the only people who actually seriously believe that science might change because of an act of God, God will cure a disease simply because of prayer with no medicine involved, and everything in the Bible is absolute truth are religious zealots--not your average person who believes in God and goes to church on Sunday.
I did not intend to say that every person who calls himself religious sees no value in science. But let's look specifically at the zealots you mentioned. Do you think it is possible that, for some of these people, their zeal might have been directed at scientific discovery had they not been deceived by religion as gullible children? I propose that science would be much more advanced in the US if not for the influences of religion.
I realize that in the face of scientific advancement, most religious people have taken to reinterpreting and redefining much of their texts ("that's just a metaphor!"). Despite that, most of them actually do believe that their prayers affect the physical world. Don't you think that there might be more funding and interest in medical research if the "prayer-chain" members around the country were instead convinced that scientific progress was the ONLY way to cure the diseases they spend so much time praying about? Few would describe these people as zealots.
There are no strawmen or delusions in my statement. But you seem to have the impression that religion does not slow scientific progress. That is unreasonable, for the reasons I stated.
This is an inevitable consequence of natural human empathy, democracy, mass-media. If you let kids experiment with explosives, a very small number of them will kill themselves. And perhaps (as you clearly think) that is a justifiable price for the inspiration it produces.
But once it does happen, the media will tell the story, and voting parents of the world will empathize with the poor mother of the dead boy. They will react emotionally, fearing for their own children, and decide that no amount of inspiration is more valuable than that single human life. The politicians will enact their wishes.
You can fight that battle, buddy, but you won't win unless you abolish one of (empathy,democracy,media). Good luck, though. I would like to fire a rocket off my apartment roof:-)
intellectual property? I don't think that means what you think it means. Unless I missed the part of my history book where the UK transfered all its patent rights and copyrights over to the US in exchange for military support.
Being a theist isn't a barrier to accepting most of the scientific community's conclusions, nor to participating in advanced research
This is pure drivel. There is a reason that almost NONE of the most eminent scientists in the world are religious. Why study the natural universe if anything could change at any time due to magic? Why try to cure a disease through science when you could just pray? Why should you learn science if it is OBVIOUSLY a flawed process (since it contradicts the abrahamic legends)?
Try discussing the space program with a religious person. They don't see the point in it. We don't need to develop the technology to save humans from cosmic disaster! God wouldn't let an impact wipe out his creations!
Yes, there are a few good scientists who practice intellectual contortion and cognitive dissonance so that they can hold on to their comforting supernatural delusions. But how many people might there be studying the universe through science today, if the majority of children hadn't been brainwashed since birth to believe that we already have all the answers in the form of old books?
In my mind, the poverty line is static. If these conditions are not met, you are in poverty. 1) food with exactly 100% of all the nutrition recommendations published by the FDA. doesn't need to taste good. 2) shelter with a climate that does not exceed the thresholds humans need to be healthy and somewhat comfortable (60-80F?), and with the possibility for privacy 3) medical care sufficient to stop premature death and constant pain (within a few limits. not everyone can get $2M brain surgery*) 4) access to education/training sufficient to gain economically valuable skills. Internet technology could make this incredibly cheap (think Open Textbooks)
The fact is, many (most?) Americans have enough money that they could live above that poverty level for the rest of their lives without working. Yet they still choose to work so that luxury (nonessential) goods are available to them. I propose that an economic system which guaranteed that level of existence would not differ much at all for the middle and upper class, but would be fantastically better for the lower class.
* This is the only "dynamic" part of the definition. it would, of course, change with technology and medical training levels.
Actually, I'm a unix guy. vi is my primary text editor. But, for coding, I would hate to work with something that doesn't at least have syntax highlighting and code folding. Argument hover-shadowing and method/property completion should be there as well. I've never seen such an editor on a hand-held. The only reason I mentioned VS is because it is the most well-known development environment that has those four essential features.
If you do actually code using just a text editor, do you spend half your time tokenizing in your head, looking for syntax errors, or just looking up whether the method you want is called.get_lenght,.get_size,.count, or whatever?
Or maybe you don't make mistakes and have a perfect memory. If that's the case, I envy you:-)
You're right that we will soon start to think of "computers" as "LCD, keyboard, and mouse connected to a handheld cradle." But I don't think we are nearly there yet. Especially for developers (which is why I ribbed ya).
I guess. I was aiming for the/. demographic, which is made up of engineers, scientists, and technicians who work with or are interested in computer technology. Such people typically have money to spare, and usually play videogames. You're an outlier, grandpa!
Oh, and everybody knows that a married guy who won't wear his wedding band is really a playboy.
Your laptop has moving parts. A flash-based laptop does not. All other things being equal, no moving parts is WAY preferable to having moving parts. They last longer, are more reliable, use less power...
You seem to think that most people would only work if the alternative were poverty.
Next time you are in an executive meeting at work, ask yourself how many people have enough money they could live just above the poverty line for the rest of their lives. Most of them could do so. Now ask yourself why they are still at the office sitting through that boring-as-hell meeting. You will realize that people still work despite fact that they are guaranteed basic social services. They want cars, private swimming pools, big TVs, etc.
Perhaps there are some jobs that are only performed by people who have "work or die" options available to them. But how many, realistically? If we changed their options to "work or live a life devoid of luxury," at least some would still work. Their wages would also rise due to decreased labor supply. But we aren't talking about a huge number of people. Also, many of those jobs could be automated.
For your scenario: Imagine it becomes much more expensive to get your oil changed. Some car manufacturer would inevitably develop some interface which a machine could easily access to change oil without human intervention. People would want to buy those cars because they save hundreds per year on oil changes. Other car companies would adopt the same process...
I've been involved in some robot-building projects. Everywhere I look, I see opportunities for automation that are currently being overlooked just because labor is still so cheap.
You are correct that a "culture of laziness" needs to be avoided. But even the poor want cell phones. I suspect many of them would take part time jobs in order to afford things like cell phones. Maybe our marketing and consumerism would keep the economy running in such an economic system.
You don't buy diamonds and gold because you don't care about things that look shiny? What about that GeForce 7950GT you're running? You just dropped $300 so your games would look shiny. And it holds its value far worse than gold does.
Get over yourself. Everyone spends money on entertainment. Looking at shiny things is entertaining.
Bullshit. Poverty is not a requirement for an economic system. If you were to take money from the rich and give the poor basic social services (food, shelter, healthcare, education), you would have no poverty. And the working people who actually make the economy function (the middle and lower non-poverty class) would still work just as hard.
In our current state, all life could all end at any moment. *poof* no life. That is unacceptable.
Heat-death, however, means life has a few trillion years to go.
Those aren't comparable scenarios. And a trillion years of science may just find a way to perpetuate life indefinitely. There is still so much we don't know.
Civilization 4 has an amazing soundtrack. The movements are epic, masterfully performed, and with wonderfully diverse instrumentation.
That had to be much more expensive than programmer-inspired beeping in earlier games. And it is well worth it. The whole game costs less than one seat at a symphony.
TR: In retrospect, in designing C++, wasn't your decision to trade off programmer efficiency, security, and software reliability for run time performance a fundamental mistake?
BS: Well, I don't think I made such a trade-off.
Holy ego alert, batman! Has BS ever worked in a modern, high-level language?
The point is to teach what the course aims to teach without wasting time on things students should learn elsewhere.
Also, one of the main themes in my software engineering education was to avoid complexity. People who think complexity is a good thing often end up on TheDailyWTF.com.
Slashdot Mirror
sorry... what does "hi rez" mean? i don't want to miss out on the joke.
I did not intend to say that every person who calls himself religious sees no value in science. But let's look specifically at the zealots you mentioned. Do you think it is possible that, for some of these people, their zeal might have been directed at scientific discovery had they not been deceived by religion as gullible children? I propose that science would be much more advanced in the US if not for the influences of religion.
I realize that in the face of scientific advancement, most religious people have taken to reinterpreting and redefining much of their texts ("that's just a metaphor!"). Despite that, most of them actually do believe that their prayers affect the physical world. Don't you think that there might be more funding and interest in medical research if the "prayer-chain" members around the country were instead convinced that scientific progress was the ONLY way to cure the diseases they spend so much time praying about? Few would describe these people as zealots.
There are no strawmen or delusions in my statement. But you seem to have the impression that religion does not slow scientific progress. That is unreasonable, for the reasons I stated.
This is an inevitable consequence of natural human empathy, democracy, mass-media. If you let kids experiment with explosives, a very small number of them will kill themselves. And perhaps (as you clearly think) that is a justifiable price for the inspiration it produces.
:-)
But once it does happen, the media will tell the story, and voting parents of the world will empathize with the poor mother of the dead boy. They will react emotionally, fearing for their own children, and decide that no amount of inspiration is more valuable than that single human life. The politicians will enact their wishes.
You can fight that battle, buddy, but you won't win unless you abolish one of (empathy,democracy,media). Good luck, though. I would like to fire a rocket off my apartment roof
intellectual property? I don't think that means what you think it means. Unless I missed the part of my history book where the UK transfered all its patent rights and copyrights over to the US in exchange for military support.
This is pure drivel. There is a reason that almost NONE of the most eminent scientists in the world are religious. Why study the natural universe if anything could change at any time due to magic? Why try to cure a disease through science when you could just pray? Why should you learn science if it is OBVIOUSLY a flawed process (since it contradicts the abrahamic legends)?
Try discussing the space program with a religious person. They don't see the point in it. We don't need to develop the technology to save humans from cosmic disaster! God wouldn't let an impact wipe out his creations!
Yes, there are a few good scientists who practice intellectual contortion and cognitive dissonance so that they can hold on to their comforting supernatural delusions. But how many people might there be studying the universe through science today, if the majority of children hadn't been brainwashed since birth to believe that we already have all the answers in the form of old books?
Are you confusing "poor" and "poverty," or am I?
In my mind, the poverty line is static. If these conditions are not met, you are in poverty.
1) food with exactly 100% of all the nutrition recommendations published by the FDA. doesn't need to taste good.
2) shelter with a climate that does not exceed the thresholds humans need to be healthy and somewhat comfortable (60-80F?), and with the possibility for privacy
3) medical care sufficient to stop premature death and constant pain (within a few limits. not everyone can get $2M brain surgery*)
4) access to education/training sufficient to gain economically valuable skills. Internet technology could make this incredibly cheap (think Open Textbooks)
The fact is, many (most?) Americans have enough money that they could live above that poverty level for the rest of their lives without working. Yet they still choose to work so that luxury (nonessential) goods are available to them. I propose that an economic system which guaranteed that level of existence would not differ much at all for the middle and upper class, but would be fantastically better for the lower class.
* This is the only "dynamic" part of the definition. it would, of course, change with technology and medical training levels.
Actually, I'm a unix guy. vi is my primary text editor. But, for coding, I would hate to work with something that doesn't at least have syntax highlighting and code folding. Argument hover-shadowing and method/property completion should be there as well. I've never seen such an editor on a hand-held. The only reason I mentioned VS is because it is the most well-known development environment that has those four essential features.
.get_lenght, .get_size, .count, or whatever?
:-)
If you do actually code using just a text editor, do you spend half your time tokenizing in your head, looking for syntax errors, or just looking up whether the method you want is called
Or maybe you don't make mistakes and have a perfect memory. If that's the case, I envy you
You're right that we will soon start to think of "computers" as "LCD, keyboard, and mouse connected to a handheld cradle." But I don't think we are nearly there yet. Especially for developers (which is why I ribbed ya).
"You have me confused for the wrong demographic."
/. demographic, which is made up of engineers, scientists, and technicians who work with or are interested in computer technology. Such people typically have money to spare, and usually play videogames. You're an outlier, grandpa!
I guess. I was aiming for the
Oh, and everybody knows that a married guy who won't wear his wedding band is really a playboy.
You must not engineer much software. How does Visual Studio look on an iPaq?
Your laptop has moving parts. A flash-based laptop does not. All other things being equal, no moving parts is WAY preferable to having moving parts. They last longer, are more reliable, use less power...
NOBODY expects the failure of A LAPTOP!!!
You seem to think that most people would only work if the alternative were poverty.
Next time you are in an executive meeting at work, ask yourself how many people have enough money they could live just above the poverty line for the rest of their lives. Most of them could do so. Now ask yourself why they are still at the office sitting through that boring-as-hell meeting. You will realize that people still work despite fact that they are guaranteed basic social services. They want cars, private swimming pools, big TVs, etc.
Perhaps there are some jobs that are only performed by people who have "work or die" options available to them. But how many, realistically? If we changed their options to "work or live a life devoid of luxury," at least some would still work. Their wages would also rise due to decreased labor supply. But we aren't talking about a huge number of people. Also, many of those jobs could be automated.
For your scenario: Imagine it becomes much more expensive to get your oil changed. Some car manufacturer would inevitably develop some interface which a machine could easily access to change oil without human intervention. People would want to buy those cars because they save hundreds per year on oil changes. Other car companies would adopt the same process...
I've been involved in some robot-building projects. Everywhere I look, I see opportunities for automation that are currently being overlooked just because labor is still so cheap.
You are correct that a "culture of laziness" needs to be avoided. But even the poor want cell phones. I suspect many of them would take part time jobs in order to afford things like cell phones. Maybe our marketing and consumerism would keep the economy running in such an economic system.
You don't buy diamonds and gold because you don't care about things that look shiny? What about that GeForce 7950GT you're running? You just dropped $300 so your games would look shiny. And it holds its value far worse than gold does.
Get over yourself. Everyone spends money on entertainment. Looking at shiny things is entertaining.
Is job growth for the poor in Asia any worse than job growth for the poor here?
Think of yourself as a citizen of humanity (instead of a citizen of the country you were randomly born to) and you might enlighten your view.
Bullshit. Poverty is not a requirement for an economic system. If you were to take money from the rich and give the poor basic social services (food, shelter, healthcare, education), you would have no poverty. And the working people who actually make the economy function (the middle and lower non-poverty class) would still work just as hard.
It is better than it would have been without the music.
Also... they have Leonard Nimoy doing the voice-over. I'm sure that cost them some cheddar, but Spock makes everything better.
water + crowd = slipping.
slipping + crowd = trampling
trampling = death
It sounds like these kids want training, not Educations.
In our current state, all life could all end at any moment. *poof* no life. That is unacceptable.
Heat-death, however, means life has a few trillion years to go.
Those aren't comparable scenarios. And a trillion years of science may just find a way to perpetuate life indefinitely. There is still so much we don't know.
You are paying more for a better product.
Face it: youtube is right on the verge of being unwatchably-low quality. This would be HD.
At least our tables and chairs don't have genders.
Civilization 4 has an amazing soundtrack. The movements are epic, masterfully performed, and with wonderfully diverse instrumentation.
That had to be much more expensive than programmer-inspired beeping in earlier games. And it is well worth it. The whole game costs less than one seat at a symphony.
You may be contractually permitted to eat 20lbs of food at an all-you-can-eat buffet, but if you do it, you're being leach.
Holy ego alert, batman! Has BS ever worked in a modern, high-level language?
The point is to teach what the course aims to teach without wasting time on things students should learn elsewhere.
Also, one of the main themes in my software engineering education was to avoid complexity. People who think complexity is a good thing often end up on TheDailyWTF.com.