My friend, if it is NOT our purpose to find out if such a thing is out there, then what are we ALL breeding, working, spending, and living for?
Just to pass the time until we die? One could argue that the rational thing to do about random disasters is to wait until they happen. You can't control everything, and it isn't necessary to drive yourself crazy trying. Perhaps what you see as the human race "not doing well with regard to disasters" is actually the human race being quite philosophical, as a whole.
Consider the situation with venture capitalists: they don't care if pushing their companies to grow big, fast, results in some of them failing spectactularly, as long as some companies succeed (preferably spectactularly). Similarly, the human race as a whole doesn't feel the loss of a few thousand, or even a few million lives. Now, a true extinction-level event would be something different, and at that point I agree with you: the human group intelligence is not necessarily up to the task of guarding against extinction level events, precisely because of the otherwise rational attitude I've just described.
I like Gandalf's advice (from the movie; it's easier to find than any related text in the books):
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
"Sometimes" you're afraid the human race "might" just win a collective Darwin Award? I'm afraid Agent Smith was closer to the mark: "No lieutenant, your men are already dead."
I'm wondering if the parent was modded Flamebait because some 14-year old moderator couldn't believe that government really works this way? I'd like to give a message to that kid: Santa Claus isn't real either, and neither is God. Sorry.
Say you have a light bulb with two slots on each side you can open an close. Both sides are being observed from a distance of 1km, side A is open and side B is closed. Slit B is opened then 5 seconds later A is closed. Am I now going to claim observer B saw the light from A move to B so fast it came FROM THE FUTURE?
Yes, you should claim exactly that, and submit it to Slashdot as a story. It'll be fun!
Prove that I don't have a wonderful magical blue puppy (fluent in five languages, including the long-dead tongue of the Hittites) in my living room. You can't?
Do you see the problem? The burden of proof is on the claimant, not the claimee. Agnosticism is not a logically tenable position to hold.
No, agnosticism simply says that since you claim you have a magical blue puppy, and since I can't prove that you don't, I have to acknowledge that it is theoretically possible that you do have a magical blue puppy. Because of the fact that you can't prove non-existence, it is in fact logically untenable to do otherwise.
That said, one can make judgements about likelihood, and many kinds of factors can go into such judgements. For example, if no-one else claims to have seen or otherwise experienced your magical blue puppy, that would seem to argue that you might be making it up, or imagining it, and I might be tempted to assign a probability indistinguishable from zero to the likelihood of its existence. But if millions of people claim to have some sort of experience of the MBP, it seems likely that these people are in fact experiencing something in common, which they've chosen to characterize as MBP. The MBP clearly "exists" in some form, even if only as a shared delusion.
In that scenario, lacking direct personal experience with the MBP, I can reasonably claim to be agnostic about both the existence and nature of the MBP. Practically speaking, agnosticism applies much more to the nature of the entity than its existence: in that scenario, *something* called MBP clearly exists in many people's minds. The question is, what, if anything, does it correspond to in shared reality? Usually, the believers themselves can't answer this question precisely, which doesn't help...
Businesses that favour WEB dev for in-house work are strealing from themselves UNLESS they only have a developer experienced in WEB programming and not GUI programming in which case they have less choice in the matter.
There's more to applications than GUI forms, though. Reports are one thing that tend to be easier as web pages, since the GUI-oriented report writers tend to be too obsessed with exact layouts even when it's not important. Also, in cases where the output is highly dynamic, so that form builders break down and you have to code to the widgets using an API, web can have an advantage. Finally, if you're using good web toolkits, the capabilities and development time can come pretty close to those of traditional GUIs.
I have clients who do both kinds of development, and I don't think it's nearly as one-sided as you make out, except possibly in certain specific scenarios. I recently replaced a GUI application with a web application to very positive reviews from users, because we were able to do some things with complex, dynamic multi-form pages that would have been a real pain to code as a GUI. In one area, the GUI app had eight logically independent forms, of which a maximum of three were ever on the screen at the same time, so the user had to navigate between three different screens to do the job. In the web version, it was easy to turn this into a single page, using Ajax-style techniques to show and hide the relevant pieces as necessary. The browser's ability to redraw the page dynamically without being told exactly where to put what is very useful here.
As for performance, GUI apps that hit the database directly are a pain to administer in a large environment, and web apps can win on that basis alone. Ruby and Python aren't even players in some of these applications. Server-side is typically Java, where automatic database persistence, object caching, and distribution across a server farm is the norm, supported by a number of very good libraries.
The truth hurts, doesn't it? Instead of just whining about it on Slashdot, I hope you're doing something to try to improve the huge mess that is public education today. If you are, then the appropriate response to the OP is "you're right, it's like that at many schools, but at my school we have taken the following steps [...] to improve the situation..." However, judging by your response to a justifiably aggrieved victim of the public school system, we're not going to get anything that constructive out of you. Congratulations, you have officially made yourself part of the problem.
Tell me, is Wikipedia about producing a great research product, or is it about who has the most marbles?
I don't understand why you're generalizing from one user who clearly has personal issues, to the whole of Wikipedia. People have different motivations for doing things, especially when no money is involved. This guy obviously needed the ego boost that he got from his edit count, but so what? My response to "for a lot of the people there, that's only part of the reason for contributing" is duh, where have you been your whole life that you haven't figured out that this is true of anything?
As for the egalitarian angle, your point might have more credibility if you were quoting something that Wikipedia said about itself and showing how their actions contradict it, rather than "I get the feeling that...". But let's assume their grand egalitarian vision is as you say. That doesn't mean that they should simply tolerate any anonymous person coming along and making an edit, because there are all sorts of trolls and vandals out there. So you need some filtering system to control that. Giving more weight to the people who have developed trust over time, who have demonstrated their commitment and ability, is the only rational thing to do, the only way to achieve a decent product. It's still egalitarian: anyone who can demonstrate the same level of commitment and ability will presumably reach the same level of "power". It would not be egalitarian if it was only open to people with PhDs, etc., but that's clearly not the case, despite this user's personal issues.
Your reaction may be a variety of the "watching sausages being made" phenomenon: the details of the process aren't always pretty. In the pre-Internet days, such details didn't often come to light, but anyone in a position of authority has to deal with such things all the time -- it's a large part of what being a manager is about. Now that this kind of dirty laundry gets exposed more often, you're seeing more of what goes on inside, which never matches the glossy veneer.
Great list, although I think you have too much time on your hands.:) That said, re the trademark, note the "TM" is just a trademark claim that doesn't require any kind of registration. If it's registered, then they can display an (R) symbol instead. However, I have my doubts about whether they could register "Software should be free" as a trademark.
Anyone who wants to can go on Zero G's flights, as long as they don't have a medical problem that gets in the way - and they have a doctor on staff who goes over your medical history before you go.
Oh yeah, Prof. Hawking's medical history shouldn't be a problem...
Everyone who calls SQL sequel is showing their youth.
That, or their adaptability to the times. I used to call it EssQueEll myself, but I see no reason to act the way an Amish computer programmer might. Get with it, gramps!
Semantics is unknown to many programmers
on
MySQL Cookbook
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· Score: 1
Yeah, why mention syntax at all?
It's because he doesn't understand the concept of semantics. Since "syntax" is the user interface to a programming language, many programmers don't realize that there's more to a language than syntax. They see a reference manual as just the definition of the syntax of the language, since to them, that's all a language is.
You nailed it. Similarly, Linux is Linus' and never will be anyone else's. No wait -- on second thought, don't be a moron. If you don't recognize an incredibly successful project when you see it, the fault is with you, not with the people who made it what it is.
I have no clue what you're talking about. You wrote:
So a non-profit organisation wants my donations? I'd feel much better if a non-profit organisation was soliciting my donations. Or calling it a subscription;)
So what's the problem with the non-profit backing Drupal? Or with the wording they used somewhere?
The logical error in your summary is that the referent of the word "society" is different in the two cases. The "society" that abuses someone is usually somewhat specific e.g. a particular group of people, bullies, a parent, teacher, school, or a church. The "society" such people end up abusing as a result tends to involve a much wider circle. By all means, abusees should do what they need to do for justice from whoever abused them. But they should keep in mind that their bad experiences are not a good basis for dealing with everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to pass the time until we die? One could argue that the rational thing to do about random disasters is to wait until they happen. You can't control everything, and it isn't necessary to drive yourself crazy trying. Perhaps what you see as the human race "not doing well with regard to disasters" is actually the human race being quite philosophical, as a whole.
Consider the situation with venture capitalists: they don't care if pushing their companies to grow big, fast, results in some of them failing spectactularly, as long as some companies succeed (preferably spectactularly). Similarly, the human race as a whole doesn't feel the loss of a few thousand, or even a few million lives. Now, a true extinction-level event would be something different, and at that point I agree with you: the human group intelligence is not necessarily up to the task of guarding against extinction level events, precisely because of the otherwise rational attitude I've just described.
I like Gandalf's advice (from the movie; it's easier to find than any related text in the books):
"Sometimes" you're afraid the human race "might" just win a collective Darwin Award? I'm afraid Agent Smith was closer to the mark: "No lieutenant, your men are already dead."
I'm wondering if the parent was modded Flamebait because some 14-year old moderator couldn't believe that government really works this way? I'd like to give a message to that kid: Santa Claus isn't real either, and neither is God. Sorry.
...while high enough to feel as though you're floating.
That said, one can make judgements about likelihood, and many kinds of factors can go into such judgements. For example, if no-one else claims to have seen or otherwise experienced your magical blue puppy, that would seem to argue that you might be making it up, or imagining it, and I might be tempted to assign a probability indistinguishable from zero to the likelihood of its existence. But if millions of people claim to have some sort of experience of the MBP, it seems likely that these people are in fact experiencing something in common, which they've chosen to characterize as MBP. The MBP clearly "exists" in some form, even if only as a shared delusion.
In that scenario, lacking direct personal experience with the MBP, I can reasonably claim to be agnostic about both the existence and nature of the MBP. Practically speaking, agnosticism applies much more to the nature of the entity than its existence: in that scenario, *something* called MBP clearly exists in many people's minds. The question is, what, if anything, does it correspond to in shared reality? Usually, the believers themselves can't answer this question precisely, which doesn't help...
I have clients who do both kinds of development, and I don't think it's nearly as one-sided as you make out, except possibly in certain specific scenarios. I recently replaced a GUI application with a web application to very positive reviews from users, because we were able to do some things with complex, dynamic multi-form pages that would have been a real pain to code as a GUI. In one area, the GUI app had eight logically independent forms, of which a maximum of three were ever on the screen at the same time, so the user had to navigate between three different screens to do the job. In the web version, it was easy to turn this into a single page, using Ajax-style techniques to show and hide the relevant pieces as necessary. The browser's ability to redraw the page dynamically without being told exactly where to put what is very useful here.
As for performance, GUI apps that hit the database directly are a pain to administer in a large environment, and web apps can win on that basis alone. Ruby and Python aren't even players in some of these applications. Server-side is typically Java, where automatic database persistence, object caching, and distribution across a server farm is the norm, supported by a number of very good libraries.
The truth hurts, doesn't it? Instead of just whining about it on Slashdot, I hope you're doing something to try to improve the huge mess that is public education today. If you are, then the appropriate response to the OP is "you're right, it's like that at many schools, but at my school we have taken the following steps [...] to improve the situation..." However, judging by your response to a justifiably aggrieved victim of the public school system, we're not going to get anything that constructive out of you. Congratulations, you have officially made yourself part of the problem.
As for the egalitarian angle, your point might have more credibility if you were quoting something that Wikipedia said about itself and showing how their actions contradict it, rather than "I get the feeling that...". But let's assume their grand egalitarian vision is as you say. That doesn't mean that they should simply tolerate any anonymous person coming along and making an edit, because there are all sorts of trolls and vandals out there. So you need some filtering system to control that. Giving more weight to the people who have developed trust over time, who have demonstrated their commitment and ability, is the only rational thing to do, the only way to achieve a decent product. It's still egalitarian: anyone who can demonstrate the same level of commitment and ability will presumably reach the same level of "power". It would not be egalitarian if it was only open to people with PhDs, etc., but that's clearly not the case, despite this user's personal issues.
Your reaction may be a variety of the "watching sausages being made" phenomenon: the details of the process aren't always pretty. In the pre-Internet days, such details didn't often come to light, but anyone in a position of authority has to deal with such things all the time -- it's a large part of what being a manager is about. Now that this kind of dirty laundry gets exposed more often, you're seeing more of what goes on inside, which never matches the glossy veneer.
Great list, although I think you have too much time on your hands. :) That said, re the trademark, note the "TM" is just a trademark claim that doesn't require any kind of registration. If it's registered, then they can display an (R) symbol instead. However, I have my doubts about whether they could register "Software should be free" as a trademark.
I for one do not welcome our innovative $4000-charging overlords.
[*] in the morning...
Shh, next thing you know they'll want us to pronounce the 'c' like the 'X' in TeX.
You nailed it. Similarly, Linux is Linus' and never will be anyone else's. No wait -- on second thought, don't be a moron. If you don't recognize an incredibly successful project when you see it, the fault is with you, not with the people who made it what it is.
I think we're OK, as long as the sharks don't have anyone to tape the AMRAAMs to their heads.
The logical error in your summary is that the referent of the word "society" is different in the two cases. The "society" that abuses someone is usually somewhat specific e.g. a particular group of people, bullies, a parent, teacher, school, or a church. The "society" such people end up abusing as a result tends to involve a much wider circle. By all means, abusees should do what they need to do for justice from whoever abused them. But they should keep in mind that their bad experiences are not a good basis for dealing with everyone else.