Fact is, formal study of logic is valuable enough to not care what the ignorant masses think. Especially in his case where he also has a comp sci degree.
I'm not sure if you are entirely serious. But a philosophy degree is actually a good degree for a software engineer.
We are logicians. For centuries we did our trade while there was little good work for it (a few tenured positions, that's it). Now we program computers. And taking as much logic (as opposed to the other philosophic history) as possible is a great way to understand abstractions.
Then as your old job is automated higher and higher, instead of lamenting the fact that (nearly) no one needs you to hand craft assembly anymore, you rejoice that your abstraction is at an ever higher, and thereby more powerful, level.
worked for me. I was already a working programmer when I went to school and I recognized logic as the key. To have comp. sci. and philosophy and stress your formal training in logic is probably a good idea.
Of course, nothing will make an employer's market good on employees, but you will have some extra skills of value.
Dumb terminals have two problems. Firstly, they may make an admin's life somewhat simpler, but they make a users life more complex. Users have to ask the BOFH not only to install software, but for permission to install it. If the BOFH is not empowered to say no... their life hasn't really gotten any better.
Two, with the advent of graphical interfaces, any "dumb" terminal has enough processing power (to display a GUI) to also be a general purpose computer, so it's limitation is artificial, and there is no fundamental reason for the user to give up processing power on their desktop when they can have both a terminal and PC functionality at the same time.
PS: I remember when the mainframe went down and no one could edit their documents. I remember when deadlines loomed for people and the machine was slowed to a halt because of all the people editing documents, and the number crunching apps that NEEDED the CPU couldn't get it.
Distributization of computers is a more powerful paradigm, it's up to us to make it easy.
you could play in the same world as the command and conquer players... if you lose and area... it's used for C&C. C&C session finishes, you move back in.
television advertising looks way successful to me.
two, you are write, it doesn't cause violence, it's a symptom of the violence in the real world. That is, we don't have real violence because of violent video games, we have violent video games because of all the real violence in the world. Oh, and a lack of creativity.
I guess you're unclear on what "intrinsic value" means. Here's a hint: it's the opposite of "extrinsic value." It has nothing to do with the market, or what somebody else thinks of a work. See if you can figure it out from there.)
first off, this strikes me as very funny. Intrinsic is a relatively common word compared to extrinsic. I like the way you think. Well, other than all the parts where you are wrong... but with a flair for logical symettry.
But because the good of society NEVER outweighs the good of the individual (this is a fundamental tenet of modern political theory),
not really. Ayn sez that. Modern political theory is FULL of suggestions, and examples are easy to contrive, since people are not isolated and there are lots of interactions such that one can always show how individual actions have ramifications on others, allowing one to show to even an (honest) objectivist or libertarian that there are limitations to what you can do... even with your own property. (e.g. the river that flows through your private property is not yours to pollute at will, even if you have water rights).
Another things is, if I write a private journal on paper and keep it in my home, that is property, and is protected. You may not steal it and sell it or steal it and keep it, at least not legally. Copyright is about duplication. I duplicate that journal and start selling it, those words are now written on someone elses property, in a book I own. The protection is for my invention which is now someone ELSE'S property.
Ok, apply a few more nice logical symmetries to get out of that one! These laws are violating my ownership of that book! I can't memorize the words on my own piece of property and recite it in town? Don't tell me it's because of simple property rights... if that was the case, it would already be protected.
It's more like, selling someone, giving them the property right, and still wanting control... "I'll sell you this house... but you must never build an addition or let anyone see it.
let me be clearer identifying your ass-of-you-and-me-making assumptions.
I don't advocate Word or Excel. I have freed my life of Microsoft products. I help others do this. I advocate this.
Although I know of nothing as good as Project... I just do without. Openoffice is good enough for me to replace Word and Excel (but I put up with wierd formatting glitches from time to time and occassionally cannot view or access a documents).
I am NOT ignorant because I do the opposite of ignore. I pay attention. Many people still "need" these products because they are a part of their business processes... to get work done by definition they need to use their companies business processes. Many such systems, be they tightly integrated or just loosely in the form of passing along MS-format data, depend on MS products. "Need" is not a metaphysical idea without qualification.
And you could have googled for MS Project as easily as I did... so I think it's more likely you that are "ignoring" key facts.
They need Word and Excel because they exchange files regularly using these products proprietary formats.
Didn't need timelines... just project milestone schedules? Um, that is a timeline. More effiecient to do by hand!? Oh yeah, you're convincing me well of the grande size of the projects you've worked on, surely. I'll bet you manager used Project.
I have a feeling you are astounded by lesser things than my ignorance.
first. Microsoft Project does not have a OSS equal that I have yet found, if I'm wrong, please tell me as I can't use Project anymore since I don't use windows anymore at work and I'd rather use paper than boot the Win2K partition on my laptop. It is for making project timelines, usually people produce Gannt Charts with it. It has been used everywhere I've worked for the last 10 years, but if you say so. BTW: you only need it if you plan projects.
two, as for my astounding ignorance, you'll have to be more specific.
Some people need Word and Excel. I didn't say why. In the context of the thread the point is to say that people chose Unix, which was cheap and small, over the robust tanks that were the mainframe OSes. The post I respond to said something to the effect of "Windows is needed".
My post says, "Exactly, people have chosen these applications and quality does not matter, just price and a critical mass of available tools."
tunnelling microscopes make images that show atomic resolutions, for example, you are able to see the individual atoms in a lattice as described by the parent post.
I would call the image mapping in that case rather direct, even if the laws of physics allowing it all are a bit surreal.
not only do gamers hate the slow down of intervening layers (hell, they moved from DOS to Win95 kicking and screaming), but they are at a competitive disadvantage.
They'd rather compile for your platform than have the creamy goodness of a garbage dump... um, I mean, garbage collector.
you are, of course, right. And the sad thing is that the reputation of those good ideas that were burried is damaged. A weight they will have to overcome in the future if they are to rise again.
To tell you the truth I'm all over the map on this. On one hand I think it was a growing pain in a good sense, that we are left with more than we started with. On the other hand a lot of kids quit school to take part in the party, and what do they have now? Many of them have nothing. Even to the degree they should have experience... experience at a failed business doesn't look so hot on the resume. It's not the kind of experience that is "equivalent" to an education.
To add to what you've said, however, the funding of all these market experiments did create an incredible coverage of ideas. A lot of good ideas got funded that wouldn't have. It's like laying fertilizer in the gound the strongest seeds come up, though a lot of the fertilizer goes to waste if you actually measure the percentage that's put to good use.
But basically I agree with you, and the keyward was "market driven". Ug.
it's true. All operating systems at that time were developed for command line interfaces in that there was only text. I guess the only option would have been menu-based, which was used for some systems (remember you would boot straight to what we call "application software" on many of these systems), but wouldn't have made sense for Unix. It's still not entirely fair to say in that Unix was designed such as to separate the presentation from the execution... but, I won't wiggle out... I acknowledge you have me on the historic technicality (and as opposed to Mac OS or Next which were developed with the GUI top end in mind for the user).... but that makes it the old "Unix is old, new is better" kind of complaint, which I still don't buy.
Funny thing is, when I was using VMS in the late 80's and Unix was coming in, Unix was very strange and chaotic compared to VMS. And VMS could do Everything Unix could do, and more nicely. But since then I have seen the coming of the Unix borg and please-don't-be-shocked but I have been assimilated. I've seen the light (or dark).
Unix is like that old quote about Democracy. "Democracy is the worst form of government possible, except for all the others."
crontab is a user interface for cron for use from a shell.
There are GUI interfaces for cron.
In fact, there are also browser interfaces for adding users, hosts names, and because of ISPs just about every admin task. None of these require a shell, you can have a machine with NO shell, which runs apache, and all you need is apache mods and CGI. Of course, shells are quite useful and you will find them installed on the most bare machines. But just because they are useful. CLIs are quite useful once you are familiar with the systems commands (espc. if they have history and auto-completion).
I had that in mind when pointing out the difference whereby the editors still hand choose the stories.
I think that method works but is different, I can see the point of doing the moderation of the stories after they are posted, giving the editors control of what they thing slashdot is.
Slashdot Mirror
only a damn idiot would think that not proofreading slashdot posts was a sign of semi-literacy!
oh, make that dam idiot.
face it reader... you don't rate three drafts!
philosophers invented logic.
(and physics and math too, by the way).
Fact is, formal study of logic is valuable enough to not care what the ignorant masses think. Especially in his case where he also has a comp sci degree.
I am glad this is interesting not funny.
I'm not sure if you are entirely serious. But a philosophy degree is actually a good degree for a software engineer.
We are logicians. For centuries we did our trade while there was little good work for it (a few tenured positions, that's it). Now we program computers. And taking as much logic (as opposed to the other philosophic history) as possible is a great way to understand abstractions.
Then as your old job is automated higher and higher, instead of lamenting the fact that (nearly) no one needs you to hand craft assembly anymore, you rejoice that your abstraction is at an ever higher, and thereby more powerful, level.
worked for me. I was already a working programmer when I went to school and I recognized logic as the key. To have comp. sci. and philosophy and stress your formal training in logic is probably a good idea.
Of course, nothing will make an employer's market good on employees, but you will have some extra skills of value.
Dumb terminals have two problems. Firstly, they may make an admin's life somewhat simpler, but they make a users life more complex. Users have to ask the BOFH not only to install software, but for permission to install it. If the BOFH is not empowered to say no... their life hasn't really gotten any better.
Two, with the advent of graphical interfaces, any "dumb" terminal has enough processing power (to display a GUI) to also be a general purpose computer, so it's limitation is artificial, and there is no fundamental reason for the user to give up processing power on their desktop when they can have both a terminal and PC functionality at the same time.
PS: I remember when the mainframe went down and no one could edit their documents. I remember when deadlines loomed for people and the machine was slowed to a halt because of all the people editing documents, and the number crunching apps that NEEDED the CPU couldn't get it.
Distributization of computers is a more powerful paradigm, it's up to us to make it easy.
Larry doesn't just pull these ideas out of thin air
yes, the place from which is pulls ideas is a much darker place than "thin air".
... let me guess... the KDE version of thnkx?
I call it "RedHat".
you could play in the same world as the command and conquer players... if you lose and area... it's used for C&C. C&C session finishes, you move back in.
television advertising looks way successful to me.
two, you are write, it doesn't cause violence, it's a symptom of the violence in the real world. That is, we don't have real violence because of violent video games, we have violent video games because of all the real violence in the world. Oh, and a lack of creativity.
You lie.
-hey... where's my anonymous button/temptation!
I guess you're unclear on what "intrinsic value" means. Here's a hint: it's the opposite of "extrinsic value." It has nothing to do with the market, or what somebody else thinks of a work. See if you can figure it out from there.)
first off, this strikes me as very funny. Intrinsic is a relatively common word compared to extrinsic. I like the way you think. Well, other than all the parts where you are wrong... but with a flair for logical symettry.
But because the good of society NEVER outweighs the good of the individual (this is a fundamental tenet of modern political theory),
not really. Ayn sez that. Modern political theory is FULL of suggestions, and examples are easy to contrive, since people are not isolated and there are lots of interactions such that one can always show how individual actions have ramifications on others, allowing one to show to even an (honest) objectivist or libertarian that there are limitations to what you can do... even with your own property. (e.g. the river that flows through your private property is not yours to pollute at will, even if you have water rights).
Another things is, if I write a private journal on paper and keep it in my home, that is property, and is protected. You may not steal it and sell it or steal it and keep it, at least not legally. Copyright is about duplication. I duplicate that journal and start selling it, those words are now written on someone elses property, in a book I own. The protection is for my invention which is now someone ELSE'S property.
Ok, apply a few more nice logical symmetries to get out of that one! These laws are violating my ownership of that book! I can't memorize the words on my own piece of property and recite it in town? Don't tell me it's because of simple property rights... if that was the case, it would already be protected.
It's more like, selling someone, giving them the property right, and still wanting control... "I'll sell you this house... but you must never build an addition or let anyone see it.
let me be clearer identifying your ass-of-you-and-me-making assumptions.
I don't advocate Word or Excel. I have freed my life of Microsoft products. I help others do this. I advocate this.
Although I know of nothing as good as Project... I just do without. Openoffice is good enough for me to replace Word and Excel (but I put up with wierd formatting glitches from time to time and occassionally cannot view or access a documents).
I am NOT ignorant because I do the opposite of ignore. I pay attention. Many people still "need" these products because they are a part of their business processes... to get work done by definition they need to use their companies business processes. Many such systems, be they tightly integrated or just loosely in the form of passing along MS-format data, depend on MS products. "Need" is not a metaphysical idea without qualification.
And you could have googled for MS Project as easily as I did... so I think it's more likely you that are "ignoring" key facts.
It essentially is the .doc format.
They need Word and Excel because they exchange files regularly using these products proprietary formats.
Didn't need timelines... just project milestone schedules? Um, that is a timeline. More effiecient to do by hand!? Oh yeah, you're convincing me well of the grande size of the projects you've worked on, surely. I'll bet you manager used Project.
I have a feeling you are astounded by lesser things than my ignorance.
no, actually, you are assuming a bunch of shit.
first. Microsoft Project does not have a OSS equal that I have yet found, if I'm wrong, please tell me as I can't use Project anymore since I don't use windows anymore at work and I'd rather use paper than boot the Win2K partition on my laptop. It is for making project timelines, usually people produce Gannt Charts with it. It has been used everywhere I've worked for the last 10 years, but if you say so. BTW: you only need it if you plan projects.
two, as for my astounding ignorance, you'll have to be more specific.
Some people need Word and Excel. I didn't say why. In the context of the thread the point is to say that people chose Unix, which was cheap and small, over the robust tanks that were the mainframe OSes. The post I respond to said something to the effect of "Windows is needed".
My post says, "Exactly, people have chosen these applications and quality does not matter, just price and a critical mass of available tools."
But I only like Best Foods Mayonaise so there.
tunnelling microscopes make images that show atomic resolutions, for example, you are able to see the individual atoms in a lattice as described by the parent post.
I would call the image mapping in that case rather direct, even if the laws of physics allowing it all are a bit surreal.
"ask slashdot" is not about getting at free or even a good answer. It's not about getting the right answer.
It's to find out what slashdot thinks. Feel free to point and laugh if you like.
not only do gamers hate the slow down of intervening layers (hell, they moved from DOS to Win95 kicking and screaming), but they are at a competitive disadvantage.
They'd rather compile for your platform than have the creamy goodness of a garbage dump... um, I mean, garbage collector.
you are, of course, right. And the sad thing is that the reputation of those good ideas that were burried is damaged. A weight they will have to overcome in the future if they are to rise again.
To tell you the truth I'm all over the map on this. On one hand I think it was a growing pain in a good sense, that we are left with more than we started with. On the other hand a lot of kids quit school to take part in the party, and what do they have now? Many of them have nothing. Even to the degree they should have experience... experience at a failed business doesn't look so hot on the resume. It's not the kind of experience that is "equivalent" to an education.
To add to what you've said, however, the funding of all these market experiments did create an incredible coverage of ideas. A lot of good ideas got funded that wouldn't have. It's like laying fertilizer in the gound the strongest seeds come up, though a lot of the fertilizer goes to waste if you actually measure the percentage that's put to good use.
But basically I agree with you, and the keyward was "market driven". Ug.
This reminds me of the Steve Martin joke..."how to be a millionaire and not pay taxes."
...
First, get a million dollars.
ok!
... but that makes it the old "Unix is old, new is better" kind of complaint, which I still don't buy.
it's true. All operating systems at that time were developed for command line interfaces in that there was only text. I guess the only option would have been menu-based, which was used for some systems (remember you would boot straight to what we call "application software" on many of these systems), but wouldn't have made sense for Unix. It's still not entirely fair to say in that Unix was designed such as to separate the presentation from the execution... but, I won't wiggle out... I acknowledge you have me on the historic technicality (and as opposed to Mac OS or Next which were developed with the GUI top end in mind for the user).
Funny thing is, when I was using VMS in the late 80's and Unix was coming in, Unix was very strange and chaotic compared to VMS. And VMS could do Everything Unix could do, and more nicely. But since then I have seen the coming of the Unix borg and please-don't-be-shocked but I have been assimilated. I've seen the light (or dark).
Unix is like that old quote about Democracy. "Democracy is the worst form of government possible, except for all the others."
no, every program has it's OWN user interface.
The shell's user interface is a CLI.
Ftp's user interface is a CLI.
X Windows user interface is a GUI.
inetd's user interface is a text file.
cron's user interface is a text file.
crontab is a user interface for cron for use from a shell.
There are GUI interfaces for cron.
In fact, there are also browser interfaces for adding users, hosts names, and because of ISPs just about every admin task. None of these require a shell, you can have a machine with NO shell, which runs apache, and all you need is apache mods and CGI. Of course, shells are quite useful and you will find them installed on the most bare machines. But just because they are useful. CLIs are quite useful once you are familiar with the systems commands (espc. if they have history and auto-completion).
the shell is a command line program for executing other programs.
In general, those other programs are the ones communicating with the kernel.
The way you communicate with the kernel is through the system libraries.
I had that in mind when pointing out the difference whereby the editors still hand choose the stories.
I think that method works but is different, I can see the point of doing the moderation of the stories after they are posted, giving the editors control of what they thing slashdot is.
depends how it's implemented. How it's been written matters for a distinction that is purely logical.