You make excellent points. Note, though, that the thread I replied to was making the argument that the BSD license was a better guarantee of freedom, and that's really what I was contesting. I don't think of the GPL as a socialist license, I think it strikes the right compromise between allowing use in as many ways as desired and guaranteeing future freedom. In that way, it's like the US's own regulated market system. Note that the GPL allows you to modify the code for your own use without re-releasing it; all that it does is protect the original copyright holder from being penalized for releasing their work.
Typical libertarian logical flaw. Libertarians are only interested in "liberty" of the starting position, not free/democratic OUTCOMES. In the real world, most people care about outcomes as much or more than some ideological starting position. The GPL is the best guarantor of free outcomes around, and about the least restrictive way I can thing of to guarantee those free outcomes.
In contrast, the goals of libertarians (and licenses like the BSD) become subverted so quickly that rather than produce democratic outcomes, you end with a worse imbalance of power than when you began. (look at the tendency of free market capitalism to produce monopolies and corruption, where in contrast heavy regulation produces a much better "market" by the free-marketeer's evaluative criteria)
Note that this is not an end-justify-the-means point. It is a don't be an unrealistic ideological dick point. Libertarians who are too ideological need to face the real world and realize the destructive consequence that their ideas would lead to if actually implemented in full. Capitalism only works with regulation, Socialism only works with civil liberties and a guarantee of democratic institutions to ensure that it is not a totalitarianism.
That has to be the most immature response that I've ever seen from an editor. No wonder Slashdot is going downhill. Show some self-respect man, don't forget that when you post in a thread, you represent more than your own narrow opinions. People expect editors to have objectivity, and certainly not to get involved in common flamewars.
I'm really surprised at this kind of behavior, I really am.
Searle asserts that a person in a room doing lookups in an enormous book would not be intelligent, but then claims that a computer that could pass the Turing test is equivalent to the Chinese room. Well, if it takes an infinite amount of time for a response, I think we would conclude that whatever was on the other end of the conversation was not intelligent. Time constraints/feasibility are VERY important in this case. I would argue that the "Chinese Room" couldn't exist, and couldn't possibly fool a person on the other end, so comparisons to the Turing test are completely invalid.
The point is, human translators may be better, but they're a lot more expensive. This is meant to fill in the gap in emergencies or urgent situations. Allowing nurses to talk to wounded soldiers, etc.
Ha ha. You forget that human language is productive. This means that the set of well-formed sentences can be put in a one-to-one correspondence with the integers, if I remember my linguistics correctly. What this means: there are an infinite number of sentences that you would need to translate. This is a very tough problem to solve with a lookup table approach (incidentally, this is part of why Searle's Chinese Room Problem is a ridiculous construction). I think that you'd find it hard to even get a useful set of sentences to carry 90% of human conversation. Think about how useless those phrase books are when you're asking even the simplest of questions in another language.
Do you guys create your database schemas by pain-stackingly copying every element in every XML schema you have to handle to database tables and write huge amount of parsing/deparsing code both ways?"
I use Dia, Agata, and Dia2SQL. (There are several variants of Dia2SQL). What exactly are the benefits of XML? I'm new to databases, but this way seems to me more efficient. At what level of complexity does the XML schema become so useful?
There's no such person as "simon garfunkel." The due was named Simon and Garfunkel after it's members, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Of the two, only Paul SImon is still around and prolifically producing music.
For the features most people need in PageMaker, that is to say simple layout and no need to re-use old files, I've been using Scribus for a while. It has an astonishing pace of development and is eminently usable. In terms of panoramic photo stiching, I'm sure there's plenty of software, but I can't reccomend anything. I've done a lot of digital video editing, and I'd say that AfterEffects isn't bad as a compositor, and Premiere is pretty damn good for video editing. Both are partially replaced by Cinerella Dreamweaver, Flash 5, and Illustrator seem to me to be the killer apps. Most people's pirate copies of photoshop see less use than PaintShopPro. The GIMP beats PSP. I just wish the GIMP had better support for print output -- like CMYK color. Development seems to be halted, with text output broken in the development version.
Snood for the masses. I actually went to the trouble to PAY for Snood when I was using Windows, so I was a little bummed that I couldn't use it on Linux. But then I discovered the above solution. I also played the game that Snood was a ripoff of via an NES emulator.
"Strike while the iron is hot" is a line from the Internationale. While appropriate for self-named communist nation Russia, it's innapropriate for the conservative Muslim world.Choose a better translation.
Yeah, anyone who needs the Internet to find someone's phone number sounds like the kind of guy who barely overheard someone ELSE getting a phone number.
PS - Does this guy remind anyone else of karma whore supreme, 56ker? We destroyed 56ker, so walk carefully, tps.
Actually, GRACE was trained by CMU drama students. They have a similar level of politeness. Drama students and Business students...I didn't realize the connection went beyond having no real work:)
Actually...the team recruited drama students to do the instruction in social skills. Carnegie Mellon has one of the best drama schools in the country, so it was a perfect fit.
What? Professional who requires MS Office? When I think of professionals, I think: Lawyers (Use WordPerfect), scientists (SPSS or LaTeX). People who need to submit formatted documents usually have classes available in LaTeX that automatically apply the correct formatting, and if they prefer MS-Word have to convert to LaTeX before submission. I can't think of any professional who actually needs anything that's a feature specific to MS-Word. A lot of people write crappy excel macros and then become dependent on Excel, but that's not the same as "dependent on MS Office." Tell me, who actually needs MS-Word and couldn't use something else with only minor adjustment?
I think what you mean is, I'm used to MS-Word, I've never used anything else, and I want to defend my choice since I've already made it.
Slashdot Mirror
You make excellent points. Note, though, that the thread I replied to was making the argument that the BSD license was a better guarantee of freedom, and that's really what I was contesting. I don't think of the GPL as a socialist license, I think it strikes the right compromise between allowing use in as many ways as desired and guaranteeing future freedom. In that way, it's like the US's own regulated market system. Note that the GPL allows you to modify the code for your own use without re-releasing it; all that it does is protect the original copyright holder from being penalized for releasing their work.
In contrast, the goals of libertarians (and licenses like the BSD) become subverted so quickly that rather than produce democratic outcomes, you end with a worse imbalance of power than when you began. (look at the tendency of free market capitalism to produce monopolies and corruption, where in contrast heavy regulation produces a much better "market" by the free-marketeer's evaluative criteria)
Note that this is not an end-justify-the-means point. It is a don't be an unrealistic ideological dick point. Libertarians who are too ideological need to face the real world and realize the destructive consequence that their ideas would lead to if actually implemented in full. Capitalism only works with regulation, Socialism only works with civil liberties and a guarantee of democratic institutions to ensure that it is not a totalitarianism.
blind slashdot users? This website is a usability disaster. There may be blind slashdot users, but they sure aren't being treated right.
Nobody from CMU takes Declan seriously. For good reason. He has a pretty sordid history.
Yo dude, why are you a freak?
I'm really surprised at this kind of behavior, I really am.
That damn "use mention" distinction. Damn, that's a tricky one.
Searle asserts that a person in a room doing lookups in an enormous book would not be intelligent, but then claims that a computer that could pass the Turing test is equivalent to the Chinese room. Well, if it takes an infinite amount of time for a response, I think we would conclude that whatever was on the other end of the conversation was not intelligent. Time constraints/feasibility are VERY important in this case. I would argue that the "Chinese Room" couldn't exist, and couldn't possibly fool a person on the other end, so comparisons to the Turing test are completely invalid.
The point is, human translators may be better, but they're a lot more expensive. This is meant to fill in the gap in emergencies or urgent situations. Allowing nurses to talk to wounded soldiers, etc.
Ha ha. You forget that human language is productive. This means that the set of well-formed sentences can be put in a one-to-one correspondence with the integers, if I remember my linguistics correctly. What this means: there are an infinite number of sentences that you would need to translate. This is a very tough problem to solve with a lookup table approach (incidentally, this is part of why Searle's Chinese Room Problem is a ridiculous construction). I think that you'd find it hard to even get a useful set of sentences to carry 90% of human conversation. Think about how useless those phrase books are when you're asking even the simplest of questions in another language.
There's no such person as "simon garfunkel." The due was named Simon and Garfunkel after it's members, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Of the two, only Paul SImon is still around and prolifically producing music.
True. It's more like the arcade game that also inspired snood. It's getting better though. Try the two-player version.
For the features most people need in PageMaker, that is to say simple layout and no need to re-use old files, I've been using Scribus for a while. It has an astonishing pace of development and is eminently usable.
In terms of panoramic photo stiching, I'm sure there's plenty of software, but I can't reccomend anything.
I've done a lot of digital video editing, and I'd say that AfterEffects isn't bad as a compositor, and Premiere is pretty damn good for video editing. Both are partially replaced by Cinerella
Dreamweaver, Flash 5, and Illustrator seem to me to be the killer apps. Most people's pirate copies of photoshop see less use than PaintShopPro. The GIMP beats PSP. I just wish the GIMP had better support for print output -- like CMYK color. Development seems to be halted, with text output broken in the development version.
Snood for the masses. I actually went to the trouble to PAY for Snood when I was using Windows, so I was a little bummed that I couldn't use it on Linux. But then I discovered the above solution. I also played the game that Snood was a ripoff of via an NES emulator.
"Strike while the iron is hot" is a line from the Internationale. While appropriate for self-named communist nation Russia, it's innapropriate for the conservative Muslim world.Choose a better translation.
PS - Does this guy remind anyone else of karma whore supreme, 56ker? We destroyed 56ker, so walk carefully, tps.
Actually, GRACE was trained by CMU drama students. They have a similar level of politeness. Drama students and Business students...I didn't realize the connection went beyond having no real work :)
Actually...the team recruited drama students to do the instruction in social skills. Carnegie Mellon has one of the best drama schools in the country, so it was a perfect fit.
It is in the default install for MySQL 4.0. MySQL AB just doesn't take the approach of bundling everything that isn't yet completely integrated.
At least you have the use-mention distinction down pat. This sentence no verb.
I think what you mean is, I'm used to MS-Word, I've never used anything else, and I want to defend my choice since I've already made it.