Been thinking about morality lately
on
Congress@Work
·
· Score: 2
While driving home from work last week, I was searching up and down AM radio and started listening to this program. The host's name was Dr. Laura. I'm not sure what field her degree is in, exactly, but she seemed to be a pretty smart person.
I expected the typical right-wing AM Clinton-bashing, but this was a little different. The host was dealing with personal issues that affect all of us from time to time. What was interesting was the moral basis she used to give advice. Now normally, I reject "morality" arguments out of hand since they are rarely backed up by logic. Doing the "moral" thing is usually a front for, "Do this because the Bible/Koran/Buddha says so."
But the good doctor went a little further. She was able to present a rational basis for morality. In fact, while I did not care for her tone, I had a hard time refuting her logic. This troubled me a little bit.
So now I find myself in the curious position of questioning some of my knee-jerk reactions. Maybe a lot of "morality" has roots in logic. Maybe keeping kids from looking at Pr0n in the library is not a bad idea. Strip away all the "Bible tells me so" stuff, and there is a legitimate secular argument, too.
The fact that so many pro-censorship supporters are religious fundamentalists does automatically preclude a valid secular argument. Indeed, we owe it to ourselves to consider these arguments.
Besides, if you stop these kids from posting as "Anonymous Coward", they'll just become sporks.
No, not Ford. You guys. All you indignant self-righteous paranoid delusionalists need to lighten up.
It's a yuk. It's a funny. This case will have no impact whatsoever on your Constitutional right to download pr0n through the company firewall. The second it starts to get serious publicity, Ford will probably drop it. If they don't, it's just because they want to make it clear they had no involvement in setting the site up. Like the Democratic Party, Ford has to make it clear they are not responsible for the actions of their more...ahem... zealous supporters.
If I bought billgatesisatwit.com and redirected it to redhat.com, I would expect Red Hat to distance from me. Of course they wouldn't, but that says more about the immature juvenile name-calling Linux culture than anything else.
It's funny. Laugh. It has nothing to do with Your Rights Online.
Ok, I'm not such a neo-Luddite that I would come on slashdot and suggest faster processors are a bad thing. Nor will I participate in a pointless flame-fest vis-a-vis the limitations of x86 architecture. For better or worse, it's what most people are running and it's what most software runs on. So be it.
However, I am going to wonder aloud how long it will be until "1.7 Ghz" becomes a requirement for my office suite.
The brilliant minds who formulated object-oriented code, modular design, and reuse could not possibly have fathomed the current state of affairs. The anti-OO crowd claims that reuse is a pipe dream, but I've got a hard drive full of mature products built by reusing and extending code from previous versions. And I do mean full. Those apps are getting huge.
Without even checking, I can imagine the dreamers at Javalobby are already wondering if 1.7 Ghz is what it will take to make Java viable for client apps. How do I know this? Am I psychic? No. I just remember them saying the same things when 600 Mhz and 1 Ghz processors came out.
At some point, we're going to realize that bigger software is not always better. I've found my personal salvation programming for the Palm platform.
As for desktop and client apps, I'm worried. I'm worried that we're using fast hardware to fix inefficient code (when it should be the other way around). I'm worried that the stupid Office paperclip will develop speech recognition capabilities and will deactivate my CD player to verbally ask me if I need help through my headphones.
Perhaps there is a solution. We should consider keeping this kind of speed out of the hands of developers for a few years. If I ran a software company, I would want my developers restricted to about 333 Mhz at the most. Any performance problems will become readily apparent. They can have all the RAM they want (speeds up the compiler), but I want raw CPU horsepower kept to grandma/grandpa levels.
I know this runs counter to current trends, but I think it's a least worth consideration. We have only slow software to lose.
By the Great Spirit, do we really need another XML grammar? Do we really need another obscure specification sitting on another server that will be down 10% of the time and cause parsers to choke, programs to hang, and tech-support desks to light up like Christmas trees.
I'm sorry to go off on such a rant, but I am SO tired of everything being done in an XML format. It's not that it's a particularly great solution, it's just that it's the new hot standard. Furthermore, let's face it, XML is real easy. So easy that very mediocre minds can grasp it and feel like they're "on top" of the current technological trend.
Puh-leeze
As a result we now have a plethora of half-baked, almost-finished grammar specifications littering the internet landscape and plugging up the W3C standards pipelines.
I'm making a predication. Most of these standards will either (1) be forgotten or (2) be rushed through and signed off as standards. I hope and meditate for the first.
XML is great for some types of data, but it's advocates are so blinded by its simplicity and consistency they overlook flaws immediately obvious to more experienced developers. Despite the press, XML is NOT that easy to parse. The same hassles we experience with HTML parsers are magnified tenfold. Furthermore, it often depends on grammar definitions that reside on remote servers. This introduces all the hassles of network-based programming into what should be simple standalone client applications. Finally, it's big. I mean REAL big. Oh, you can zip it? Great, let me run out and link the zip libraries into my application. What? There's licensing issues? Well, what do I do know?
Please, for pete's sake, when you feel the temptation to create another XML grammar, think about what you are doing. Just say no. Your users will thank you.
Oh, come on now, you don't really expect us to visit National Review Online -- the electronic wellspring of right-wing extremism?
Perhaps if the Kopel article was somewhere less biased and better informed (hint - Salon), I'd bother. Otherwise, I'll sleep better knowing my clicks aren't sending ad revenue to fascists.
It was created a long time ago. It is based on some really great ideas, but it also contains a lot of cruft and anachronisms unique to the time in which it was created. It has been surpassed by newer systems and should be redesigned from the ground up, but nobody can agree on what to keep and what to throw out. So, as a result, we keep chugging along with it and putting up with its shortcomings.
Consider:
1) The Electoral College is a throwback to a form of representative democracy born in an era when direct democracy was not technologically feasible. The notion that a person whom the majority of Americans hate could still become President because he won in three states should be quite troubling.
2) The Bill of Rights is in serious need of revision. Does anybody even pay any attention to the ninth and tenth amendments? Of course not. Legally, they are too vague and the government can't tell when it is violating them. As a result, they are ignored just as vague terms in a contract may be safely ignored by the parties. What about the third amendment? Quartering soldiers in peacetime? Does anyone really think this applicable to the 21st century?
Perhaps it's time to re-think the system. Keep what's good, but throw out the cruft and make it usable by average Americans without degrees in Constitutional Law.
First, way to go jamie. Too bad you didn't apply for a patent.:)
Second, I'm a little troubled by scientists who don't like to share telescopes. I could understand if it's a simple time issue (e.g. all of the good telescopes are booked up). At the same time, it does not speak well of the scientific community if it's members are adopting an attitude of, "This telescope is mine! Mine! Get your own!"
At one time, I thought that the physical sciences were the last example of true community cooperation for the good of everyone. Today, however, science is becoming corporatized and dominated by a famous few. The rush to get patents and "lock-in" advancements in knowledge (as in the Genome project) is only slightly more shameful than the mad rush of scientists to be first to publish a discovery.
Make no mistake, there are serious egos involved here. Unlike Slashdot, a "first post" in the astronomy community means good karma -- fame and grants for further study. The fact that it may improve the scientist's standard of living is a bit of a hush-hush secret.
Is the increasing capitalization of science really a good thing? In the words of Bloom County's Oliver, "Even research physicists need Porsches."
I'm sorry, but that number seems awfully high to me. From where are they drawing their sample? What do they qualify as "using"?
This is one of those news-friendly stats that is so short and high-level that it's meaningless. Perhaps they are basing their figures on sales of various censorware programs. "Selling" and "using" are two vastly different things. A lot of people impulse-buy software the way they buy candy at the register. They get home with "Purity In A Box", struggle through the install, and find out it's more trouble than it's worth. They decide not to use it but, for purposes of statistics, they are considered censorware "users".
What difference does it make, "Mr. Punch"? My point is that good programmers come from all over the world. Are you marching in the parade of hatred too now?
Well, sir (or ma'am), I think you've just won the prize for most poorly-veiled racial slur.
Your vicious sweeping generalizations aside, my company employs many non-US programmers. Many of them are of Middle Eastern decent. We produce outstanding award-winning software and we stay profitable.
Perhaps I'm out of line, here, but I think you're just spreading anti-immigration FUD to preserve your overpaid position. How horrible it would be if your managers found it they could get software equal or better than yours from a bunch of "im'grants". And at half the cost, too. This must keep you up at night, AC.
You know, I'm still kind of new to these alternative operating systems, but I'm becoming a BIG fan of BSD (FreeBSD in particular).
Aside from a little bit of "REAL Unix" snobbishness, I'm finding that the BSD communities are very friendly and eager to help out. I had some questions about setting up an old 486 as a firewall and I found documentation right away. When I got stuck, the experts on the newsgroups helped me out right away. Now, my home network is connected to @Home through a FreeBSD firewall that also does NAT. As long as I don't call in a tech, they'll never know how many machines I'm running.
I think that's the important thing for new operating systems to remember -- a kind and helpful community goes a long way. When you provide instant help to newbies, you can take over the world. Look, for example, at how well Perl is doing. Were it not for the help available in the #Perl IRC, I'm sure the language would have never gotten off the ground.
I'm still a Linux fan, of course. Right now, it's a little easier to use and there's still more software for it. Nevertheless, I think the BSDs are up and coming with tremendous potential.
I think this is a finger in the eye of all those who claim that geeks are overly left-brained linear thinkers who lack creativity. Wasn't it Voltaire who said that art is not confined to its medium?
For geeks, the computer case is a ubiquitous unnoticed presence. Turning the everyday mundane into the dramatic was a technique popularized by Warhol (remember the Campbell's Soup Can?). It indicates an artistic maturity unrealized by many who claim to be serious artists. Of course, these so-called serious artists continue to toil with the limited tools of paint and brush. The paint and brush is what makes them feel serious.
Here we have artistic expression coming from an unexpected outlet. That makes it all the more exciting and effective.
I think this is proof that geeks are far more artistic and dynamic than most people believe. It's unfortunate that mediums such as source code don't get displayed in public museums. Perhaps they should. Maybe these cases are a step closer to the day when the Linux kernal source is framed and on display in the Louvre.
I know this post isn't really related to the topic, so please be patient with me. I apologize for taking your time as I'm sure you are a very busy person.
Anyway, there's this person at work who said I needed to get in touch with you. Something about an "apprentice" and learning about Karma. I'm not totally sure what he was talking about -- he's the kind of nut who drives around in a pickup truck with a gun rack and an American flag sticker. He was very serious about me finding you on slashdot, though.
Perhaps you could e-mail me and explain what he was talking about. He also said I should say "pet goat". I don't know why.
Thank you and I apologize again for wasting everyone's time here on Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
This might put things in perspective.
I found some more information here.
More information here.
Go speak to... sex slaves in Thailand.
I plan on doing that this summer.
While driving home from work last week, I was searching up and down AM radio and started listening to this program. The host's name was Dr. Laura. I'm not sure what field her degree is in, exactly, but she seemed to be a pretty smart person.
I expected the typical right-wing AM Clinton-bashing, but this was a little different. The host was dealing with personal issues that affect all of us from time to time. What was interesting was the moral basis she used to give advice. Now normally, I reject "morality" arguments out of hand since they are rarely backed up by logic. Doing the "moral" thing is usually a front for, "Do this because the Bible/Koran/Buddha says so."
But the good doctor went a little further. She was able to present a rational basis for morality. In fact, while I did not care for her tone, I had a hard time refuting her logic. This troubled me a little bit.
So now I find myself in the curious position of questioning some of my knee-jerk reactions. Maybe a lot of "morality" has roots in logic. Maybe keeping kids from looking at Pr0n in the library is not a bad idea. Strip away all the "Bible tells me so" stuff, and there is a legitimate secular argument, too.
The fact that so many pro-censorship supporters are religious fundamentalists does automatically preclude a valid secular argument. Indeed, we owe it to ourselves to consider these arguments.
Besides, if you stop these kids from posting as "Anonymous Coward", they'll just become sporks.
I tried, but instead of working commands, I ended up with bunch of "+3 Informative" Slashdot posts.
No, not Ford. You guys. All you indignant self-righteous paranoid delusionalists need to lighten up.
...ahem... zealous supporters.
It's a yuk. It's a funny. This case will have no impact whatsoever on your Constitutional right to download pr0n through the company firewall. The second it starts to get serious publicity, Ford will probably drop it. If they don't, it's just because they want to make it clear they had no involvement in setting the site up. Like the Democratic Party, Ford has to make it clear they are not responsible for the actions of their more
If I bought billgatesisatwit.com and redirected it to redhat.com, I would expect Red Hat to distance from me. Of course they wouldn't, but that says more about the immature juvenile name-calling Linux culture than anything else.
It's funny. Laugh. It has nothing to do with Your Rights Online.
Ok, I'm not such a neo-Luddite that I would come on slashdot and suggest faster processors are a bad thing. Nor will I participate in a pointless flame-fest vis-a-vis the limitations of x86 architecture. For better or worse, it's what most people are running and it's what most software runs on. So be it.
However, I am going to wonder aloud how long it will be until "1.7 Ghz" becomes a requirement for my office suite.
The brilliant minds who formulated object-oriented code, modular design, and reuse could not possibly have fathomed the current state of affairs. The anti-OO crowd claims that reuse is a pipe dream, but I've got a hard drive full of mature products built by reusing and extending code from previous versions. And I do mean full. Those apps are getting huge.
Without even checking, I can imagine the dreamers at Javalobby are already wondering if 1.7 Ghz is what it will take to make Java viable for client apps. How do I know this? Am I psychic? No. I just remember them saying the same things when 600 Mhz and 1 Ghz processors came out.
At some point, we're going to realize that bigger software is not always better. I've found my personal salvation programming for the Palm platform.
As for desktop and client apps, I'm worried. I'm worried that we're using fast hardware to fix inefficient code (when it should be the other way around). I'm worried that the stupid Office paperclip will develop speech recognition capabilities and will deactivate my CD player to verbally ask me if I need help through my headphones.
Perhaps there is a solution. We should consider keeping this kind of speed out of the hands of developers for a few years. If I ran a software company, I would want my developers restricted to about 333 Mhz at the most. Any performance problems will become readily apparent. They can have all the RAM they want (speeds up the compiler), but I want raw CPU horsepower kept to grandma/grandpa levels.
I know this runs counter to current trends, but I think it's a least worth consideration. We have only slow software to lose.
By the Great Spirit, do we really need another XML grammar? Do we really need another obscure specification sitting on another server that will be down 10% of the time and cause parsers to choke, programs to hang, and tech-support desks to light up like Christmas trees.
I'm sorry to go off on such a rant, but I am SO tired of everything being done in an XML format. It's not that it's a particularly great solution, it's just that it's the new hot standard. Furthermore, let's face it, XML is real easy. So easy that very mediocre minds can grasp it and feel like they're "on top" of the current technological trend.
Puh-leeze
As a result we now have a plethora of half-baked, almost-finished grammar specifications littering the internet landscape and plugging up the W3C standards pipelines.
I'm making a predication. Most of these standards will either (1) be forgotten or (2) be rushed through and signed off as standards. I hope and meditate for the first.
XML is great for some types of data, but it's advocates are so blinded by its simplicity and consistency they overlook flaws immediately obvious to more experienced developers. Despite the press, XML is NOT that easy to parse. The same hassles we experience with HTML parsers are magnified tenfold. Furthermore, it often depends on grammar definitions that reside on remote servers. This introduces all the hassles of network-based programming into what should be simple standalone client applications. Finally, it's big. I mean REAL big. Oh, you can zip it? Great, let me run out and link the zip libraries into my application. What? There's licensing issues? Well, what do I do know?
Please, for pete's sake, when you feel the temptation to create another XML grammar, think about what you are doing. Just say no. Your users will thank you.
Oh, come on now, you don't really expect us to visit National Review Online -- the electronic wellspring of right-wing extremism?
Perhaps if the Kopel article was somewhere less biased and better informed (hint - Salon), I'd bother. Otherwise, I'll sleep better knowing my clicks aren't sending ad revenue to fascists.
It was created a long time ago. It is based on some really great ideas, but it also contains a lot of cruft and anachronisms unique to the time in which it was created. It has been surpassed by newer systems and should be redesigned from the ground up, but nobody can agree on what to keep and what to throw out. So, as a result, we keep chugging along with it and putting up with its shortcomings.
Consider:
1) The Electoral College is a throwback to a form of representative democracy born in an era when direct democracy was not technologically feasible. The notion that a person whom the majority of Americans hate could still become President because he won in three states should be quite troubling.
2) The Bill of Rights is in serious need of revision. Does anybody even pay any attention to the ninth and tenth amendments? Of course not. Legally, they are too vague and the government can't tell when it is violating them. As a result, they are ignored just as vague terms in a contract may be safely ignored by the parties. What about the third amendment? Quartering soldiers in peacetime? Does anyone really think this applicable to the 21st century?
Perhaps it's time to re-think the system. Keep what's good, but throw out the cruft and make it usable by average Americans without degrees in Constitutional Law.
First, way to go jamie. Too bad you didn't apply for a patent. :)
Second, I'm a little troubled by scientists who don't like to share telescopes. I could understand if it's a simple time issue (e.g. all of the good telescopes are booked up). At the same time, it does not speak well of the scientific community if it's members are adopting an attitude of, "This telescope is mine! Mine! Get your own!"
At one time, I thought that the physical sciences were the last example of true community cooperation for the good of everyone. Today, however, science is becoming corporatized and dominated by a famous few. The rush to get patents and "lock-in" advancements in knowledge (as in the Genome project) is only slightly more shameful than the mad rush of scientists to be first to publish a discovery.
Make no mistake, there are serious egos involved here. Unlike Slashdot, a "first post" in the astronomy community means good karma -- fame and grants for further study. The fact that it may improve the scientist's standard of living is a bit of a hush-hush secret.
Is the increasing capitalization of science really a good thing? In the words of Bloom County's Oliver, "Even research physicists need Porsches."
1 parent in 3 uses censorware?
I'm sorry, but that number seems awfully high to me. From where are they drawing their sample? What do they qualify as "using"?
This is one of those news-friendly stats that is so short and high-level that it's meaningless. Perhaps they are basing their figures on sales of various censorware programs. "Selling" and "using" are two vastly different things. A lot of people impulse-buy software the way they buy candy at the register. They get home with "Purity In A Box", struggle through the install, and find out it's more trouble than it's worth. They decide not to use it but, for purposes of statistics, they are considered censorware "users".
What difference does it make, "Mr. Punch"? My point is that good programmers come from all over the world. Are you marching in the parade of hatred too now?
Gotta love it when someone references Operation: Mindcrime.
R-E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N
...I remember now.
Well, sir (or ma'am), I think you've just won the prize for most poorly-veiled racial slur.
Your vicious sweeping generalizations aside, my company employs many non-US programmers. Many of them are of Middle Eastern decent. We produce outstanding award-winning software and we stay profitable.
Perhaps I'm out of line, here, but I think you're just spreading anti-immigration FUD to preserve your overpaid position. How horrible it would be if your managers found it they could get software equal or better than yours from a bunch of "im'grants". And at half the cost, too. This must keep you up at night, AC.
You know, I'm still kind of new to these alternative operating systems, but I'm becoming a BIG fan of BSD (FreeBSD in particular).
Aside from a little bit of "REAL Unix" snobbishness, I'm finding that the BSD communities are very friendly and eager to help out. I had some questions about setting up an old 486 as a firewall and I found documentation right away. When I got stuck, the experts on the newsgroups helped me out right away. Now, my home network is connected to @Home through a FreeBSD firewall that also does NAT. As long as I don't call in a tech, they'll never know how many machines I'm running.
I think that's the important thing for new operating systems to remember -- a kind and helpful community goes a long way. When you provide instant help to newbies, you can take over the world. Look, for example, at how well Perl is doing. Were it not for the help available in the #Perl IRC, I'm sure the language would have never gotten off the ground.
I'm still a Linux fan, of course. Right now, it's a little easier to use and there's still more software for it. Nevertheless, I think the BSDs are up and coming with tremendous potential.
I think this is a finger in the eye of all those who claim that geeks are overly left-brained linear thinkers who lack creativity. Wasn't it Voltaire who said that art is not confined to its medium?
For geeks, the computer case is a ubiquitous unnoticed presence. Turning the everyday mundane into the dramatic was a technique popularized by Warhol (remember the Campbell's Soup Can?). It indicates an artistic maturity unrealized by many who claim to be serious artists. Of course, these so-called serious artists continue to toil with the limited tools of paint and brush. The paint and brush is what makes them feel serious.
Here we have artistic expression coming from an unexpected outlet. That makes it all the more exciting and effective.
I think this is proof that geeks are far more artistic and dynamic than most people believe. It's unfortunate that mediums such as source code don't get displayed in public museums. Perhaps they should. Maybe these cases are a step closer to the day when the Linux kernal source is framed and on display in the Louvre.
Greetings uh... "Shoeboy" (hee hee),
I know this post isn't really related to the topic, so please be patient with me. I apologize for taking your time as I'm sure you are a very busy person.
Anyway, there's this person at work who said I needed to get in touch with you. Something about an "apprentice" and learning about Karma. I'm not totally sure what he was talking about -- he's the kind of nut who drives around in a pickup truck with a gun rack and an American flag sticker. He was very serious about me finding you on slashdot, though.
Perhaps you could e-mail me and explain what he was talking about. He also said I should say "pet goat". I don't know why.
Thank you and I apologize again for wasting everyone's time here on Slashdot.