Re:Since when is helplessness a virtue?
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ORBS Forks
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Regarding that G. K. Chesterton quote: the extreme likelihood that you didn't create the silicon wafers, design the circuit boards, mold the plastics, and do the soldering on the machine you're using to post to your message indicates the hypocrisy of your argument.
Oh, how silly of me. Of course, I should have realized that since I am unable to build my own computer out of sand and copper ore, that any attempt to exercise some modicum of self-sufficiency is doomed to be hypocritical.
No doubt the fact that when I make waffles from 'scratch', I haven't ground my own flour from wheat that I've grown myself, churned my own butter from my own cow, and gotten the eggs from my own chickens proves my hypocrisy as well. I should just be a good little corporate consumer and serve my family Eggo.
Thanks for setting me straight. I'll make sure to stop trying to write my own software and uproot those tomato plants in my back yard so that I won't be a hypocrite for failing to be entirely self-sufficient.
Since when is helplessness a virtue?
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ORBS Forks
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Sheesh. I understand that not everyone has the time and talent to write their own mailfilters and admin their own servers, but why sneer at those who do? Got something against taking responsibility?
So why not grow your own food so you only eat what you control and sew your own clothing and manufacture your own car and build your own house?
You say that as if these were bad things. Why not indeed?
But there is another strong objection which I, one of the laziest of all the children of Adam, have against the Leisure State. Those who think it could be done argue that a vast machinery using electricity, water-power, petrol, and so on, might reduce the work imposed on each of us to a minimum. It might, but it would also reduce our control to a minimum. We should ourselves become parts of a machine, even if the machine only used those parts once a week. The machine would be our master, for the machine would produce our food, and most of us could have no notion of how it was really being produced. -- G. K. Chesterton
"Boredom and Ignorance" are MODERN problems
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Yo - Pay Attention!
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It's no accident that we're the first society to develop widespread ADD.
Exactly. When we train children from practically birth to focus on pretty flashing lights and bleeping noises, anything that doesn't involve pretty flashing lights and bleeping noises becomes tough to pay attention to. In fact, anything else starts to seem... BORING.
The controversies shrouding this disorder aside, the very idea would have seemed absurd in the pre-electronic, pre-digital era. It was boredom and ignorance that was epidemic.
Sorry, Jon, but you are displaying your own ignorance here. Life was not, contrary to what Hollywood would have us believe, insufferable tedium until the harnessing of the electron. And I'm not convinced that "ignorance" has declined over the last century. Who is more ignorant, a 2001 teen who knows where all the weapons caches are in Quake III, but thinks food comes from grocery stores, or the rural teen of the last century (or the Amish today) who would be mystified by the computer, but read the newspaper and actually understood the myriad complex tasks involved in a farming household.
This is a culture drowning in instant, overwhelming information; losing its ability to figure out what, if anything, to pay attention to.
Right. We are bombarded with a constant barrage of information, most of which is useless and much of which is not even true. Meanwhile, we have lost silence and the time and ability to actually reflect on what matters.
But think for a minute: What could be more boring than this constant barrage? (The channel-surfer complaint: "500 channels and there's nothing on!!!???) And what could be a better definition of ignorance than not even knowing what merits attention?
Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers. -- G. K. Chesterton
If it does all happen to be a big troll, then congratulations, Jon, it's very well done, you've fooled me. If you really do believe all this, how can you stand it here?
I say troll. Clearly, "Jon Erikson" is a very nasty satirist with far too much free time on his hands.
Look. I grew up in a Fundamentalist family. I was Fundamentalist for a long time. I have family and friends who went to BJU. If you look hard enough, you can find people who think little bits and pieces like this. But the whole flamin' deadpan package? Doesn't exist in Real Life(tm). He's trolling, and counting on the general anti-Fundamentalist prejudices of the Slashdot crowd to take these rantings as "typical" of Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity, when they are not.
And the "skeptical" "critical" "thinkers" of Slashdot are falling for it hook, line, and sinker...
There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. -- G. K. Chesterton
Of course there were stories of dragons and rings etc. before Tolkien wrote -- he was certainly more familiar with them than you and I.
But if you doubt that Tolkien set the shape of modern 'Fantasy' literature, just try to find a writer today who doesn't end up rehashing Tolkien, badly. Even those who aren't writing Middle-Earth lookalikes almost seem to have to work at not being Tolkienesque.
Tolkien is not a god, and his book is nothing special.
Half right. Tolkien is just a man, who "just" happened to write a profoundly influential novel.
By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece. -- G. K. Chesterton
Cute troll, but sheesh! What makes you think a big-budget Hollywood production can help but be "bread and circuses"?
While I'm all for a general raising of consciousness and aliveness to the world, I don't think anyone needs to worry about the revolutionary potential of The Matrix. Those who are tuned in to philosophical issues will find them, those who are not will be happy with the big explosions and with drooling at Trinity.
(And just for fun, I'll point out that there's nothing solipsist about The Matrix. Neo is living in an illusion, but he's hardly the only one there. I can make a stronger case for The Matrix being a Christian allegory, with Neo of course the Christ-figure. This is Holy Week, if you don't get it, try making it to an Easter service this Sunday and do some research.)
Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else. -- G. K. Chesterton, "A Utopia of Userers"
I think the whole issue of Linux acceptance outside of the server realm comes down to this:
there is TOO much choice in how to set up Linux.
The Linux Terminal Server Project provides one solution to this. As far as IT issues go, it should provide a "win-win" -- you get to use standard, cheap PCs as a "thin client" AND you get the centralized control over everyone's configuration that IS loves so much (and that does help lower TCO).
For a look at how this works in the "real world," read Major Law Firm Installation of Linux. This provided a standardized KDE desktop for the administrative staff. Since the customer was a long-time WordPerfect user, the staff did not require application retraining, and only required minimal training on the Win* to KDE conversion.
This also had the nice effect of changing an IT manager's nightmare into an IT manager's dream. The law firm ended up with a single point of control for all their desktops, which they could then even oursouce many operations back to Unique Systems, the company which did the rollout in the first place.
What IT manager wouldn't like to be able to say to their boss "Look, for a small consulting charge and minimal retraining, I managed to cut our license fees AND support costs, preserve our legacy data and applications, outsource our administrative overhead, and I did this without purchasing any new hardware"?
(And no, I don't work for Unique Systems, I'm just familiar with them from them from their good work with the Toledo Area Linux Users Group, and from considering just this setup for a former employer.)
You're missing the point. I did not say "Aquinas is superior to Aristotle because he was a Christian." What I'm pointing out is that the stereotype of "Christians can't be skeptical scientific inquirers because they use Faith not Reason" is exactly contradicted by the historical examples of Aristotle and Aquinas. After Aristotle wrote his treatises, his followers (pagan, Muslim, and even some Christian) practiced "science" for centuries as an appeal to the authoritative writings of Aristotle. After Aquinas wrote his treatises, his followers for centures practiced skeptical inquiry into natural phenomena without deferring to the authority of ancient authors such as Aristotle, or even Aquinas himself.
So, it's exactly relevant to note that Aquinas is Christian, and perhaps the most influential Christian philosopher of the last millenium.
I certainly did not claim that Aquinas never got anything wrong (although use some perspective; alchemical theory looked a lot more tenable on the basis of available data in the 1300s than it does today), or that Aristotle never got anything right. Or that Aristotle was "evil" simply because he was a pre-Christian pagan. Please do not put words into my mouth.
Yet again, the tired old "conflict" between Christianity and (capitalized) Science(tm). A little reality checking is in order here:
1st science: Ether was believed to be the all incorporating substance between people & things as late as the nineteenth century. Science later debunked that as incorrect and now we know that air is the material we live and breathe. Maybe someday that will be debunked when a scientist becomes interested enough. This kind of questioning is accepted and tolerated.
Air was understood as being a distinct thing from "ether" for a long time before the Michaelson-Morley experiment showed that the ether theory to be untenable.
You really need to look into the history of scientific inquiry a bit more. The idea of ether was a holdover from Aristotle, who held that the Universe needed an absolute frame of reference. For a long, long time, Aristotle's viewpoints were held sacred and unchallengeable. Eventually, along came Thomas Aquinas who said that instead of holding to the tradition of Aristotle's teaching, we ought to simply look at reality and accept that what we observe is the way it is, regardless of whether it contradicts Aristotle or not.
It is not irrelevant to note that Aristotle was a pagan and Aquinas was a Christian
I wonder what would happen to your faith if humanity encountered a material life which said: "your Christian doctrine is bull-pucky".
No need to run the experiment; it happens all the time. Oh, you meant if an ET said it vs. some Slashdotter saying it?
Would that change the relevance of the truth and teaching of Christianity?
Not really. While contact with ETs would certainly raise some... interesting issues of practical theology, their very existance wouldn't undermine Christianity in the slightest. As for this hypothetical religious challenge, give me a break. You and I both have no idea what religious situation any ETs would have, because we've never encountered any. For all you know, they're as likely to bolster the Faith as to challenge it. And if I'm capable of believing even though less than 100% of my fellow homo sapiens agree with me, why should it be a problem if a creature from some other world also happens to disagree?
I guess you would then just shift to the "these material beings are God's test of my faith".
C. S. Lewis covered this quite well back in the '50's with his essay "Religion and Rocketry," where he discussed the (non-)implications of extraterrestrial life on Christian belief. (You didn't specify Christian, but I'm hardly qualified to comment on the implications of ET life on other religions.)
A few points to keep in mind about Christian doctrine on the subject:
Christianity does insist that humans are a special creation, and the only "souled" or "spiritual" creatures native to this planet.
Christianity does, however, also insist on the existance of ET intelligences, and of their presense on this planet and elsewhere. We call them "angels" (or "demons" if they are fallen). We don't know much about these creatures, although two data points are that they are non-material, and they seem to have a different "economy of salvation" than we do.
Christianity is silent on the possiblity of extraterrestrial, material life. Therefore, our finding or not finding it is irrelevant to the truth and teaching of Christianity.
The critics of Christianity for decades now (this is documented by Lewis, and it hasn't let up since) have been enjoying the hobby of taking whatever the latest discoveries and theories on ET life and using them as a stick to beat Christianity with. "The Universe is cold and lifeless! Therefore God is dead!" "The Universe is teeming with life! Therefore God is dead!" While this may be fun for the critics, it's not terribly logical and it ignores the actual teachings of Christianity on the subject. Ecclessia delanda est, I suppose.
So, the bottom line should be "no effect, really." It's really quite a straw man that gets set up, and I've never understood why people seem to think that the possiblity of ET life sets up some sort of religious crisis.
Applixware Office is not free software. It is a traditional closed-source, proprietary software product that just happens to run on Linux and use GTK+ as it's widget set.
So, what "proof of a broken business model" was that again?
The fact that this kind of churn started in overtime with the Industrial revolution and not the Digital does not mean that it's not a problem. Simply because something's been going on for 150+ years doesn't mean it's the way the world has to work.
And "communities" haven't been doing the moving -- people have. The communities made up of those people are what boom or die. And there is a cost to this, no matter how the evangelists of Progress(tm)and Industry(tm) and Technology(tm) try to pretend otherwise.
"My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday." -- G. K. Chesterton
Cyber-"space" isn't. The point should be obvious, and it worries me that it isn't, and needs to be explained. All of us, every last one of us, live in what gets referred to disparagingly in cyberpunk novels as "meatspace," the real solid physical world. OK, so some of us spend more and more time staring at computer screens. That no more means that we "live" in "cyberspace" than the fact that I spent a lot of time one year reading Lord of the Rings meant that I lived in Middle-Earth.
Tools don't provide meaning. Again, I would hope this should be obvious. It is right to look for a moral and spiritual foundation for society (Jon is on the right track here), but the things we build and use can never provide that foundation. The technical theological term for this is idolatry, and it is the thing warned against most strongly in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. This is not new with the Internet; it goes back at least as far as Babel.
Try some non-techophile authors. In particular, Jacques Ellul's The Meaning of the City (Amazon, my review) is relevant to a discussion of technology and any supposed "New Jerusalem."
The real New Jerusalem doesn't have a monthly access charge. In Revelation, New Jerusalem is the symbol of eternal shalom, of God's justice and mercy for all who will enter and be citizens. There is no poll tax -- in fact, the global poor are probably in a better position than the global rich (which includes anyone with a computer and Internet access). It strikes me as... almost obscene, to take the symbol of universal relief from oppression and suffering, and claim that the plaything of the rich techno-elite will take its place.
... the originals were genuine heroes. They were fighting for a way of life, not for moral control or cultural power.
This is a pretty false dichotomy, Jon. As if one's 'way of life' is or could be or should be distinct from one's moral and cultural vision of a good society.
Those utilitarian
miracles which science has made are anti-democratic, not so much
in their perversion, or even in their practical result, as in their
primary shape and purpose. The Frame-Breaking Rioters were right;
not perhaps in thinking that machines would make fewer men workmen;
but certainly in thinking that machines would make fewer men masters.
More wheels do mean fewer handles; fewer handles do mean fewer hands.-- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
Note that, according to Kirkpatric Sale, the Midlands artisans were not averse to technological innovation -- they had adopted many themselves. Where they objected was when the new technologies (backed up by goverment force) cleared the way for sweatshop factories and massive industrial pollution. In other words, the Luddites were rebelling against The Corporation, not Technology. And they were right -- the new machines did make "fewer masters." Ned Ludd had the right idea.
Sorry, too late. Our present level of population cannot be maintained without our present level of technology.
Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.
Our present urban population densities cannot be maintained without out present technologies. That's not the same thing as our present level of population. Many of our rural areas have become depopulated over the last decades. Wes Jackson estimates that, according to the best archeological evidence, his area of Kansas supported more population in pre-Columbian times that live there today.
The corollary of this fact is that any person who advocates "rolling technology back" or "going back to the land" is advocating genocide -- and should be regarded on that level of (im)morality.
You are presenting your assertion as fact, and laying a classic ad hominem on anyone who might disagree with your "fact."
If today's technologies are unsustainable (and there's good evidence that they are), isn't it "genocidal" to advocate marching forward blindly until the crash happens? Better, I think, to look for "soft landing" scenarios -- which do involve "back to the land" and "rolling back technology."
There are several disproofs by example for your thesis, but I will simply name one -- the Amish. The Amish way supports a higher population density than the "English" techno-agri-business way, with less environmental impact at the same time. Keep in mind that the Amish do innovate technologically -- the key is that they most emphatically do not worship technology, but subordinate their technological choices to their religious and cultural priorities. If only the rest of us were so wise as to keep technology our servant rather than our master.
Not a can of worms at all
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(sigh)
Here we go indeed, with the same tired old "science will invalidate faith" schtick...
If we can bring back a certain species of animal then what role does God play?
The same role He plays and always plays. This is a non-sequiter -- the same question could be asked (and probably has been on Slashdot) about any technological innovation: the computer, the Bomb, antibiotics, all the way back to fire and the wheel.
Think about it, religion is about God making all of the decisions, who lives, who dies, what species keeps going, what species becomes extinct, etc.
"Religion" in general is not about such things. There are a whole host of religions which don't postulate an omnipotent deity.
That said, Christianity does believe in an omnipotent God (as do Islam and some strains of Judaism, but I'm not as familiar with them). But all you've managed to do is to rephrase the old "omnipotence of God / human freedom" paradox that has been well-chewed by theologians for millenia now. Nothing earthshattering there.
If we start making these decisions the people that spend every sunday in church will have to look at things differently
Hardly. The fact that people have the ability to effect real changes in the world is hardly news to Christianity. Cloning the Tasmanian Wolf from fossil DNA is just one more example of cleverly pushing matter around in new ways, but hardly a challenge to God's omnipotence or to the Christian faith.
But scientists, who ought to know Assure us that it must be so. So let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about.-- Hillaire Belloc
If you want to think of it that way, go ahead.:^) I can assure you that the Evolution developers are thinking of it as a substitute for Outlook, not Magellan. But since they all seem to be in about the same application space, it doesn't really matter.
If you want a free software IMAP reader, and you're adventurous, you could always try Mutt or GNUS in the meantime.:^)
Here is your answer...File...save As...Word 95...end of question.
If only it were that simple.
Today, that shouldn't be a problem, but when Office97 first came out, Word95 was not an available "Save As" format. So, Word97 could read Word95 files, but couldn't output them. This "oversight" was fixed in the first Office97 service pack, but still...
Evolution is the GNOME email, calendar, and contact manager. Think of it as Outlook on Linux and on steroids, and you'll get the idea. Check out the Evolution page at Helix Code for details.
I am not a fan of giving a lot of power to a government. However, I do believe that the government must have the power to trump a corporation. Otherwise, the Bill of Rights may one day become a EULA.
IANAL.
My understanding is that the State that a corporation is charterd in does have the authority to invoke the "death penalty" by revoking a corporation's charter. The Feds do not have this authority, nor should they.
However, (fortunately or unfortuantely, depending on your perspective), this ability of the States to demand good corporate behavior from their corporate "citizens" has been pretty much a dead letter. Politicians need (advertising) dollars to get elected, and corporations have those dollars. And if enough politicians did have the collective cohones to stand up to that, corporations can always punish the local constituents by moving jobs over a state line, which tends to make politicians unpopular with the voters, and thus ex-politicians.
Men are ruled, at this minute, by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern, and therefore wish to enslave. -- G. K. Chesterton, "Utopia of Userers"
Why does anyone pay attention to this guy? He, like Bill Gibson, is basically a computer illiterate that writes fiction w/o any understanding of the technology they're writing about.
While you're right about Gibson (the man admits to never having seen a computer before writing Neuromancer), this is completely inaccurate regarding Stephenson. The man is clearly literate in a couple of programming languages and systems, and admits to using Emacs as his editor of choice for writing English text.
People complain when they hear "hacker" used in a negative light...but it's guys like Neal that _revel_ in the dark side of criminal computer cracking. It's the butter on their bread, and they know it.
Sorry, I just don't see that. Now, I haven't read every Stephenson novel there is, but in both Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon the "hackers" are people who build things. YT's question to Hiro ("if you're such a great hacker, how come you're delivering pizza?") is a valid one, and part of the answer is that Hiro is not a criminal. Randy Waterhouse and the Epiphyte(2) "hackers" are also engaged in creation, not destruction. The only character who is clearly a "cracker" is Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, and since he's a WWII codebreaker, he's wearing a white hat anyway.
Someone pointed me to some baloney that he wrote on command line OSes -- and it was just rife with errors. Written clearly by someone who wasnt there and didnt live through those times.
You mean "In the Beginning was the Command Line?" Funny, I thought it was spot-on. But I guess I must not have "lived through those times" -- I've only been programming for 20 years, and using Unix for 13 years.
I find that Stephenson's novels have enough correct technical details to give me the feeling of "yeah, he's either been there or knows somebody who has." Now, if you don't like his prose style, or his philosophy about operating systems and editors, then fine. But he's not a Gibson, making stuff up out of whole cloth.
Purportedly from an MIT job ad: "Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of UNIX, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement."
I've read your explanation of why "Linux" should more properly be referred to as "GNU/Linux" (and therefore, "GNU/Hurd" as well). It seems to me that, following the same logic, a Solaris machine with the proprietary user programs stripped off and installed with the GNU system could in some sense properly be referred to as a "GNU/Solaris" system. (Of course, the example could be repeated for AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, etc.)
My understanding of your position is that you disagree with "GNU/Solaris" as being proper.
I just tried to reach Book Stacks at www.books.com, and it now appears to be simply Barnes & Noble. Does anyone know a working URL?
FWIW, while Amazon.com is abusing the patent system, B&N does not exactly wear a white hat. It has been B&N who have most agressively, in the brick-and-mortar market, been squeezing out independant bookstores. Support your local independant booksellers!
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship b y the press. -- G. K. Chesteron, "Orthodoxy"
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, how silly of me. Of course, I should have realized that since I am unable to build my own computer out of sand and copper ore, that any attempt to exercise some modicum of self-sufficiency is doomed to be hypocritical.
No doubt the fact that when I make waffles from 'scratch', I haven't ground my own flour from wheat that I've grown myself, churned my own butter from my own cow, and gotten the eggs from my own chickens proves my hypocrisy as well. I should just be a good little corporate consumer and serve my family Eggo.
Thanks for setting me straight. I'll make sure to stop trying to write my own software and uproot those tomato plants in my back yard so that I won't be a hypocrite for failing to be entirely self-sufficient.
Sheesh. I understand that not everyone has the time and talent to write their own mailfilters and admin their own servers, but why sneer at those who do? Got something against taking responsibility?
You say that as if these were bad things. Why not indeed?
Exactly. When we train children from practically birth to focus on pretty flashing lights and bleeping noises, anything that doesn't involve pretty flashing lights and bleeping noises becomes tough to pay attention to. In fact, anything else starts to seem ... BORING.
Sorry, Jon, but you are displaying your own ignorance here. Life was not, contrary to what Hollywood would have us believe, insufferable tedium until the harnessing of the electron. And I'm not convinced that "ignorance" has declined over the last century. Who is more ignorant, a 2001 teen who knows where all the weapons caches are in Quake III, but thinks food comes from grocery stores, or the rural teen of the last century (or the Amish today) who would be mystified by the computer, but read the newspaper and actually understood the myriad complex tasks involved in a farming household.
Right. We are bombarded with a constant barrage of information, most of which is useless and much of which is not even true. Meanwhile, we have lost silence and the time and ability to actually reflect on what matters.
But think for a minute: What could be more boring than this constant barrage? (The channel-surfer complaint: "500 channels and there's nothing on!!!???) And what could be a better definition of ignorance than not even knowing what merits attention?
I say troll. Clearly, "Jon Erikson" is a very nasty satirist with far too much free time on his hands.
Look. I grew up in a Fundamentalist family. I was Fundamentalist for a long time. I have family and friends who went to BJU. If you look hard enough, you can find people who think little bits and pieces like this. But the whole flamin' deadpan package? Doesn't exist in Real Life(tm). He's trolling, and counting on the general anti-Fundamentalist prejudices of the Slashdot crowd to take these rantings as "typical" of Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity, when they are not.
And the "skeptical" "critical" "thinkers" of Slashdot are falling for it hook, line, and sinker ...
Of course there were stories of dragons and rings etc. before Tolkien wrote -- he was certainly more familiar with them than you and I.
But if you doubt that Tolkien set the shape of modern 'Fantasy' literature, just try to find a writer today who doesn't end up rehashing Tolkien, badly. Even those who aren't writing Middle-Earth lookalikes almost seem to have to work at not being Tolkienesque.
Half right. Tolkien is just a man, who "just" happened to write a profoundly influential novel.
Cute troll, but sheesh! What makes you think a big-budget Hollywood production can help but be "bread and circuses"?
While I'm all for a general raising of consciousness and aliveness to the world, I don't think anyone needs to worry about the revolutionary potential of The Matrix. Those who are tuned in to philosophical issues will find them, those who are not will be happy with the big explosions and with drooling at Trinity.
(And just for fun, I'll point out that there's nothing solipsist about The Matrix. Neo is living in an illusion, but he's hardly the only one there. I can make a stronger case for The Matrix being a Christian allegory, with Neo of course the Christ-figure. This is Holy Week, if you don't get it, try making it to an Easter service this Sunday and do some research.)
The Linux Terminal Server Project provides one solution to this. As far as IT issues go, it should provide a "win-win" -- you get to use standard, cheap PCs as a "thin client" AND you get the centralized control over everyone's configuration that IS loves so much (and that does help lower TCO).
For a look at how this works in the "real world," read Major Law Firm Installation of Linux. This provided a standardized KDE desktop for the administrative staff. Since the customer was a long-time WordPerfect user, the staff did not require application retraining, and only required minimal training on the Win* to KDE conversion.
This also had the nice effect of changing an IT manager's nightmare into an IT manager's dream. The law firm ended up with a single point of control for all their desktops, which they could then even oursouce many operations back to Unique Systems, the company which did the rollout in the first place.
What IT manager wouldn't like to be able to say to their boss "Look, for a small consulting charge and minimal retraining, I managed to cut our license fees AND support costs, preserve our legacy data and applications, outsource our administrative overhead, and I did this without purchasing any new hardware"?
(And no, I don't work for Unique Systems, I'm just familiar with them from them from their good work with the Toledo Area Linux Users Group, and from considering just this setup for a former employer.)
You're missing the point. I did not say "Aquinas is superior to Aristotle because he was a Christian." What I'm pointing out is that the stereotype of "Christians can't be skeptical scientific inquirers because they use Faith not Reason" is exactly contradicted by the historical examples of Aristotle and Aquinas. After Aristotle wrote his treatises, his followers (pagan, Muslim, and even some Christian) practiced "science" for centuries as an appeal to the authoritative writings of Aristotle. After Aquinas wrote his treatises, his followers for centures practiced skeptical inquiry into natural phenomena without deferring to the authority of ancient authors such as Aristotle, or even Aquinas himself.
So, it's exactly relevant to note that Aquinas is Christian, and perhaps the most influential Christian philosopher of the last millenium.
I certainly did not claim that Aquinas never got anything wrong (although use some perspective; alchemical theory looked a lot more tenable on the basis of available data in the 1300s than it does today), or that Aristotle never got anything right. Or that Aristotle was "evil" simply because he was a pre-Christian pagan. Please do not put words into my mouth.
Yet again, the tired old "conflict" between Christianity and (capitalized) Science(tm). A little reality checking is in order here:
Air was understood as being a distinct thing from "ether" for a long time before the Michaelson-Morley experiment showed that the ether theory to be untenable.
You really need to look into the history of scientific inquiry a bit more. The idea of ether was a holdover from Aristotle, who held that the Universe needed an absolute frame of reference. For a long, long time, Aristotle's viewpoints were held sacred and unchallengeable. Eventually, along came Thomas Aquinas who said that instead of holding to the tradition of Aristotle's teaching, we ought to simply look at reality and accept that what we observe is the way it is, regardless of whether it contradicts Aristotle or not.
It is not irrelevant to note that Aristotle was a pagan and Aquinas was a Christian
No need to run the experiment; it happens all the time. Oh, you meant if an ET said it vs. some Slashdotter saying it?
Not really. While contact with ETs would certainly raise some ... interesting issues of practical theology, their very existance wouldn't undermine Christianity in the slightest. As for this hypothetical religious challenge, give me a break. You and I both have no idea what religious situation any ETs would have, because we've never encountered any. For all you know, they're as likely to bolster the Faith as to challenge it. And if I'm capable of believing even though less than 100% of my fellow homo sapiens agree with me, why should it be a problem if a creature from some other world also happens to disagree?
You guess wrong.
C. S. Lewis covered this quite well back in the '50's with his essay "Religion and Rocketry," where he discussed the (non-)implications of extraterrestrial life on Christian belief. (You didn't specify Christian, but I'm hardly qualified to comment on the implications of ET life on other religions.)
A few points to keep in mind about Christian doctrine on the subject:
The critics of Christianity for decades now (this is documented by Lewis, and it hasn't let up since) have been enjoying the hobby of taking whatever the latest discoveries and theories on ET life and using them as a stick to beat Christianity with. "The Universe is cold and lifeless! Therefore God is dead!" "The Universe is teeming with life! Therefore God is dead!" While this may be fun for the critics, it's not terribly logical and it ignores the actual teachings of Christianity on the subject. Ecclessia delanda est, I suppose.
So, the bottom line should be "no effect, really." It's really quite a straw man that gets set up, and I've never understood why people seem to think that the possiblity of ET life sets up some sort of religious crisis.
Applixware Office is not free software. It is a traditional closed-source, proprietary software product that just happens to run on Linux and use GTK+ as it's widget set.
So, what "proof of a broken business model" was that again?
The fact that this kind of churn started in overtime with the Industrial revolution and not the Digital does not mean that it's not a problem. Simply because something's been going on for 150+ years doesn't mean it's the way the world has to work.
And "communities" haven't been doing the moving -- people have. The communities made up of those people are what boom or die. And there is a cost to this, no matter how the evangelists of Progress(tm)and Industry(tm) and Technology(tm) try to pretend otherwise.
Oh, my, so much fluff, so little time ...
Cyber-"space" isn't. The point should be obvious, and it worries me that it isn't, and needs to be explained. All of us, every last one of us, live in what gets referred to disparagingly in cyberpunk novels as "meatspace," the real solid physical world. OK, so some of us spend more and more time staring at computer screens. That no more means that we "live" in "cyberspace" than the fact that I spent a lot of time one year reading Lord of the Rings meant that I lived in Middle-Earth.
Tools don't provide meaning. Again, I would hope this should be obvious. It is right to look for a moral and spiritual foundation for society (Jon is on the right track here), but the things we build and use can never provide that foundation. The technical theological term for this is idolatry, and it is the thing warned against most strongly in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. This is not new with the Internet; it goes back at least as far as Babel.
Try some non-techophile authors. In particular, Jacques Ellul's The Meaning of the City (Amazon, my review) is relevant to a discussion of technology and any supposed "New Jerusalem."
The real New Jerusalem doesn't have a monthly access charge. In Revelation, New Jerusalem is the symbol of eternal shalom, of God's justice and mercy for all who will enter and be citizens. There is no poll tax -- in fact, the global poor are probably in a better position than the global rich (which includes anyone with a computer and Internet access). It strikes me as ... almost obscene, to take the symbol of universal relief from oppression and suffering, and claim that the plaything of the rich techno-elite will take its place.
This is a pretty false dichotomy, Jon. As if one's 'way of life' is or could be or should be distinct from one's moral and cultural vision of a good society.
Note that, according to Kirkpatric Sale, the Midlands artisans were not averse to technological innovation -- they had adopted many themselves. Where they objected was when the new technologies (backed up by goverment force) cleared the way for sweatshop factories and massive industrial pollution. In other words, the Luddites were rebelling against The Corporation, not Technology. And they were right -- the new machines did make "fewer masters." Ned Ludd had the right idea.
Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.
Our present urban population densities cannot be maintained without out present technologies. That's not the same thing as our present level of population. Many of our rural areas have become depopulated over the last decades. Wes Jackson estimates that, according to the best archeological evidence, his area of Kansas supported more population in pre-Columbian times that live there today.
You are presenting your assertion as fact, and laying a classic ad hominem on anyone who might disagree with your "fact."
If today's technologies are unsustainable (and there's good evidence that they are), isn't it "genocidal" to advocate marching forward blindly until the crash happens? Better, I think, to look for "soft landing" scenarios -- which do involve "back to the land" and "rolling back technology."
There are several disproofs by example for your thesis, but I will simply name one -- the Amish. The Amish way supports a higher population density than the "English" techno-agri-business way, with less environmental impact at the same time. Keep in mind that the Amish do innovate technologically -- the key is that they most emphatically do not worship technology, but subordinate their technological choices to their religious and cultural priorities. If only the rest of us were so wise as to keep technology our servant rather than our master.
(sigh)
Here we go indeed, with the same tired old "science will invalidate faith" schtick ...
The same role He plays and always plays. This is a non-sequiter -- the same question could be asked (and probably has been on Slashdot) about any technological innovation: the computer, the Bomb, antibiotics, all the way back to fire and the wheel.
"Religion" in general is not about such things. There are a whole host of religions which don't postulate an omnipotent deity.
That said, Christianity does believe in an omnipotent God (as do Islam and some strains of Judaism, but I'm not as familiar with them). But all you've managed to do is to rephrase the old "omnipotence of God / human freedom" paradox that has been well-chewed by theologians for millenia now. Nothing earthshattering there.
Hardly. The fact that people have the ability to effect real changes in the world is hardly news to Christianity. Cloning the Tasmanian Wolf from fossil DNA is just one more example of cleverly pushing matter around in new ways, but hardly a challenge to God's omnipotence or to the Christian faith.
Why Sun should GPL StarOffice.
Zach Frey
So it's a copy of Magellan for KDE?
If you want to think of it that way, go ahead. :^) I can assure you that the Evolution developers are thinking of it as a substitute for Outlook, not Magellan. But since they all seem to be in about the same application space, it doesn't really matter.
If you want a free software IMAP reader, and you're adventurous, you could always try Mutt or GNUS in the meantime. :^)
Here is your answer...File...save As...Word 95...end of question.
If only it were that simple.
Today, that shouldn't be a problem, but when Office97 first came out, Word95 was not an available "Save As" format. So, Word97 could read Word95 files, but couldn't output them. This "oversight" was fixed in the first Office97 service pack, but still ...
Evolution is the GNOME email, calendar, and contact manager. Think of it as Outlook on Linux and on steroids, and you'll get the idea. Check out the Evolution page at Helix Code for details.
IANAL.
My understanding is that the State that a corporation is charterd in does have the authority to invoke the "death penalty" by revoking a corporation's charter. The Feds do not have this authority, nor should they.
However, (fortunately or unfortuantely, depending on your perspective), this ability of the States to demand good corporate behavior from their corporate "citizens" has been pretty much a dead letter. Politicians need (advertising) dollars to get elected, and corporations have those dollars. And if enough politicians did have the collective cohones to stand up to that, corporations can always punish the local constituents by moving jobs over a state line, which tends to make politicians unpopular with the voters, and thus ex-politicians.
While you're right about Gibson (the man admits to never having seen a computer before writing Neuromancer), this is completely inaccurate regarding Stephenson. The man is clearly literate in a couple of programming languages and systems, and admits to using Emacs as his editor of choice for writing English text.
Sorry, I just don't see that. Now, I haven't read every Stephenson novel there is, but in both Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon the "hackers" are people who build things. YT's question to Hiro ("if you're such a great hacker, how come you're delivering pizza?") is a valid one, and part of the answer is that Hiro is not a criminal. Randy Waterhouse and the Epiphyte(2) "hackers" are also engaged in creation, not destruction. The only character who is clearly a "cracker" is Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, and since he's a WWII codebreaker, he's wearing a white hat anyway.
You mean "In the Beginning was the Command Line?" Funny, I thought it was spot-on. But I guess I must not have "lived through those times" -- I've only been programming for 20 years, and using Unix for 13 years.
I find that Stephenson's novels have enough correct technical details to give me the feeling of "yeah, he's either been there or knows somebody who has." Now, if you don't like his prose style, or his philosophy about operating systems and editors, then fine. But he's not a Gibson, making stuff up out of whole cloth.
I've read your explanation of why "Linux" should more properly be referred to as "GNU/Linux" (and therefore, "GNU/Hurd" as well). It seems to me that, following the same logic, a Solaris machine with the proprietary user programs stripped off and installed with the GNU system could in some sense properly be referred to as a "GNU/Solaris" system. (Of course, the example could be repeated for AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, etc.)
My understanding of your position is that you disagree with "GNU/Solaris" as being proper.
So my question is simple: why not?
I just tried to reach Book Stacks at www.books.com, and it now appears to be simply Barnes & Noble. Does anyone know a working URL?
FWIW, while Amazon.com is abusing the patent system, B&N does not exactly wear a white hat. It has been B&N who have most agressively, in the brick-and-mortar market, been squeezing out independant bookstores. Support your local independant booksellers!