By the time the complete history of the human race human race can be written there won't be anyone interested enough in us to write it.
The history of the human race already has been started, written by the only creatures in the multiverse likely to find us interesting, rather than fascinating (or appalling?)
How would you deal with the situation where the sum of what all the people wants exceeds the sum of what all the people can provide? What if it turned out that the absence of money significantly reduced the inclination of people to work? Then the sum of what all the people provided would be a lot less than what is provided today.
How would you change contract law to deal with the absence of money?
How would you deal with the situation where there where not enough automation volunteers to deal with all the automataion needs; where nobody wanted to be a soldier, or a sewer worker, or a CEO?
What would be the advantage of turning a university into a corporation? For that matter, given the absence of money, what would be the nature of a corporation?
I'd rather hear a counter arguement about how it is impossible to create such a system using current technology than simply discrediting my opinions because I haven't written up a website with enough words to prove it to you.
Far from discrediting your opinions, I am hoping to gain some insight into them. And when I ask for a link, I do not necessarily mean a web link. You say that, in the past five years, solutions to all our problems have been found. I did not and do not think it was hostile of me to ask for a little more information, nor to indicate my hope that descriptions of these solutions include how they would deal with some of the more pressing problems they would face.
If, on the other hand, they all boil down to "we should let technology save us", your hostility is understandable and no more need be said.
Anyway, there are solutions to solve all our problems. Most of them developed over the last 5 years
I would be very interested to see a link to these solutions. I would hope such a link contained information that included the proposed detailed day-to-day operation of the solution, once impemented; the detailed plan for making the transition from where we are to where the solution means to take us, including how to deal with the inevitable opposition; the means by which we'll get to the point where such a transition is even seriously considered; and finally, why anyone thinks the solution would work any better than past utopian solutions.
I think the only way to get our minds off of money is to do away with it completely and instead use computers, databases and networks to manage our resources efficiently
This, also, make me want to see a plan. It reminds me of the Socialists' claim that all would be well if the workers were in charge. I have never seen nor heard of a detailed economic model that gave any hope of actually succeeding in managing a nation's resources efficiently, wisely and fairly. Such a model may well be within the capabilities of human ingenuity, but I'd be a little surprised if such a thing already existed, given my understanding of the state of technology.
We see this all the time. People see terrible things going on and think that all they have to do is point at it while loudly raising alarm, and they have contributed to the solution. Well, it ain't true. Yeah, the education system sucks, but it isn't because those running it want it to suck. TV is a vast wasteland, and always has been, but what, if anything, can be done to improve it? Even offering a solution is dangerous enough, but fixing a social problem without a plan will certainly lead to disaster.
Utopians consistently excel in discovering faults, but those who actually try to fix them usually end up with a situation far worse than the one they were so alarmed about.
The number of good Windows admins may well be about equal to the number of good Unix admins, but there are sure as hell a lot more really bad Windows admins out there. Problably just because that's where that particular ecological niche exists.
I'm glad someone finally mentioned Brin. His uplifter universe, though it gets a little strange at the end, is one of the most imaginative ever written. I think it compares very well with the universe of Dune.
Fascism, according to dictionary.com is:
"A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
According to this, there's no discernable difference between Fascism (as practiced by the Nazis) and Communism (as practiced by the Soviets). Methinks I detect a note of revisionist thinking here.
Probably the last time quality housing was built in the U.S. was back at the turn of the 20th century, when all those exquisite Victorian homes and craftsman-era cottages were built.
Craftsman Homes was a brand name, back in the early days of the last century. IIRC, it was even trademarked.
Discussions about what came before the Big Bang miss an important element of Relativity. It's not that there was nothing before the Big Bang, it's that the very notion of before time is nonsensical. The Big Bang represents an edge of time itself. There's no going back beyond that point in time because, even more than Oakland, there's no there there. The very idea of the begining of space-time being a creation event is open to question. It is as likely as not that the entire continuum - all points in space as well as all points in time - already exists, and that conciousness is simply the experience of moving through time. As likely is the recently proposed idea that there is actually a creation of this universe happening along the edge of the time dimension, and that conciousness is a by-product of this process.
In any case, to imagine any events occuring outside the space-time continuum in which we reside - including the formation or destruction of our universe, we must assume that some analogue of time also exists outside. At this point, that is rampant speculation; as are any guesses about the nature of that meta-time or of the meta-processes that take place within.
Then there's the case of the company who's DB is worth $1M/hour when it's down. Who are you going to sue if MySql goes down for a day? Disclaimers aside, Oracle actually has some money you can go after.
Who are you going to sue if Oracle goes down? Does anyone have information about the odds of winning lawsuits against Oracle/Sun/Microsoft? Yeah, they have money to win, but that means they have money to defend. It's almost certain that somebody using these products did something that was not recommended. Which, of course means that any problem would not be the fault of the vendor.
Smart folks use a product for what it can do for them, not for what it can do for their lawyers.
The folks who did the shooting back on that May 4th were National Guard, as in "I'm not a jackbooted thug, but I play one on the weekend!"
The folks who did the shooting at Ruby Ridge and Waco were the Real Thing. I assume they learnt their lesson: It's OK to kill lefties and students, but better leave the right alone.
An absolutely secure audit trail is needed
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
Purely electronic balloting would only work if there was a truly secure way of making sure that the votes cast were the votes counted, and the binary that did the counting was the binary compiled by the published source. It is just too easy to slip in a patch that alters the vote "just a bit". The source would have to be open, the binary digitally signed, and the operational binary's signature checked frequently. In other words, the election process would have to be run by geeks. Good luck.
We haven't seen the results of the hand count yet, but I for one won't be surprised if there is a very large delta between what the machines counted and what the humans count - and I would not blame human error for the difference.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Aside from the real-time capabilities, which I presume are meaningless to almost all linux users, basically we've got another BeOS here.
Yeah, except that QNX has been around - and people have been buying it for mission critical applications - for many, many years. I think we can all learn something about how the *nix market works by taking a look at these guys, and I, for one, am glad that this showed up on slashdot. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
If you are not getting paid a lot of money for what you do, you are either:
1. A chump 2. Incompentent 3. Unable to comprehend how well-off you are.
Most folks I know are pulling in an effective annual salary of around $100k (using the metric that a consultant's effective annual salary is the hourly rate divided by three), give or take a few $10K. This is about half of what it takes to buy a good house in San Francisco, and nowhere near what I would call "big Bucks". And nowhere near what I would require to put up with a job I did not love. It's a pity that they are not representative of the normal teacher.
It's interesting that you use teachers as an example. I know several teachers, and any one of them could easily triple their salary by moving to a tech job, and they know it. They stay where they are because they love their jobs and because they know they are making a difference.
I say again, unless you're making Big Bucks - unless you are seeing millions heading your way - if you're not having fun, it's just not worth the effort.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Scott Adams once defined high tech as stuff that doesn't work. We spend so much time messing with technology because that what it takes to get it to work. One of these days, it'll all come together and start working right. And then the quality of my life, at least, will diminish. I "work" long hours because I love what I do and wouldn't rather be doing anything else. On the other hand, I've long since learned to respect geek fatigue, and to solve problems by sleeping on them.
Anyone who hasn't should read The Soul of a New Machine and take the lessons therein to heart. Nobody is going to be greatful for the hours you put in at work. There will be no reward in the future. Working in high tech is like play professional sports. Unless you're one of the few who make the big bucks, if you're not having fun it just isn't worth the effort. If you don't love what you do, you ought to find something to do that's a whole lot easier.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
I must admit that the lack of sub selects was one of the biggest things to bug me when I first started using MySQL. I got around it by looping through queries in my code. Maybe a bit less efficient, but it works.
It may be less efficient, but it may also be more efficient. I have often gotten an order of magnitude improvement in database code by moving subqueries out of the SQL select and into the program code. Of course the same tactic will often make things even worse. It all depends on the program logic, the compiler, the database and (it sometimes seems) the phase of the moon. When tweaking code like this, there is no substitute for profiling the running program.
MySQL simplifies this whole process. Since subselects are not supported, you just don't have to worry about optimising that particular thing.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Apple didn't want you developing for the Mac unless you werre a commercial licenser
Actually, this may be closer to the truth than you realize. While Steve Jobs was more than happy to encourage non-commercial developers, he made it very clear that only those who were dedicated to shifting the burden from user to developer were welcomed into the fold. That shift of effort was like a mantra in the early days of the Mac.
Of course, things have changed, and there is no longer any reason for the programming effort to be as great as it is on the Mac. Which is probably why Apple is changing the programming experience for the Mac developer. With OS X, Mac programming will change from being to hardest way to program to the easiest and most fun. We should be seeing some very nice applications soon after OS X arrives.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
How will I know its not biased towards the right or left
That one's easy. There is no right or left on the Internet. That dicotomy, where one is forced to accept one entire slate of political ideas or another, is an oversimplification that was invented and has been kept alive by the traditional media's need to pander to the least common denominator.
Whatever bias is present in any particular news site, you can be sure that is won't be nearly as simple as left and right.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
This is one of the major problems in making false analogies; in this case, pretending that illegal copying is just like stealing. People just don't notice when the analogy breaks down, and continue to use it well past the point of absurdity. The legal system, at least in the USA, is particularly bad at this.
While copying a copyrighted work can certainly be illegal in some cases, it is not theft. It has many of the same characteristics as theft. It is in some ways like theft. It is, in other words, analogous to theft. But it is not theft. Theft is another crime altogether. Ditto piracy.
What this all means is that while I wouldn't be surprised if some prosecutor or police agent under the thumb of RIAA goes after a MP3 lover for trafficing in stolen goods, it isn't that at all, and any decent lawyer should be able to beat that rap (we'll just pass over the problems that arise when government employees subvert the law for the benefitof the rich and powerful).
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
I hope Deneba (the makers of Canvas) take this as a wakeup call, and get their act together a little better. I have always prefered Canavas to Corel Draw. Not only does it integrate raster and vector graphics like no other application I've seen, but its vector tools are (IMHO) far better than Corel's.
But the latest Canvas beta download did not work at all, and we should be seeing close-to-release quality by now. Granted, they are doing a better thing, as pointed out in posting #7, by developing with libwine, rather then just running it in Wine; and that will take longer. But still, it will be a real shame if Corel Draw buries Canvas again just because it got to market sooner.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Nobody uses GUI toolkits anymore. Your front end should be HTML
This is not even almost true. While HTML is the right choice for a great many applications there are still a whole lot of times where you need a richer, more flexible set of User Interface elements. Applications that are heavily oriented to data entry, that need quick response of an indicator to human input, that load up data into controls in a fairly complex manner, or that have to cram a lot of controls into a small sppace are good candidates for a traditional GUI. Use the right tool for the right job.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Slashdot Mirror
By the time the complete history of the human race human race can be written there won't be anyone interested enough in us to write it.
The history of the human race already has been started, written by the only creatures in the multiverse likely to find us interesting, rather than fascinating (or appalling?)
How would you deal with the situation where the sum of what all the people wants exceeds the sum of what all the people can provide? What if it turned out that the absence of money significantly reduced the inclination of people to work? Then the sum of what all the people provided would be a lot less than what is provided today.
How would you change contract law to deal with the absence of money?
How would you deal with the situation where there where not enough automation volunteers to deal with all the automataion needs; where nobody wanted to be a soldier, or a sewer worker, or a CEO?
What would be the advantage of turning a university into a corporation? For that matter, given the absence of money, what would be the nature of a corporation?
I'd rather hear a counter arguement about how it is impossible to create such a system using current technology than simply discrediting my opinions because I haven't written up a website with enough words to prove it to you.
Far from discrediting your opinions, I am hoping to gain some insight into them. And when I ask for a link, I do not necessarily mean a web link. You say that, in the past five years, solutions to all our problems have been found. I did not and do not think it was hostile of me to ask for a little more information, nor to indicate my hope that descriptions of these solutions include how they would deal with some of the more pressing problems they would face.
If, on the other hand, they all boil down to "we should let technology save us", your hostility is understandable and no more need be said.
Anyway, there are solutions to solve all our problems. Most of them developed over the last 5 years
I would be very interested to see a link to these solutions. I would hope such a link contained information that included the proposed detailed day-to-day operation of the solution, once impemented; the detailed plan for making the transition from where we are to where the solution means to take us, including how to deal with the inevitable opposition; the means by which we'll get to the point where such a transition is even seriously considered; and finally, why anyone thinks the solution would work any better than past utopian solutions.
I think the only way to get our minds off of money is to do away with it completely and instead use computers, databases and networks to manage our resources efficiently
This, also, make me want to see a plan. It reminds me of the Socialists' claim that all would be well if the workers were in charge. I have never seen nor heard of a detailed economic model that gave any hope of actually succeeding in managing a nation's resources efficiently, wisely and fairly. Such a model may well be within the capabilities of human ingenuity, but I'd be a little surprised if such a thing already existed, given my understanding of the state of technology.
We see this all the time. People see terrible things going on and think that all they have to do is point at it while loudly raising alarm, and they have contributed to the solution. Well, it ain't true. Yeah, the education system sucks, but it isn't because those running it want it to suck. TV is a vast wasteland, and always has been, but what, if anything, can be done to improve it? Even offering a solution is dangerous enough, but fixing a social problem without a plan will certainly lead to disaster.
Utopians consistently excel in discovering faults, but those who actually try to fix them usually end up with a situation far worse than the one they were so alarmed about.
The number of good Windows admins may well be about equal to the number of good Unix admins, but there are sure as hell a lot more really bad Windows admins out there. Problably just because that's where that particular ecological niche exists.
I'm glad someone finally mentioned Brin. His uplifter universe, though it gets a little strange at the end, is one of the most imaginative ever written. I think it compares very well with the universe of Dune.
Fascism, according to dictionary.com is: "A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
According to this, there's no discernable difference between Fascism (as practiced by the Nazis) and Communism (as practiced by the Soviets). Methinks I detect a note of revisionist thinking here.
They use big, long extension cords for their fishing boats. The only problem is the time it takes to untangle it all at the end of the day.
Probably the last time quality housing was built in the U.S. was back at the turn of the 20th century, when all those exquisite Victorian homes and craftsman-era cottages were built.
Craftsman Homes was a brand name, back in the early days of the last century. IIRC, it was even trademarked.
Discussions about what came before the Big Bang miss an important element of Relativity. It's not that there was nothing before the Big Bang, it's that the very notion of before time is nonsensical. The Big Bang represents an edge of time itself. There's no going back beyond that point in time because, even more than Oakland, there's no there there. The very idea of the begining of space-time being a creation event is open to question. It is as likely as not that the entire continuum - all points in space as well as all points in time - already exists, and that conciousness is simply the experience of moving through time. As likely is the recently proposed idea that there is actually a creation of this universe happening along the edge of the time dimension, and that conciousness is a by-product of this process.
In any case, to imagine any events occuring outside the space-time continuum in which we reside - including the formation or destruction of our universe, we must assume that some analogue of time also exists outside. At this point, that is rampant speculation; as are any guesses about the nature of that meta-time or of the meta-processes that take place within.
Then there's the case of the company who's DB is worth $1M/hour when it's down. Who are you going to sue if MySql goes down for a day? Disclaimers aside, Oracle actually has some money you can go after.
Who are you going to sue if Oracle goes down? Does anyone have information about the odds of winning lawsuits against Oracle/Sun/Microsoft? Yeah, they have money to win, but that means they have money to defend. It's almost certain that somebody using these products did something that was not recommended. Which, of course means that any problem would not be the fault of the vendor.
Smart folks use a product for what it can do for them, not for what it can do for their lawyers.
The folks who did the shooting back on that May 4th were National Guard, as in "I'm not a jackbooted thug, but I play one on the weekend!"
The folks who did the shooting at Ruby Ridge and Waco were the Real Thing. I assume they learnt their lesson: It's OK to kill lefties and students, but better leave the right alone.
Purely electronic balloting would only work if there was a truly secure way of making sure that the votes cast were the votes counted, and the binary that did the counting was the binary compiled by the published source. It is just too easy to slip in a patch that alters the vote "just a bit". The source would have to be open, the binary digitally signed, and the operational binary's signature checked frequently. In other words, the election process would have to be run by geeks. Good luck.
We haven't seen the results of the hand count yet, but I for one won't be surprised if there is a very large delta between what the machines counted and what the humans count - and I would not blame human error for the difference.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Aside from the real-time capabilities, which I presume are meaningless to almost all linux users, basically we've got another BeOS here.
Yeah, except that QNX has been around - and people have been buying it for mission critical applications - for many, many years. I think we can all learn something about how the *nix market works by taking a look at these guys, and I, for one, am glad that this showed up on slashdot.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Corporations are people, for almost all legal considerations. They can and do hold patents.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
If you are not getting paid a lot of money for what you do, you are either:
1. A chump
2. Incompentent
3. Unable to comprehend how well-off you are.
Most folks I know are pulling in an effective annual salary of around $100k (using the metric that a consultant's effective annual salary is the hourly rate divided by three), give or take a few $10K. This is about half of what it takes to buy a good house in San Francisco, and nowhere near what I would call "big Bucks". And nowhere near what I would require to put up with a job I did not love. It's a pity that they are not representative of the normal teacher.
It's interesting that you use teachers as an example. I know several teachers, and any one of them could easily triple their salary by moving to a tech job, and they know it. They stay where they are because they love their jobs and because they know they are making a difference.
I say again, unless you're making Big Bucks - unless you are seeing millions heading your way - if you're not having fun, it's just not worth the effort.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Scott Adams once defined high tech as stuff that doesn't work. We spend so much time messing with technology because that what it takes to get it to work. One of these days, it'll all come together and start working right. And then the quality of my life, at least, will diminish. I "work" long hours because I love what I do and wouldn't rather be doing anything else. On the other hand, I've long since learned to respect geek fatigue, and to solve problems by sleeping on them.
Anyone who hasn't should read The Soul of a New Machine and take the lessons therein to heart. Nobody is going to be greatful for the hours you put in at work. There will be no reward in the future. Working in high tech is like play professional sports. Unless you're one of the few who make the big bucks, if you're not having fun it just isn't worth the effort. If you don't love what you do, you ought to find something to do that's a whole lot easier.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
I must admit that the lack of sub selects was one of the biggest things to bug me when I first started using MySQL. I got around it by looping through queries in my code. Maybe a bit less efficient, but it works.
It may be less efficient, but it may also be more efficient. I have often gotten an order of magnitude improvement in database code by moving subqueries out of the SQL select and into the program code. Of course the same tactic will often make things even worse. It all depends on the program logic, the compiler, the database and (it sometimes seems) the phase of the moon. When tweaking code like this, there is no substitute for profiling the running program.
MySQL simplifies this whole process. Since subselects are not supported, you just don't have to worry about optimising that particular thing.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Apple didn't want you developing for the Mac unless you werre a commercial licenser
Actually, this may be closer to the truth than you realize. While Steve Jobs was more than happy to encourage non-commercial developers, he made it very clear that only those who were dedicated to shifting the burden from user to developer were welcomed into the fold. That shift of effort was like a mantra in the early days of the Mac.
Of course, things have changed, and there is no longer any reason for the programming effort to be as great as it is on the Mac. Which is probably why Apple is changing the programming experience for the Mac developer. With OS X, Mac programming will change from being to hardest way to program to the easiest and most fun. We should be seeing some very nice applications soon after OS X arrives.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
How will I know its not biased towards the right or left
That one's easy. There is no right or left on the Internet. That dicotomy, where one is forced to accept one entire slate of political ideas or another, is an oversimplification that was invented and has been kept alive by the traditional media's need to pander to the least common denominator.
Whatever bias is present in any particular news site, you can be sure that is won't be nearly as simple as left and right.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
This is one of the major problems in making false analogies; in this case, pretending that illegal copying is just like stealing. People just don't notice when the analogy breaks down, and continue to use it well past the point of absurdity. The legal system, at least in the USA, is particularly bad at this.
While copying a copyrighted work can certainly be illegal in some cases, it is not theft. It has many of the same characteristics as theft. It is in some ways like theft. It is, in other words, analogous to theft. But it is not theft. Theft is another crime altogether. Ditto piracy.
What this all means is that while I wouldn't be surprised if some prosecutor or police agent under the thumb of RIAA goes after a MP3 lover for trafficing in stolen goods, it isn't that at all, and any decent lawyer should be able to beat that rap (we'll just pass over the problems that arise when government employees subvert the law for the benefitof the rich and powerful).
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Unix (and, of course, Linux) is the best Integrated Development Environment ever built. Just add a GUI builder and what more could you want?
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
I hope Deneba (the makers of Canvas) take this as a wakeup call, and get their act together a little better. I have always prefered Canavas to Corel Draw. Not only does it integrate raster and vector graphics like no other application I've seen, but its vector tools are (IMHO) far better than Corel's.
But the latest Canvas beta download did not work at all, and we should be seeing close-to-release quality by now. Granted, they are doing a better thing, as pointed out in posting #7, by developing with libwine, rather then just running it in Wine; and that will take longer. But still, it will be a real shame if Corel Draw buries Canvas again just because it got to market sooner.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Nobody uses GUI toolkits anymore. Your front end should be HTML
This is not even almost true. While HTML is the right choice for a great many applications there are still a whole lot of times where you need a richer, more flexible set of User Interface elements. Applications that are heavily oriented to data entry, that need quick response of an indicator to human input, that load up data into controls in a fairly complex manner, or that have to cram a lot of controls into a small sppace are good candidates for a traditional GUI. Use the right tool for the right job.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation