I'll stop again at your start. In order for the statement "source code cannot be turned into software" to be false, you'd need to demonstrate that all source code everywhere for all time can be. I did not state an absolute. You interpreted it thusly.
But again, this is all meaningless. This is you arguing syntax again. Stop picking one statement of mine that has nothing to do with the argument being made.
I argued that tools, in general, tend to be just as open source as software. That a hammer is just as open source as apache. Argue that.
I decided to read the rest of your post. A few things stand out.
First, you're talking about software application (mostly), that perform a set of tasks within a system -- so you can mimic such a system with a container, shoehorns and all. I'm talking about software married to the system. You can't shoehorn it into another system, it is the entire system.
Second, you're now a professional. If you're arguing that a professional can build open source code into software, the only word left to say is "duh". A professional glue manufacturer can copy someone else's glue too. The difference between you and the original author, especially after a half-day of study, is almost nill. The difference between you, and the typical user of said software is all of your tools, training, and experience.
Third, I wrote every line of code for my software. I did every design chart. I decided what it needed to be, and how it would work. I used it for years, and based my entire livelihood on it. I employed dozens of people. Then, with international issues being what they are (CIA directly connected to Rackspace), I changed data centre providers to save over $15'000/year. It still took me three months, and three persons, to set up the old software on the new network, and took me two years to plan the move.
I'm going to stop at your logically-inconsistent accusation based on your logically-inconsistent inability to read.
I said "source code cannot be turned into software" and "source code requires days of powerful machine time to turn into software". The former is missing the requirements listed in the latter. If you can't compare two sentences, and see the big huge difference, then we're done here.
So I'll summarize, for you, to satisfy your early complaint -- alone, without some amount of help, expertise, documentation, know-how, assistance, time, resources, and understanding, most source code cannot be turned into software merely by commonly available computer hardware.
You can list myriad examples of source can that's been designed to do exactly that, but I'm not saying that all source code needs more, I'm saying that most/much/some/many/any does/can/might/will. When I don't use a modifier, you don't get to presume I meant "always/forever/in-all-instances/every-time".
You are arguing based on syntax, in a debate based on abstract concepts. Given recent political events, I can guess where you learned your style. I'll guess that you also think oral sex isn't sex -- even though it's right in the name.
Second, source code cannot be turned into software. I don't know why you think that it can. Some source code requires days of powerful machine time to turn into software. Most requires a compiler that likely isn't free. Many need a whole host of compiler instructions, configurations, and a full IDE-worth of resources specific to the developer's choosing to be compiled.
Dude, I build web-sites and even my shitty perl code is useless without three days of custom linux and apache tweaking. It took me three months to configure a plain-jane lamp server -- and that's with my entire business resources behind it -- pushing for a vital and highly profitable supplier change.
and this is exactly why I eat all of my food direct from farmers. blockchain shmockchain, walmart kills 50 times more people than sharks. so many that they need this much technology just to track it! none of this actually stops the food from being tainted.
Like I've said before, I don't want walmart to take back the bad food. I want them to be horrified that their food was tainted. Alas, it is not their food, and hence they don't give a shit. They care only about their dollars.
So, I buy directly from the farmers around me. If a tomato is bad, I know the person who touched it over 50 times to grow it from a seed. If the chicken's bad, I know its name and its god damned educational history. And if a steak is bad, I know the guy who planted the grass.
You are confusing "free" with "open source". Hammers aren't free, but they are open source. You don't get the blue-prints, just like you don't get the code-flow diagrams or design commentary or code documentation. But you do get the hammer, and you can see everything that the hammer is. You can peel off the handle, and you can test the material, and you can see how it works, why it works, and when it fails.
Hammer manufacturers compete on many things (including price), but mostly on what design elements matter most. Innovating a design element is a big deal, as is patenting it. But there's no mystery to the end-user. It is better because it's this shape, or it's buttor because it's this material. There aren't many other attributes to most tools.
The hammer is open source. So is the screw driver, nail gun, wrench, and plyers. Tools have always been open source. Tools have never been for the end-user. The end-user has needs and requirements, and isn't interested in building it themselves. That's where the expertise of having-done-it-before is valuable. That's why we pay people to do things that they've been doing for others for decades. Of course I can learn to do it myself. I can learn to do anything that millions of men have learned to do before me. But I'm not interested in sewing my own pants.
I'm not even interested in repairing the stitching in one inch of my pants.
And yet, the needle and thread, sewing machines, and wood-working tools are all open source.
Do I build my own couch? I could. It's really easy to cut wood, screw it together, cover it with foam, cover it with cloth. It's really easy to follow a pattern and a design and a template. Still, no thanks, not interested.
I pay for someone else to build my couch because I'd rather spend my time working in my chosen profession than building a couch.
Open source doesn't change anything to the end-user. My clients who sell white tube socks aren't going to build their own web-site. Sure they could, but they aren't interested. They also won't be their own security guard (also open source), paint their own offices (brushes are open source), or even ship their own desks (again, open source).
Every tool, and every obvious technique is open source. Who cares. You pay someone else to use those tools for you.
One day, 3D printers will become ubiquitous. And still, it won't matter. I'll want a widget this big and this shape to do this -- and I'll pay someone to design it. Whether they cut it out of wood, or mold it out of plastic, or hit print, is totally meaningless to me. I don't care what tools they use. I want my widget. And no, I don't want someone else's widget. Their widget won't fit my business model.
Music as the background to your life is already bad enough -- poor quality sound, poor quality experience, unpaired environment, not relaxing at all, and completely unshared -- but it's the background to other things. Putting recreational gaming as the background to life is just even more stupid. 24 hours of candy crush, wonderful.
Somewhere along the way, I think this guy has forgotten the reason we play games -- not his fault, since he's obviously forgotten the reason people used to spent tens of thousands of dollars buying music.
So here's my advice. Look at pictures of a music room from 1985. The kind that had a $20'000 music collection. Realize that the same collection and the same audio quality is now possible with $1'000 of investment. Spend it. Sit in a proper music room with proper sound and your music collection.
What's you'll discover is this: after an hour, you'll have zero stress following a stressful day; after an afternoon, you'll love your children more; after an evening, you'll feel soothed like a three-day vacation; and after a full day/weekend of your music room, you'll actually be healthier, happier, and more focused than ever.
Or, you can drive to work worried about your gaming score.
You said "no problem is too big that you can't walk away from it". Sure. If you want to walk away from your city's problems, you can live in the country. "walking away" isn't a solution when you don't want to leave everything behind.
Your inner voice and your search for truth won't sway an election, or any scenario in which a majority rules.
Given the opportunity cost of fighting the system, you're always forced to sacrifice some of what you want for the rest -- purely because of others.
1. Those people who choose not to validate/authenticate/corobberate have huge influence over everyone -- voting for government, making dumb investments that pump and burst bubbles, making purchases and hence deciding when products work in the marketplace.
2. Psychology is the study of how it isn't their choice in the first place -- or how to make it not their choice.
Those two combine, very interactively, to mean that dumb people, professionally treated as dumb people, can be controlled to influence the smart people in a way that the smart people cannot control at all.
Think about dinner plans. If your family members vote on where to go for dinner, and you have two parents and five toddlers, it really doesn't matter how much access to information your toddlers have, you are going to mcdonalds five nights a week, if not seven. That's why we've made it illegal to advertize happy meals during children's television shows and the commercials during those time-slots too.
You've got it backwards. Between consumers who have zero money invested in weeding out the truth, and players who have huge amounts of money invested in the lie, the side with the money always wins.
It doesn't matter that six weeks later the truth comes out. It matters that for those six weeks, the lie achieved a result. It's already too late for the truth.
I think you've forgotten the hundred years of that before smartphones. You're thinking of cellphones, telephones, and radios. Zero computation necessary.
Ah self-driving cars. So, more people in traffic longer, but they aren't bored because they are working. We've had self-driving cars for a very long time. We've called them trains, busses, taxis, planes, chauffeurs, and horses.
Driving is a pleasure, especially with the right car. I don't want to sit in your self-driving car for an hour's ride to a meeting. I enjoy driving my sportscar for an hour to my meeting.
And I sure as hell don't want to work for that extra hour, just because society says that I should be working always.
So...you're saying that the free flow of information is the dissemination of truth? Have you not been reading slashdot today? Information flows from good and bad soures alike. True information is no more prominent than false information.
this is the age of incremental crappy technology that pushes everyone to spend more time at work and away from their families. that's probably a first for technology.
If you want to talk about technology advancement, look at refridgeration liberating women from full-time canning. Look at cars growing cities. And roads. Look at the post office making written communication cost pennies -- think of everything coming by mail, like bills. Look at telephones allowing families to connect. Look at beer, bringing drinkable non-toxic water far from fresh-water sources, allowing civilization to build cities in the first place. Look at sewers and plumbing and running water. Look at flight.
All of the above improves life with family, life with friends, and the building of cities. They make us safer, and sounder, and comfortable in our own homes. They save lives.
Supercomputers in our pockets do absolutely none of that. They merely give us information, most of which we don't actually use once we acquire it, and they provide entertainment in the most anti-social manner possible, and they push us to spend more time working for less wealth.
That's funny. I'd prefer to call it "focus all of your primary senses on all of my primary senses" -- which includes vision, hearing, and presence too -- but yeah, "smell my finger" would be the easy way to remember!
What to study. Where to invest effort. Whether or not to go see the movie. What is and is not a waste of time, effort, money, and innovation. Teaching you what the ultimate action is.
Dolphins pointing with ultrasound isn't pointing like an arrow. Humans pointing with a finger also isn't pointing with an arrow. Stop seeing things as language and communication when it isn't.
Both of those are nothing more than a first-step. If you want to walk to the door, you start by taking one step. Then everyone around you knows that you are literally moving towards the door.
If you're a dolphin, and the first step of using an object is to highlight it with ultrasound, then every interaction begins with ultrasound. So when you light something up, everyone around you knows you're interacting with it. Not because you "said" anything, and not because you "pointed" at it. You literally starting interacting with it the same way you've started interacting with everything you've every interacted with.
Humans interact with everything the very same way -- we touch it with our hands. We grab food, we push things, we pull things, we feel things. I'll bet 95% of everything interaction you have starts with your hand moving towards an object. So, "pointing" with a finger is nothing more than you beginning that interaction.
"pointing" then, is nothing more than the first-step of interactions. And, when we're merely talking, we stop at the first step, because that's enough. You'll no-doubt note that some people like to touch-and-turn an object about which they are speaking. Same thing.
So, again. Want to understand a puppy? Notice that the very first thing they do any time they interact with anything of any kind any where, is to sniff it first. So, when your puppy moves his nose towards an object, whether or not he goes and smells it, he's talking about it to you. That's why one of the very first "tricks" I train in a puppy is "touch" where he touches his nose to something -- and if you really understand what I've been saying, then you won't be surprised that the first thing I teach him to to "touch" is the tip of my finger.
His nose, my finger. Now we not only have a common verb: "touch", which extends to "show me" and "get it" and "what's that?" and "where is..." and ultimately "go to", but we also have our first translation -- nose == finger.
Once we have nose is finger -- which is confirmed when I touch something then he goes and smells it -- then we get into what I do and don't want him to do very very very quickly.
I touch a toy, he smells it, I say good boy and praise him and get excited. I touch a treat, he smells it, he eats it. I touch a deck of cards, he smells it, I say "no, bad boy" and push him away.
I touch the deck of cards again, repeatedly, until he comes over to smell it, the moment he does, I say "no, bad boy" and push him away.
I touch the deck of cards again, a lot, he hesitantly comes over to smell it, knowing that I called him over, I say "no!" he backs away immediately, as though he'd expected me to say no.
I touch the deck of cards again, he looks at me, he looks at the cards, he takes one step towards the cards, he backs away again, he looks at me, he telepathically says "I'm staying away, is that what you want?" I say "good boy!" and get all excited. and give him a toy to play with.
I resume my card game on the bed. He sits two feet away, relaxing with a toy.
From then on, I don't need to wait for him to do something that I don't like. I make him do it. I tell him no. I make him do it again. I tell him no again. He understands.
The ability to show my puppy what I don't want him to do, is, in my mind, probably the most important thing that I can communicate.
Yeah, I stand in the middle of the street, while he's still on the sidewalk, and I tug on the leash until hes steps into the street with me -- then I tell him "no! bad boy! never!" Obviously, this one's a little more complicated in that it requires a little more repetition, in part because we don't spend as much time walking as we do in bed, but he quickly understands that he doesn't go into the street, and he doesn't even foll
I love when scientists describe intelligent alien communications as being difficult due to different "contexts". It really shows just how far scientists have travelled outside of their cities.
Communications-outside-of-context are done all the time. Humanity's historical cultures don't play any role in a Canadian adult speaking with a third-world african child. Yet it's done all the time.
Similarly, adopt a puppy. Learn to live with any intelligent animal. The first time that you catch your puppy in a lie, you'll know that you've learned to communicate across "contexts".
If you want to communicate with an alien species, intelligent or otherwise, it's as easy as it's always been. Your "context" is the one thing you share -- the environment around you. Lock yourself in a room, a cabin in the woods, an asteroid adrift, a mysteriously-locked laboratory, and any two individuals (now sharing a "context") will figure out how to communicate with each other very very very quickly, and pretty darn efficiently too, using whatever works (physical touch, verbal commands, emotional cues, mechanical blocking, et cetera).
In my life, I've trained two birds, four dogs, three cats, and a girl. I've been trained by one dog, two cats, and that very same girl.
But this requires a very simple comprehension of communication, that I worry most people simply do not have. It is this: communication (of thought), however lengthy and prolonged, is the means to an end. That end is always action (or inaction). Taking away any opportunity for communication to surround action, makes communication utterly meaningless. It simply must relate to something else. And obviously so, since the communication of thought requires thought first, and that thought must be of something -- most often of truth. And any truth, once again, comes down to an observable and testable action.
Train a puppy. Along the way, you'll discover that the puppy has trained you too. Sit back, and notice the new common language that's formed between you. It takes about a week -- most of which is about discovering the shared environment that now requires a common language -- you didn't need to talk to each other when you didn't share a house.
Programmers suck, and projects fail, often because the person leading the team hasn't any clue about how things are programmed. It would seem logical to for successful programmers to graduate out of programming, and use their experience to actually guide projects.
I'll never forget, some twenty years ago, as a lowly programmer, following a 50+ page specification to build a shitty web-site, that detailed right down to how to spell the word "Login", but never detailed the variable name to be used -- wouldn't be a big deal, except front-end and back-end needed to agree on the variable name, and were two different programmers in two different departments. Another amount of stupid. Project manager had never seen anything but a finished web-page. Big surprise.
Maybe where you live, but not where I live. Very rarely is anyone looking through my window. And I've news for you: it's been illegal to point a telescope into someone's window for quite some time.
Umm, might want to look at what the women want. I guess it takes a man to say: get a dog.
But hey. If a woman can't keep a man, then there's no betting that she'll be able to keep a dog either.
Oh yeah, how could I forget: also she has 90 seconds. How silly of me. Even with 90 seconds, she needs help. I can't think of a place in my life where 90 seconds wouldn't already be enough for me to get away. But I've got 90 seconds, a dog, friends, a community, a cell phone, money, and a strong woman by my side.
So now we're talking about women without any ability to keep money, nor to keep a man, nor to keep a dog. And they want it to be inconspicuous because they also don't want strangers to save them. So, no money, no man, no dog, no friends, and no community, and no phone.
Yeah. Now that's a woman worth saving.
Make the prize two million. You've got nothing to lose. You've already eliminated every solution that's worked for men for thousands of years. They're called friends. Strangers turned into friends, friends you brought with you, canine friends. Every one of them is totally and completely free-as-in-beer, or shall we say free-as-in-friends.
Takes a women to want to buy a friend, I guess. A $40 friend.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll stop again at your start. In order for the statement "source code cannot be turned into software" to be false, you'd need to demonstrate that all source code everywhere for all time can be. I did not state an absolute. You interpreted it thusly.
But again, this is all meaningless. This is you arguing syntax again. Stop picking one statement of mine that has nothing to do with the argument being made.
I argued that tools, in general, tend to be just as open source as software. That a hammer is just as open source as apache. Argue that.
I decided to read the rest of your post. A few things stand out.
First, you're talking about software application (mostly), that perform a set of tasks within a system -- so you can mimic such a system with a container, shoehorns and all. I'm talking about software married to the system. You can't shoehorn it into another system, it is the entire system.
Second, you're now a professional. If you're arguing that a professional can build open source code into software, the only word left to say is "duh". A professional glue manufacturer can copy someone else's glue too. The difference between you and the original author, especially after a half-day of study, is almost nill. The difference between you, and the typical user of said software is all of your tools, training, and experience.
Third, I wrote every line of code for my software. I did every design chart. I decided what it needed to be, and how it would work. I used it for years, and based my entire livelihood on it. I employed dozens of people. Then, with international issues being what they are (CIA directly connected to Rackspace), I changed data centre providers to save over $15'000/year. It still took me three months, and three persons, to set up the old software on the new network, and took me two years to plan the move.
I'm going to stop at your logically-inconsistent accusation based on your logically-inconsistent inability to read.
I said "source code cannot be turned into software" and "source code requires days of powerful machine time to turn into software". The former is missing the requirements listed in the latter. If you can't compare two sentences, and see the big huge difference, then we're done here.
So I'll summarize, for you, to satisfy your early complaint -- alone, without some amount of help, expertise, documentation, know-how, assistance, time, resources, and understanding, most source code cannot be turned into software merely by commonly available computer hardware.
You can list myriad examples of source can that's been designed to do exactly that, but I'm not saying that all source code needs more, I'm saying that most/much/some/many/any does/can/might/will. When I don't use a modifier, you don't get to presume I meant "always/forever/in-all-instances/every-time".
You are arguing based on syntax, in a debate based on abstract concepts. Given recent political events, I can guess where you learned your style. I'll guess that you also think oral sex isn't sex -- even though it's right in the name.
My advice is to you thusly: check out your local farmers' markets. Did you even know that farmers come to you?
Please mod him up. City-dwellers should know that they can still eat farm fresh food.
You're totally wrong from the start.
First off, "FOSS" needs the "F" for a reason.
Second, source code cannot be turned into software. I don't know why you think that it can. Some source code requires days of powerful machine time to turn into software. Most requires a compiler that likely isn't free. Many need a whole host of compiler instructions, configurations, and a full IDE-worth of resources specific to the developer's choosing to be compiled.
Dude, I build web-sites and even my shitty perl code is useless without three days of custom linux and apache tweaking. It took me three months to configure a plain-jane lamp server -- and that's with my entire business resources behind it -- pushing for a vital and highly profitable supplier change.
and this is exactly why I eat all of my food direct from farmers. blockchain shmockchain, walmart kills 50 times more people than sharks. so many that they need this much technology just to track it! none of this actually stops the food from being tainted.
Like I've said before, I don't want walmart to take back the bad food. I want them to be horrified that their food was tainted. Alas, it is not their food, and hence they don't give a shit. They care only about their dollars.
So, I buy directly from the farmers around me. If a tomato is bad, I know the person who touched it over 50 times to grow it from a seed. If the chicken's bad, I know its name and its god damned educational history. And if a steak is bad, I know the guy who planted the grass.
What a concept.
You are confusing "free" with "open source". Hammers aren't free, but they are open source. You don't get the blue-prints, just like you don't get the code-flow diagrams or design commentary or code documentation. But you do get the hammer, and you can see everything that the hammer is. You can peel off the handle, and you can test the material, and you can see how it works, why it works, and when it fails.
Hammer manufacturers compete on many things (including price), but mostly on what design elements matter most. Innovating a design element is a big deal, as is patenting it. But there's no mystery to the end-user. It is better because it's this shape, or it's buttor because it's this material. There aren't many other attributes to most tools.
The hammer is open source. So is the screw driver, nail gun, wrench, and plyers. Tools have always been open source. Tools have never been for the end-user. The end-user has needs and requirements, and isn't interested in building it themselves. That's where the expertise of having-done-it-before is valuable. That's why we pay people to do things that they've been doing for others for decades. Of course I can learn to do it myself. I can learn to do anything that millions of men have learned to do before me. But I'm not interested in sewing my own pants.
I'm not even interested in repairing the stitching in one inch of my pants.
And yet, the needle and thread, sewing machines, and wood-working tools are all open source.
Do I build my own couch? I could. It's really easy to cut wood, screw it together, cover it with foam, cover it with cloth. It's really easy to follow a pattern and a design and a template. Still, no thanks, not interested.
I pay for someone else to build my couch because I'd rather spend my time working in my chosen profession than building a couch.
Open source doesn't change anything to the end-user. My clients who sell white tube socks aren't going to build their own web-site. Sure they could, but they aren't interested. They also won't be their own security guard (also open source), paint their own offices (brushes are open source), or even ship their own desks (again, open source).
Every tool, and every obvious technique is open source. Who cares. You pay someone else to use those tools for you.
One day, 3D printers will become ubiquitous. And still, it won't matter. I'll want a widget this big and this shape to do this -- and I'll pay someone to design it. Whether they cut it out of wood, or mold it out of plastic, or hit print, is totally meaningless to me. I don't care what tools they use. I want my widget. And no, I don't want someone else's widget. Their widget won't fit my business model.
Music as the background to your life is already bad enough -- poor quality sound, poor quality experience, unpaired environment, not relaxing at all, and completely unshared -- but it's the background to other things. Putting recreational gaming as the background to life is just even more stupid. 24 hours of candy crush, wonderful.
Somewhere along the way, I think this guy has forgotten the reason we play games -- not his fault, since he's obviously forgotten the reason people used to spent tens of thousands of dollars buying music.
So here's my advice. Look at pictures of a music room from 1985. The kind that had a $20'000 music collection. Realize that the same collection and the same audio quality is now possible with $1'000 of investment. Spend it. Sit in a proper music room with proper sound and your music collection.
What's you'll discover is this: after an hour, you'll have zero stress following a stressful day; after an afternoon, you'll love your children more; after an evening, you'll feel soothed like a three-day vacation; and after a full day/weekend of your music room, you'll actually be healthier, happier, and more focused than ever.
Or, you can drive to work worried about your gaming score.
You are 100% wrong. Here's why:
You said "no problem is too big that you can't walk away from it". Sure. If you want to walk away from your city's problems, you can live in the country. "walking away" isn't a solution when you don't want to leave everything behind.
Your inner voice and your search for truth won't sway an election, or any scenario in which a majority rules.
Given the opportunity cost of fighting the system, you're always forced to sacrifice some of what you want for the rest -- purely because of others.
You're 100% wrong. Here's why.
1. Those people who choose not to validate/authenticate/corobberate have huge influence over everyone -- voting for government, making dumb investments that pump and burst bubbles, making purchases and hence deciding when products work in the marketplace.
2. Psychology is the study of how it isn't their choice in the first place -- or how to make it not their choice.
Those two combine, very interactively, to mean that dumb people, professionally treated as dumb people, can be controlled to influence the smart people in a way that the smart people cannot control at all.
Think about dinner plans. If your family members vote on where to go for dinner, and you have two parents and five toddlers, it really doesn't matter how much access to information your toddlers have, you are going to mcdonalds five nights a week, if not seven. That's why we've made it illegal to advertize happy meals during children's television shows and the commercials during those time-slots too.
You've got it backwards. Between consumers who have zero money invested in weeding out the truth, and players who have huge amounts of money invested in the lie, the side with the money always wins.
It doesn't matter that six weeks later the truth comes out. It matters that for those six weeks, the lie achieved a result. It's already too late for the truth.
I think you've forgotten the hundred years of that before smartphones. You're thinking of cellphones, telephones, and radios. Zero computation necessary.
Ah self-driving cars. So, more people in traffic longer, but they aren't bored because they are working. We've had self-driving cars for a very long time. We've called them trains, busses, taxis, planes, chauffeurs, and horses.
Driving is a pleasure, especially with the right car. I don't want to sit in your self-driving car for an hour's ride to a meeting. I enjoy driving my sportscar for an hour to my meeting.
And I sure as hell don't want to work for that extra hour, just because society says that I should be working always.
So...you're saying that the free flow of information is the dissemination of truth? Have you not been reading slashdot today? Information flows from good and bad soures alike. True information is no more prominent than false information.
this is the age of incremental crappy technology that pushes everyone to spend more time at work and away from their families. that's probably a first for technology.
If you want to talk about technology advancement, look at refridgeration liberating women from full-time canning.
Look at cars growing cities. And roads.
Look at the post office making written communication cost pennies -- think of everything coming by mail, like bills.
Look at telephones allowing families to connect.
Look at beer, bringing drinkable non-toxic water far from fresh-water sources, allowing civilization to build cities in the first place.
Look at sewers and plumbing and running water.
Look at flight.
All of the above improves life with family, life with friends, and the building of cities. They make us safer, and sounder, and comfortable in our own homes. They save lives.
Supercomputers in our pockets do absolutely none of that. They merely give us information, most of which we don't actually use once we acquire it, and they provide entertainment in the most anti-social manner possible, and they push us to spend more time working for less wealth.
Try again.
That's funny. I'd prefer to call it "focus all of your primary senses on all of my primary senses" -- which includes vision, hearing, and presence too -- but yeah, "smell my finger" would be the easy way to remember!
What to study. Where to invest effort. Whether or not to go see the movie. What is and is not a waste of time, effort, money, and innovation. Teaching you what the ultimate action is.
Dolphins pointing with ultrasound isn't pointing like an arrow. Humans pointing with a finger also isn't pointing with an arrow. Stop seeing things as language and communication when it isn't.
Both of those are nothing more than a first-step. If you want to walk to the door, you start by taking one step. Then everyone around you knows that you are literally moving towards the door.
If you're a dolphin, and the first step of using an object is to highlight it with ultrasound, then every interaction begins with ultrasound. So when you light something up, everyone around you knows you're interacting with it. Not because you "said" anything, and not because you "pointed" at it. You literally starting interacting with it the same way you've started interacting with everything you've every interacted with.
Humans interact with everything the very same way -- we touch it with our hands. We grab food, we push things, we pull things, we feel things. I'll bet 95% of everything interaction you have starts with your hand moving towards an object. So, "pointing" with a finger is nothing more than you beginning that interaction.
"pointing" then, is nothing more than the first-step of interactions. And, when we're merely talking, we stop at the first step, because that's enough. You'll no-doubt note that some people like to touch-and-turn an object about which they are speaking. Same thing.
So, again. Want to understand a puppy? Notice that the very first thing they do any time they interact with anything of any kind any where, is to sniff it first. So, when your puppy moves his nose towards an object, whether or not he goes and smells it, he's talking about it to you. That's why one of the very first "tricks" I train in a puppy is "touch" where he touches his nose to something -- and if you really understand what I've been saying, then you won't be surprised that the first thing I teach him to to "touch" is the tip of my finger.
His nose, my finger. Now we not only have a common verb: "touch", which extends to "show me" and "get it" and "what's that?" and "where is..." and ultimately "go to", but we also have our first translation -- nose == finger.
Once we have nose is finger -- which is confirmed when I touch something then he goes and smells it -- then we get into what I do and don't want him to do very very very quickly.
I touch a toy, he smells it, I say good boy and praise him and get excited.
I touch a treat, he smells it, he eats it.
I touch a deck of cards, he smells it, I say "no, bad boy" and push him away.
I touch the deck of cards again, repeatedly, until he comes over to smell it, the moment he does, I say "no, bad boy" and push him away.
I touch the deck of cards again, a lot, he hesitantly comes over to smell it, knowing that I called him over, I say "no!" he backs away immediately, as though he'd expected me to say no.
I touch the deck of cards again, he looks at me, he looks at the cards, he takes one step towards the cards, he backs away again, he looks at me, he telepathically says "I'm staying away, is that what you want?" I say "good boy!" and get all excited. and give him a toy to play with.
I resume my card game on the bed. He sits two feet away, relaxing with a toy.
From then on, I don't need to wait for him to do something that I don't like. I make him do it. I tell him no. I make him do it again. I tell him no again. He understands.
The ability to show my puppy what I don't want him to do, is, in my mind, probably the most important thing that I can communicate.
Yeah, I stand in the middle of the street, while he's still on the sidewalk, and I tug on the leash until hes steps into the street with me -- then I tell him "no! bad boy! never!" Obviously, this one's a little more complicated in that it requires a little more repetition, in part because we don't spend as much time walking as we do in bed, but he quickly understands that he doesn't go into the street, and he doesn't even foll
You won't do any of that garbage. When they move left. You'll physically block them, and say "no". You'll do it twenty times in a row. You'll be done.
I love when scientists describe intelligent alien communications as being difficult due to different "contexts". It really shows just how far scientists have travelled outside of their cities.
Communications-outside-of-context are done all the time. Humanity's historical cultures don't play any role in a Canadian adult speaking with a third-world african child. Yet it's done all the time.
Similarly, adopt a puppy. Learn to live with any intelligent animal. The first time that you catch your puppy in a lie, you'll know that you've learned to communicate across "contexts".
If you want to communicate with an alien species, intelligent or otherwise, it's as easy as it's always been. Your "context" is the one thing you share -- the environment around you. Lock yourself in a room, a cabin in the woods, an asteroid adrift, a mysteriously-locked laboratory, and any two individuals (now sharing a "context") will figure out how to communicate with each other very very very quickly, and pretty darn efficiently too, using whatever works (physical touch, verbal commands, emotional cues, mechanical blocking, et cetera).
In my life, I've trained two birds, four dogs, three cats, and a girl. I've been trained by one dog, two cats, and that very same girl.
But this requires a very simple comprehension of communication, that I worry most people simply do not have. It is this: communication (of thought), however lengthy and prolonged, is the means to an end. That end is always action (or inaction). Taking away any opportunity for communication to surround action, makes communication utterly meaningless. It simply must relate to something else. And obviously so, since the communication of thought requires thought first, and that thought must be of something -- most often of truth. And any truth, once again, comes down to an observable and testable action.
Train a puppy. Along the way, you'll discover that the puppy has trained you too. Sit back, and notice the new common language that's formed between you. It takes about a week -- most of which is about discovering the shared environment that now requires a common language -- you didn't need to talk to each other when you didn't share a house.
Programmers suck, and projects fail, often because the person leading the team hasn't any clue about how things are programmed. It would seem logical to for successful programmers to graduate out of programming, and use their experience to actually guide projects.
I'll never forget, some twenty years ago, as a lowly programmer, following a 50+ page specification to build a shitty web-site, that detailed right down to how to spell the word "Login", but never detailed the variable name to be used -- wouldn't be a big deal, except front-end and back-end needed to agree on the variable name, and were two different programmers in two different departments. Another amount of stupid. Project manager had never seen anything but a finished web-page. Big surprise.
Enforcement is independent of legislation. But you'll upload it to youtube anyway.
Maybe where you live, but not where I live. Very rarely is anyone looking through my window. And I've news for you: it's been illegal to point a telescope into someone's window for quite some time.
Umm, might want to look at what the women want. I guess it takes a man to say: get a dog.
But hey. If a woman can't keep a man, then there's no betting that she'll be able to keep a dog either.
Oh yeah, how could I forget: also she has 90 seconds. How silly of me. Even with 90 seconds, she needs help. I can't think of a place in my life where 90 seconds wouldn't already be enough for me to get away. But I've got 90 seconds, a dog, friends, a community, a cell phone, money, and a strong woman by my side.
So now we're talking about women without any ability to keep money, nor to keep a man, nor to keep a dog. And they want it to be inconspicuous because they also don't want strangers to save them. So, no money, no man, no dog, no friends, and no community, and no phone.
Yeah. Now that's a woman worth saving.
Make the prize two million. You've got nothing to lose. You've already eliminated every solution that's worked for men for thousands of years. They're called friends. Strangers turned into friends, friends you brought with you, canine friends. Every one of them is totally and completely free-as-in-beer, or shall we say free-as-in-friends.
Takes a women to want to buy a friend, I guess. A $40 friend.