Perhaps the hatred-filled, mocking tone of condescension you feel towards your bosses is the problem.
No, bosses who don't know as much as we do and won't admit it are the problem. Management needs to stay the hell out of technology, because they're ignorant of it. Why should we take the rap for a problem that's created by management's attitude that life is and should be a goddamn ass-kissing and popularity contest. They're in the wrong, why the fuck do we have to adapt?
How do you know that? How do you know the intent of the poster?
The language was certainly colorful, and implies a certain degree of immaturity or personal involvment in the issue. It wasn't a detached and cool assesment. The implied criticism of zealots in such a passionate post is mildly amusing. However, there is a point of sorts. Here's the original post:
Object Oriented Porgramming is for control freak fucks who can't keep their heads on straight. They want to categorize and classify every damn thing under the sun. Kind of like the programmer and the engineer who were asked to build a toaster by the king. The king had the programmer ass (who was n OOP zealot) put to death.
Suppose the poster had written this instead:
C++ is, from the point of view of many C programmers, somewhat covoluted and over-elaborated. It's not optimized for thinking about small, simple, precisely-targeted code. Creating elaborate structures of objects is too much work for most programming tasks.
(I'm not sure that's exactly the posters intent, due to the style, but it will serve as an example.)
If the poster had used more moderate language, would you still have called the post a troll? Doesn't the language the poster used also support an alternative interpretation, in which not only are they not trolling (posting with intent to "attract predictable responses or flames"), but in which these are their genuine feelings? In fact, doesn't the language used support the idea that this person genuinely, if somewhat un-thoughtfully, despises OOP?
There's a Slashdotter who sometimes signs just his name, and sometimes signs with "Esq." after. He says his ratings of "Troll" and "Flamebait" rise dramatically when he uses "Esq.". All of this implies that moderators are rating not the content, but the style.
Personally, I'd like to see the likes of "Troll" and "Flamebait" replaced by something along the lines of "Imprecise" or "Emotional". Maybe "Offtopic" could be replaced by "Tangential".:-)
"XP is successful because it stresses customer satisfaction"
"XP empowers your developers to confidently respond to changing customer requirements, even late in the life cycle"
"Managers, customers, and developers are all part of a team"
The What is Extreme Programming? page has these buzzwords and an "oily" tone in general. Like they're trying to sell something. Ick.
Stressing "customer satisfaction" is a good way to get a crap product. This echoes the attitude heard from Windows apologists: "Yes, but it's good for people who don't want to learn a lot about computers." For customers to have much input into the programming process is bad even for the customer. This is like letting managers overrule engineers in the Shuttle program.
Extreme Programming sounds like a way to pander to the egos of customers who want to "play computer", suits who think they know something and don't. Managers aren't programmers, they don't know how to program, and they should stay the hell out of the programming process.
I don't know that Oakley addressed Robinson's main point: "Those few readers who haven't defected to Tolkienesque fantasy cling only to Star Trek, Star Wars, and other Sci Fi franchises." Most people don't want a challenge, they want to sit back and relax. Brightly-colored fantasy like Tolkien is just more soothing than the unknown future you have to construct for yourself.
In the meantime, there's a news piece once a month on advances in carbon nanotubes to build a space elevator. On orbit for $5 a pound, coming right up, ma'am.
In the meantime, there's a considerable subset of the population that wants Mars so bad we can already taste her oxidized sands. A few billion dollars (perhaps 10% of what we've spent on the war in Iraq) and ten years and we could be there.
And no one seems to care. Where is this planet spending it's collective dollars, pounds and rubles?
"... using perfectly good rockets to kill each other, instead."
At Carnegie Mellon University there is a stairwell called Architect's Leap, and a common pasttime is to Leap old monitors by dropping them from the top story. It is usually fairly effective and equally satisfying.
Theorizing that one could smash monitors within his own stairwell, Dr. RainbowSix dropped monitors into the Architect's Leap accelerator... and graduated.
Well, if you can reduce an ordinary story into "epistemological allegory" then all bets are off. I think any story can be expounded in terms of some obscure literary-philosophical theory, difficult to understand, impossible to refute.
Hmmm. That's an interesting point of view. If I'm reading you correctly, then you believe The Matrix is an "ordinary story" and I and others are perhaps 'over-interpreting' it. In contrast, the reason I liked The Matrix so much is that I felt[1] it *was* epistemological allegory -- something along the lines of the allegory of the cave, or maybe Descartes' Evil Genius theory, as Stargoat has pointed out -- with the action being an elaboration or a reinforcement of the central ideas.
Presuming I've summarized your attitude correctly, would you feel differently if the Wachowski Brothers intended the allegory?
Such theories are of extreme disinterest to most people -- hence your post being labeled as Flamebait.
I've often suspected that people mod posts based on politics rather than truth.
Ellen
[1] There, that's my diplomatic nod to the possibility that I am not categorically correct in all matters. This unnatural compromise has taken a lot out of me, so I can't promise to be able to do it again soon.:-)
Whenever a slashdotter refers to "suspension of disbelief", usually what they really mean is "I enjoyed that movie/novel/manga, and it isn't fair of you to destroy my enjoyment by picking scientific nits." Come on, people. When you tell a story, you can't just ignore the real world.
On the contrary, you can, and often do, ignore the real world for literary purposes. A director or writer often chooses a setting or genre to establish mood or enable some literary device they want to use for their story. 28 Days Later isn't about virology, it's about people reverting to their most primitive (not unlike Shallow Grave or Trainspotting).
Along similar lines, I posted a couple of weeks ago and got modded "Troll" when I said that the Matrix wasn't SF, but epistemelogical allegory in a sci-fi setting. I was dead serious about that. Would the moderator in question care to speak up publicly and say what about my post made it seem that my post was "designed to attract predictable responses or flames"?
I'm not defending any characteristic of the American government...
Then what are you defending? From your post, it seems that you're pro-government and anti-education.
Re:Orwell's vision was true!
on
Gates and Security
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
If we do indeed lack some fundamental rights, it is due to our own laziness. We seem to demand so many things of our government.
Agreed, sort of. It's important to keep the pronouns straight.
I demand nothing of my government except that it mind it's own business. I'm not opposed to the basic idea of government, but my participation is not voluntary and so I'm getting a bad deal. I want my participation to be voluntary so that I can put the forcibly removed 15-20% of my paycheck into medical and dental care. I want government to provide a basic minimum of services (the primary service I expect is providing a nexus for the administration of common property, like land and air), not to control a broad swath of public life. I think I speak for a lot of slashdotters when I say that government is at best a necessary evil, something I put up with rather than genuinely like.
But this is not what "we", in the sense of most people, want. Most people do want government to be more involved. There are studies that show that most people are pro-government. They think the measures to "combat terrorism" are a good idea. They think that free speech rights are a little too broad. They take it for granted that the purpose of government is to take care of people. The desires of the majority are 'obviously' correct. (Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Zeitgeist.) The problem isn't government, it's these vast numbers of people who support government. Those people won't get the long-term picture until it's the short-term picture; they will support government until it's an immediate problem for them.
As always, the only profound solution is education. Until most people understand at a gut-level that government is the atomic-bomb of social engineering, a powerful and dangerous weapon that needs to operated with attention, caution and deliberation, they and "we" -- the smaller "we", the slashdot-type "we" that prefers freedom to comfort and security -- are going to remain under the feet of government.
As for the WMD's in Iraq: What does this have to do with the Republicans?
The fact that the evidence they're presenting appears to be largely bullshit. This article is an automated translation from German, but it makes clear that the degree of shovelling was so high that Blix's language wasn't considered suitable for print!
If I disagree with everyone, who the FSCK should I vote for?
Let me propose some possible alternatives.
You could vote Democrat. I don't like them much more than the Republicans, but there's Watergate, their ties to the religious right, Iran-Contra, the election fraud of 2000, and the lack of solid evidence of WMD in Iraq as just a few examples of the Republicans' work. The Republicans have demonstrated a willingness to out-and-out lie, and to do it over and over and over again. Vote them out and start badgering the Democrats for election reforms, including better support for third-party candidates.
You could vote Libertarian. They're against almost all government, supporting only police, courts and national defense in their most radical position.
You could vote for any other third party. If even, say, 20% of the votes in a national election went to third party candidates, the media reaction would force election reform.
The core idea is, if you don't like anyone, vote for change. Maybe someone you do like will sneak in.:-)
The attitude "it could happen here" is exactly what allows over-reaction.
We're not over-reacting, it *is* happening. This is Germany, circa 1930 all over again. Hell, this is worse, because we have the bad example of Germany circa 1930. We should know better.
Animals are not sentient. Some members of the ape family might be on the edge of sentience and just need a little "push" to cross that border, but they aren't there yet. Dolphins aren't even close. Only one create on this planet has reached sentience - humans.
What definition of sentience are you using? m-w.com says:
1 : responsive to or conscious of sense impressions
2 : AWARE 3 : finely sensitive in perception or feeling
Animals aren't aware? Animals don't respond to sense impressions? More to the point, if animals don't have human-like emotions, they certainly are faking it really well. They're probably not exactly the same as human emotions, but they seem pretty close.
The responses I got... generally boiled down to "Whatever you want!" Okay... but give me some idea of a goal or a point to my existence.
A lot of us want to provide our own goal or point to our existence.
It's thrilling to hear this "what-do-i-do" versus "whatever-you-want" debate. The "gamers" want a game, where the goal is specified by the devs. The "worlders" want a world to live in, where goals are specified by each player. (Applications of this concept to politics are left to the reader as an exercise.) Worlders have been hoping for a long time for a game that would provide a minimal framework and let them create the social structures within that framework. Someplace a gamer can stretch their imaginative muscles.
Who expected what from EVE is a little unclear. Personally, I can only take so much Tolkien-inspired pseudo-medieval fantasy, and went to AO for a sci-fi environment[1]. I've been waiting for EVE for the same change in venue, so I'll play for a while no matter what happens, but the fact that EVE is self-structuring enough to fan these particular flames is really encouraging.
[1] Imagine my apoplexy when Funcom announced an expansion in which the corporate bad guys looked like demons and the rebel good guys looked like angels.
Slashdot Mirror
But there's still something wrong if they can't figure out the basics of TETRIS.
That's not their fault, the blocks weren't exploding!!!
For months, in secret, the Free Software Foundation, a Boston-based group that controls the licensing process for Linux and other "free" programs...
Ummm... we're organized?
Perhaps the hatred-filled, mocking tone of condescension you feel towards your bosses is the problem.
No, bosses who don't know as much as we do and won't admit it are the problem. Management needs to stay the hell out of technology, because they're ignorant of it. Why should we take the rap for a problem that's created by management's attitude that life is and should be a goddamn ass-kissing and popularity contest. They're in the wrong, why the fuck do we have to adapt?
How do you know that? How do you know the intent of the poster?
The language was certainly colorful, and implies a certain degree of immaturity or personal involvment in the issue. It wasn't a detached and cool assesment. The implied criticism of zealots in such a passionate post is mildly amusing. However, there is a point of sorts. Here's the original post:
Suppose the poster had written this instead: (I'm not sure that's exactly the posters intent, due to the style, but it will serve as an example.)
If the poster had used more moderate language, would you still have called the post a troll? Doesn't the language the poster used also support an alternative interpretation, in which not only are they not trolling (posting with intent to "attract predictable responses or flames"), but in which these are their genuine feelings? In fact, doesn't the language used support the idea that this person genuinely, if somewhat un-thoughtfully, despises OOP?
There's a Slashdotter who sometimes signs just his name, and sometimes signs with "Esq." after. He says his ratings of "Troll" and "Flamebait" rise dramatically when he uses "Esq.". All of this implies that moderators are rating not the content, but the style.
Personally, I'd like to see the likes of "Troll" and "Flamebait" replaced by something along the lines of "Imprecise" or "Emotional". Maybe "Offtopic" could be replaced by "Tangential".
Stressing "customer satisfaction" is a good way to get a crap product. This echoes the attitude heard from Windows apologists: "Yes, but it's good for people who don't want to learn a lot about computers." For customers to have much input into the programming process is bad even for the customer. This is like letting managers overrule engineers in the Shuttle program.
Extreme Programming sounds like a way to pander to the egos of customers who want to "play computer", suits who think they know something and don't. Managers aren't programmers, they don't know how to program, and they should stay the hell out of the programming process.
I don't know that Oakley addressed Robinson's main point: "Those few readers who haven't defected to Tolkienesque fantasy cling only to Star Trek, Star Wars, and other Sci Fi franchises." Most people don't want a challenge, they want to sit back and relax. Brightly-colored fantasy like Tolkien is just more soothing than the unknown future you have to construct for yourself.
In the meantime, there's a news piece once a month on advances in carbon nanotubes to build a space elevator. On orbit for $5 a pound, coming right up, ma'am.
In the meantime, there's a considerable subset of the population that wants Mars so bad we can already taste her oxidized sands. A few billion dollars (perhaps 10% of what we've spent on the war in Iraq) and ten years and we could be there.
And no one seems to care. Where is this planet spending it's collective dollars, pounds and rubles?
"... using perfectly good rockets to kill each other, instead."
At Carnegie Mellon University there is a stairwell called Architect's Leap, and a common pasttime is to Leap old monitors by dropping them from the top story. It is usually fairly effective and equally satisfying.
Theorizing that one could smash monitors within his own stairwell, Dr. RainbowSix dropped monitors into the Architect's Leap accelerator... and graduated.
Why would you even alert the masses of this? ... That would panic the person(s) a lot...
Yes, but not *every* person, just stupid panicky people we want out of the gene pool anyway.
(And how did we get from Nobel Prizes to Charlie's Angels?)
:-)
We were defining the extreme ends of the intelligence spectrum.
Well, if you can reduce an ordinary story into "epistemological allegory" then all bets are off. I think any story can be expounded in terms of some obscure literary-philosophical theory, difficult to understand, impossible to refute.
:-)
Hmmm. That's an interesting point of view. If I'm reading you correctly, then you believe The Matrix is an "ordinary story" and I and others are perhaps 'over-interpreting' it. In contrast, the reason I liked The Matrix so much is that I felt[1] it *was* epistemological allegory -- something along the lines of the allegory of the cave, or maybe Descartes' Evil Genius theory, as Stargoat has pointed out -- with the action being an elaboration or a reinforcement of the central ideas.
Presuming I've summarized your attitude correctly, would you feel differently if the Wachowski Brothers intended the allegory?
Such theories are of extreme disinterest to most people -- hence your post being labeled as Flamebait.
I've often suspected that people mod posts based on politics rather than truth.
Ellen
[1] There, that's my diplomatic nod to the possibility that I am not categorically correct in all matters. This unnatural compromise has taken a lot out of me, so I can't promise to be able to do it again soon.
Whenever a slashdotter refers to "suspension of disbelief", usually what they really mean is "I enjoyed that movie/novel/manga, and it isn't fair of you to destroy my enjoyment by picking scientific nits." Come on, people. When you tell a story, you can't just ignore the real world.
On the contrary, you can, and often do, ignore the real world for literary purposes. A director or writer often chooses a setting or genre to establish mood or enable some literary device they want to use for their story. 28 Days Later isn't about virology, it's about people reverting to their most primitive (not unlike Shallow Grave or Trainspotting).
Along similar lines, I posted a couple of weeks ago and got modded "Troll" when I said that the Matrix wasn't SF, but epistemelogical allegory in a sci-fi setting. I was dead serious about that. Would the moderator in question care to speak up publicly and say what about my post made it seem that my post was "designed to attract predictable responses or flames"?
shoplifting goes with maiming, what the..?
Well, the film was originally slated to star Winona Ryder....
Charlie's Angels 2 disappointing? What did you expect? It delivered:
* Women in various states of undress
* Said women shaking their groove things
Said women can't shake what they don't have. They need to be taken out for a good meal.
I'm not defending any characteristic of the American government...
Then what are you defending? From your post, it seems that you're pro-government and anti-education.
If we do indeed lack some fundamental rights, it is due to our own laziness. We seem to demand so many things of our government.
Agreed, sort of. It's important to keep the pronouns straight.
I demand nothing of my government except that it mind it's own business. I'm not opposed to the basic idea of government, but my participation is not voluntary and so I'm getting a bad deal. I want my participation to be voluntary so that I can put the forcibly removed 15-20% of my paycheck into medical and dental care. I want government to provide a basic minimum of services (the primary service I expect is providing a nexus for the administration of common property, like land and air), not to control a broad swath of public life. I think I speak for a lot of slashdotters when I say that government is at best a necessary evil, something I put up with rather than genuinely like.
But this is not what "we", in the sense of most people, want. Most people do want government to be more involved. There are studies that show that most people are pro-government. They think the measures to "combat terrorism" are a good idea. They think that free speech rights are a little too broad. They take it for granted that the purpose of government is to take care of people. The desires of the majority are 'obviously' correct. (Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Zeitgeist.) The problem isn't government, it's these vast numbers of people who support government. Those people won't get the long-term picture until it's the short-term picture; they will support government until it's an immediate problem for them.
As always, the only profound solution is education. Until most people understand at a gut-level that government is the atomic-bomb of social engineering, a powerful and dangerous weapon that needs to operated with attention, caution and deliberation, they and "we" -- the smaller "we", the slashdot-type "we" that prefers freedom to comfort and security -- are going to remain under the feet of government.
... a player that acts evil most of the time won't get to play Jesus...
So if you go into the temple to open a can of whoopass on the moneylenders, is that good or evil?
As for the WMD's in Iraq: What does this have to do with the Republicans?
The fact that the evidence they're presenting appears to be largely bullshit. This article is an automated translation from German, but it makes clear that the degree of shovelling was so high that Blix's language wasn't considered suitable for print!
Credit to Elektro Schock at kuro5hin, who posted about this.
If I disagree with everyone, who the FSCK should I vote for?
:-)
Let me propose some possible alternatives.
You could vote Democrat. I don't like them much more than the Republicans, but there's Watergate, their ties to the religious right, Iran-Contra, the election fraud of 2000, and the lack of solid evidence of WMD in Iraq as just a few examples of the Republicans' work. The Republicans have demonstrated a willingness to out-and-out lie, and to do it over and over and over again. Vote them out and start badgering the Democrats for election reforms, including better support for third-party candidates.
You could vote Libertarian. They're against almost all government, supporting only police, courts and national defense in their most radical position.
You could vote for any other third party. If even, say, 20% of the votes in a national election went to third party candidates, the media reaction would force election reform.
The core idea is, if you don't like anyone, vote for change. Maybe someone you do like will sneak in.
The attitude "it could happen here" is exactly what allows over-reaction.
We're not over-reacting, it *is* happening. This is Germany, circa 1930 all over again. Hell, this is worse, because we have the bad example of Germany circa 1930. We should know better.
Boy, it's a good thing that Bruce Sterling is not paranoid or anything. Otherwise, he'd come up with some really whacky theories.
The attitude that "it can't happen here" is exactly what allows it to happen.
What definition of sentience are you using? m-w.com says:Animals aren't aware? Animals don't respond to sense impressions? More to the point, if animals don't have human-like emotions, they certainly are faking it really well. They're probably not exactly the same as human emotions, but they seem pretty close.
Hey, didn't Morpheus himself say "free your mind"?
Actually, I think that was En Vogue.
The responses I got... generally boiled down to "Whatever you want!" Okay... but give me some idea of a goal or a point to my existence.
A lot of us want to provide our own goal or point to our existence.
It's thrilling to hear this "what-do-i-do" versus "whatever-you-want" debate. The "gamers" want a game, where the goal is specified by the devs. The "worlders" want a world to live in, where goals are specified by each player. (Applications of this concept to politics are left to the reader as an exercise.) Worlders have been hoping for a long time for a game that would provide a minimal framework and let them create the social structures within that framework. Someplace a gamer can stretch their imaginative muscles.
Who expected what from EVE is a little unclear. Personally, I can only take so much Tolkien-inspired pseudo-medieval fantasy, and went to AO for a sci-fi environment[1]. I've been waiting for EVE for the same change in venue, so I'll play for a while no matter what happens, but the fact that EVE is self-structuring enough to fan these particular flames is really encouraging.
[1] Imagine my apoplexy when Funcom announced an expansion in which the corporate bad guys looked like demons and the rebel good guys looked like angels.
LADIES @ NJ/NYC: 23 YEAR OLD GUY SEEKS YOU!
Shouldn't this be:
IN SOVIET UNION: 23 YEAR OLD GUY SEEKS YOU!
SMG has always been one of those Hollywood women who really needs to eat a sandwitch sometime.
Well, she does, according to some of the fanfic I've read.
Oh, wait, sandwitch? Never mind.