Modern computers are so powerful that a lot of things would still be lost if people grew up programming them. Perhaps we should think about this the other way around? Children should go to the programming.
I learned how to program on my TI-80 calculator. It is slow -- painfully so -- and uses its own sort of BASIC. If you think your child is naturally curious buy them something like this, or an old 386/486 computer. Either way would do fine, I think.
If people cannot get enough of fresh, new experiences they can still resist change, after all. If a person who changes all the time continues changing, is he really? Or to put it another way, wouldn't he only 'change' if he stopped changing all the time?
There's a reason nearly every major philosopher in the 19th century at least alludes to Kant in their works. I can tell you it's not because he managed to confuse them.
My post was in no way endorsing Kant's philosophy as such, only holding it above Rand's insofar as it is actually has something interesting to say.
Blah. Rand can kiss my butt. Particularly her attacks against Kant are completely absurd, especially since she incorporates many large parts of his philosophy into hers.
She is to philosophy what a child armed with an Easy-Bake Oven is to a real chef. That is to say, cute, mildly diverting, but in the end someone whose taste we eventually grow past.
If you want philosophy your time would be better spent reading actual philosophers than her, uh, "literature."
I loved the God Emperor of Dune because it was the culmination of Herbert's treatment of philosophy and evolution, at least in my eyes. Though I can certainly imagine a reaction along the lines of "GIGANTIC WORM KING?! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!"
In fact, the latter reaction is probably the most common.
I've seen two people (and replied to one) recommend Robert Jordan's horrible "Wheel of Time" series. Unless you like tedium I suggest you stay away from all but perhaps the first two books.
As for my list, Frank Herbert's Dune is always a good read and, though I know many people would disagree, the fourth book, God Emperor of Dune is my favorite of the series. It's the culmination of the subtle (in the first book) Nietzschean subtext involving becoming the greatest predator ever to live, and so forth. Sounds goofy, I suppose, but I liked it.
Another, possibly less well-known though, again in my opinion, much better written series is Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. Gene Wolfe loves to play mind games with his readers and more often than not you're presented with puzzles that at first you don't even realize are puzzles. The whole thing is very novel and, while short (four books with about 200 pages each -- compare that to Jordan's drivel which is 7, or maybe more now, at around 1000 each) it is intense and well worth the read. Aside from the intellectual motivation to read the series, it is also simply a great story. You won't see Gene Wolfe using science-fiction as a way to retell mostly old stories(*) in some sort of "futuristic" setting. Could I possibly gush some more? Maybe, but seriously, this is one of the finest pieces of real science-fiction to come out in a long time, perhaps ever.
(*)Ok, I lie, he does retell old stories and seemingly use the old ploys most science fiction authors do, but always in a way to poke fun at that way of writing. For example, all of his characters' names sound like science-fiction character names (Severian, Ymar, Palaemon, etc.), but in reality they're all names of obscure Catholic saints. Also, his retelling of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur using 19th century ships (which ones, I won't say, since even this fact isn't all that obvious when reading it) is wonderful.
Anyhow, in summary, etc., and so forth, I suggest you give Gene Wolfe a try. Really. Do it. HURRY!
I read Robert Jordan when I was in middle school and loved it. "I'm a big boy!" I thought. Then, years later, I realized that he couldn't really write well , or at least didn't write well, and only the first book was worth reading.
Who wants to spend the time reading 7, or however many there are now, 1000+ page books whose plot is plainly drawn out as long as possible for seemingly no other reason that to extend the series? I don't, but I suppose this is a good way to kill time during the summer.
Well, honestly, I wouldn't exclude Europe, either, if that's what you thought I was doing. Just by virtue of having a larger area, though, the US will have more good universities.
Certainly places like Harvard, Yale, MIT, CalTech, University of Chicago, etc. can compare to any of the top universities in Europe? If you're not talking about Europe (and you might not be, your post is very difficult for me to understand), then, well, I'll have to disagree. Save for a few here and there, all the truly great universities are in Europe or the US.
Secondary education aside, there is a reason people come from all over the world to study at American universities. I can assure you that it's not because they enjoy paying a lot of money for no real gain.
This happens because the act of talking a walk itself has symbolic meaning. Even if you didn't take a walk to escape something, relax, find yourself, or whatever else, you might have just taken it because you enjoy a walk. There is still meaning there, and the meaning other people attach to it in the poem would be the same they would attach to it if they saw you walking down the street.
Anything that imitates life has levels of meaning, even someone refusing to write poetry and just handing in a blank piece of paper.
You've hit the nail on the head. The problem with most philosophical "proofs" of God's existence is that they proof a God wholly different from the one we "want." Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion goes over this pretty well, and Kant's moral argument for the existence of God is one of the few "proofs" that actually presents us with the God we "want."
I say "want" for the very reason that, of course, different people want different gods. Take it as you will, and forgive me for possibly being incoherent -- I need sleep.
AMD uses their alternate naming scheme to claim that their processor, though they're actually clocked slower, run at comparable speeds. It's more than fair to test this, then.
That's not really fair. There is a lot of mathematics that is useful, especially to scientists, but something like Fermat is just one of those mathematical problems which are interesting because 1) they look very simple, but 2) turn out to be maddeningly difficult to prove. To say Fermat, which is basically a mathematical problem akin to getting Linux running on your toaster, is indicative of the field of mathematics is unfair.
Wow, well, I was going to read why I should be using Opera, but your first (or zeroeth...) point was pure flamebait. Great wait to start off a list of arguments!
I'm sorry you attended such a terrible universities. Most professors I've met don't silence students who differ -- perhaps you're mistaking the typical timidity of undergraduate students for active repression?
I didn't even see who you were before I hit reply...heh. Here goes, though.
Businesses, who seem to be the big adopters of Linux, do (or at least their lawyers) know the difference between BSD/GPL licenses and MS "Shared source." They have to, or else they are open to legal threat from Microsoft.
As long as there is a solid, legal distinction between these types of licenses, people will continue to adpot the former rather than the latter for the same reasons they are now.
A couple of days? Unless you're compiling the whole KDE suite, it won't take over a few hours on a relatively recent machine (e.g., 1GHz or more, with 256 MB RAM or so).
Did you enable the optimizations in the Gentoo kernel? Like low-latency scheduling and preemptible kernel?
I can be compiling something, doing my normal every day stuff (browsing the web, reading e-mail, writing stuff) and listening to mp3s. Xmms doesn't skip a beat.
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Modern computers are so powerful that a lot of things would still be lost if people grew up programming them. Perhaps we should think about this the other way around? Children should go to the programming.
I learned how to program on my TI-80 calculator. It is slow -- painfully so -- and uses its own sort of BASIC. If you think your child is naturally curious buy them something like this, or an old 386/486 computer. Either way would do fine, I think.
If people cannot get enough of fresh, new experiences they can still resist change, after all. If a person who changes all the time continues changing, is he really? Or to put it another way, wouldn't he only 'change' if he stopped changing all the time?
Maybe not since, after all, with great power comes great responsibility.
There's a reason nearly every major philosopher in the 19th century at least alludes to Kant in their works. I can tell you it's not because he managed to confuse them.
My post was in no way endorsing Kant's philosophy as such, only holding it above Rand's insofar as it is actually has something interesting to say.
Blah. Rand can kiss my butt. Particularly her attacks against Kant are completely absurd, especially since she incorporates many large parts of his philosophy into hers.
She is to philosophy what a child armed with an Easy-Bake Oven is to a real chef. That is to say, cute, mildly diverting, but in the end someone whose taste we eventually grow past.
If you want philosophy your time would be better spent reading actual philosophers than her, uh, "literature."
I loved the God Emperor of Dune because it was the culmination of Herbert's treatment of philosophy and evolution, at least in my eyes. Though I can certainly imagine a reaction along the lines of "GIGANTIC WORM KING?! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!"
In fact, the latter reaction is probably the most common.
I've seen two people (and replied to one) recommend Robert Jordan's horrible "Wheel of Time" series. Unless you like tedium I suggest you stay away from all but perhaps the first two books.
As for my list, Frank Herbert's Dune is always a good read and, though I know many people would disagree, the fourth book, God Emperor of Dune is my favorite of the series. It's the culmination of the subtle (in the first book) Nietzschean subtext involving becoming the greatest predator ever to live, and so forth. Sounds goofy, I suppose, but I liked it.
Another, possibly less well-known though, again in my opinion, much better written series is Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. Gene Wolfe loves to play mind games with his readers and more often than not you're presented with puzzles that at first you don't even realize are puzzles. The whole thing is very novel and, while short (four books with about 200 pages each -- compare that to Jordan's drivel which is 7, or maybe more now, at around 1000 each) it is intense and well worth the read. Aside from the intellectual motivation to read the series, it is also simply a great story. You won't see Gene Wolfe using science-fiction as a way to retell mostly old stories(*) in some sort of "futuristic" setting. Could I possibly gush some more? Maybe, but seriously, this is one of the finest pieces of real science-fiction to come out in a long time, perhaps ever.
(*)Ok, I lie, he does retell old stories and seemingly use the old ploys most science fiction authors do, but always in a way to poke fun at that way of writing. For example, all of his characters' names sound like science-fiction character names (Severian, Ymar, Palaemon, etc.), but in reality they're all names of obscure Catholic saints. Also, his retelling of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur using 19th century ships (which ones, I won't say, since even this fact isn't all that obvious when reading it) is wonderful.
Anyhow, in summary, etc., and so forth, I suggest you give Gene Wolfe a try. Really. Do it. HURRY!
I read Robert Jordan when I was in middle school and loved it. "I'm a big boy!" I thought. Then, years later, I realized that he couldn't really write well , or at least didn't write well, and only the first book was worth reading.
Who wants to spend the time reading 7, or however many there are now, 1000+ page books whose plot is plainly drawn out as long as possible for seemingly no other reason that to extend the series? I don't, but I suppose this is a good way to kill time during the summer.
Well, honestly, I wouldn't exclude Europe, either, if that's what you thought I was doing. Just by virtue of having a larger area, though, the US will have more good universities.
Certainly places like Harvard, Yale, MIT, CalTech, University of Chicago, etc. can compare to any of the top universities in Europe? If you're not talking about Europe (and you might not be, your post is very difficult for me to understand), then, well, I'll have to disagree. Save for a few here and there, all the truly great universities are in Europe or the US.
Secondary education aside, there is a reason people come from all over the world to study at American universities. I can assure you that it's not because they enjoy paying a lot of money for no real gain.
This happens because the act of talking a walk itself has symbolic meaning. Even if you didn't take a walk to escape something, relax, find yourself, or whatever else, you might have just taken it because you enjoy a walk. There is still meaning there, and the meaning other people attach to it in the poem would be the same they would attach to it if they saw you walking down the street.
Anything that imitates life has levels of meaning, even someone refusing to write poetry and just handing in a blank piece of paper.
How many phone calls, emails, voicemails, memos or stories do I have to go through every day?
No more than 2, no more than 10, 0, 0, and 0, in that order.
You've hit the nail on the head. The problem with most philosophical "proofs" of God's existence is that they proof a God wholly different from the one we "want." Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion goes over this pretty well, and Kant's moral argument for the existence of God is one of the few "proofs" that actually presents us with the God we "want."
I say "want" for the very reason that, of course, different people want different gods. Take it as you will, and forgive me for possibly being incoherent -- I need sleep.
That's there value in ruling out variables when trying to objectively compare things?
AMD uses their alternate naming scheme to claim that their processor, though they're actually clocked slower, run at comparable speeds. It's more than fair to test this, then.
That's not really fair. There is a lot of mathematics that is useful, especially to scientists, but something like Fermat is just one of those mathematical problems which are interesting because 1) they look very simple, but 2) turn out to be maddeningly difficult to prove. To say Fermat, which is basically a mathematical problem akin to getting Linux running on your toaster, is indicative of the field of mathematics is unfair.
Wow, well, I was going to read why I should be using Opera, but your first (or zeroeth...) point was pure flamebait. Great wait to start off a list of arguments!
Like I said, I'm sorry you attended such a terrible university. Most that I know are almost the direct opposite of that.
I'm sorry you attended such a terrible universities. Most professors I've met don't silence students who differ -- perhaps you're mistaking the typical timidity of undergraduate students for active repression?
It runs in Windows, but it's a DOS program, not Win32 native, afaik.
I didn't even see who you were before I hit reply...heh. Here goes, though.
Businesses, who seem to be the big adopters of Linux, do (or at least their lawyers) know the difference between BSD/GPL licenses and MS "Shared source." They have to, or else they are open to legal threat from Microsoft.
As long as there is a solid, legal distinction between these types of licenses, people will continue to adpot the former rather than the latter for the same reasons they are now.
Or at least, I hope they will...
Though some people frown on it, 'he' can be used to mean someone whose gender one doesn't know (rather than the awkward he/she device).
A couple of days? Unless you're compiling the whole KDE suite, it won't take over a few hours on a relatively recent machine (e.g., 1GHz or more, with 256 MB RAM or so).
Did you enable the optimizations in the Gentoo kernel? Like low-latency scheduling and preemptible kernel?
I can be compiling something, doing my normal every day stuff (browsing the web, reading e-mail, writing stuff) and listening to mp3s. Xmms doesn't skip a beat.
Yeah, IBM never makes bad decisions about how to license operating systems.
*cough*MS*cough*