I think the point of the article is not that there is too much information but that people choose too many ways for the information to be delivered to them. By choosing to own a mobile phone and answer incoming calls I may actually be causing myself undue stress. By choosing to read certain webcomics each day I consign away much of my time. By choosing to play a computer game I can waste days.
The point is, maybe it is better for me to make the choice _before_ I become engrossed in the information that is spewing along whatever conduits to it I have open.
I've already replied to this once, but there was one other thing I took issue with, and that was your statement that "This isn't about the issue at hand. Its about grand-standing."
Honestly evaluating myself it was about the issue at hand first and foremost and about a healthy does of grand-standing as well. They're not mutually exclusive. Not an exclusive or, but an inclusive or.
If this doesn't get modded up or gets labelled as Flamebait or troll I'll have lost all hope for Slashdot.
You may notice that one of the numerous links in this Slashback is to a page that crashes Mozilla.
cant_get_a_good_nick replies to the following (written by cscx):
"So how come this "exploit" wasn't deserving of its own front page story like the IE one was?"
with
"Umm, cause it wasn't an exploit. IE exploits gives bad people access to your machines. This just crashes your browser. Does a crash in code that is so obscure that nobody ever triggered it using tags that I've personally never heard of (I'm no HTML expert but I have been a professional webmaster on and off for 10 years) warrant a font page story? My vote is no."
And yes, he is right! But what he fails to remember is that just a few days ago the same sort of crash was labelled as an "exploit" by slashdot.
He also makes reference to the fact that this is really uncommon html code. i.e. we should go easy on Mozilla for this. But IE received no such grace from slashdot readers. Go on, click on the link. Read through the comments.
We all know we're biased in some sense to Linux. But does it have to be so god damn obvious? We're geeks. We're supposed to be smarter than average. We should be better than this.
What really gets me though is that cscx was modded as a troll for his statement. Bias doesn't get anymore blatant than that.
Every time I see a a discussion of a scam like this I see messages suggesting that if people are too stupid to do fall for a scam like this then they somehow deserve it.
I cannot begin to express how angry this makes me. Who can honestly justify this morally? The justice system should exist to protect the stupid and the ignorant.
I see little difference between taking advantage of someone who is stupid and taking advantage of someone who is inexperienced. And I know that most people would be horrified if I suggested it was ok to take advantage of young children (for whatever purpose.)
What is it that makes people feel it is justified? I'd really like to know. Reply to this. Let me know. Because I don't see any reason why it is.
Sean
Who Programmed God then?
on
Immortal Code
·
· Score: 1
Who programmed God then? Does this bother any of you believers out there? Is this a stupid question to you guys? This question, simple as it is, never gets answered to my satisfaction. Some say it doesn't matter
I think the nature of creation is one of the most interesting questions we have to answer. Is it an infinite chain of creation, (perhaps a circular one!), or is it just as BORING as saying one infinite being created us and we'll just leave it at that.
I've never bothered to think about all the reasons that realism actually _does_ count to me, but let me try in the next few paragraphs.
Before I raise the ire of too many people I'd like to say here and now that if you don't care for realism then I see your point of view. I simply wish to put across my point of view about why realism does matter to me.
First and foremost, a lot of good fiction tries to be consistent. Why is consistency important? Because it gives you a grasp on the world being portrayed in the book/film. Without this grasp of the "rules" of the reality, I tend to find myself becoming distant from the characters, simply because I know they'll be able to do whatever the need to be able to do to advance the story.
Just what is it about a film, say based on a true story that really makes us resonate with the character? I would hazard the opinion that it is because we know how hard the real world can be and just how difficult it must have been for that character to overcome whatever hardship they did.
Perhaps another reason that people like to throw out realism (I prefer to call it "inner consistency") in movies is because there is a perception that realistic films won't appeal as much. This is patently false. I went to see Black Hawk Down recently and I can tell you that that film got my pulse running like few films I have ever seen before. Why? Because the main characters truly were in danger. Obviously if I go to see Blade 2, I know that Wesly Snipes is in no danger whatsoever at any stage in the film, and consequently the film is just not going to get my pulse running AS MUCH AS (note the careful choice of words) it would while watching Black Hawk Down.
Science fiction films (yes, I realise Blade 2 is not SF technically - more horror) often lose out on inner consistency. This is strange considering that some of the earliest SF was what I would called "hard" science fiction (i.e SF that attempts to attain inner consistency to the highest degree.)
Consider for a moment "War of the Worlds" or "The First Men in the Moon". True, these books have their fantastic elements. But if a new concept is introduced its implications are fully investigated. (Just think of the gravity shielding material that existed in "The First Men in the Moon". The idea of the shutters on the windows of the craft was a COOL idea.)
I respect that there is place in this world for trashy inconsistent films and ones which are internally consistent. I hope to see more of the latter. It's harder to do, and it produces a MUCH nicer result in my opinion.
Could someone tell me the feasability of getting an ipod and using it with a PC. I know there is a new software package out called XPlay that should allow this.
At the moment I've been hanging around some researchers who know what they are talking about and are doing something very special.
They are developing a fully extensible language.
It turns out that the only type of programming language that could do this is one that allows higher order functions (functions which can return other functions). That is, this language will have to be a functional programming language (this phrase means more than you might think).
Examples of functional programming languages are Hope, Standard ML, Lazy ML, Haskell and Miranda. If you've never heard of these languages then you should find out about them as soon as possible.
A totally extensible language would allow a programmer to add any new syntax they wanted in a declaritive (not interpretive) way. Forget having to get a new language to add a bit of syntactical sugar you just can't do without, you add it to this language.
At the moment the only way of extending a language is to write a new grammar, define all the semantics and then write a compiler which compiles this language into a well known language or assembly code. (The former is probably a better idea).
This is not a good solution because of the utter nontrivial nature of this task. What if you just wanted one more bit of syntax in C. You essentially have to write a new compiler to handle this C-plus-a-little language. You instantly throw out all the good work that GNU, or Borland or whatever has done in making a fast compiler and start from SCRATCH.
A fully extensible language would be a very special thing. By simply loading a library of syntactical defintions from a file you could turn this language into PERL, C, C++, JAVA or whatever.
Some of you will think I don't know what I'm talking about. I assure you I am not. This is theoretically possible.
A topic that would illuminate just a little what I just said is that of "combinator libraries" (this is a functional programming topic)
While I actually enjoyed Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, the series lost it for me from Xenocide onwards (actually I only read as far as Children of the Mind)
Most of my discontent with Xenocide focussed around the method of faster than light travel. Up until that point Card had presented a somewhat fantastic but at least marginally believable scientific framework for his novels.
Then he lost it. What convinced him that his idea of a person's mental abberations causing strange things to happen as a side effect of faster than light travel was a good idea?
Imagine that Xenocide had been a movie (and that was your first exposure to the story). Which of you from the/. crowd could honestly tell me that if a young Peter and Valentine suddenly appeared on screen that you wouldn't have thought "What a lame way to add a bit of drama to the series."?
To top it all off he bases an entire book on this mental abberation of Ender's. There were other problems with Children of the Mind. The sequence where the ansibles are shut down and Jane has to migrate somewhere else is also quite weak. I wasn't convinced at all that she shouldn't have died.
A thing I have noticed about my self is that if the first book in a series is good one tends to become more forgiving as they progress in the series. I don't believe there is any justification for this.
To summarise, I enjoyed Card's novels when I was younger. Even then I believed they had problems.
He has some skill as a writer, certainly more than I will ever have. However, I would not rate his books as classics.
I'm really not trying to start a religious fight here but whether you like it or not the religious books were written by humans not God.
Is it not possible that those humans' failings caused the writings to become geocentric? This is of course is assuming God does exist and that he did speak to prophets.
I find in my discussions with people who use religious texts that a circular argument is always set up with the fact that the Bible is correct a point on that circle.
The argument crumbles as soon as that assumption is shown to be false. If humans are indeed fallible then this must be thought of as a distinct possibility.
Actually I did work out that that was the largest prime found to date, but only because I had heard of Mersenne Primes before (which is any prime of the form 2^n-1).
However, I entirely agree with all the negative comments aimed at the simultaneous introduction of both exponentiation and subtraction.
Sending prime numbers on the other hand. A very good idea.
Sean Seefried
Slashdot Mirror
I think the point of the article is not that there is too much information but that people choose too many ways for the information to be delivered to them. By choosing to own a mobile phone and answer incoming calls I may actually be causing myself undue stress. By choosing to read certain webcomics each day I consign away much of my time. By choosing to play a computer game I can waste days.
The point is, maybe it is better for me to make the choice _before_ I become engrossed in the information that is spewing along whatever conduits to it I have open.
Sean
Actually we know for sure that there are infinte primes. The Greeks proved that.
Sean
I've already replied to this once, but there was one other thing I took issue with, and that was your statement that "This isn't about the issue at hand. Its about grand-standing."
Honestly evaluating myself it was about the issue at hand first and foremost and about a healthy does of grand-standing as well. They're not mutually exclusive. Not an exclusive or, but an inclusive or.
Sean
You are very insightful. You are right on both counts. I hardly ever post though, so maybe I can be forgiven.
Maybe I can also be forgiven because:
(a) I'd already seen someone modded as troll for a similar statement and I didn't wish that to occur.
(b) I had a bloody good point and I _am_ interested in improving the level of critical thinking on this forum.
Sean
If this doesn't get modded up or gets labelled as Flamebait or troll I'll have lost all hope for Slashdot.
You may notice that one of the numerous links in this Slashback is to a page that crashes Mozilla.
cant_get_a_good_nick replies to the following (written by cscx):
"So how come this "exploit" wasn't deserving of its own front page story like the IE one was?"
with
"Umm, cause it wasn't an exploit.
IE exploits gives bad people access to your machines. This just crashes your browser. Does a crash in code that is so obscure that nobody ever triggered it using tags that I've personally never heard of (I'm no HTML expert but I have been a professional webmaster on and off for 10 years) warrant a font page story? My vote is no."
And yes, he is right! But what he fails to remember is that just a few days ago the same sort of crash was labelled as an "exploit" by slashdot.
here
He also makes reference to the fact that this is really uncommon html code. i.e. we should go easy on Mozilla for this. But IE received no such grace from slashdot readers. Go on, click on the link. Read through the comments.
We all know we're biased in some sense to Linux. But does it have to be so god damn obvious? We're geeks. We're supposed to be smarter than average. We should be better than this.
What really gets me though is that cscx was modded as a troll for his statement. Bias doesn't get anymore blatant than that.
Sean
Every time I see a a discussion of a scam like this I see messages suggesting that if people are too stupid to do fall for a scam like this then they somehow deserve it.
I cannot begin to express how angry this makes me. Who can honestly justify this morally? The justice system should exist to protect the stupid and the ignorant.
I see little difference between taking advantage of someone who is stupid and taking advantage of someone who is inexperienced. And I know that most people would be horrified if I suggested it was ok to take advantage of young children (for whatever purpose.)
What is it that makes people feel it is justified? I'd really like to know. Reply to this. Let me know. Because I don't see any reason why it is.
Sean
Who programmed God then? Does this bother any of you believers out there? Is this a stupid question to you guys? This question, simple as it is, never gets answered to my satisfaction. Some say it doesn't matter
I think the nature of creation is one of the most interesting questions we have to answer. Is it an infinite chain of creation, (perhaps a circular one!), or is it just as BORING as saying one infinite being created us and we'll just leave it at that.
semantix
Or should that be "sever" his employment with Alcatel. :)
Semantix
Before I raise the ire of too many people I'd like to say here and now that if you don't care for realism then I see your point of view. I simply wish to put across my point of view about why realism does matter to me.
First and foremost, a lot of good fiction tries to be consistent. Why is consistency important? Because it gives you a grasp on the world being portrayed in the book/film. Without this grasp of the "rules" of the reality, I tend to find myself becoming distant from the characters, simply because I know they'll be able to do whatever the need to be able to do to advance the story.
Just what is it about a film, say based on a true story that really makes us resonate with the character? I would hazard the opinion that it is because we know how hard the real world can be and just how difficult it must have been for that character to overcome whatever hardship they did.
Perhaps another reason that people like to throw out realism (I prefer to call it "inner consistency") in movies is because there is a perception that realistic films won't appeal as much. This is patently false. I went to see Black Hawk Down recently and I can tell you that that film got my pulse running like few films I have ever seen before. Why? Because the main characters truly were in danger. Obviously if I go to see Blade 2, I know that Wesly Snipes is in no danger whatsoever at any stage in the film, and consequently the film is just not going to get my pulse running AS MUCH AS (note the careful choice of words) it would while watching Black Hawk Down.
Science fiction films (yes, I realise Blade 2 is not SF technically - more horror) often lose out on inner consistency. This is strange considering that some of the earliest SF was what I would called "hard" science fiction (i.e SF that attempts to attain inner consistency to the highest degree.)
Consider for a moment "War of the Worlds" or "The First Men in the Moon". True, these books have their fantastic elements. But if a new concept is introduced its implications are fully investigated. (Just think of the gravity shielding material that existed in "The First Men in the Moon". The idea of the shutters on the windows of the craft was a COOL idea.)
I respect that there is place in this world for trashy inconsistent films and ones which are internally consistent. I hope to see more of the latter. It's harder to do, and it produces a MUCH nicer result in my opinion.
Sean
Could someone tell me the feasability of getting an ipod and using it with a PC. I know there is a new software package out called XPlay that should allow this.
Does anyone have experience with this package?
Sean
They are developing a fully extensible language. It turns out that the only type of programming language that could do this is one that allows higher order functions (functions which can return other functions). That is, this language will have to be a functional programming language (this phrase means more than you might think).
Examples of functional programming languages are Hope, Standard ML, Lazy ML, Haskell and Miranda. If you've never heard of these languages then you should find out about them as soon as possible.
A totally extensible language would allow a programmer to add any new syntax they wanted in a declaritive (not interpretive) way. Forget having to get a new language to add a bit of syntactical sugar you just can't do without, you add it to this language.
At the moment the only way of extending a language is to write a new grammar, define all the semantics and then write a compiler which compiles this language into a well known language or assembly code. (The former is probably a better idea).
This is not a good solution because of the utter nontrivial nature of this task. What if you just wanted one more bit of syntax in C. You essentially have to write a new compiler to handle this C-plus-a-little language. You instantly throw out all the good work that GNU, or Borland or whatever has done in making a fast compiler and start from SCRATCH.
A fully extensible language would be a very special thing. By simply loading a library of syntactical defintions from a file you could turn this language into PERL, C, C++, JAVA or whatever.
Some of you will think I don't know what I'm talking about. I assure you I am not. This is theoretically possible.
A topic that would illuminate just a little what I just said is that of "combinator libraries" (this is a functional programming topic)
Sean
Let me add a second voice of dissent.
While I actually enjoyed Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, the series lost it for me from Xenocide onwards (actually I only read as far as Children of the Mind)
Most of my discontent with Xenocide focussed around the method of faster than light travel. Up until that point Card had presented a somewhat fantastic but at least marginally believable scientific framework for his novels.
Then he lost it. What convinced him that his idea of a person's mental abberations causing strange things to happen as a side effect of faster than light travel was a good idea?
Imagine that Xenocide had been a movie (and that was your first exposure to the story). Which of you from the /. crowd could honestly tell me that if a young Peter and Valentine suddenly appeared on screen that you wouldn't have thought "What a lame way to add a bit of drama to the series."?
To top it all off he bases an entire book on this mental abberation of Ender's. There were other problems with Children of the Mind. The sequence where the ansibles are shut down and Jane has to migrate somewhere else is also quite weak. I wasn't convinced at all that she shouldn't have died.
A thing I have noticed about my self is that if the first book in a series is good one tends to become more forgiving as they progress in the series. I don't believe there is any justification for this.
To summarise, I enjoyed Card's novels when I was younger. Even then I believed they had problems. He has some skill as a writer, certainly more than I will ever have. However, I would not rate his books as classics.
I'm really not trying to start a religious fight here but whether you like it or not the religious books were written by humans not God.
Is it not possible that those humans' failings caused the writings to become geocentric? This is of course is assuming God does exist and that he did speak to prophets.
I find in my discussions with people who use religious texts that a circular argument is always set up with the fact that the Bible is correct a point on that circle.
The argument crumbles as soon as that assumption is shown to be false. If humans are indeed fallible then this must be thought of as a distinct possibility.
Sean.
Actually I did work out that that was the largest prime found to date, but only because I had heard of Mersenne Primes before (which is any prime of the form 2^n-1). However, I entirely agree with all the negative comments aimed at the simultaneous introduction of both exponentiation and subtraction. Sending prime numbers on the other hand. A very good idea. Sean Seefried