So art is protected by freedom of speech, and open source programming is art.
Well then, wouldn't an elegant, artful open source implementation of a strong encryption algorithm be protected by freedom of speech, and therefore be exportable?
I would love to set up a linux server with BeOS workstations. But I have not figured out a good way to run X apps on the server. I would love to be able to run X apps on the server and have them display on my Be desktop, but I don't think there is a way to do this. Anyone know?
A certain group of people displaying eccentric traits gets labeled as "geeks". Then, other people that share some, but not even most, of those traits falls under the same umbrella name. At present, many do fit the stereotype, some fit it perfectly, and many not at all.
I suck at html guys. On my other post in this thread, I forgot my P tags, and unfotunately now it's just a mass of text that nobody will read. Perhaps I should repost it formatted correctly.
And now, judging from the replies to this post, I guess I should have used the SARCASM tag, because people evedently need to see that. Come to think of it, I probably would have needed to forgoe the SARCASM tag completely and used BLINK SARCASM/BLINK instead;-)
BTW, I was not trying to be a troll. I was trying to make people laugh! Oh well.
Theorems are not all proven to be true. Witness Fermat's last theorem, to use a famous example. I think it is now proven, but for a long time it was not - people were trying to prove it, but hadn't yet. And they called it a theorem. Another example: the four color map theorem.
And the x=x example is true by definition, because we have defined the symbol of two parallel horizontal line segments (=) to mean equality. Other axioms work in a similiar way, being true by the very definition of the symbols they use.
One other thing I forgot to mention: a theory is not exactly a hypothesis - a hypothesis is an educated guess made before an experiment is performed. The purpose of the experiment is to prove/disprove the hypothesis. Therefore, hypotheses are written as very simple, provable or disprovable statements. Theories are general explanations to explain phenomena, and stand until replaced by a better one.
A theory is a hypothesis that has a lot of support.
A law in science is a theory or that has an overwhelming amount of support, few or no opposing theories, and is accepted as fact.
A theorem is a mathematical hypothesis that has not yet been proven or disproven but is thought to be true.
An axiom is a building block of mathematics - something that is true by definition (like x=x). Axioms are used to prove theorems.
A law in mathematics is a theorem that has been proven through a logically sound reasoning process that can be broken down into axioms so that because the axioms are true by definition, the law must be true. It can then be used like an axiom to prove other theorems.
And I agree that a law in science can hardly ever be proven, for the reasons you said above.
Look at it a little more closely. Nowhere is it implied that Creationism will be taught explicitly, nor does it state that science will be abolished completely.
True. What the people that really passed this would like to do is ban evolution and instate mandatory creationism. They are not for a completely open, unitarian several religion approach. But they know that mandatory creation in schools isn't going to happen so they passed this instead.
Simply put, people want to keep their religious beliefs strong because it's what gives them meaning in life. I'm a Christian, and sometimes I just can't see how many others can go on living.
I find that very sad indeed. Basically you are saying that if someone managed to convince you beyond any doubt that we share common ancestry with other primates on this planet (and I have the feeling that would take a lot of convincing) that life would lose all meaning, because we as humans would not be quite so Special anymore.
Consider this: There are middle grounds between Atheistic evolution and young earth creationism. Many people, for instance, believe that evolution did take place the way the fossil record shows, but was guided by an omnipresence (god if you like) rather than cold probabilities. If this were the case, would life still be devoid of meaning?
IMO, mandatory evolution curriculum (and in the school format, in order not to fail many science classes, one must acknowledge it as perfect truth) is quite detrimental to religious freedom.
This is like saying hundreds of years ago that the earth-orbits-the-sun theory is detrimental to religious freedom. Many religions simply did not want to accept that we are not smack dab in the middle. The difference is that it has been proven beyond even the faintest shadow of a doubt that the earth does indeed orbit the sun. It has only been proven beyond a shred of doubt that species on this planet have, in fact, evolved and diverged.
To change the topic a little, what exactly makes the evolution theory any more valid than any other?
Evolution is a theory that has been written and tested with the scientific method using evidence, experiments in petri dishes, observations of different populations, and a huge supply of buried fossils.
Every other explaination of the origins of humanity that I can think of is a story, passed down from generation to generation.
1. An intelligent Being created the universe and set it into motion with order and design, and created beings with free will--man. But man disobeyed, and imperfection bred imperfection, setting the 2nd law of thermodynamics into effect...
Thermodynamics??????? Huh? Thermodynamics is a physics term, and I don't think it can be applied to 'imperfections' in somebody's character.
2. Chaos became order, and shortly after everything materialized, the laws of the universe shifted radically--instead of things gradually becoming more orderly, they became subjected to entropy. Except for living beings, which, for some reason, defied this by evolving into better-adjusted beings.
Simple: You are implying that evolution is proposterous in the same way that it would be proposerous to leave a pile of dirt on the table and watch it turn into an apple (instead of the other way around). There is an apparent paradox in that the environment on earth has gotten much more complex with all these forms of life instead of more simple. Well, this only applies to closed systems. The earth is not a closed system - it has the nearby sun constantly adding energy to it. If you look at the whole galaxy as a closed system, it would work, because the burning in a star is an increase in entropy and the earth represents a small section of the system with decreasing entropy.
No, I'm not in favor of shoving ANY system of beliefs down anyone's throat. It's just not the way a theory begins to take root into someone's mind to convince them. I think the curriculum should lay out several different worldviews (I'm not talking a course in theology--just a few simple examples).
Evolution is not about beliefs - it is about reasoning and deduction.
I suck at html guys. On my other post in this thread, I forgot my
tags, and unfotunately now it's just a mass of text that nobody will read. Perhaps I should repost it formatted correctly.
And now, judging from the replies to this post, I guess I should have used the tag, because people evedently need to see that. Come to think of it, I probably would have needed to forgoe the tag completely and used SARCASM instead;-)
BTW, I was not trying to be a troll. I was trying to make people laugh! Oh well.
Look at it a little more closely. Nowhere is it implied that Creationism will be taught explicitly, nor does it state that science will be abolished completely. True. What the people that really passed this would like to do is ban evolution and instate mandatory creationism. They are not for a completely open, unitarian several religion approach. But they know that mandatory creation in schools isn't going to happen so they passed this instead. Simply put, people want to keep their religious beliefs strong because it's what gives them meaning in life. I'm a Christian, and sometimes I just can't see how many others can go on living. I find that very sad indeed. Basically you are saying that if someone managed to convince you beyond any doubt that we share common ancestry with other primates on this planet (and I have the feeling that would take a lot of convincing) that life would lose all meaning, because we as humans would not be quite so Special anymore. Consider this: There are middle grounds between Atheistic evolution and young earth creationism. Many people, for instance, believe that evolution did take place the way the fossil record shows, but was guided by an omnipresence (god if you like) rather than cold probabilities. If this were the case, would life still be devoid of meaning? IMO, mandatory evolution curriculum (and in the school format, in order not to fail many science classes, one must acknowledge it as perfect truth) is quite detrimental to religious freedom. This is like saying hundreds of years ago that the earth-orbits-the-sun theory is detrimental to religious freedom. Many religions simply did not want to accept that we are not smack dab in the middle. The difference is that it has been proven beyond even the faintest shadow of a doubt that the earth does indeed orbit the sun. It has only been proven beyond a shred of doubt that species on this planet have, in fact, evolved and diverged. To change the topic a little, what exactly makes the evolution theory any more valid than any other? Evolution is a theory that has been written and tested with the scientific method using evidence, experiments in petri dishes, observations of different populations, and a huge supply of buried fossils. Every other explaination of the origins of humanity that I can think of is a story, passed down from generation to generation. 1. An intelligent Being created the universe and set it into motion with order and design, and created beings with free will--man. But man disobeyed, and imperfection bred imperfection, setting the 2nd law of thermodynamics into effect... Thermodynamics??????? Huh? Thermodynamics is a physics term, and I don't think it can be applied to 'imperfections' in somebody's character. 2. Chaos became order, and shortly after everything materialized, the laws of the universe shifted radically--instead of things gradually becoming more orderly, they became subjected to entropy. Except for living beings, which, for some reason, defied this by evolving into better-adjusted beings. Simple: You are implying that evolution is proposterous in the same way that it would be proposerous to leave a pile of dirt on the table and watch it turn into an apple (instead of the other way around). There is an apparent paradox in that the environment on earth has gotten much more complex with all these forms of life instead of more simple. Well, this only applies to closed systems. The earth is not a closed system - it has the nearby sun constantly adding energy to it. If you look at the whole galaxy as a closed system, it would work, because the burning in a star is an increase in entropy and the earth represents a small section of the system with decreasing entropy. No, I'm not in favor of shoving ANY system of beliefs down anyone's throat. It's just not the way a theory begins to take root into someone's mind to convince them. I think the curriculum should lay out several different worldviews (I'm not talking a course in theology--just a few simple examples). Evolution is not about beliefs - it is about reasoning and deduction.
Still reeling from the absence of the Ten Commandments in public schools, I reached for my news-paper on monday and saw that they are teaching 'evolution' without having pieced together the fossil record from the first genetic material to Polly Shore. (Hey, I can be reasonable)
I demand the right to a solid platform upon which I can support my dignity. How can I feel good about myself if I am reminded that I share common ancestry with ape-brutes? I've been to the zoo, and I decline to write of the horrid, disgusting things I have seen the creatures do.
With our sense of self-worth at stake, supporters of science will talk of 'emprical evidence', 'facts', and 'logic'. Take a moment and reflect on the innocence lost the day our world left it's prominent spot at the center of the universe. And now they would have us force feed this, their evil-ution, to our kids.
Does a man who is doing his utmost to get into heaven benefit from filling his head with theories? Do we want our teachers questioning all that is good and decent, twisting things around with their fancy words? We must shift our focus back to something which is never used in an evil fashion: religion.
Calculating it involves a fairly simple algorithm. Just leave the algorithm running and saving to disk in the background day and night until your disk is full.
All these findings are easily explained by the incredible amount of advertising (more likely to use words with good connotations) and religious fanatic sites (which will talk about being 'saved' and the glory of god and the kingdom of heaven more often than they will warn of the smoking pits of hell) Anyway, I know it's just a joke to begin with.
I worked at a small software company (this one was VERY small) and we obviously had nothing that rigorous.
You know this, but I'll just go ahead and say it anyway: Unless you're writing "Hello world" you ALWAYS do a thorough design first. With my company, that meant everyone standing around a white board armed with markers, arguing about how to design it. Once we had our design up on the white board we would leave it there and divide it up into pieces and hand out the pieces.
Things were always informal with a small group, and we never had to worry about miscommunication. With a big team the plan you described sounds like a good one to me.
Of course, I think they should always start with a couple hours around a white board.
I am not on a crusade against GUIs, nor do I think that they spawned from the smoking pits of Hell, nor do I think they are for losers only, nor do I think they are the only way to learn to use a computer.
I am not saying that I have my entire forray into parenting years from now planned to the last detail. I was saying that as a kind of joke with an element of truth in it.
It came from my memories of writing a breakout game in 4th grade when I first learned to use the Apple IIe's command line interface. I remember how much fun it was, and how smart and computer-literate I felt (hey, it was 4th grade).
There really was something to say for doing everything without ever moving my hands from the keyboard. It was like I was working in overdrive, molding a program as an artist works with clay. Then it was VB and Visual C++, and they worked pretty well for the small projects I was always into, but an element of pioneering and discovery was lost. Not until I started programming for linux did I feel like that again.
I am always annoyed by parents that leave their kids in front of the tv to keep them "out of trouble". Perhaps thats what this whole debate over the internet it! Parents would like to leave their kid on the internet to keep them out of trouble, but they can't because it's not censored like tv. One of the short articles at the onion makes a great point about this - go to their page and look for the one called "Ritalin Cures Next Picasso".
We have to stop and think "What are we trying to do when we surround kids with technology?" Some parents will do this because they are kidding themselves into thinking their kids will have an "edge" in the new high tech world. We at slashdot ought to know better than that - they will just learn to point and click earlier. Hardly a hard-to-come-by skill.
There is something Neal Stephenson said that relates to this perfectly. I don't recall his exact words, but basically he said that the people that will control tomorrow's technology (and today's for that matter) are the ones that can comfortably deal with text. As in being able to read and write well. Multimedia is for the lusers - an interface for the 'eloi' out there.
Net access is great when people reach a certain age - it will help you to really see issues from all angles and get the whole story, as opposed to television newscasts which present a very one-sided version most of the time. It gives you another way to figure out who you are, express yourself, and find a community other than the ones you live among.
But little kids will not get that out of it. A 4 year old is much better off learning from a role model standing right there working with him/her, and playing with friends of the same age.
When I have kids, I'll give them a computer with a command line interface, and if they are interested in learning to use it, I will teach them. Then, when they get to be teenagers, they can have their GUI. That ought to be interesting.
I love Micros~1 as much as the next slashdotter, but they have many good points here. Yes, the competition DID go running to the DOJ for help against mean old MS. Yes, they SHOULD have the right to sell anything they like, at whatever price they like, and if they want to include a web browser why shouldn't they?
However, there are a great many reasons they should be prosecuted. Unfortunately, the DOJ did not focus enough on legitimate issues such as their restrictive agreements with hardware vendors designed to make it literally impossible to make money selling an alternative OS to OEMs.
And then there are the other reasons to hate them which, while technically legal, are obviously slimy. For instance, their marketing practices of raising a huge fanfare for a new collection of bits, then charging outrageous amounts for them. Then pushing the release back a long time and releasing a still buggy product. Then actually charging the public for a package of fixes. And the practice of denying that bugs exist, either saying they can't duplicate them so they're not there, or calling them 'features'.
Maybe I shouldn't have put 'improvements' in quotes like that. I honestly don't care how many/few distros there are, or who makes them.
I was just putting a prediction out there in case, in the unlikely case that I am right, I can say "I knew it" to nobody in particular.
It just struck me as the type of thing Oracle would do. I am actually VERY happy every time some company moves away from windows toward Linux, not out of any particular wish to see Bill go down in flames, but because then the chances are just that much better that I will use Linux at work.
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Ellison decides to sell complete servers with an Oracle Linux distribution installed. They'd probably put an emphasis on speed and security and integrate an oracle database server.
Then, they'd start making all kinds of 'improvements' to non-kernel-related aspects of the Oracle Linux distribution.
I have read some Pitr lines aloud, to try and place that accent ("am thinkink about goink out for sushi") and it always came out sounding Indian, like Ben in "short circuit". I figured that fit, since there are a lot of Indians that talk like that at my friendly neighborhood computer shop. Oh well.
I am white. I just now looked down at my skin, and noticed that it is nowhere near the shade of white of a piece of paper. Actually, it's a pretty dark tan, because I am outside a lot. Does this mean that a cartoonist should have a full palette of "skin tones" to choose from? Starting at the pasty geek-white, and running all the way down to the very darkest black of some african tribes? No. I like Iliad's comment on how they're all just 'people'. I have mixed races in many of my classes, and I often forget about their races, too. I know some little black kids who, when asked to draw a picture of themselves, drew an outline of a person without coloring it in - just like white kids do, and just like cartoonists do. And what about Pitr? He does not strike me as a typical caucasian male. I could be wrong, but I always had the impression that he is Indian (as in from India). Maybe I'm wrong about that, but he seems to me to be a good example of diversity, while at the same time staying true to an accurate reflection of geeks.
I didn't mean that the mouse is too slow - it isn't. I think the best way to describe my experience with X is to compare it to that of using a cheap, POS mouse with a light, slipping ball bearing and defective buttons. Using windows, with the same mouse, feels like using an expensive, heavy mouse with a grippy ball and pad and precise, weighted buttons. I dunno, maybe it's just my computer.
The experience of using X is, in my opinion, far inferior to using windows or macos. It is the feel of it that always gets on my nerves. Using X, the mouse seems just a tiny bit less smooth and responsive than running windows on the same machine. Responsiveness to a click lags a little bit behind other systems, and for some reason a click does not always register. And yes, my video card IS supported, and my processor is a Pentium 350, my bus runs at 100mhz and I have 96MB of sdram, so I don't think the computer is the problem. The speed things are actually drawn at is usually way better than windows or mac, but responsiveness to the mouse and sometimes the keyboard is usually way worse. If X would just start feeling as smooth and responsive as other GUIs, I would be very happy with it, but right now it is frustrating.
Slashdot Mirror
So art is protected by freedom of speech, and open source programming is art.
Well then, wouldn't an elegant, artful open source implementation of a strong encryption algorithm be protected by freedom of speech, and therefore be exportable?
Q.E.D. Baby!
I would love to set up a linux server with BeOS workstations. But I have not figured out a good way to run X apps on the server. I would love to be able to run X apps on the server and have them display on my Be desktop, but I don't think there is a way to do this. Anyone know?
A certain group of people displaying eccentric traits gets labeled as "geeks". Then, other people that share some, but not even most, of those traits falls under the same umbrella name. At present, many do fit the stereotype, some fit it perfectly, and many not at all.
Stereotypes work in this way.
And the phrase "We're not in Kansas anymore" takes on a completely new meaning.
I suck at html guys. On my other post in this thread, I forgot my P tags, and unfotunately now it's just a mass of text that nobody will read. Perhaps I should repost it formatted correctly.
;-)
And now, judging from the replies to this post, I guess I should have used the SARCASM tag, because people evedently need to see that. Come to think of it, I probably would have needed to forgoe the SARCASM tag completely and used BLINK SARCASM/BLINK instead
BTW, I was not trying to be a troll. I was trying to make people laugh! Oh well.
I need to work on my HTML I guess.
Theorems are not all proven to be true. Witness Fermat's last theorem, to use a famous example. I think it is now proven, but for a long time it was not - people were trying to prove it, but hadn't yet. And they called it a theorem.
Another example: the four color map theorem.
And the x=x example is true by definition, because we have defined the symbol of two parallel horizontal line segments (=) to mean equality. Other axioms work in a similiar way, being true by the very definition of the symbols they use.
One other thing I forgot to mention: a theory is not exactly a hypothesis - a hypothesis is an educated guess made before an experiment is performed. The purpose of the experiment is to prove/disprove the hypothesis. Therefore, hypotheses are written as very simple, provable or disprovable statements. Theories are general explanations to explain phenomena, and stand until replaced by a better one.
A hypothesis is an educated guess.
A theory is a hypothesis that has a lot of support.
A law in science is a theory or that has an overwhelming amount of support, few or no opposing theories, and is accepted as fact.
A theorem is a mathematical hypothesis that has not yet been proven or disproven but is thought to be true.
An axiom is a building block of mathematics - something that is true by definition (like x=x). Axioms are used to prove theorems.
A law in mathematics is a theorem that has been proven through a logically sound reasoning process that can be broken down into axioms so that because the axioms are true by definition, the law must be true. It can then be used like an axiom to prove other theorems.
And I agree that a law in science can hardly ever be proven, for the reasons you said above.
True. What the people that really passed this would like to do is ban evolution and instate mandatory creationism. They are not for a completely open, unitarian several religion approach. But they know that mandatory creation in schools isn't going to happen so they passed this instead.
Simply put, people want to keep their religious beliefs strong because it's what gives them meaning in life. I'm a Christian, and sometimes I just can't see how many others can go on living.
I find that very sad indeed. Basically you are saying that if someone managed to convince you beyond any doubt that we share common ancestry with other primates on this planet (and I have the feeling that would take a lot of convincing) that life would lose all meaning, because we as humans would not be quite so Special anymore.
Consider this: There are middle grounds between Atheistic evolution and young earth creationism. Many people, for instance, believe that evolution did take place the way the fossil record shows, but was guided by an omnipresence (god if you like) rather than cold probabilities. If this were the case, would life still be devoid of meaning?
IMO, mandatory evolution curriculum (and in the school format, in order not to fail many science classes, one must acknowledge it as perfect truth) is quite detrimental to religious freedom.
This is like saying hundreds of years ago that the earth-orbits-the-sun theory is detrimental to religious freedom. Many religions simply did not want to accept that we are not smack dab in the middle. The difference is that it has been proven beyond even the faintest shadow of a doubt that the earth does indeed orbit the sun. It has only been proven beyond a shred of doubt that species on this planet have, in fact, evolved and diverged.
To change the topic a little, what exactly makes the evolution theory any more valid than any other?
Evolution is a theory that has been written and tested with the scientific method using evidence, experiments in petri dishes, observations of different populations, and a huge supply of buried fossils.
Every other explaination of the origins of humanity that I can think of is a story, passed down from generation to generation.
1. An intelligent Being created the universe and set it into motion with order and design, and created beings with free will--man. But man disobeyed, and imperfection bred imperfection, setting the 2nd law of thermodynamics into effect...
Thermodynamics??????? Huh? Thermodynamics is a physics term, and I don't think it can be applied to 'imperfections' in somebody's character.
2. Chaos became order, and shortly after everything materialized, the laws of the universe shifted radically--instead of things gradually becoming more orderly, they became subjected to entropy. Except for living beings, which, for some reason, defied this by evolving into better-adjusted beings.
Simple: You are implying that evolution is proposterous in the same way that it would be proposerous to leave a pile of dirt on the table and watch it turn into an apple (instead of the other way around). There is an apparent paradox in that the environment on earth has gotten much more complex with all these forms of life instead of more simple. Well, this only applies to closed systems. The earth is not a closed system - it has the nearby sun constantly adding energy to it. If you look at the whole galaxy as a closed system, it would work, because the burning in a star is an increase in entropy and the earth represents a small section of the system with decreasing entropy.
No, I'm not in favor of shoving ANY system of beliefs down anyone's throat. It's just not the way a theory begins to take root into someone's mind to convince them. I think the curriculum should lay out several different worldviews (I'm not talking a course in theology--just a few simple examples).
Evolution is not about beliefs - it is about reasoning and deduction.
tags, and unfotunately now it's just a mass of text that nobody will read. Perhaps I should repost it formatted correctly.
;-)
And now, judging from the replies to this post, I guess I should have used the tag, because people evedently need to see that. Come to think of it, I probably would have needed to forgoe the tag completely and used SARCASM instead
BTW, I was not trying to be a troll. I was trying to make people laugh! Oh well.
I need to work on my HTML I guess.
Look at it a little more closely. Nowhere is it implied that Creationism will be taught explicitly, nor does it state that science will be abolished completely. True. What the people that really passed this would like to do is ban evolution and instate mandatory creationism. They are not for a completely open, unitarian several religion approach. But they know that mandatory creation in schools isn't going to happen so they passed this instead. Simply put, people want to keep their religious beliefs strong because it's what gives them meaning in life. I'm a Christian, and sometimes I just can't see how many others can go on living. I find that very sad indeed. Basically you are saying that if someone managed to convince you beyond any doubt that we share common ancestry with other primates on this planet (and I have the feeling that would take a lot of convincing) that life would lose all meaning, because we as humans would not be quite so Special anymore. Consider this: There are middle grounds between Atheistic evolution and young earth creationism. Many people, for instance, believe that evolution did take place the way the fossil record shows, but was guided by an omnipresence (god if you like) rather than cold probabilities. If this were the case, would life still be devoid of meaning? IMO, mandatory evolution curriculum (and in the school format, in order not to fail many science classes, one must acknowledge it as perfect truth) is quite detrimental to religious freedom. This is like saying hundreds of years ago that the earth-orbits-the-sun theory is detrimental to religious freedom. Many religions simply did not want to accept that we are not smack dab in the middle. The difference is that it has been proven beyond even the faintest shadow of a doubt that the earth does indeed orbit the sun. It has only been proven beyond a shred of doubt that species on this planet have, in fact, evolved and diverged. To change the topic a little, what exactly makes the evolution theory any more valid than any other? Evolution is a theory that has been written and tested with the scientific method using evidence, experiments in petri dishes, observations of different populations, and a huge supply of buried fossils. Every other explaination of the origins of humanity that I can think of is a story, passed down from generation to generation. 1. An intelligent Being created the universe and set it into motion with order and design, and created beings with free will--man. But man disobeyed, and imperfection bred imperfection, setting the 2nd law of thermodynamics into effect... Thermodynamics??????? Huh? Thermodynamics is a physics term, and I don't think it can be applied to 'imperfections' in somebody's character. 2. Chaos became order, and shortly after everything materialized, the laws of the universe shifted radically--instead of things gradually becoming more orderly, they became subjected to entropy. Except for living beings, which, for some reason, defied this by evolving into better-adjusted beings. Simple: You are implying that evolution is proposterous in the same way that it would be proposerous to leave a pile of dirt on the table and watch it turn into an apple (instead of the other way around). There is an apparent paradox in that the environment on earth has gotten much more complex with all these forms of life instead of more simple. Well, this only applies to closed systems. The earth is not a closed system - it has the nearby sun constantly adding energy to it. If you look at the whole galaxy as a closed system, it would work, because the burning in a star is an increase in entropy and the earth represents a small section of the system with decreasing entropy. No, I'm not in favor of shoving ANY system of beliefs down anyone's throat. It's just not the way a theory begins to take root into someone's mind to convince them. I think the curriculum should lay out several different worldviews (I'm not talking a course in theology--just a few simple examples). Evolution is not about beliefs - it is about reasoning and deduction.
Still reeling from the absence of the Ten Commandments in public schools, I reached for my news-paper on monday and saw that they are teaching 'evolution' without having pieced together the fossil record from the first genetic material to Polly Shore. (Hey, I can be reasonable)
I demand the right to a solid platform upon which I can support my dignity. How can I feel good about myself if I am reminded that I share common ancestry with ape-brutes? I've been to the zoo, and I decline to write of the horrid, disgusting things I have seen the creatures do.
With our sense of self-worth at stake, supporters of science will talk of 'emprical evidence', 'facts', and 'logic'. Take a moment and reflect on the innocence lost the day our world left it's prominent spot at the center of the universe. And now they would have us force feed this, their evil-ution, to our kids.
Does a man who is doing his utmost to get into heaven benefit from filling his head with theories? Do we want our teachers questioning all that is good and decent, twisting things around with their fancy words? We must shift our focus back to something which is never used in an evil fashion: religion.
163120 for "insane"
only 103430 for "sane"
??????????
"sane" should be found at LEAST as many times as
"insane"
:-)
Calculating it involves a fairly simple algorithm. Just leave the algorithm running and saving to disk in the background day and night until your disk is full.
All these findings are easily explained by the incredible amount of advertising (more likely to use words with good connotations) and religious fanatic sites (which will talk about being 'saved' and the glory of god and the kingdom of heaven more often than they will warn of the smoking pits of hell) Anyway, I know it's just a joke to begin with.
Think of the possibilities for multiprocessor boxes! Biathlon, Pentathlon, or the mighty Decathlon!
If somebody made a three processor box, they could call it the ironman!
I worked at a small software company (this one was VERY small) and we obviously had nothing that rigorous.
You know this, but I'll just go ahead and say it anyway: Unless you're writing "Hello world" you ALWAYS do a thorough design first. With my company, that meant everyone standing around a white board armed with markers, arguing about how to design it. Once we had our design up on the white board we would leave it there and divide it up into pieces and hand out the pieces.
Things were always informal with a small group, and we never had to worry about miscommunication. With a big team the plan you described sounds like a good one to me.
Of course, I think they should always start with a couple hours around a white board.
I am not on a crusade against GUIs, nor do I think that they spawned from the smoking pits of Hell, nor do I think they are for losers only, nor do I think they are the only way to learn to use a computer.
I am not saying that I have my entire forray into parenting years from now planned to the last detail. I was saying that as a kind of joke with an element of truth in it.
It came from my memories of writing a breakout game in 4th grade when I first learned to use the Apple IIe's command line interface. I remember how much fun it was, and how smart and computer-literate I felt (hey, it was 4th grade).
There really was something to say for doing everything without ever moving my hands from the keyboard. It was like I was working in overdrive, molding a program as an artist works with clay. Then it was VB and Visual C++, and they worked pretty well for the small projects I was always into, but an element of pioneering and discovery was lost. Not until I started programming for linux did I feel like that again.
I could not possibly agree with you more!
I am always annoyed by parents that leave their kids in front of the tv to keep them "out of trouble". Perhaps thats what this whole debate over the internet it! Parents would like to leave their kid on the internet to keep them out of trouble, but they can't because it's not censored like tv. One of the short articles at the onion makes a great point about this - go to their page and look for the one called "Ritalin Cures Next Picasso".
We have to stop and think "What are we trying to do when we surround kids with technology?" Some parents will do this because they are kidding themselves into thinking their kids will have an "edge" in the new high tech world. We at slashdot ought to know better than that - they will just learn to point and click earlier. Hardly a hard-to-come-by skill.
There is something Neal Stephenson said that relates to this perfectly. I don't recall his exact words, but basically he said that the people that will control tomorrow's technology (and today's for that matter) are the ones that can comfortably deal with text. As in being able to read and write well. Multimedia is for the lusers - an interface for the 'eloi' out there.
Net access is great when people reach a certain age - it will help you to really see issues from all angles and get the whole story, as opposed to television newscasts which present a very one-sided version most of the time. It gives you another way to figure out who you are, express yourself, and find a community other than the ones you live among.
But little kids will not get that out of it. A 4 year old is much better off learning from a role model standing right there working with him/her, and playing with friends of the same age.
When I have kids, I'll give them a computer with a command line interface, and if they are interested in learning to use it, I will teach them. Then, when they get to be teenagers, they can have their GUI. That ought to be interesting.
I love Micros~1 as much as the next slashdotter, but they have many good points here. Yes, the competition DID go running to the DOJ for help against mean old MS. Yes, they SHOULD have the right to sell anything they like, at whatever price they like, and if they want to include a web browser why shouldn't they?
However, there are a great many reasons they should be prosecuted. Unfortunately, the DOJ did not focus enough on legitimate issues such as their restrictive agreements with hardware vendors designed to make it literally impossible to make money selling an alternative OS to OEMs.
And then there are the other reasons to hate them which, while technically legal, are obviously slimy. For instance, their marketing practices of raising a huge fanfare for a new collection of bits, then charging outrageous amounts for them. Then pushing the release back a long time and releasing a still buggy product. Then actually charging the public for a package of fixes. And the practice of denying that bugs exist, either saying they can't duplicate them so they're not there, or calling them 'features'.
Maybe I shouldn't have put 'improvements' in quotes like that. I honestly don't care how many/few distros there are, or who makes them.
I was just putting a prediction out there in case, in the unlikely case that I am right, I can say "I knew it" to nobody in particular.
It just struck me as the type of thing Oracle would do. I am actually VERY happy every time some company moves away from windows toward Linux, not out of any particular wish to see Bill go down in flames, but because then the chances are just that much better that I will use Linux at work.
I hate using windows at work. grrrrrrrrrrr....
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Ellison decides to sell complete servers with an Oracle Linux distribution installed. They'd probably put an emphasis on speed and security and integrate an oracle database server.
Then, they'd start making all kinds of 'improvements' to non-kernel-related aspects of the Oracle Linux distribution.
I have read some Pitr lines aloud, to try and place that accent ("am thinkink about goink out for sushi") and it always came out sounding Indian, like Ben in "short circuit". I figured that fit, since there are a lot of Indians that talk like that at my friendly neighborhood computer shop. Oh well.
I am white. I just now looked down at my skin, and noticed that it is nowhere near the shade of white of a piece of paper. Actually, it's a pretty dark tan, because I am outside a lot.
Does this mean that a cartoonist should have a full palette of "skin tones" to choose from? Starting at the pasty geek-white, and running all the way down to the very darkest black of some african tribes? No.
I like Iliad's comment on how they're all just 'people'. I have mixed races in many of my classes, and I often forget about their races, too.
I know some little black kids who, when asked to draw a picture of themselves, drew an outline of a person without coloring it in - just like white kids do, and just like cartoonists do.
And what about Pitr? He does not strike me as a typical caucasian male. I could be wrong, but I always had the impression that he is Indian (as in from India). Maybe I'm wrong about that, but he seems to me to be a good example of diversity, while at the same time staying true to an accurate reflection of geeks.
I didn't mean that the mouse is too slow - it isn't.
I think the best way to describe my experience with X is to compare it to that of using a cheap, POS mouse with a light, slipping ball bearing and defective buttons. Using windows, with the same mouse, feels like using an expensive, heavy mouse with a grippy ball and pad and precise, weighted buttons. I dunno, maybe it's just my computer.
The experience of using X is, in my opinion, far inferior to using windows or macos. It is the feel of it that always gets on my nerves.
Using X, the mouse seems just a tiny bit less smooth and responsive than running windows on the same machine. Responsiveness to a click lags a little bit behind other systems, and for some reason a click does not always register. And yes, my video card IS supported, and my processor is a Pentium 350, my bus runs at 100mhz and I have 96MB of sdram, so I don't think the computer is the problem.
The speed things are actually drawn at is usually way better than windows or mac, but responsiveness to the mouse and sometimes the keyboard is usually way worse. If X would just start feeling as smooth and responsive as other GUIs, I would be very happy with it, but right now it is frustrating.