely bent out of shape over "Heathen Harry" I can actually see the world get just a little bit back into alignment again. Best of all I love the term "muggle." It describes my religious opponents so well! Some day I'm going to meet Jery Fallwell or Pat Robertson and I'll put on my Hagris accent and say, "And I suppose a great muggle like you is going to...."
The first picture is of the whole sun. The line reads, shot through the "finder telescope." I know of some Norwegians who would remark that only the Swedes would need a finder telescope to find the sun. (LOL)
Why get anywhere near hatred of the Jew? Why not simply say, "I'm not Jewish. I therefore have no affinity to things Jewish."....and let it go at that? I think I know the reason why not. You are still preoccupied with the Jewish cult Christianity. Trying to be a Christian and distance yourself from Jews is like trying to breed a hairless dog: If you ever actually achieve such a "wonderous" thing, hey, it's all yours! You can keep it! But I like wolves....
The U.S. needs to get out of the "empire business". You can't win at that game. Eventually you wind up in the history books, right along with all the others who played and lost.
Dear Mr. Seinfeld-Frasier-Letterman:
/. All better now?
Tomorrow at 12:00 CST I will stand in my living room, head down, and imagine that you are a few feet away from me. At any time after 12:00 CST you--wherever you are--may laugh your hardest, coldest, most cynical laugh at me. I will stand at humble attention for 10 minutes "receiving" your laughter from afar. Thusly smoted, I will slink off to lick my wounds and regret ever making such a idiotic posting to
The title "Myths to Live By" says it all. But how do we live by a "myth"? Is the valour, honor, bravery, etc. depicted in LOTR just a quaint yuckyuck waiting to be spoofed by professional wise-asses? Am I a fool to want a world like the hobbits or the elves? The poster above you thinks I'm a crack smoker....
If I see "Shogun" I think it's a cool, fasinating story. If I see "Roots" that's great, too. If I see LOTR--warts and all (I didn't like it being filmed in NZland. I would have preferred NoEuro.)--I positively GLOW with excitement! That's because my ancestors are from NoEuro; I'm hardwired to light up when someone strokes my genetic memories. I'm not just being an immature, nutcase, silly romanticist. If you're from NoEuro (basically of Celtic or Germanic origin) you can't help but vibrate at the NoEuro frequency when you get such a strong wack as LOTR provides. Sure, there's elements by and large universal contained therein, but still Tolkien hand-made it for the NoEuro. Go with it. It's more than just "fantasy". It's what C.G. Jung called the collective subconsious trying to talk to you. But as we know, getting in touch with the personal or collective subconsious is fraught with danger. Nazi Germany tried to touch it, and millions died. It's like a pressure cooker, the steam has to be released slowly. (If Huxley's Brave New World really existed, how would you go in and "correct" (socially re-engineer) it?) Cynics may laugh at all this, but I've already been one of the world's most aloof, intellectual, realist-cynics....and it's a dead-end profession--literally NO FUTURE. For starters, check out the book "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn (or his Web site http://www.ishmael.org). LOTR is a standing call to the NoEuro human to do some "roots."
This is not a good time to join the rush to Big Brother.
I'd love to be in Sweden, period.
Q: Are you lisping?
A: No, I'm scheming.
I've never bought the CS degree argument that you need theory, etc. in order to be fit enough to catch the next wave. Believe me, nobody like Oracle or Microsoft is going to come out with something so new and big that it'll take a CS degree to grok it. The real IT world makes the next wave as catchable as possible for their developer base. Hence, good IT jobs are very possible without CS degrees. Look at MS: a study in living totally outside the CS degree.
A CS degree says you can tackle big stuff and not get thrown the first day. If you don't want to do bread-and-butter data management work, but stuff more cutting edge, then yes, the compter as a scientific subject should be in your realm of knowledge. But when as many as 75% of any given CS program's students only want big-buck commercial data management gigs, why torture them with CS theory?
Paul Graham makes some big claims for Lisp/functional programming in some of his essays (see www.paulgraham.com). But logic also dictates that some sort of artificial intelligence will have to come to pass; otherwise, we continue telling the computer each thought to have, hoping we thought of everything, and that those thoughts don't clash and crash. (To be sure, this hand-built, hand-coordinated approach is already pretty much maxed out.) Between Graham and the inevitability of AI's reemergence, Lisp seems like a good bet. Or am I (and Graham) way off?
All retaliation is at least one order of magnitude above what the original wrongdoing called for. The Nazis come to mind, and now this attack today. Violence always escalates because the involved parties believe they will "teach the other side a lesson." The lesson of violence only teaches retaliation at least one order of magnitude too severe.
I'm seeing an "either/or", black-or-white mindset to the issue of free software. True freedom is maximal for all concerned. It's too far of a stretch to insist that when I write software and sell it without the source, I am somehow abridging the buyer's freedom. If I get too big I might someday face monopolist charges, but, for example, Microsoft is not abridging my freedom when it doesn't give me source code any more than Fridigaire is for not giving me the schematics to the refrigerator they just sold me. I'm involved with Linux and free/open software out of choice, which doesn't (in my mind at least) preclude the existence of others being involved in proprietary software. Laws exist to protect us from monopolists, but until I say so, any property of mine belongs to me--with all the inherent karmic ills of property ownership, too. A superior product produced by a superior system will prevail; I personally think the Free/Open software system is the best. Yet one's participation therein should be based on personal beliefs, not external coersion. I've been a left-winger for decades now, and I've seen how lame the Left is at getting anything done. It invariably comes down to holier-than-thou posturing and politically correct moralizing. The Right has long since been de-fanged from any serious moralistic coersion, but in the past 20-30 years the Left has simply repeated their mistakes, i.e., this hair-splitting and infighting is typical non-productive leftist behavior. I've come to a very libertarian attitude about morality and idealism: I have mine and you have yours. I may try to change your mind. I may oppose you and even work against you. But unless you're dangerous and/or truly delusional, I should not disrespect or discount your opinions. People who disrespect and discount others opinions are ramping up for destructive acts. It's a terrible mistake to totally dismiss people simply because they fail a hidden political correctness test. It's done to me all the time, and it hurts. I know a "do what you need to do, brother" attitude doesn't always fit the situation, but always worrying about your own karma first adds civility and even wisdom to life. Again, I'm involved in Free/Open because it squares with my view of life. I don't need to worry so much about what others are doing.
I've been run over by so many bandwagons in the last 7 years that I don't think I have enough energy left to jump on the J2EE war wagon. I'm older, but I'm going into grad school and I'm not coming out! Still, I have to agree with the author: Linux/Open Source people tend to be purists at the expense of having anything for the real world public. I think .NET has a lot of people worried, and that's good. A few voices have been screaming about getting something for the real world, but I think they're largely ignored by the pencil-necks that just want to hack a kernel onto the erasure of a mechanical pencil. If anything, the author is dead on about the proud, old Unix world chasing MS's tailights on .NET. I say go with Java. It's from a BSD-derived company and started by J. Gosling, a good guy. Why not?
I think IBM's commercial work with open source is a more accurate barometer. They act as a rich uncle to Linux and many open source projects. They share a garden with the independent open source community. Sure, open source can be slow; the proprietary commercial outfits can throw lots of bodies and money in some direction and get (good?) results faster than open source. But commercial outfits can also augment open source, and indeed they do. But is slow bad? Jerry Mander (something of a Luddite) believes technology should have a much longer ramp-up time. Look at Linux. It coatailed on Unix and suffers far less security and stability-wise. It's simply more mature. The real problems I see are outright theft and open source license violations, as well as non-productive version forking. On the first problem, if MS ever truly stoled, say, GPL code and didn't follow its license, all hell would break loose. This first anti-trust lawsuit didn't arouse great open source passions because it was too weird and vague: browser wars, huh? But if MS started stealing, that's a different story. The second problem is actually more serious because it really has no solution. Recently RH decided to jump in with a Postgres version, and promises not to fork the codebase. But they very easily could have, and, thus, cause chaos among Postgresers. Just look at the latest MySQL flare-up. But IMHO this is exactly the future of our entire economy! I look forward to the day when outsiders with better methods can "corporate raid" anybody's enterprise. If auto production was "open source" somebody could put together a more efficient car and demand the reigns of production. Of course this doesn't work today outside of computers because the means of production with computers are cheap and ubiquitous while auto production costs billions of dollars. Still, the basic open source model of anyone being able to make a better product and then either shift the product's existing direction or morph a new version is a fabulous step in the direction of pure supply and demand. Today's so-called free market only approximates pure supply and demand--far better than communism, but still greatly lacking. The proof is MS itself: today's free market with its emphasis on property rights allows impregnable fiefdoms to be set up, and monopolies and lock-in are inevitable. To some extent they're plugged into supply and demand, but its far slower and clankier than pure supply and demand. W. Brian Arthur (http://www.santafe.edu/arthur/) rocked the classical economics world when he suggested that monopolies and lock-in to less-than-best goods and services is far more prevalent than we want to admit. I think the open source model will triumph by purifying supply and demand. So, to me, open source may have a socialistic tinge to it, but if it improves supply and demand, it trumps today's medieval free market.
Communism failed because it used money, and using money forced it into the schizoid position of having to play the profit game (prices > costs = profit) but then again not because it violated Marxist fundamentals. They "cooked the books" (hid the fact that production costs were greater than the prices asked for the finished goods) for as long as they could--until it finally collapsed. I've heard the open source = Marx argument, and at this point it is true that only a small percentage of open source code has been directly monetarily reimbursed. But how many IT professionals write software versus administer it, consult with it, train with it, etc.? How many people are directly in auto manufacturing versus the auto service sector? To many people, nothing changes with open source other than the software is, well, open source! Same fees for consulting, etc., as with proprietary software, just no software costs. Paid software coders? I guarantee that if I was a major contributor to a major open source project, I could write my own ticket at Microsoft, Oracle, etc., because I would be a whiz at what they need too--after a minimum of retraining. Where do you think MS gets its talent? From universities (an exclusive domain of Linux/Unix) and the open source heavy-hitter ranks. Being a successful open source participant is quickly becoming the new comp sci university system anyway. Maybe Python won't replace C++ tomorrow, but good stuff eventually finds its level. At times I work as a coder--in an MS environment--and I use Cygwin's Python and Postgres. The apps practically write themselves. My programs are so short that I probably wouldn't impress any prospective new employer who doesn't also know about Python, my code looks too lightweight! Hey, I'm getting paid for using open source....
Some of the Allchin insights where he's chastising the MS geeks "money doesn't grow on trees yadayadayada" is the very heart of the difference between corporate and open software. The open software allows much more freedom of exploration. Something that's cool and good will first pick up a small cult following, then get bigger based solely on its merits. Look at Python. I don't really know if using Python alone will revolutionize computing, but not having to worry about profit, instead technology, has given a great language solid legs. Profit is a harsh, blind master. Somebody has to lay down the cash in exchange for something that will in turn do them right on their own profit hunt. But the greater reality is different. I download/investigate a lot of stuff that looks cool, eventually I sort through it and get going in maybe one or two directions. For example, right now I'm looking at Lisp and Python and wondering if doing functional programming in Python offers any advantages. What got me on this path was a /. link to Paul Graham and a series of articles at IBM by David Mertz. This is a much more natural way to handle the evolution of computing and IT. No stampedes, no hype, no sweat. The open source world will progress in a far more natural way, while the corporate world will lurch from one lock-in/safe-bet monopoly technology-for-dummies to the next. The more I hear about super-big IT firms, the more obvious it is that their precarious "skunkworks" nooks and crannies are pale shadows of the greater open source world. Why worry about secretive, proprietary nervous skunkworks-ware just days from the accountants' axes? Microsoft and their ilk will always be a murky world for good technology to ever thrive in. Open source will triumph because their proponents are free people.
Unless I'm missing something, I don't see a true rebuttal. Petreley's basic argument was that MS will always have the option to change .NET whenever it feels like it since it is not truly open source. And MS has a long history of playing crack-the-whip. For example, just when the first PowerMacs were coming out ('94-95?) MS "ported" the latest MS Office over, but intentionally made no adjustments or optimizations. A few months later they apologized for the buggy, slow port and optimized. Reputation damage already done. And the dirty trick sailed under the radar.... Passport or no, this leaves open source contrubutors locked in, and as P-man said, vulnerable. It's no different than creating a Linux version of VC++ or VB when you think about it. But you'll always be the poorer relation. To me, open source is all about catching up and then surpassing the commercial monopolists, not accomodating them. Many may counter that MS wouldn't dare screw over the open sourcerers. How many peaceful, treaty-signing, reservation Indians got slaughtered in the late 19th century and no one noticed/cared until about 100 years later?