I take it you didn't recognize the book I'm quoting from, and you think it was written by some hippie on LSD. Well, by some definitions he's a hippie, but it definitely wasn't LSD!
Doomsday cults are based on weird ambiguous predictions by lost civilizations, medieval seers, or some crazy dude who just knows how to rant in an entertaining manner:
I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. Having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands. And among the lampstands was one like a son of man, clothed with a robe reaching down to his feet, and with a golden sash around his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace. His voice was like the voice of many waters. He had seven stars in his right hand. Out of his mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining at its brightest. When I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man. He laid his right hand on me, saying, "Don't be afraid. I am the first and the last, and the Living one. I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore."
Against competition like that, some silly pattern in a computer clock simply doesn't rate!
I wanted to say that science generally makes a whole more sense than most laws, because it rests on what I called "scientific reasoning": no space for mystification, prejudice, incoherence and deceit.
There's no language problem here. You said what I thought you said. And it's nonsense. Science does mystification, prejudice, incoherence, and deceit all the time. Their tools for detecting it are sort of better than in other fields, but that doesn't make scientists any less mystical, prejudiced, incoherence or dishonest — in a word, stupid — than people who don't use those tools.
All arguments are examined, criticized and eventually accepted or dropped in the most rational way possible.
Again, not true. Read about the history of phlogiston, cold fusion, and global warming. In each of these, scientists with a vested interest in a theoretical model simply refused to accept evidence that the model didn't work. In the case of cold fusion and global warming, there are still scientists who refuse to accept that debunked models are debunked.
In the case of global warming, there's still a public debate over which side is right. (There is or there isn't a scientific consenus, depending on who you talk to.) But clearly one "scientific" model or the other is bogus.
BTW, I would be most interested in getting you started on Sagan and anthropology.
Sorry, don't feel like it. Read The Dragons of Eden and decide for yourself.
I'm not bashing Linux, GNUStep, or anything else. If you read my post a little more carefully, you'll note that I simply said that the only reason to use GNUStep or Haiku is a love of the technology. This was in response to a post that said that effort that went into Haiku would be better directed at GNUStep. So I'm not trashing either OS, I'm simply squashing a preference for one over the other, a preference that's based on unrealistic hopes for the OS as a mainstream platform.
I really do get tired of arguments that start from talking about "mainstream media". What you really mean is media that you see as having a liberal agenda. Conservatives are entitled to make an issue about the "liberal agenda" (they're full of shit, but they're still entitled to make an issue out of their shit) but they owe it to the rest of us to state the issue in clear language and not hide behind code words. "Mainstream media" is a particular dishonest codeword in a time when media with an avowed anti-liberal agenda has so much clout.
You said that all the operating systems you've ever used have been failures, except for Unix. I read that to be an assertion that non-Unix OSs in general have been a failure. If you're only talking about the ones you've worked with, then you're really talking about your poor luck with OSs, not about Unix's general superiority.
Funny, that's what everybody used to say of Unix before 1995 when linux began to gain traction and a couple of years before Apple switched to a unix ecosystem.
Your knowledge of the computer marketplace is pretty limited. Unix has been a big commercial operating system since the early 80s. For many years it was the OS for workstations from Sun, HP, SGI, and IBM. That market faded when proprietary workstations started getting pushed out of the marketplace by cheap-but-powerful commodity systems that mostly run Windows. Now it's pretty much dead as a desktop OS, but is still big in the server space, though not as big as Linux or Windows.
Since your key date is 1995, I guess your perspective is limited to the push to replace Windows with Linux on the home and office desktop. That has never gained the traction you seem to think it has. A few hackers use it, a lot of embedded system developers, that's about it. Windows still dominates the desktop space, despite what Linux fanboys think. I had some hopes when netbooks became the big thing, because most of the early ones ran Linux. But now all the new ones seem to run Windows.
Apple, since MacOS X 1.5, for what I know, is in the process of ripping the balls off its Nextstep / OpenStep / YellowBox / Cocoa tools (reduction of Objective-C visibility, promotion of Java [Yerk !] and other neuteured languages like objective-c++ [Bleeeeech !!!]). I have no interest whatsoever to follow that road, I don't like Apple hardware, never did, certainly never will, thankyouverymuch.
Dude, you're the one that put forward OS X as a reason for learning GNUStep.
Agencies have not been able to post videos to YouTube (although many already have) because, under the current terms of service, people who post content is subject to their state's liable laws.
I notice this story has already been tagged "Engrish". But the submitter's issue is not so much poor ESL (I think he might even be a native speaker!) as poor self expression. They can't but they already have? What do the "liable laws" have to do with this?
You know, since the editors never do any actual editing, maybe it's time to call them something else.
Every OS has educational value. That's beside the point. The big question is whether the OS will ever get big enough to create a self-sustaining ecosystems of providers, developers, and users. For GNUStep, that train left the station a long time ago.
If you want to work with GNUStep because you enjoy it, or because it seems to you that it's the best fit for what you're doing, that's fine. But if you want to learn about OS X concepts, you should be using OS X, not some precursor OS. And if you want to promote an OS as a viable alternative the leading OSs (which is what people mean when they say "the effort that's going into Haiku would be better spent on GNUStep") then your keyword should be viable.
People can be broadly stupid — but that doesn't make them stupid in any absolute sense. I think if you take somebody who's thoroughly ignorant, bigoted, idea-deaf, and full of themselves, and strip all that away, you'll find a core set of skills, some of which are better than yours. Everybody's good at something, assuming they have even the most basic survival ability.
Of course, getting close to such a person for the purpose of figuring out how they tick can be pretty traumatic. One can hardly be blamed for keeping one's distance. This fosters the appearance of such a person as monolithically stupid. Doesn't mean they are.
The most important part of any UNIX-derived shell langauge is not its syntax or power but the fact it lets you construct large ad-hoc applications out of a toolbox of tens of thousands of pieces.
Like constructing a Windows app out of ActiveX components?
No, I'm not saying that ActiveX is as good a glue as the Unix equivalents, or that Windows is as good as Unix. I'm just saying that there's more to Unix than its ability to glue stuff together.
This is where all other operating systems (that I've ever used, and that's 30-40) have failed.
I guess your definition of "failure" is "Pieter hates using it". By any other measure, there are are fair number of non-failed OSs that aren't Unix or Unix-like.
I'd rather see effort like this poured into GNUstep....
The only reason to work on either BeOS or GNUstep is enthusiasm for the technology. If you think either one has any chance of ever being more than an enthusiast's toy, you're deluded.
I'm not the best person to ask as I've done a couple of degrees in CompSci and have over 15 years of programming experience (well official, stick another 10 years on that when younger). I'm not one of your 'self-taught techies'.
Then I suppose you probably know the right answer to the question. Then again, maybe you think you do, but don't really. So let me ask it one last time: how many characters in the ASCII character set? It's only fair that you make an honest effort to understand my argument before making me parse your counterargument.
I just wanted to say that the fact that lawyers - and other classes too - pretty much lack the principles of scientific reasoning makes it hard for us that have it, to understand the matters in which they are specialists, and makes it hard for them sometimes to understand our perspective which, I must say, is most of the times right.
I agree that lawyers tend to think differently than techies. And there are aspects of legal argument I'm not happy about. But to characterize the way techies think as "scientific reasoning" is ridiculous. What, we're more logical? Not from what I've seen on Slashdot! Better educated in the sciences? Broadly speaking that's true, but you still see techies recite some really stupid scientific howlers.
(Even scientists often get stupid about science when they talk about a field that don't have much training in. Don't get me started on Carl Sagan and anthropology.)
So basically, you are indeed saying that techies are smarter than lawyers, you're just hiding argument behind bigoted nonsense like "scientific reasoning". And that's precisely what I was arguing against.
Dude, life is not a multiple choice test. Most teachers program students to think it is, since to them "teaching" means feeding students simplistic factoids and rewarding them when they regurgitate them upon demand. Such students tend to get all peevish when they encounter a real teacher, one who tries to teach actual thinking skills. Guess what? These teachers are not out to humiliate you. You're doing that to yourself.
I was trying to do something sort of similar when I tried to get people to define ASCII. My point — my only point — was that many techies use "ASCII" to refer to whatever character set they're actually using, which nowadays is usually an extension of ASCII, and which varies depending on your locale and platform.
Sigh. I'm tired of arguing with people who quibble with my use of this word or that, but aren't even trying to understand what I'm saying.
Try describing ASCII to me. Start with telling me how many ASCII characters there are (including control characters). Specifying this number as a power of 2 is fine (and yes, that's a hint.)
Did you maybe click on the wrong "reply" link? Because you seem to be replying to somebody who said that "lawyers are smart, everybody else is dumb". Which isn't even remotely what I said.
Slashdot Mirror
No, he was right the first time. Fixed cats don't fight as much, and cat fights can be really brutal for all concerned.
I take it you didn't recognize the book I'm quoting from, and you think it was written by some hippie on LSD. Well, by some definitions he's a hippie, but it definitely wasn't LSD!
Your link point to a squatter site. Typo? Out of date?
Doomsday cults are based on weird ambiguous predictions by lost civilizations, medieval seers, or some crazy dude who just knows how to rant in an entertaining manner:
I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. Having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands.
And among the lampstands was one like a son of man, clothed with a robe reaching down to his feet, and with a golden sash around his chest.
His head and his hair were white as white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire.
His feet were like burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace. His voice was like the voice of many waters.
He had seven stars in his right hand. Out of his mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining at its brightest.
When I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man. He laid his right hand on me, saying, "Don't be afraid. I am the first and the last, and the Living one. I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore."
Against competition like that, some silly pattern in a computer clock simply doesn't rate!
I wanted to say that science generally makes a whole more sense than most laws, because it rests on what I called "scientific reasoning": no space for mystification, prejudice, incoherence and deceit.
There's no language problem here. You said what I thought you said. And it's nonsense. Science does mystification, prejudice, incoherence, and deceit all the time.
Their tools for detecting it are sort of better than in other fields, but that doesn't make scientists any less mystical, prejudiced, incoherence or dishonest — in a word, stupid — than people who don't use those tools.
All arguments are examined, criticized and eventually accepted or dropped in the most rational way possible.
Again, not true. Read about the history of phlogiston, cold fusion, and global warming. In each of these, scientists with a vested interest in a theoretical model simply refused to accept evidence that the model didn't work. In the case of cold fusion and global warming, there are still scientists who refuse to accept that debunked models are debunked.
In the case of global warming, there's still a public debate over which side is right. (There is or there isn't a scientific consenus, depending on who you talk to.) But clearly one "scientific" model or the other is bogus.
BTW, I would be most interested in getting you started on Sagan and anthropology.
Sorry, don't feel like it. Read The Dragons of Eden and decide for yourself.
But one should never allow facts to get in the way of one's preconceptions, right?
True. In your case, you might want to work on your assumption that people are incapable of saying "I stand corrected."
I stand corrected. In fact, you've sparked my interest in the use of GNUStep under Windows.
I'm not bashing Linux, GNUStep, or anything else. If you read my post a little more carefully, you'll note that I simply said that the only reason to use GNUStep or Haiku is a love of the technology. This was in response to a post that said that effort that went into Haiku would be better directed at GNUStep. So I'm not trashing either OS, I'm simply squashing a preference for one over the other, a preference that's based on unrealistic hopes for the OS as a mainstream platform.
I really do get tired of arguments that start from talking about "mainstream media". What you really mean is media that you see as having a liberal agenda. Conservatives are entitled to make an issue about the "liberal agenda" (they're full of shit, but they're still entitled to make an issue out of their shit) but they owe it to the rest of us to state the issue in clear language and not hide behind code words. "Mainstream media" is a particular dishonest codeword in a time when media with an avowed anti-liberal agenda has so much clout.
You said that all the operating systems you've ever used have been failures, except for Unix. I read that to be an assertion that non-Unix OSs in general have been a failure. If you're only talking about the ones you've worked with, then you're really talking about your poor luck with OSs, not about Unix's general superiority.
Funny, that's what everybody used to say of Unix before 1995 when linux began to gain traction and a couple of years before Apple switched to a unix ecosystem.
Your knowledge of the computer marketplace is pretty limited. Unix has been a big commercial operating system since the early 80s. For many years it was the OS for workstations from Sun, HP, SGI, and IBM. That market faded when proprietary workstations started getting pushed out of the marketplace by cheap-but-powerful commodity systems that mostly run Windows. Now it's pretty much dead as a desktop OS, but is still big in the server space, though not as big as Linux or Windows.
Since your key date is 1995, I guess your perspective is limited to the push to replace Windows with Linux on the home and office desktop. That has never gained the traction you seem to think it has. A few hackers use it, a lot of embedded system developers, that's about it. Windows still dominates the desktop space, despite what Linux fanboys think. I had some hopes when netbooks became the big thing, because most of the early ones ran Linux. But now all the new ones seem to run Windows.
Apple, since MacOS X 1.5, for what I know, is in the process of ripping the balls off its Nextstep / OpenStep / YellowBox / Cocoa tools (reduction of Objective-C visibility, promotion of Java [Yerk !] and other neuteured languages like objective-c++ [Bleeeeech !!!]). I have no interest whatsoever to follow that road, I don't like Apple hardware, never did, certainly never will, thankyouverymuch.
Dude, you're the one that put forward OS X as a reason for learning GNUStep.
Was the intended word "applicable"? I thought it was "liability" and somebody else thought they meant "libel".
Sigh. You just had to ruin my whole day by knowing the right answer, didn't you?
The point I was trying to make was that many techies seem to confuse ASCII with common 8 bit character sets, such as CP1252.
YMBNAH!
Agencies have not been able to post videos to YouTube (although many already have) because, under the current terms of service, people who post content is subject to their state's liable laws.
I notice this story has already been tagged "Engrish". But the submitter's issue is not so much poor ESL (I think he might even be a native speaker!) as poor self expression. They can't but they already have? What do the "liable laws" have to do with this?
You know, since the editors never do any actual editing, maybe it's time to call them something else.
Every OS has educational value. That's beside the point. The big question is whether the OS will ever get big enough to create a self-sustaining ecosystems of providers, developers, and users. For GNUStep, that train left the station a long time ago.
If you want to work with GNUStep because you enjoy it, or because it seems to you that it's the best fit for what you're doing, that's fine. But if you want to learn about OS X concepts, you should be using OS X, not some precursor OS. And if you want to promote an OS as a viable alternative the leading OSs (which is what people mean when they say "the effort that's going into Haiku would be better spent on GNUStep") then your keyword should be viable.
People can be broadly stupid — but that doesn't make them stupid in any absolute sense. I think if you take somebody who's thoroughly ignorant, bigoted, idea-deaf, and full of themselves, and strip all that away, you'll find a core set of skills, some of which are better than yours. Everybody's good at something, assuming they have even the most basic survival ability.
Of course, getting close to such a person for the purpose of figuring out how they tick can be pretty traumatic. One can hardly be blamed for keeping one's distance. This fosters the appearance of such a person as monolithically stupid. Doesn't mean they are.
The most important part of any UNIX-derived shell langauge is not its syntax or power but the fact it lets you construct large ad-hoc applications out of a toolbox of tens of thousands of pieces.
Like constructing a Windows app out of ActiveX components?
No, I'm not saying that ActiveX is as good a glue as the Unix equivalents, or that Windows is as good as Unix. I'm just saying that there's more to Unix than its ability to glue stuff together.
This is where all other operating systems (that I've ever used, and that's 30-40) have failed.
I guess your definition of "failure" is "Pieter hates using it". By any other measure, there are are fair number of non-failed OSs that aren't Unix or Unix-like.
I'd rather see effort like this poured into GNUstep....
The only reason to work on either BeOS or GNUstep is enthusiasm for the technology. If you think either one has any chance of ever being more than an enthusiast's toy, you're deluded.
I'm not the best person to ask as I've done a couple of degrees in CompSci and have over 15 years of programming experience (well official, stick another 10 years on that when younger). I'm not one of your 'self-taught techies'.
Then I suppose you probably know the right answer to the question. Then again, maybe you think you do, but don't really. So let me ask it one last time: how many characters in the ASCII character set? It's only fair that you make an honest effort to understand my argument before making me parse your counterargument.
Let's hope the Leshers don't visit Slashdot!
Slashdot trolls can get pretty malicious. But I've yet to see anybody accuse another poster of being a rapist. Did I miss that thread?
I just wanted to say that the fact that lawyers - and other classes too - pretty much lack the principles of scientific reasoning makes it hard for us that have it, to understand the matters in which they are specialists, and makes it hard for them sometimes to understand our perspective which, I must say, is most of the times right.
I agree that lawyers tend to think differently than techies. And there are aspects of legal argument I'm not happy about. But to characterize the way techies think as "scientific reasoning" is ridiculous. What, we're more logical? Not from what I've seen on Slashdot! Better educated in the sciences? Broadly speaking that's true, but you still see techies recite some really stupid scientific howlers.
(Even scientists often get stupid about science when they talk about a field that don't have much training in. Don't get me started on Carl Sagan and anthropology.)
So basically, you are indeed saying that techies are smarter than lawyers, you're just hiding argument behind bigoted nonsense like "scientific reasoning". And that's precisely what I was arguing against.
Dude, life is not a multiple choice test. Most teachers program students to think it is, since to them "teaching" means feeding students simplistic factoids and rewarding them when they regurgitate them upon demand. Such students tend to get all peevish when they encounter a real teacher, one who tries to teach actual thinking skills. Guess what? These teachers are not out to humiliate you. You're doing that to yourself.
I was trying to do something sort of similar when I tried to get people to define ASCII. My point — my only point — was that many techies use "ASCII" to refer to whatever character set they're actually using, which nowadays is usually an extension of ASCII, and which varies depending on your locale and platform.
Sigh. I'm tired of arguing with people who quibble with my use of this word or that, but aren't even trying to understand what I'm saying.
Try describing ASCII to me. Start with telling me how many ASCII characters there are (including control characters). Specifying this number as a power of 2 is fine (and yes, that's a hint.)
You really need to work on your reading skills.
Did you maybe click on the wrong "reply" link? Because you seem to be replying to somebody who said that "lawyers are smart, everybody else is dumb". Which isn't even remotely what I said.