However, the inability to learn new things is most certainly a sign of stupidity. Nowhere in my post did I say that there
should be a shifting of responsibilities in other departments onto the already overloaded backs of the programming group.
So, I presume if I gave you a violin, you could learn it? Anyone up for some banter po russkii? No doubt you could jump into any job function in your company with a few hours of training and a cheat sheet. Understanding CVS is part of understanding computing systems and it is NOT their job. It's yours. Indeed, it's your job solely to help them do their jobs, unless you're in a development house, in which case it's likely that it's your job to help people in other companies do their jobs.
We're IT. We're the support staff of modern industry. And no, you did not say there should be a shifting of responsibilities in other departments onto the already overloaded backs of the programming group (which apparantly has plenty of time to post on/.). But if you go back and read, you specifically recommended shifting the responsibilities of IT onto every other department. It's the job of the person who asked the question to make some sort of system work for the rest of his company with minimal imposition on the rest of the company - just as it's the responsibility of payroll to make sure you get paid on time just for handing in a sheet of paper or filling out an on-line form. Without payroll people, we starve. Without us, they lose their documents. It's neither their job to know or care how to do ours nor vice-versa.
Of course, division of labor is a management issue, and differing skills and predispositions are psychological issues, and you're obviously way to stupid to learn those ideas, and thus have no place in IT and should be shoveling shit for a living.
Right. And they'll be more than happy to turn over your development department's Legal, Accounting and Marketing aspects to your band of tech-college hackers (or are they hacks?). Here's a clue: Not understanding what you happen to understand does not make one stupid or unqualified for their job. Hell, I'd wager a weeks pay that there are less than 10 coders in my 70,000+ person company who could be an even passibly good admin assistant for a week.
I can't tell you the number of people I've interviewed with who have been absolutely AMAZED that I don't think of non-techies as ignorant baffoons. Apparantly they've all run into you a bit too often.
Two weeks, one full time developer, $10,000 in lost billable time. Plus maintenance. And I've *never* seen an internally written app that didn't grow once the users got used to what it could do and started to speculate about what it might be able to do with a few changes.
It stores versions, has a nice, friendly, Explorer-like interface, and runs on windows. Sounds like that's all the management wants.
As long as they don't want to branch documents (which I recall being a bit of a bitch), they should be fine.
(All of this with the note that I'm *pretty* sure that VSS handles binaries alright, even though it may not be able to do such things as diffs, even on files in a proprietary format from it's own company.)
No longer will script-kiddies just be able to wipe you're data, they'll be able to make your hardware literally die. Or turn blue. Or whatever they like. Perhaps the "I Love You" virus of 2020 will actually make your monitor love you. Genetic modification of hardware could certainly make Melissa or Michelangelo more interesting.
And I shudder to think of what will become of the "Killer App".
While I like the concept, this can really be nothing more than a step in the right direction, not a destination (even an intermediate one). In the areas they seem to be looking, $200 is enough to buy food for half a year, if not more. The phrase "Hierarchy of Needs" springs to mind.
Children who are hungry don't learn, so in an increasing number of school districts in the US, breakfast is being served. Likewise, maybe an illiterate farmer or merchant would love to have one of these, once you've figured out a way for him to stop worrying about feeding his family this week (or this evening). Considering the progress we've made on THAT question over the last half a century, I'd guess that computers such as this, while a lovely idea, are at least 20 years ahead of being useful.
Of course, speaking of what $200 will buy, other than a useless piece of mixed circuitry, anyone care to speculate on what the $10M these guys raised and spent developing the things could have done for a typical Indian village?
A traditionally coded application, from Office through to Quake, the Linux kernel to Windows XP, doesn't really express anything. Its a means to an end.
Being a means to an end and expressing something are not mutually exclusive. The source code for any computer program is the ONLY complete and accurate description of what that program is and what it does. Not what it "should" do, or what the documenter was told it would do, but what it does.
A computer program, such as a compiled DeCSS, is a device. The source code for that program serves two functions. First, it instructs the compiler (or interpreter) on how to create the device. Does an episode of "Emeril Live!" contain speech? After all, Emeril is telling people how to do something - to cook a particular dish. He embellishes quite a bit, but then, most source code I see has quite a bit of commentary in it. Is only the commentary portion speech, so that "BAM!" is protected, but "Add a pinch of the garlic we just ground to the pesto base" can be censored willy-nilly? Code, as instructive, is speech.
Even if the merely prescriptive were not expressive, and thus not protected speech, code would not qualify as unprotected because, as I mentioned above, it is the code which describes the compiled system. I'm not legally allowed to carry a MAC-10. A MAC 10 is a machine pistol capable of fully automatic fire at a rate of over 20 rounds per second and holding a standard 50 round magazine. Is that sentence not protected speech because what it describes is illegal for me to have? Or is it protected speech (as the phrase "digital crowbar" would appear to be) merely because it's a really BAD description of a MAC-10 and isn't accurate?
In short, source code is expressive because it explains how to do something and because it describes something other than itself. The only thing that sets it apart is that many people don't understand it. However, last time I checked it was still protected to walk around speaking Lithuanian in the US.
Anyhow, having said all that, could someone who knows Lisp better than me explain what it is about Lisp that makes it so good for AI? I've always heard that but being pretty far removed from that field I've never seen any cool Lisp AI code.
I'm not (unfortunately) a LISP god, but I think I know enough of the theory to answer. It's mentioned in the article, actually, where it describes LISP as a language where code and data are of the same form - that is, code returns data which is, syntactically, no different than code. What this means from an AI perspective is that LISP is designed to be able (given a good enough head start) to write itself. If one understands AI as learning systems rather than just logic-processing systems, this ability, in some form or another, is key.
Ok, I have to apologize. I was thinking the author was just another kid pissed off at not being able to get all the free music he wants. Just didn't read close enough -
Boy, I just can't wait for the opportunity to pay Napster a monthly fee to share my music with other people. And have them censor me for my trouble, too.
This guy's sharing his own music on Napster, which is frankly a very cool thing and a shrewed business move for someone who's probably not very well known as a musician yet. Maybe he could share the name of his band and some of his songs so we can look up his music while we still can. Oh, and I bet if he asked Napster would probably wave the subscription price, since he's contributing stuff he owns for the betterment of the service.
Joe Blow writes in with this article from The Podunk Reporter. Apparantly Target Corporation has decided to implement two new pieces of technology - the "lock" and the "cashier" - at all Target, Dayton's, Hudson's, Marshal Field's and Mervyn's stores nationwide.
What's next? Government appointed people driving around with guns and restraint devices stopping people for breaking the "locks" and walking past the "cashiers"? What about my 7.5th amendment rights to all the damned free stuff I can load up on????
1) The students doing the bullying were engaged in clearly illegal activity (theft, property damage, battery).
2) A substancial portion of this behavior was reported to the school over the year and systematically ignored.
and 3) Specific incidents can be documented, preferrably with cooborating witnesses.
How about trying a new tactic and filing criminal charges against the superintendent for accessory to each offense committed against the student after first receiving notification that such activity was occuring? Seems to me that the super's behavior in this matter has been rather criminal anyway, so it would make sense for him to face criminal charges in some way related to it.
One thing Katz missed in an otherwise very good article is the termonology battle. Kid in school are victims of "bullying"? I think not.
They're victims of: Assault, Simple Battery, Agrevated Assault, Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Misdemeanor and Felony Harrasment, all degrees of Sexual Assault (with 3rd degree happening to your average attractive girl around 40 times per day), Extortion, Robbery, Theft, Racketeering (a group organized for the purpose of an illegal activity) and countless other very real crimes.
So long as we continue to convince students either a: that the criminal behavior in which they are engaged is acceptable (or, at worst, subject to minimal action taken outside of the criminal justice system it would be in in any other context) or b: that their complaints regarding criminal actions being taken against them aren't to be taken seriously we will continue to have large numbers of students taking their own lives or, in much smaller numbers, those of others.
Used to teach university logic. Have you taken it?
Microsoft is up between 8 and 10 points from January 1. They're also down between 10 and 15 from February 3. On Jan 1, they were down 20 from Dec 1 and down 30 from November 1.
They're only a "big gainer" because the point you're counting from happens to be the lowest possible point to count from in the last 3 years. Sure, they're up 8 on the year. And they're up 12 over the last 3 years. That's pretty hideous performance. Of course, not as bad as being down 60 from this time last year, with no serious recovery in sight.
Oh, and Merrill Lynch (I believe it was) recently downgraded it from a long term "buy" to a long-term "hold". Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
(Stocks such as VA linux, btw, aren't on the DOW index, and aren't expected to maintaintain any particular level of stability. Stocks like Microsoft are.)
MS PDAs - zero market share is easy to improve upon. They haven't had a viable PDA until last year.
.NET - HailStorm is the first aspect of.NET actually to be fleshed out in concept. The rest of it hasn't even been described (as anything other than what it "will" accomplish, by some unknown means. It's the software equivilant of a block of iron ore. It works great - as a paperweight. Too bad it has to be judged as a box of paperclips./p)
Despite the overall tech downturn, Microsoft is one of the top gaining stocks this year, while Linux companies are hitting all-time lows.
Of course, as I'm sure "ZicoKnows", Microsoft is a top gaining stock *this year* because it started this year at a 3 year low.
I'd love to see in just which time period MS managed to increase it's share of the desktop market. And the PDA marketplace... as the Mad Hatter said, "It's easy to have more than nothing."
As for.NET and HailStorm... Oooh. Ms has better vapourware. Shocking news. Let me know when they've got more reality behing them than doctored xbox screenshots.
"It's a valid question, even if it assumes the computer revolution was shaped like other revolutions, by a handful of dogmatic leaders advocating specific principles."
AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Netscape, the FSF, the US DoD. Script kiddies and half-assed journalists had nothing whatsoever to do with "shaping" the "revolution". Everyone who had a personal impact (Gates, Jobs/Wozniak, Dell, Stallman, etc) did so by becoming major economic and personal powers and throwing their weight around.
The "Specific Principles" they advocate are known today as "Standards" (or pretenders to Standards), and are as essential and fundamental to the "revolution" as the primacy of capital or labor.
Re:Great ideas, horrible book
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 1
Interestingly, people either absolutely love or hate Rand's writing. Usually that's an indication that the issue has to do with the philosophy represented than a name-calling slam (usually by one who hasn't even read the material).
Then there're people such as the editors of the Oxford companion to Philosophy, who don't even bother including her. (Hint to the sheep who worship her: It's not because they scorn her brilliance.)
Indeed. Jon's ability to imagine himself as living in the worst of all possible worlds strikes again - and to think that he has the gonads to call 15 year old linux geeks undereducated on history and culture.
The other quote that grabbed me was:
Unthinking technology is always dangerous technology, and few great scientific projects have ever been rushed to completion with as little public consideration as this one.
Can anyone here name any great scientific project in the history of humanity that has had any level of genuine public consideration? Off hand I can't even think of a minor one that has. I can think of plenty of ones that have not, though:
Atomic energy/weaponry, jet propulsion, heavier than air flight, lighter than air flight, vaccination, geometry, navigation, the integrated circuit (not to mention the transistor and the vacuum tube)...
The only major scientific "project", such as it is, that I can think of that even involves a substancial portion of the public (although I'd still hesitate to declare that "public consideration" is involved) is the selective breeding of domesticated animals.
Well, it DID give JonKatz something to post an opinion on without making himself look like an uneducated nitwit... Although there was that part about seeing it twice...
Slashdot Mirror
However, the inability to learn new things is most certainly a sign of stupidity. Nowhere in my post did I say that there should be a shifting of responsibilities in other departments onto the already overloaded backs of the programming group.
So, I presume if I gave you a violin, you could learn it? Anyone up for some banter po russkii? No doubt you could jump into any job function in your company with a few hours of training and a cheat sheet. Understanding CVS is part of understanding computing systems and it is NOT their job. It's yours. Indeed, it's your job solely to help them do their jobs, unless you're in a development house, in which case it's likely that it's your job to help people in other companies do their jobs.
We're IT. We're the support staff of modern industry. And no, you did not say there should be a shifting of responsibilities in other departments onto the already overloaded backs of the programming group (which apparantly has plenty of time to post on /.). But if you go back and read, you specifically recommended shifting the responsibilities of IT onto every other department. It's the job of the person who asked the question to make some sort of system work for the rest of his company with minimal imposition on the rest of the company - just as it's the responsibility of payroll to make sure you get paid on time just for handing in a sheet of paper or filling out an on-line form. Without payroll people, we starve. Without us, they lose their documents. It's neither their job to know or care how to do ours nor vice-versa.
Of course, division of labor is a management issue, and differing skills and predispositions are psychological issues, and you're obviously way to stupid to learn those ideas, and thus have no place in IT and should be shoveling shit for a living.
Right. And they'll be more than happy to turn over your development department's Legal, Accounting and Marketing aspects to your band of tech-college hackers (or are they hacks?). Here's a clue: Not understanding what you happen to understand does not make one stupid or unqualified for their job. Hell, I'd wager a weeks pay that there are less than 10 coders in my 70,000+ person company who could be an even passibly good admin assistant for a week.
I can't tell you the number of people I've interviewed with who have been absolutely AMAZED that I don't think of non-techies as ignorant baffoons. Apparantly they've all run into you a bit too often.
Two weeks, one full time developer, $10,000 in lost billable time. Plus maintenance. And I've *never* seen an internally written app that didn't grow once the users got used to what it could do and started to speculate about what it might be able to do with a few changes.
Microsoft Visual Source Safe.
It stores versions, has a nice, friendly, Explorer-like interface, and runs on windows. Sounds like that's all the management wants. As long as they don't want to branch documents (which I recall being a bit of a bitch), they should be fine.
(All of this with the note that I'm *pretty* sure that VSS handles binaries alright, even though it may not be able to do such things as diffs, even on files in a proprietary format from it's own company.)
No longer will script-kiddies just be able to wipe you're data, they'll be able to make your hardware literally die. Or turn blue. Or whatever they like. Perhaps the "I Love You" virus of 2020 will actually make your monitor love you. Genetic modification of hardware could certainly make Melissa or Michelangelo more interesting.
And I shudder to think of what will become of the "Killer App".
While I like the concept, this can really be nothing more than a step in the right direction, not a destination (even an intermediate one). In the areas they seem to be looking, $200 is enough to buy food for half a year, if not more. The phrase "Hierarchy of Needs" springs to mind.
Children who are hungry don't learn, so in an increasing number of school districts in the US, breakfast is being served. Likewise, maybe an illiterate farmer or merchant would love to have one of these, once you've figured out a way for him to stop worrying about feeding his family this week (or this evening). Considering the progress we've made on THAT question over the last half a century, I'd guess that computers such as this, while a lovely idea, are at least 20 years ahead of being useful.
Of course, speaking of what $200 will buy, other than a useless piece of mixed circuitry, anyone care to speculate on what the $10M these guys raised and spent developing the things could have done for a typical Indian village?
A traditionally coded application, from Office through to Quake, the Linux kernel to Windows XP, doesn't really express anything. Its a means to an end.
Being a means to an end and expressing something are not mutually exclusive. The source code for any computer program is the ONLY complete and accurate description of what that program is and what it does. Not what it "should" do, or what the documenter was told it would do, but what it does.
A computer program, such as a compiled DeCSS, is a device. The source code for that program serves two functions. First, it instructs the compiler (or interpreter) on how to create the device. Does an episode of "Emeril Live!" contain speech? After all, Emeril is telling people how to do something - to cook a particular dish. He embellishes quite a bit, but then, most source code I see has quite a bit of commentary in it. Is only the commentary portion speech, so that "BAM!" is protected, but "Add a pinch of the garlic we just ground to the pesto base" can be censored willy-nilly? Code, as instructive, is speech.
Even if the merely prescriptive were not expressive, and thus not protected speech, code would not qualify as unprotected because, as I mentioned above, it is the code which describes the compiled system. I'm not legally allowed to carry a MAC-10. A MAC 10 is a machine pistol capable of fully automatic fire at a rate of over 20 rounds per second and holding a standard 50 round magazine. Is that sentence not protected speech because what it describes is illegal for me to have? Or is it protected speech (as the phrase "digital crowbar" would appear to be) merely because it's a really BAD description of a MAC-10 and isn't accurate?
In short, source code is expressive because it explains how to do something and because it describes something other than itself. The only thing that sets it apart is that many people don't understand it. However, last time I checked it was still protected to walk around speaking Lithuanian in the US.
Anyhow, having said all that, could someone who knows Lisp better than me explain what it is about Lisp that makes it so good for AI? I've always heard that but being pretty far removed from that field I've never seen any cool Lisp AI code.
I'm not (unfortunately) a LISP god, but I think I know enough of the theory to answer. It's mentioned in the article, actually, where it describes LISP as a language where code and data are of the same form - that is, code returns data which is, syntactically, no different than code. What this means from an AI perspective is that LISP is designed to be able (given a good enough head start) to write itself. If one understands AI as learning systems rather than just logic-processing systems, this ability, in some form or another, is key.
Ok, I have to apologize. I was thinking the author was just another kid pissed off at not being able to get all the free music he wants. Just didn't read close enough -
Boy, I just can't wait for the opportunity to pay Napster a monthly fee to share my music with other people. And have them censor me for my trouble, too.
This guy's sharing his own music on Napster, which is frankly a very cool thing and a shrewed business move for someone who's probably not very well known as a musician yet. Maybe he could share the name of his band and some of his songs so we can look up his music while we still can. Oh, and I bet if he asked Napster would probably wave the subscription price, since he's contributing stuff he owns for the betterment of the service.
Joe Blow writes in with this article from The Podunk Reporter. Apparantly Target Corporation has decided to implement two new pieces of technology - the "lock" and the "cashier" - at all Target, Dayton's, Hudson's, Marshal Field's and Mervyn's stores nationwide. What's next? Government appointed people driving around with guns and restraint devices stopping people for breaking the "locks" and walking past the "cashiers"? What about my 7.5th amendment rights to all the damned free stuff I can load up on????
Assuming the following:
1) The students doing the bullying were engaged in clearly illegal activity (theft, property damage, battery).
2) A substancial portion of this behavior was reported to the school over the year and systematically ignored.
and 3) Specific incidents can be documented, preferrably with cooborating witnesses.
How about trying a new tactic and filing criminal charges against the superintendent for accessory to each offense committed against the student after first receiving notification that such activity was occuring? Seems to me that the super's behavior in this matter has been rather criminal anyway, so it would make sense for him to face criminal charges in some way related to it.
One thing Katz missed in an otherwise very good article is the termonology battle. Kid in school are victims of "bullying"? I think not.
They're victims of: Assault, Simple Battery, Agrevated Assault, Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Misdemeanor and Felony Harrasment, all degrees of Sexual Assault (with 3rd degree happening to your average attractive girl around 40 times per day), Extortion, Robbery, Theft, Racketeering (a group organized for the purpose of an illegal activity) and countless other very real crimes.
So long as we continue to convince students either a: that the criminal behavior in which they are engaged is acceptable (or, at worst, subject to minimal action taken outside of the criminal justice system it would be in in any other context) or b: that their complaints regarding criminal actions being taken against them aren't to be taken seriously we will continue to have large numbers of students taking their own lives or, in much smaller numbers, those of others.
Used to teach university logic. Have you taken it?
Microsoft is up between 8 and 10 points from January 1. They're also down between 10 and 15 from February 3. On Jan 1, they were down 20 from Dec 1 and down 30 from November 1.
They're only a "big gainer" because the point you're counting from happens to be the lowest possible point to count from in the last 3 years. Sure, they're up 8 on the year. And they're up 12 over the last 3 years. That's pretty hideous performance. Of course, not as bad as being down 60 from this time last year, with no serious recovery in sight.
Oh, and Merrill Lynch (I believe it was) recently downgraded it from a long term "buy" to a long-term "hold". Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
(Stocks such as VA linux, btw, aren't on the DOW index, and aren't expected to maintaintain any particular level of stability. Stocks like Microsoft are.)
MS PDAs - zero market share is easy to improve upon. They haven't had a viable PDA until last year.
Despite the overall tech downturn, Microsoft is one of the top gaining stocks this year, while Linux companies are hitting all-time lows.
Of course, as I'm sure "ZicoKnows", Microsoft is a top gaining stock *this year* because it started this year at a 3 year low.
I'd love to see in just which time period MS managed to increase it's share of the desktop market. And the PDA marketplace... as the Mad Hatter said, "It's easy to have more than nothing."
As for .NET and HailStorm... Oooh. Ms has better vapourware. Shocking news. Let me know when they've got more reality behing them than doctored xbox screenshots.
"It's a valid question, even if it assumes the computer revolution was shaped like other revolutions, by a handful of dogmatic leaders advocating specific principles."
AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Netscape, the FSF, the US DoD. Script kiddies and half-assed journalists had nothing whatsoever to do with "shaping" the "revolution". Everyone who had a personal impact (Gates, Jobs/Wozniak, Dell, Stallman, etc) did so by becoming major economic and personal powers and throwing their weight around.
The "Specific Principles" they advocate are known today as "Standards" (or pretenders to Standards), and are as essential and fundamental to the "revolution" as the primacy of capital or labor.
Then there're people such as the editors of the Oxford companion to Philosophy, who don't even bother including her. (Hint to the sheep who worship her: It's not because they scorn her brilliance.)
Indeed. Jon's ability to imagine himself as living in the worst of all possible worlds strikes again - and to think that he has the gonads to call 15 year old linux geeks undereducated on history and culture.
The other quote that grabbed me was:
Unthinking technology is always dangerous technology, and few great scientific projects have ever been rushed to completion with as little public consideration as this one.
Can anyone here name any great scientific project in the history of humanity that has had any level of genuine public consideration? Off hand I can't even think of a minor one that has. I can think of plenty of ones that have not, though:
Atomic energy/weaponry, jet propulsion, heavier than air flight, lighter than air flight, vaccination, geometry, navigation, the integrated circuit (not to mention the transistor and the vacuum tube)...
The only major scientific "project", such as it is, that I can think of that even involves a substancial portion of the public (although I'd still hesitate to declare that "public consideration" is involved) is the selective breeding of domesticated animals.Well, it DID give JonKatz something to post an opinion on without making himself look like an uneducated nitwit... Although there was that part about seeing it twice...