Do you label everyone who thinks outside your
narrow little world a "troll"? Excuse me for
asking tough questions. If thinking for myself
makes me a "troll" then so be it, I'd rather
be a "troll" than live the life of a mere
receptacle for media products and blind
consumerism.
...isn't the whole thing an invitation to TERRORISTS?
Think about it. Those on the wrong side are going
to be the #1 beneficiaries of a technology like this.
It allows them to create their own secure networks
and organize murderous attacks against the
civilized world with total impunity.
In the past I might have thought putting all this
power in the hands of just anyone was an unmitigated
blessing. But now?
I'm only asking: Is it worth the risk? Can't
anything be done to make this technology safe?
The Macintosh Apple doesn't require all this cooling. Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but I think it does. There you are, trying to work around the bugs in Abi Word and wondering if it is because your AMD processor is just too damn hot, and endless droning on and on and on is giving you THE WORST headache! Maybe if you move your box a little further away... maybe you can get by with just three fans if you underclock it a little bit... GOD that humming never quits!
Macintosh Apple users have no fans! They don't listen to that noise day in and day out. How could this be? I don't know. I'm not saying the Macintosh Apple is a better computer. I'm only saying that users of the Apple don't have to listen to fucking fans all day long.
Maybe you like all those fans going constantly. If you do, good for you. I'm only saying, you don't have to listen to that non-stop noise on and on and on and on...
Everyone knows that hackers only steal and never pay for what they use. They cannot possibly be anyone's "customer". Treating them like criminals is perfectly legitimate.
And how on earth could calling a hacker a hacker do anything to alienate the real paying customers? Regular people with jobs and families who work and earn money and spend it on fine music CDs and movies don't even know any hackers. Unless they are really unlucky.
So the consumers who keep the world running smoothly have no reason to mind the prosecution of those who do things that normal folks would never dream of doing. And that is why the regular media over in the real world has ignored this story.
Only over the fantasy world of the hacker "community" is it even noticed.
...by the insightful discussion of desktop images. I had never realized that a plain desktop color could be so practical. I guess I was taken in by the "gee-whiz factor" as Mr. Jeff Raskin calls it. He's right that a plain, one-color desktop background really can work awfully well.
Was it right to be so critical of Mr. Steve Jobs though? Mr. Steve Jobs inventented the Macintosh Apple, and it is still the best O.S. ever. Maybe if you are just as successful, you can be critical. Even so, it's good to not like it my way so much. I know I don't.
It is well known that the Apple is the #1 educational computer. This is because it is far and away the most successful computer in schools, and in a school environment, the Macintosh Apple can't be beat.
You probably already know, but didn't list, all of other fatal flaws that "The Matrix" has. The number of implausible premises is a function of how long you spend thinking about the movie, and how much you know (or can guess) about the physics, computers, human nature, logic, philosophy, baking cookies, etc. The number of holes is the plot is legendary. The level of sustained, meaningless violence is so high that is goes beyond ultraviolence and becomes porn in the true sense: pure spectacle with zero content. The movie is visually arresting and brilliantly stylish, but after half an hour this too begins to work against it because you realize that the underlying message is "There is no problem so difficult that it can't be solved by wearing even cooler clothes." And then there is Keanu Reeves.
So what then, it's just a bad move, right? No! It is a movie that is intellectually stimulating and provocative and will have an influence that lasts for a generation. It is as much a culture-bearing artifact of the modern geek culture as "2001," or _On The Road_ were in their times.
But why? The movie looks self-indulgent, empty and hollow on its surface, and the closer you look, the more crap you find. So why does this bad movie work so well?
The reason people like Katz need to believe that "They... are creating a revolution and don't seem to know it" is that it justifies his existence. Katz needs to think that without him none of us would be able to look around and notice whether or not the world now is the same or different than it used to be. It's bad enough that he is clueless. What is offensive is that he thinks we are even more clueless than him.
Forget about Katz and his uninformed speculation about nothing. People like him and Rheingold have been sitting on the sidlines rehashing the exact same questions for a good ten years now. If they were going to get anywhere that way they would have done so long ago.
You raise a much more interesting question: What exactly makes an email address sound professional? I don't use nospamdennis@backstreetboysclub.com on my resume, and probably my @acm.org address sounds impressive to a few people, especially if you are only trying to impress an HR gargoyle. What about @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com? Too common? Since @yahoo.com is the one I actually use, even though no one is given the address directly, wouldn't using it make me look, I don't know, practical and down-to-earth? What about TygerTyger@brittanica.com? Too artsy fartsy? Does it make a difference to anyone if your email address is on your own machine, or on a machine that you pay to use, rather than a free email service? And finally there is your university's email. Will @gonzaga.edu impress anyone? Or does it have to me a Stanford machine before it starts to give you any points?
...are so quick to wrap themselves in the flag and sing hymns to capitalism and the free market economy. Government protection of IP is a form of regulation over the market. In a completely free market, you could rip off all the IP you wanted and your victims would have no recourse except hiring thugs or a private army. Look at what China said when Microsoft tried to get them to pay licensing fees: "How many warheads does Microsoft have?" (Just think of all the differnt kinds of irony involved here!) If you are a proponent of laws to protect IP, you are a supporter of a mixed economy, and possibly even a socialist, because you recognize that laissez faire leads to undesirable outcomes and so the government must intervene. You pinoks make me sick!;)
the only way for me to hear something
new is for (a) a friend to send it to me or (b) to hear it on the radio
Do you really think Microsoft
and Macintosh would have developed their software for free?
for people like me with relatively
mainstream tastes (WWF, Britney Spears etc) its all good.
If you are really happy with what the corporations are giving you, I don't really know what to say to you. Good for you, I guess.
I would never dream of violating the copyright of a Stephen King novel, or a Microsoft product, or a WWF pay-per-view. They can keep it all. Just don't expect me to go to the mat defending the "rights" of these corporations. These are people who make their living selling games to children where they get to play at ripping people's bodies apart, and they have total contempt for their customers. They see them only as components in a profit machine. Naturally the kids who are used like this have no qualms about stealing from the suppliers of this crap.
Pointing out that Ada Augusta Milhous Nixon Herbert Walker Bush Couger Mellencamp Byron, Lady of Lovelace And Not A Bad Looker Either pursued a mathematics education and sought difficult problems is not a defense of aristocracy. It is just one colorful example of someone who did good work without needing greed as a motive. But if for you only the carrot and stick will make you take on challenges, and you are pleased with the quality of things created to maximize market return, then more power to you. You make an excellent consumer and an ideal employee.
I'm on the Internet right now! Whee! Look at me world!!! I'm FAMOUS!
I'm nobody. I don't know anybody who isn't also nobody. I certainly didn't pay anybody anything for the privlidge of making my voice heard. That sure beats giving bribes to The End (aka The Edge aka The Peak aka The Mountain) to acquire the status of the next "underground" hit.
Now if only I could play something. Or at least hack...
It's not entirely about the end of album sales, but the end of royalties. While it may be free to just download the music, there are advantages to buying the CD, such as convenience and sound quality, especially if you eliminate all the record company overhead. But mostly I mentioned DiFranco because of the sketch she draws of how her business runs, and the sweet way she feigns dismay over making all that money.
Courtney Love does not fail to mention the importanance of radio airplay. Its right there on the first page, about halfway down. She points out that one of the expenses a corporate band pays is to have their songs put on the radio. Paying to get past this bottlneck between the artist and their (potential) fans is one of the things that putting your music on the Internet eliminates.
More to the point, what law are they going to be able to pass to prevent the inevitable? No matter what the the artists want, or whether information wants to be free or not, people will be free to copy it. They can attempt all the bozo copy protection schemes they want; it will barely slow the rate of copying. Better to accept it, and learn to enjoy the advantages.
I don't think Ani DiFranco spends a whole lot of time suing people for copying her music, and the link will give you a little more detail about how to make a living as a musician outside the mainstream. If you want you can sift through this list of bands who oppose copyrighting and see if any are making any money. My guess is that none own their own jet, I'll grant you that.
You've defined your question in a somewhat difficult way, though, by insisting on an exception for "hippie musicians." You can take any example you are given and label them a hippie and therefore they don't count. The fact that they don't go around demanding royalties for their music can be taken as proof that they are hippies. So you want, what, like a Christian country western singer with a buzz cut who never sells recordings and only collects the ticket recipts? I'll go look; stay right there 'til I get back...
There are musicians everywhere who demonstrate every day that you can make a perfectly respectable living doing nothing but selling tickets to live shows. Most corporate-owned bands don't make anything off their record sales any way, as you can find explained in places like Courtney Love's kooky rant in Salon. We already know that you can make money writing free software, though you probably will never make so much that your old friends no longer know you.
It is certainly necessary to prevent unlicensed copying if movie studios are to recoup the costs of $125 million-plus special effects blockbusters like "Dante's Peak" or "Titanic," or for record companies to finance Keith Richard's drug habit. The console video games that 13-year olds can't get enough of would take quite at hit as well if the games could be easily copied. The world's most popular PC operating system is another example of one of our civilization's achievements that might not exist without intellectual property protection.
I don't see what difference the laws will make. The only hope they have to continue centralized control of information is to build copy prevention into every kind of storage device in the world, which seems impractical at best.
Nowhere in the mainstream, corporate-owned infotainment media, software industry and legal establishment can you find an argument in favor of intellectual property?
...have never needed money to motivate them to create. They pursued their vocation because they couldn't stop themselves if they had wanted to. Ada Augusta merley heard about the idea of a computer that didn't even exist and she couldn't help trying to program it. The best programmers today are no different; they would be hacking away whether someone was paying them to or not. Rock stars are always telling interviewers that they practice their art out of love and consider themselves lucky that they get paid to do do what they love. Now they will get the chance to prove it.
With the decline in corporate control of information and content, musicians, writers and programmers will have direct access to a worldwide audiance, but no more of the exclusive access that the media empires of the past enjoyed. It means that more artists than ever will be able to quit their day jobs and make a moderate living doing what they love, but hardly any will become the kind of intergalactic superstars that can afford to buy private islands and professional football teams. I don't have a problem with that.
The number of bachelor's degrees awarded in engineering and engineering technologies fell 16 percent between 1986-1987 and 1991-1992. It dropped another 3 percent between 1991-1992 and 1996-1997, according to the Department of Education's most recent data.
In the 1996-1997 school year, 61,185 bachelor's degrees were awarded in engineering, marking the lowest level since 1975.
I really wonder if there will ever be enough tech workers, no matter what happens in education. The output of quality technology appears to remain constant no matter how much it is pushed in schools. The people who actually have all the great ideas and develop them appear to be immune to the vagaries of a good formal education or lack thereof (within reason). Efforts to mass produce technologists by expanding science and engineering education seems to just mean a proliferation of new names for college degrees (MIS), but not more people who know what they are doing.
Compared to other rich countries, the US public education system is really backward, yet the large portion of the population with an inadequate education hasn't led to a disproportionate lack of technical innovation in our society as a whole. Other countries that do give a good education to all of their citizens don't look vastly more productive when it comes to actual innovation. If this is all true, it might help if we recognized the fact and got used to it. Does the apparently large number of programmers from India contradict this hypothesis? Or does India have the the same share of geeks as every other country, but they are just more visible because of recent immigration trends? Why don't countries with exceptionally good education systems produce equally exceptionally large quantities of software?
(I'm only talking about technology workers here; education has many other purposes besides making more engineers. No, really, it does! And I also think foreigners should be allowed to live and work freely in the US with no restrictions at all, but that is another rant.)
...of English, so they couldn't see the parallel between Milton's belief in inner sight acquired due to his blindness and the irony of the sun being blotted out just when the days are supposed to be getting longer. And at dawn no less! Or else they thought you can just pull an apropos passage out of Paradise Lost with grep or something, and then just paste it. Or else they just don't like poetry.
To them I say:
But, while he was shouting, he saw with surprise
That the moon of that evening was starting to rise
Up over his head in the darkening skies.
"What's THAT?" snorted Yertle. "Say, what IS that thing
That dares to be higher than Yertle the King?
I shall not allow it! I'll go higher still!
I'll build my throne higher! I can and I will!
I'll call some more turtles. I'll stack 'em to heaven!
I need 'bout five thousand, six hundred and seven!"
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal Note. Thus with the Year
Seasons return, but not me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and the Book of knowledge fair
Presented with a Universal blanc
Of Nature's works to me expung'd and ras'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou Celestial Light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
You have been a programmer for 5 years and you are working; in fact you are busy 8 to 13 hours a day. Yet you don't have enough money to get a halfway decent monitor ($300 to $500) and good 2D card ($50 to $100)? Journeyman plumbers and auto mechanincs easily spend $5,000 at least on the tools of their much lower paying trades. Now I'm the last person to say that a programmer should make money a priority in choosing a career path, but in this case something just doesn't fit.
Are you working in Bangledesh? Are you a BASIC programmer? Do you have seven kids and a dog who will die without an operation?
Slashdot Mirror
Is it wrong to ask if this technology can be made safe? How do we know if we don't ask the question?
Do you label everyone who thinks outside your narrow little world a "troll"? Excuse me for asking tough questions. If thinking for myself makes me a "troll" then so be it, I'd rather be a "troll" than live the life of a mere receptacle for media products and blind consumerism.
Think about it. Those on the wrong side are going to be the #1 beneficiaries of a technology like this. It allows them to create their own secure networks and organize murderous attacks against the civilized world with total impunity.
In the past I might have thought putting all this power in the hands of just anyone was an unmitigated blessing. But now?
I'm only asking: Is it worth the risk? Can't anything be done to make this technology safe?
Macintosh Apple users have no fans! They don't listen to that noise day in and day out. How could this be? I don't know. I'm not saying the Macintosh Apple is a better computer. I'm only saying that users of the Apple don't have to listen to fucking fans all day long.
Maybe you like all those fans going constantly. If you do, good for you. I'm only saying, you don't have to listen to that non-stop noise on and on and on and on...
You bastard, the people love me! They have always loved me and they always will! Take it back!
And how on earth could calling a hacker a hacker do anything to alienate the real paying customers? Regular people with jobs and families who work and earn money and spend it on fine music CDs and movies don't even know any hackers. Unless they are really unlucky.
So the consumers who keep the world running smoothly have no reason to mind the prosecution of those who do things that normal folks would never dream of doing. And that is why the regular media over in the real world has ignored this story.
Only over the fantasy world of the hacker "community" is it even noticed.
Was it right to be so critical of Mr. Steve Jobs though? Mr. Steve Jobs inventented the Macintosh Apple, and it is still the best O.S. ever. Maybe if you are just as successful, you can be critical. Even so, it's good to not like it my way so much. I know I don't.
It is well known that the Apple is the #1 educational computer. This is because it is far and away the most successful computer in schools, and in a school environment, the Macintosh Apple can't be beat.
You probably already know, but didn't list, all of other fatal flaws that "The Matrix" has. The number of implausible premises is a function of how long you spend thinking about the movie, and how much you know (or can guess) about the physics, computers, human nature, logic, philosophy, baking cookies, etc. The number of holes is the plot is legendary. The level of sustained, meaningless violence is so high that is goes beyond ultraviolence and becomes porn in the true sense: pure spectacle with zero content. The movie is visually arresting and brilliantly stylish, but after half an hour this too begins to work against it because you realize that the underlying message is "There is no problem so difficult that it can't be solved by wearing even cooler clothes." And then there is Keanu Reeves.
So what then, it's just a bad move, right? No! It is a movie that is intellectually stimulating and provocative and will have an influence that lasts for a generation. It is as much a culture-bearing artifact of the modern geek culture as "2001," or _On The Road_ were in their times.
But why? The movie looks self-indulgent, empty and hollow on its surface, and the closer you look, the more crap you find. So why does this bad movie work so well?
The reason people like Katz need to believe that "They... are creating a revolution and don't seem to know it" is that it justifies his existence. Katz needs to think that without him none of us would be able to look around and notice whether or not the world now is the same or different than it used to be. It's bad enough that he is clueless. What is offensive is that he thinks we are even more clueless than him.
Forget about Katz and his uninformed speculation about nothing. People like him and Rheingold have been sitting on the sidlines rehashing the exact same questions for a good ten years now. If they were going to get anywhere that way they would have done so long ago.
You raise a much more interesting question: What exactly makes an email address sound professional? I don't use nospamdennis@backstreetboysclub.com on my resume, and probably my @acm.org address sounds impressive to a few people, especially if you are only trying to impress an HR gargoyle. What about @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com? Too common? Since @yahoo.com is the one I actually use, even though no one is given the address directly, wouldn't using it make me look, I don't know, practical and down-to-earth? What about TygerTyger@brittanica.com? Too artsy fartsy? Does it make a difference to anyone if your email address is on your own machine, or on a machine that you pay to use, rather than a free email service? And finally there is your university's email. Will @gonzaga.edu impress anyone? Or does it have to me a Stanford machine before it starts to give you any points?
Just wondering.
...are so quick to wrap themselves in the flag and sing hymns to capitalism and the free market economy. Government protection of IP is a form of regulation over the market. In a completely free market, you could rip off all the IP you wanted and your victims would have no recourse except hiring thugs or a private army. Look at what China said when Microsoft tried to get them to pay licensing fees: "How many warheads does Microsoft have?" (Just think of all the differnt kinds of irony involved here!) If you are a proponent of laws to protect IP, you are a supporter of a mixed economy, and possibly even a socialist, because you recognize that laissez faire leads to undesirable outcomes and so the government must intervene. You pinoks make me sick! ;)
-
the only way for me to hear something
new is for (a) a friend to send it to me or (b) to hear it on the radio
If you are really happy with what the corporations are giving you, I don't really know what to say to you. Good for you, I guess.Do you really think Microsoft and Macintosh would have developed their software for free?
for people like me with relatively mainstream tastes (WWF, Britney Spears etc) its all good.
I would never dream of violating the copyright of a Stephen King novel, or a Microsoft product, or a WWF pay-per-view. They can keep it all. Just don't expect me to go to the mat defending the "rights" of these corporations. These are people who make their living selling games to children where they get to play at ripping people's bodies apart, and they have total contempt for their customers. They see them only as components in a profit machine. Naturally the kids who are used like this have no qualms about stealing from the suppliers of this crap.
Pointing out that Ada Augusta Milhous Nixon Herbert Walker Bush Couger Mellencamp Byron, Lady of Lovelace And Not A Bad Looker Either pursued a mathematics education and sought difficult problems is not a defense of aristocracy. It is just one colorful example of someone who did good work without needing greed as a motive. But if for you only the carrot and stick will make you take on challenges, and you are pleased with the quality of things created to maximize market return, then more power to you. You make an excellent consumer and an ideal employee.
I'm on the Internet right now! Whee! Look at me world!!! I'm FAMOUS!
I'm nobody. I don't know anybody who isn't also nobody. I certainly didn't pay anybody anything for the privlidge of making my voice heard. That sure beats giving bribes to The End (aka The Edge aka The Peak aka The Mountain) to acquire the status of the next "underground" hit.
Now if only I could play something. Or at least hack...
It's not entirely about the end of album sales, but the end of royalties. While it may be free to just download the music, there are advantages to buying the CD, such as convenience and sound quality, especially if you eliminate all the record company overhead. But mostly I mentioned DiFranco because of the sketch she draws of how her business runs, and the sweet way she feigns dismay over making all that money.
Courtney Love does not fail to mention the importanance of radio airplay. Its right there on the first page, about halfway down. She points out that one of the expenses a corporate band pays is to have their songs put on the radio. Paying to get past this bottlneck between the artist and their (potential) fans is one of the things that putting your music on the Internet eliminates.
More to the point, what law are they going to be able to pass to prevent the inevitable? No matter what the the artists want, or whether information wants to be free or not, people will be free to copy it. They can attempt all the bozo copy protection schemes they want; it will barely slow the rate of copying. Better to accept it, and learn to enjoy the advantages.
I don't think Ani DiFranco spends a whole lot of time suing people for copying her music, and the link will give you a little more detail about how to make a living as a musician outside the mainstream. If you want you can sift through this list of bands who oppose copyrighting and see if any are making any money. My guess is that none own their own jet, I'll grant you that.
You've defined your question in a somewhat difficult way, though, by insisting on an exception for "hippie musicians." You can take any example you are given and label them a hippie and therefore they don't count. The fact that they don't go around demanding royalties for their music can be taken as proof that they are hippies. So you want, what, like a Christian country western singer with a buzz cut who never sells recordings and only collects the ticket recipts? I'll go look; stay right there 'til I get back...
Did those Renaissance cats need platoons of lawyers to protect their IP rights to keep the wolf from the door?
No one ever makes a living writing software if they allow it to be copied freely?
There are musicians everywhere who demonstrate every day that you can make a perfectly respectable living doing nothing but selling tickets to live shows. Most corporate-owned bands don't make anything off their record sales any way, as you can find explained in places like Courtney Love's kooky rant in Salon. We already know that you can make money writing free software, though you probably will never make so much that your old friends no longer know you.
It is certainly necessary to prevent unlicensed copying if movie studios are to recoup the costs of $125 million-plus special effects blockbusters like "Dante's Peak" or "Titanic," or for record companies to finance Keith Richard's drug habit. The console video games that 13-year olds can't get enough of would take quite at hit as well if the games could be easily copied. The world's most popular PC operating system is another example of one of our civilization's achievements that might not exist without intellectual property protection.
I don't see what difference the laws will make. The only hope they have to continue centralized control of information is to build copy prevention into every kind of storage device in the world, which seems impractical at best.
Nowhere in the mainstream, corporate-owned infotainment media, software industry and legal establishment can you find an argument in favor of intellectual property?
...have never needed money to motivate them to create. They pursued their vocation because they couldn't stop themselves if they had wanted to. Ada Augusta merley heard about the idea of a computer that didn't even exist and she couldn't help trying to program it. The best programmers today are no different; they would be hacking away whether someone was paying them to or not. Rock stars are always telling interviewers that they practice their art out of love and consider themselves lucky that they get paid to do do what they love. Now they will get the chance to prove it.
With the decline in corporate control of information and content, musicians, writers and programmers will have direct access to a worldwide audiance, but no more of the exclusive access that the media empires of the past enjoyed. It means that more artists than ever will be able to quit their day jobs and make a moderate living doing what they love, but hardly any will become the kind of intergalactic superstars that can afford to buy private islands and professional football teams. I don't have a problem with that.
- The number of bachelor's degrees awarded in engineering and engineering technologies fell 16 percent between 1986-1987 and 1991-1992. It dropped another 3 percent between 1991-1992 and 1996-1997, according to the Department of Education's most recent data.
I really wonder if there will ever be enough tech workers, no matter what happens in education. The output of quality technology appears to remain constant no matter how much it is pushed in schools. The people who actually have all the great ideas and develop them appear to be immune to the vagaries of a good formal education or lack thereof (within reason). Efforts to mass produce technologists by expanding science and engineering education seems to just mean a proliferation of new names for college degrees (MIS), but not more people who know what they are doing.In the 1996-1997 school year, 61,185 bachelor's degrees were awarded in engineering, marking the lowest level since 1975.
Compared to other rich countries, the US public education system is really backward, yet the large portion of the population with an inadequate education hasn't led to a disproportionate lack of technical innovation in our society as a whole. Other countries that do give a good education to all of their citizens don't look vastly more productive when it comes to actual innovation. If this is all true, it might help if we recognized the fact and got used to it. Does the apparently large number of programmers from India contradict this hypothesis? Or does India have the the same share of geeks as every other country, but they are just more visible because of recent immigration trends? Why don't countries with exceptionally good education systems produce equally exceptionally large quantities of software?
(I'm only talking about technology workers here; education has many other purposes besides making more engineers. No, really, it does! And I also think foreigners should be allowed to live and work freely in the US with no restrictions at all, but that is another rant.)
...of English, so they couldn't see the parallel between Milton's belief in inner sight acquired due to his blindness and the irony of the sun being blotted out just when the days are supposed to be getting longer. And at dawn no less! Or else they thought you can just pull an apropos passage out of Paradise Lost with grep or something, and then just paste it. Or else they just don't like poetry.
To them I say:
But, while he was shouting, he saw with surprise
That the moon of that evening was starting to rise
Up over his head in the darkening skies.
"What's THAT?" snorted Yertle. "Say, what IS that thing
That dares to be higher than Yertle the King?
I shall not allow it! I'll go higher still!
I'll build my throne higher! I can and I will!
I'll call some more turtles. I'll stack 'em to heaven!
I need 'bout five thousand, six hundred and seven!"
Dr. Seuss, Yertle the Turtle.
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal Note. Thus with the Year
Seasons return, but not me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and the Book of knowledge fair
Presented with a Universal blanc
Of Nature's works to me expung'd and ras'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou Celestial Light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
John Milton, Paradise Lost, III, 38-55
But you should still make your health your highest priority, no matter what you do.
You have been a programmer for 5 years and you are working; in fact you are busy 8 to 13 hours a day. Yet you don't have enough money to get a halfway decent monitor ($300 to $500) and good 2D card ($50 to $100)? Journeyman plumbers and auto mechanincs easily spend $5,000 at least on the tools of their much lower paying trades. Now I'm the last person to say that a programmer should make money a priority in choosing a career path, but in this case something just doesn't fit.
Are you working in Bangledesh? Are you a BASIC programmer? Do you have seven kids and a dog who will die without an operation?
Just wondering, that's all.