It's practically a daily occurrence that someone who owns a *potentially* lucrative business "sells out" - ie, sells the entire business to (perhaps) the competition - the owner then retires a (possibly multi) millionaire at 30, set for life... he/she doesn't care if it means no competition in that arena. The buyer is happy because there is less competition and they've acquired assets.
Perhaps this is Inprise gearing up for a potential sale, rather than go under. But then again I'm a programmer, not an economist, so perhaps I'm full of BS. But I don't see that Inprise would've done this if their numbers hadn't shown that they were heading for trouble with their current strategy. Perhaps they've just decided to back out of the IDE market, much like IBM backed out of the OS market. Delphi will still exist, officially, but no roadmap.
I see this "partnership" as a bad thing. I see it as the end of real competition in development platforms on Windows. I know MFC well enough to know that it's a fscking hideously godawful "standard", that I wouldn't want my worst enemy to have to program with. MS Visual C++, however, happens to be a great product - but without decent competition it WILL stagnate, and prices WILL go up.
On the bright side, stagnation in development environments on Windows can only make developers more keen to check out Linux.
Personally I don't know how true it is what people are saying about the FSF and RMS.. but "Animal Farm" does contain many interesting truths about human nature. And I don't see any particular reason why any one group of people would be immune to that sort of thing.. "Free Software Good, Commercial Software Bad" or something like that. But as long as people remain capable of critical thought, nothing like that should pose any problems.
(a) Write a better book (b) Find publisher who will sell high-quality book (c) Make money off royalties from high-quality book
Nothing in the offer seems to foreclose this possibility. If the RMS-commissioned book turns out to be an excellent book, great. If it doesn't, the market is open for a better one.
Nonetheless I see your point. There does seem to a bit of an element of Microsoftian "announce vaporware to deter competitors from even bothering to try". Nonetheless I haven't seen anyone else try to produce a gnome programming book. And it would be really useful.
Amazing.. everyones making all this fuss over a few pics of nude girlies.. almost as if.. as if the nude human body were offensive or something!
One day, far off in the future, a more enlightened people will look back at this phase in history, and compare it to the dark ages.. "imagine", they will say, "they thought sex was something evil, filthy and offensive".
All this fuss about "protecting the kiddies", and yet not one bit of research has ever shown that the viewing of porn by minors is harmful.
Remember, "if God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way".
"An AI's motivation could be TOTALLY DIFFERENT..."
Emphasis on "could be".. one of the primary characteristics of human intelligence is the ability for the brain to "reprogram" itself to adapt to new tasks. The ability for self-reprogramming may essentially be a requirement if we are to build machines with intelligence matching or surpassing that of humans - whatever "instincts" we try to "hardcode" into such a machine (eg "do not harm humans") will probably be reprogrammable in some way, just as humans can override instincts when they really want to.
Another distinctive characteristic of human intelligence is unpredictability (eg Columbine) - you can't predict the behaviours of all the intelligent entities you (or they) create.
Also, if history is anything to go by, the first "truely" artificially intelligent creations of man will probably reach their first incarnations as military devices of some sort. What do you suppose their programmed primary motivations and driving urges will be?
And technology-wise, it's not a matter of if we eventually create computers with intelligence surpassing ours - it's a matter of when.. and whatever we make, we'll have to live with it. I for one am just a little "paranoid".
Computing power, and Linux apps
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The main problem I see here is that way back when Linux and all its applications ran great on 386's and 486's, the "computing power spectrum" for ppl running Linux *mainly* ranged from slow 386's to moderately fast 486's, and RAM probably ranged from about 4MB to 16MB on average. (intel platforms)
Nowadays the range is from slow 386's all the way up to (say) Quad Pentium III Xeon's, and RAM ranges from about 16MB to 512MB on average. So some of the newer applications (fat desktop environments) take advantage of the top half of that spectrum, and people probably fear that the Linux of the future (where nearly all new apps are Gnome and/or KDE) will no longer run on the bottom half of that spectrum. Some people want to utilise slower machines. Some want to utilise fast machines. Something has to give somewhere.
An "entry-level" PC can handle Gnome/KDE just fine. But all those old PC's are still hanging around, begging to be used, and the threat is that Gnome/KDE will prevent them from being usable. It's a genuine concern.
So whose idea did you really think it was when Intel put that new "feature" (sic) in its PIII?
Who did you think was really behind those little ID'ing features in MS Office documents?
Just some "food for thought"... pathetic paranoia?
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I'm pretty passive about most "little" things, like which icon is used where, doesn't really bother me.
But one thing that annoys the crap out of me (it's one of the main reasons I don't like to use Windows and I was horrified at a couple of "hints" that Gnome seems to be heading there) is when the system assumes I'm an ignorant moron -- when it tells me something I already know, in the form of an annoying message box. I *HATE* message boxes. (Re: Gnome, I'm referring to that message you get if you startx as root, warning you about the dangers of being "root", AAAARGH!)
Sure, it's basically impossible for the system to know what I know, and newbie users need that sh-t. But I *would* like some global "experience" setting somewhere, where you can select that you are "novice/beginner/intermediate/advanced/guru" etc.. then apps can check this before they piss you off with lame comments such as "This file is a 'program file'. If you delete it you will no longer be able to run the program".
Just my rant for the day. (On the whole I am very impressed with both KDE and Gnome, although Gnome still needs a bit more time to mature.)
Well I for one would have loved to have received car mechanics courses at school. They spent years teaching me all sorts of useless things that will never mean anything to me, and now I'm a member of the working class I regularly throw away large chunks of my salary on car maintenance (and half the time get ripped off) for my crappy old wreck of a vehicle, simply because I'm not clued up about cars.
Perhaps if more people were clued up about how computers work internally they wouldn't get ripped off so easily - this embodies MS's sales philosophy - teach people how to use *Microsoft software*, not how to use *computers*. And its precisely why large corporations like Intel and Microsoft, as well as thousands of smaller computer sales and repair stores are ripping ignorant consumers off left right and center - precisely the way mechanics rip people off.
At the *very least* some basic algorithmic principles should be compulsory for everyone at school. I remember as far back as primary school doing "Logo".
"Our readers are stupid uneducated dimwits" - Ed.
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Anyone else noticed how dim an opinion many corporate higher-ups have of their own customer base? This whole editor attitude of "our readers are way too clueless too understand all these truthful details, just simplify it until its in some sort of predigested form so that our stupid readers don't have to think". Advertising also.. advertisers say "hmm, lets see, just how stupid is our target market? Can we use a bunch of cheap overused marketing tactics from Marketing 101? Yes, of course we can! Our consumers are a bunch of easily manipulated suckers".
I've always sort of believed that if you treat people like morons, they will start behaving like morons. The people deciding what goes into newspapers and onto the TV are treating the viewers as morons. Perhaps people aren't as stupid as they are made out to be. Perhaps people would be more capable of critical thought if they weren't continually treated like drooling idiots. Or perhaps they really are, I don't know. But I'm sick of the media patronizing me.
Unsolicited commercial email - normally it is quite clear if the intent of the spammer is to try and sell you something, legit or not. I find it difficult to imagine a case where it would not be clear if the sender was trying to make money somehow (although there may be some borderline cases but I can't think of any).
But there are other types of 'spam' that don't fall into this category, eg the "hello friend i want to convert you to my religion" variety. I don't want to get that crud either.
But perhaps banning email that is (mass-sent && (commercial || a_scam) && unsolicited) would be sufficient to lower the quantity of unsolicited unwanted garbage to acceptable levels.
Nothing wrong with the idea of consumers being allowed to "opt-out" of receiving junk. Except that it just plain and simply does not work, and I suspect that in five to ten years the European Parliament will be realising that they have made an awful mistake.
Firstly, there is no guarantee at all that a spammer will remove you from his/her list. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case for most spammers.
Secondly, it requires effort, time (and consequently money) from the consumer to figure out how to get their email address removed from a spammers list. This would be OK if it was just a small handful of lists ever, but most spammers seem to each have their own "remove" list, and with each new spam mail I get, there seems to be a new address to reply to to "remove". So in reality consumers would probably be doing the "remove me" thing several times a week. Also, many of the "remove me" email addresses are simply bogus addresses.
A centralised "remove" database does not work either. The majority of spammers ignore this information, since they don't really give a rats ass if you don't want to receive their junk. Some spammers may use this information to *create* lists.
Most spammers will NOT remove you from their lists if you reply and type "remove" - on the contrary, replying often simply lets the spammer know which email addresses are active. Thus it is "unsafe" to "hit reply and type remove", so I do not do it.
As for "legit" companies, well, legalising spam, including the opt-out approach, also allows basically any company with access to your email address to spam you. So you can be sure that every few days yet another company will have "purchased" your email address as part of some spammer database and will be sending you advertisements for their products. The consumer will have to opt-out of every single one of these.
Companies have NOT shown in the past that they can be trusted wrt privacy; rather, they have shown quite the opposite (very large companies like Intel "consumer is the enemy", Sun "you have no privacy, get over it", and that other one have demonstrated they don't care about consumer privacy). Do you trust a company with your email address to not sell that information? Do you trust a company to delete your email address completely from their database? Do you trust companies not to 'exchange' information about consumers buying habits, etc etc?
Lastly, all the "usual" anti-spam arguments also apply, for example that most of the burden of cost is carried by the unwilling recipient of spam, typically through time and increased ISP costs.
Spam, all types of it, should be plain and simply illegal.
The "Dear Nightmare" thing sounds like a parody to me, looks like someone 'poking fun' at genuine attitudes entrenched in society.
The scary part is it is so "real" it is barely recognizable as parody. I'm sure most of the people it is parody-ing will read it and say something like "ha ha, yeah, hehe, think i will, thanks, uh, duh, teehee".
Overall decent post, but I can't say I agree with you where you imply that this is caused by the 'expunging of God from schools'. I went to what I would say was a pretty religous school - in South Africa, kids still wear school uniforms, and up until a year or two ago (after I left school) Christianity was still a large part of the syllabus, and prayer and scripture reading was a daily thing for all students in assembly and "Religious Instruction" periods. Also a fairly large percentage of students (I would guess about 30 to 40 %) were very religious, and were "good Christians", who spent their free time (during breaks (called recess in America) they got together and worshipped God, spent friday nights at Youth groups, etc etc. On top of this, about 99% of students were from "Christian" families, so even the not-so-religious still had Christian upbringings (South Africa is pretty conservative.)
And despite all this, bullying and violence were still rife, as was swearing and so was drug use. And this was in a "decent" middle-class school. I also get the impression that Columbine had a fairly religious atmosphere to it as well.
Many atheists, agnostics (like myself) and other non-Christians have no problem showing respect for others, and understanding what it means to respect others - while many "Christians" seem to have zero tolerance of others and are violent and abusive. Clearly we need to preach *tolerance*, and respect. Many atheists etc are incapable of doing harmful things (such as blowing away fellow students).
I agree with you on most the other points. But I don't think the introduction of God into the school syllabus teaches tolerance and respect. If anything, it teaches disrespect against others who hold different views (eg Muslims, Jews, atheists, agnostics are all sidelined, singled out, taught that they are "wrong" (I was taught that I was "wrong" at school, I was an atheist at the time, and sheez, people looked at me like I was some kinda strange animal when I tried to be vocal about it).)
Morals do not go hand in hand with religion, I am living proof of that - I was raised without religion, but my parents managed to instil in me a greater moral sense than many other people I have met. Some of the biggest pricks I've ever met, on the other hand, called themselves "Christians" (although I'm sure you'll probably agree they werent really) but the point is they had a Christian upbringing.
The Columbine killers were obviously filled with hate and anger, but I don't believe by any means that they were "fundamentally evil". *No* child is born filled with hate and anger (and no child is born "evil") - that has to come from somewhere. You could argue that Christianity, had these kids found it, might have provided some way to dissolve that hatred and anger. But in some cases Christianity fails to do so, I can name examples. Either way, kids need (a) alternative outlets for hate and anger, and (b) a situation that does not foster hate in the first place, eg no school bullying. This seems to be what you advocate.
Lea, I wouldn't take posts stating that geeks "asked for it"/"deserved it"/"just weren't tough enough" too seriously. I see this poster in the same class as those people who say that a woman got raped because "she was asking for it" or "she wanted it" (eg by the way she dressed or something equally lame).
Nobody asks to be a victim of anything ("asked for it"), nobody likes to be victimized, and not everybody is a victim ("it happens to everyone" attitude). But you will always get people who make such claims.
I mean, who really wants to, like, make an effort to, like, help other people who are suffering?
Some of use were very comfortable just cruising along and generally pretending not to notice that people right near us are in serious pain... we don't want the inconvenience and uncomfortable-feeling that taking action would bring. We just want to live in our little bubbles where we don't have to know about suffering. Then we can get on with watching Mad About You, Baywatch and the X-Files.
People like Jon Katz bother me, I mean, like, why can't we just like, ignore all the folks around us who are suffering, crying out for help, being pushed to the brink of homicide/suicide every day? Why do we have to be reminded of facts like "suicide is the third leading cause of death in America"? I have a right to live in an ignorance-induced selfish bliss, damnit!
Sure, life can be cruel, I mean, children get molested, people get murdered and women get raped. But these victims need to stop whining about it.. I mean, its so annoying, these women who just whine all the time about getting raped and so on, just because they lack the physical skills to survive in the jungle...
I mean, who cares about "rights" and all that other BS that America was founded upon. If you aren't tough enough to make it yourself, it must be YOUR fault that then, that you couldnt protect yourself when you were 6 and your stepfather molested you.. sorry, not tough enough to survive in the jungle, I guess.
How about those 6 million jews then.. just "not tough enough to survive in the jungle", I wish they would stop whining. And those damn Red Injuns the Americans blew away when they arrived, they werent tough enough, now they're some whiny "minority group".
Too bad the millions of black people oppressed for years in South Africa just "couldn't survive in the jungle".
And how about those damn Kosovo refugees, whining about being "victims" 'n all that, they should learn to defend themselves, damnit.
We better watch our backs.. if we're not careful these whiny minority-group victims might put an end to the age of white male supremacy.
Sure, 'the system' isn't perfect - but like I'm trying to say here, instead of trying to improve the system where it has failed victims, we should just sit on our asses and do nothing, or better, accuse the victims that they werent tough enough! Like maybe your wife gets raped one day.. what are you gonna tell her.. she wasn't tough enough to "survive in the jungle"? Your kid perhaps gets his arm broken one day by a bunch of bullies, you gonna tell him the same thing? A relative abuses your 8-year old daughter, gonna tell her the same thing?
Disclaimer, this article is parody of the article it responds to, etc etc.
Sorry to bust your bubble, but NOT everyone in school has to deal with being physically assaulted every day for literally years on end. At least, back in my school, probably less than 5% of the students got beaten up at all, let alone every single day for years.
And, if I may ask, lets say I am in a situation where I am approached by a group of "popular, athletic-type students", and they decide to start beating me up, and I am on my own, nowhere to run/hide, and noone is around to help me, and the teachers etc that I have told about this have all in the past said "just ignore them" or "try harder to fit in".. tell me, pleeeease, I would love to know, what is the "intelligent rational manner" to respond to that? Make witty comments? Threaten these people with a lawsuit? Um, yeah, I really see that all helping!
You say you were "treated as weird" in HS.. were you physically assaulted, day-in, day-out, for years on end? If so, do you really believe that everyone else was also?
Apparently some people are feeling left out of the whole "victimhood" thing or something:) You see the same behaviour cropping up in many other situations, for example, as a clinical depressive, I've often had to deal with the "sheez, everyone gets depressed sometimes" crap, from people who know absolutely nothing about clinical depression. Now its the "sheez, everyone gets picked on at school" crap.
.. how about we just remove all of those authoritarian rules stating that it is illegal to commit acts of physical assault against others. And how about we take away those oppressive little laws saying that it is illegal to rape women. I mean, those laws just address the problem after its already started. The only real way to solve the problem of physical assault and rape is by education.. parents should teach kids that it is wrong to rape women, beat up other people, hate others because of their class/race etc. Just this education alone should be enough.. but applying authoritarian tactics such as anti-child-abuse and anti-murder laws will just harbor resentment and make everyone feel oppressed, failing to solve anything.
Think carefully about this -- the types of behaviour this poster suggested passing legislation against - peer abuse - falls into the same class as all of the other physically violent crimes. He did not make suggestions to the effect of "ban people wearing trenchcoats" (an obvious violation of freedom of expression for an act that cannot harm others). Rather, he wants to pass rules against physical violence, such as "smash someones head into a locker", "punch someone in the stomach so that they cant breath for five minutes", "beat someone with metal chains till they're covered in bruises", "throw glass bottles at someone", "break someones arm", "stab someone with a knife"... you know, all those "cute-little-things-that-kids-do, that are part-of-growing-up, and if-you-just-ignore-them-they-will-go-away, and you-must-have-done-something-to-provoke-them, and why-dont-you-try-fit-in".
"the teasing that goes on, has gone on, and probably will go on for years to come"
Again and again I see people in the media and people posting on/. and other forums perpetuate this myth that "teasing" is the problem, and also that "everyone gets teased at that age", etc etc.
We are not, I'm afraid, talking about teasing.. heck, school wouldve been a breeze if I just had to put up with some teasing... what many here are talking about is being victims of physically violent crimes for years on end. Being *physically* assaulted - understand that. Many kids are getting beaten up and knocked around *daily*. In the "adult world", people get thrown in jail for doing the types of things that teachers turn a blind eye to every single day - beating up people is not considered protected free speech, I'm afraid.
You have a great point - the main thing is to have fun. I was a very serious person at school (probably largely due to the fact that I'm a depressive), but one of my big regrets is that I just did not make enough of an attempt to just go out and have fun. Sure, it isn't easy to do this in the first place if you're not popular -- but I did have some attitude problems, at least in the sense that I was very anti-superficial (anything vaguely superficial I hated, curiously this stopped in University at the exact same time I started on anti-depressants, but thats another story); I was also somewhat "anti-people". I also made a point of not getting too involved with sport, which was DUMB of me. Sport can be an excellent mindless way to let loose, have fun and "bond" with peers.
I was in too much of a hurry to grow up - mainly because I hated school.
I suspect that teachers, and in fact the school system, do NOT help out in this regard. I think that the system serves to perpetuate cliched stereotypes, probably not intentionally. If a kid starts showing intelligence, he is from a very early age "singled out" by the teachers and treated differently -- obviously his peers will start seeing him differently if he is treated differently, and thus begins the "I don't seem to fit in" snowball. Intelligent kids seem to be pushed into cliched "roles" - things like "nerdy kids dont need/want social skills", "nerdy kids don't belong on the sportsfield", etc etc. Nerdy kids aren't encouraged to do many of the things that a kid needs to do. ALL kids should be encouraged to actively participate, learn social skills, play sports (not necessarily for the school but just for fun) etc. I learnt at University how much fun it is playing sports with peers, even though I'm crap at it.
"I hated school just because I wasn't free to do with my time what I wanted"
Strangely, although I hated school, once I left I began to think to myself that one of the few things I *liked* about school was that I was free to do with my time what I wanted. When I was a student at University (working part-time) I had nearly no free time. Now that I'm working full-time I have almost no free time. But back at school I seemed to have all the time in the world.. the workload was light and easy, the "workday" was five hours; I often lazed away many an afternoon in the sun, or drawing, or programming.
BTW I grew up in "urban white" South Africa; we also for some reason have this odd cultural view that dumb is good and that if you're smart you're some sort of freak.
.. because in my school, it always seemed to me that only a small handful of kids, less than 5% of them, were getting physically assaulted on an almost daily basis.
You need to get over this idea that we are just talking about "natural teenage feelings of being an outcast" and "a bit of teasing". We are talking about all-out abuse, physical violent crimes that these kids are victims of. The press seems to say a lot "these kids were teased", "these kids were called name".. heck, if it was just name-calling, school would have been a breeze for me. It wasn't. I was hit and beaten on a near-daily basis for years on end. As far as I could tell, this was not happening to anywhere near the majority of my peers.
"Do the kids who got pushed around... say something to their teachers"
Generally, no. I can't remember what happened with the stab-wound case, but the broken-hand victim claimed that it was some or other accident. (If it was my hand broken I would have taken persecution of the perpetrator as far as I could.)
Obviously it can be argued that the victims are partly to blame here for keeping quiet. Unfortunately, a combination of factors makes it extremely difficult to not keep quiet;
There is a very strong unwritten "code of ethics" at school-going age, where you just simply do not 'snitch'. If you do, you are automatically thrown to the bottom rung of the social ladder, even if you werent there before. This results in further ostracization and greater unpopularity.
There is a hefty fear of retaliation. Sure, its easy to "be protected" from the people you just ratted on while you're at school under a teachers nose - but the moment the final school bell rings, the teachers go home and you're left with a reasonable probability of getting beaten up worse than before.
You *never* make any friends when you rat someone out.
A victim might feel that "running to the teacher" indicates a weakness on his part, a failing on his part of being strong enough to stand on his own two feet - as someone else on this forum said, a "perverse kind of Social Darwinism" - you gotta be strong. It's embarassing and shameful to say "I'm weak and get pushed around." And your peers *will* let you know just how weak and pathetic you are, if you have snitched.
Often ratting someone out has little or no effect. Often the perpetrator will just get a warning, or some equally weak "punishment". This isn't enough to get a "bullying is wrong" message across.
I could probably think of a few more reasons if I had more time.
The real way to "solve" this problem, I believe, is to attempt to reverse this seeming cultural "double-standard", which says that criminally violent behaviour is not OK except in a school situation. This means engendering(?) people, teachers particularly, with a culture of complete intolerance to bullying - an attitude towards it that is similar to the intolerance of other related "abuse" perpetrators, such as child abusers. The crime is quite similar. Society just sees one as evil and the other as "a part of growing up".
"Was such violence really ignored?"
The stabbing couldnt really be ignored because it was on school grounds and the victim had to be treated. Like I say, I can't remember too clearly what happened, but I think the "punishment" amounted to little more than a warning and perhaps a caning (which was still legal then here in South Africa, but isn't anymore.) In general, every other case was ignored, especially the "everyday" stuff. I saw time and again kids being horribly victimized while teachers, watching the whole thing, would stand by, staring 'past' this as if nothing was happening. I have no recollection of a teacher ever punishing this sort of thing, or even mentioning it out loud.
You are right, children should be taught to deal with such problems in a real-world manner. But this involves a widespread change of attitude amongst educators. I for one don't remember ever feeling that there was anyone I could go to, or anything I could say, that would have changed the situation. My situation was compounded by the fact that I suffer from clinical depression.
I believe the school system should serve as a catch-net for problems that either originate in the home or that are missed by parents. Children simply in most cases do not have the capacity to seek out solutions to their problems by themselves, and often may not even realise there is a problem. There are way too many screwed up families to just hope that wishing for better parenting is going to solve these problems. This only leaves one possible catch-point for these problems - the school system. There is no other system that has the potential to serve such a useful purpose.
For "real" psychology regarding the psychological aspects of online environments, a worthwhile read is Sherry Turkle's paper, "Constructions and Reconstructions of the Self in Virtual Reality" ( http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/co nstructions.html). I suggest reading the entire thing before passing judgment, the paper seems much weaker than it is if you only glance over it. It basically discusses how online social environments (in particular, MUDs) can be used to help people deal with real-life problems through role-playing and enactment.
She has a bunch of other papers on similar topics (which I haven't read yet) at her homepage http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/ .
Definitely better than the "games are evil, the spawn of satan, they possess our children and make them do evil things" type crap that the mass-media latches onto.
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It's practically a daily occurrence that someone who owns a *potentially* lucrative business "sells out" - ie, sells the entire business to (perhaps) the competition - the owner then retires a (possibly multi) millionaire at 30, set for life ... he/she doesn't care if it means no competition in that arena. The buyer is happy because there is less competition and they've acquired assets.
Perhaps this is Inprise gearing up for a potential sale, rather than go under. But then again I'm a programmer, not an economist, so perhaps I'm full of BS. But I don't see that Inprise would've done this if their numbers hadn't shown that they were heading for trouble with their current strategy. Perhaps they've just decided to back out of the IDE market, much like IBM backed out of the OS market. Delphi will still exist, officially, but no roadmap.
I see this "partnership" as a bad thing. I see it as the end of real competition in development platforms on Windows. I know MFC well enough to know that it's a fscking hideously godawful "standard", that I wouldn't want my worst enemy to have to program with. MS Visual C++, however, happens to be a great product - but without decent competition it WILL stagnate, and prices WILL go up.
On the bright side, stagnation in development environments on Windows can only make developers more keen to check out Linux.
.. Orwell's 'Animal Farm'.
.. but "Animal Farm" does contain many interesting truths about human nature. And I don't see any particular reason why any one group of people would be immune to that sort of thing .. "Free Software Good, Commercial Software Bad" or something like that. But as long as people remain capable of critical thought, nothing like that should pose any problems.
Personally I don't know how true it is what people are saying about the FSF and RMS
(a) Write a better book
(b) Find publisher who will sell high-quality book
(c) Make money off royalties from high-quality book
Nothing in the offer seems to foreclose this possibility. If the RMS-commissioned book turns out to be an excellent book, great. If it doesn't, the market is open for a better one.
Nonetheless I see your point. There does seem to a bit of an element of Microsoftian "announce vaporware to deter competitors from even bothering to try". Nonetheless I haven't seen anyone else try to produce a gnome programming book. And it would be really useful.
Amazing .. everyones making all this fuss over a few pics of nude girlies .. almost as if .. as if the nude human body were offensive or something!
.. "imagine", they will say, "they thought sex was something evil, filthy and offensive".
One day, far off in the future, a more enlightened people will look back at this phase in history, and compare it to the dark ages
All this fuss about "protecting the kiddies", and yet not one bit of research has ever shown that the viewing of porn by minors is harmful.
Remember, "if God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way".
"An AI's motivation could be TOTALLY DIFFERENT..."
Emphasis on "could be" .. one of the primary characteristics of human intelligence is the ability for the brain to "reprogram" itself to adapt to new tasks. The ability for self-reprogramming may essentially be a requirement if we are to build machines with intelligence matching or surpassing that of humans - whatever "instincts" we try to "hardcode" into such a machine (eg "do not harm humans") will probably be reprogrammable in some way, just as humans can override instincts when they really want to.
Another distinctive characteristic of human intelligence is unpredictability (eg Columbine) - you can't predict the behaviours of all the intelligent entities you (or they) create.
Also, if history is anything to go by, the first "truely" artificially intelligent creations of man will probably reach their first incarnations as military devices of some sort. What do you suppose their programmed primary motivations and driving urges will be?
And technology-wise, it's not a matter of if we eventually create computers with intelligence surpassing ours - it's a matter of when .. and whatever we make, we'll have to live with it. I for one am just a little "paranoid".
The main problem I see here is that way back when Linux and all its applications ran great on 386's and 486's, the "computing power spectrum" for ppl running Linux *mainly* ranged from slow 386's to moderately fast 486's, and RAM probably ranged from about 4MB to 16MB on average. (intel platforms)
Nowadays the range is from slow 386's all the way up to (say) Quad Pentium III Xeon's, and RAM ranges from about 16MB to 512MB on average. So some of the newer applications (fat desktop environments) take advantage of the top half of that spectrum, and people probably fear that the Linux of the future (where nearly all new apps are Gnome and/or KDE) will no longer run on the bottom half of that spectrum. Some people want to utilise slower machines. Some want to utilise fast machines. Something has to give somewhere.
An "entry-level" PC can handle Gnome/KDE just fine. But all those old PC's are still hanging around, begging to be used, and the threat is that Gnome/KDE will prevent them from being usable. It's a genuine concern.
Sorry, blabbed too long.
So whose idea did you really think it was when Intel put that new "feature" (sic) in its PIII?
Who did you think was really behind those little ID'ing features in MS Office documents?
Just some "food for thought"
I'm pretty passive about most "little" things, like which icon is used where, doesn't really bother me.
But one thing that annoys the crap out of me (it's one of the main reasons I don't like to use Windows and I was horrified at a couple of "hints" that Gnome seems to be heading there) is when the system assumes I'm an ignorant moron -- when it tells me something I already know, in the form of an annoying message box. I *HATE* message boxes. (Re: Gnome, I'm referring to that message you get if you startx as root, warning you about the dangers of being "root", AAAARGH!)
Sure, it's basically impossible for the system to know what I know, and newbie users need that sh-t. But I *would* like some global "experience" setting somewhere, where you can select that you are "novice/beginner/intermediate/advanced/guru" etc
Just my rant for the day. (On the whole I am very impressed with both KDE and Gnome, although Gnome still needs a bit more time to mature.)
Well I for one would have loved to have received car mechanics courses at school. They spent years teaching me all sorts of useless things that will never mean anything to me, and now I'm a member of the working class I regularly throw away large chunks of my salary on car maintenance (and half the time get ripped off) for my crappy old wreck of a vehicle, simply because I'm not clued up about cars.
Perhaps if more people were clued up about how computers work internally they wouldn't get ripped off so easily - this embodies MS's sales philosophy - teach people how to use *Microsoft software*, not how to use *computers*. And its precisely why large corporations like Intel and Microsoft, as well as thousands of smaller computer sales and repair stores are ripping ignorant consumers off left right and center - precisely the way mechanics rip people off.
At the *very least* some basic algorithmic principles should be compulsory for everyone at school. I remember as far back as primary school doing "Logo".
Anyone else noticed how dim an opinion many corporate higher-ups have of their own customer base? This whole editor attitude of "our readers are way too clueless too understand all these truthful details, just simplify it until its in some sort of predigested form so that our stupid readers don't have to think". Advertising also
I've always sort of believed that if you treat people like morons, they will start behaving like morons. The people deciding what goes into newspapers and onto the TV are treating the viewers as morons. Perhaps people aren't as stupid as they are made out to be. Perhaps people would be more capable of critical thought if they weren't continually treated like drooling idiots. Or perhaps they really are, I don't know. But I'm sick of the media patronizing me.
Unsolicited commercial email - normally it is quite clear if the intent of the spammer is to try and sell you something, legit or not. I find it difficult to imagine a case where it would not be clear if the sender was trying to make money somehow (although there may be some borderline cases but I can't think of any).
But there are other types of 'spam' that don't fall into this category, eg the "hello friend i want to convert you to my religion" variety. I don't want to get that crud either.
But perhaps banning email that is (mass-sent && (commercial || a_scam) && unsolicited) would be sufficient to lower the quantity of unsolicited unwanted garbage to acceptable levels.
Nothing wrong with the idea of consumers being allowed to "opt-out" of receiving junk. Except that it just plain and simply does not work, and I suspect that in five to ten years the European Parliament will be realising that they have made an awful mistake.
Firstly, there is no guarantee at all that a spammer will remove you from his/her list. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case for most spammers.
Secondly, it requires effort, time (and consequently money) from the consumer to figure out how to get their email address removed from a spammers list. This would be OK if it was just a small handful of lists ever, but most spammers seem to each have their own "remove" list, and with each new spam mail I get, there seems to be a new address to reply to to "remove". So in reality consumers would probably be doing the "remove me" thing several times a week. Also, many of the "remove me" email addresses are simply bogus addresses.
A centralised "remove" database does not work either. The majority of spammers ignore this information, since they don't really give a rats ass if you don't want to receive their junk. Some spammers may use this information to *create* lists.
Most spammers will NOT remove you from their lists if you reply and type "remove" - on the contrary, replying often simply lets the spammer know which email addresses are active. Thus it is "unsafe" to "hit reply and type remove", so I do not do it.
As for "legit" companies, well, legalising spam, including the opt-out approach, also allows basically any company with access to your email address to spam you. So you can be sure that every few days yet another company will have "purchased" your email address as part of some spammer database and will be sending you advertisements for their products. The consumer will have to opt-out of every single one of these.
Companies have NOT shown in the past that they can be trusted wrt privacy; rather, they have shown quite the opposite (very large companies like Intel "consumer is the enemy", Sun "you have no privacy, get over it", and that other one have demonstrated they don't care about consumer privacy). Do you trust a company with your email address to not sell that information? Do you trust a company to delete your email address completely from their database? Do you trust companies not to 'exchange' information about consumers buying habits, etc etc?
Lastly, all the "usual" anti-spam arguments also apply, for example that most of the burden of cost is carried by the unwilling recipient of spam, typically through time and increased ISP costs.
Spam, all types of it, should be plain and simply illegal.
The "Dear Nightmare" thing sounds like a parody to me, looks like someone 'poking fun' at genuine attitudes entrenched in society.
The scary part is it is so "real" it is barely recognizable as parody. I'm sure most of the people it is parody-ing will read it and say something like "ha ha, yeah, hehe, think i will, thanks, uh, duh, teehee".
Overall decent post, but I can't say I agree with you where you imply that this is caused by the 'expunging of God from schools'. I went to what I would say was a pretty religous school - in South Africa, kids still wear school uniforms, and up until a year or two ago (after I left school) Christianity was still a large part of the syllabus, and prayer and scripture reading was a daily thing for all students in assembly and "Religious Instruction" periods. Also a fairly large percentage of students (I would guess about 30 to 40 %) were very religious, and were "good Christians", who spent their free time (during breaks (called recess in America) they got together and worshipped God, spent friday nights at Youth groups, etc etc. On top of this, about 99% of students were from "Christian" families, so even the not-so-religious still had Christian upbringings (South Africa is pretty conservative.)
And despite all this, bullying and violence were still rife, as was swearing and so was drug use. And this was in a "decent" middle-class school. I also get the impression that Columbine had a fairly religious atmosphere to it as well.
Many atheists, agnostics (like myself) and other non-Christians have no problem showing respect for others, and understanding what it means to respect others - while many "Christians" seem to have zero tolerance of others and are violent and abusive. Clearly we need to preach *tolerance*, and respect. Many atheists etc are incapable of doing harmful things (such as blowing away fellow students).
I agree with you on most the other points. But I don't think the introduction of God into the school syllabus teaches tolerance and respect. If anything, it teaches disrespect against others who hold different views (eg Muslims, Jews, atheists, agnostics are all sidelined, singled out, taught that they are "wrong" (I was taught that I was "wrong" at school, I was an atheist at the time, and sheez, people looked at me like I was some kinda strange animal when I tried to be vocal about it).)
Morals do not go hand in hand with religion, I am living proof of that - I was raised without religion, but my parents managed to instil in me a greater moral sense than many other people I have met. Some of the biggest pricks I've ever met, on the other hand, called themselves "Christians" (although I'm sure you'll probably agree they werent really) but the point is they had a Christian upbringing.
The Columbine killers were obviously filled with hate and anger, but I don't believe by any means that they were "fundamentally evil". *No* child is born filled with hate and anger (and no child is born "evil") - that has to come from somewhere. You could argue that Christianity, had these kids found it, might have provided some way to dissolve that hatred and anger. But in some cases Christianity fails to do so, I can name examples. Either way, kids need (a) alternative outlets for hate and anger, and (b) a situation that does not foster hate in the first place, eg no school bullying. This seems to be what you advocate.
Lea, I wouldn't take posts stating that geeks "asked for it"/"deserved it"/"just weren't tough enough" too seriously. I see this poster in the same class as those people who say that a woman got raped because "she was asking for it" or "she wanted it" (eg by the way she dressed or something equally lame).
Nobody asks to be a victim of anything ("asked for it"), nobody likes to be victimized, and not everybody is a victim ("it happens to everyone" attitude). But you will always get people who make such claims.
I mean, who really wants to, like, make an effort to, like, help other people who are suffering?
... we don't want the inconvenience and uncomfortable-feeling that taking action would bring. We just want to live in our little bubbles where we don't have to know about suffering. Then we can get on with watching Mad About You, Baywatch and the X-Files.
Some of use were very comfortable just cruising along and generally pretending not to notice that people right near us are in serious pain
People like Jon Katz bother me, I mean, like, why can't we just like, ignore all the folks around us who are suffering, crying out for help, being pushed to the brink of homicide/suicide every day? Why do we have to be reminded of facts like "suicide is the third leading cause of death in America"? I have a right to live in an ignorance-induced selfish bliss, damnit!
/parody off
Sure, life can be cruel, I mean, children get molested, people get murdered and women get raped. But these victims need to stop whining about it .. I mean, its so annoying, these women who just whine all the time about getting raped and so on, just because they lack the physical skills to survive in the jungle ...
.. sorry, not tough enough to survive in the jungle, I guess.
.. just "not tough enough to survive in the jungle", I wish they would stop whining. And those damn Red Injuns the Americans blew away when they arrived, they werent tough enough, now they're some whiny "minority group".
.. if we're not careful these whiny minority-group victims might put an end to the age of white male supremacy.
.. what are you gonna tell her .. she wasn't tough enough to "survive in the jungle"? Your kid perhaps gets his arm broken one day by a bunch of bullies, you gonna tell him the same thing? A relative abuses your 8-year old daughter, gonna tell her the same thing?
I mean, who cares about "rights" and all that other BS that America was founded upon. If you aren't tough enough to make it yourself, it must be YOUR fault that then, that you couldnt protect yourself when you were 6 and your stepfather molested you
How about those 6 million jews then
Too bad the millions of black people oppressed for years in South Africa just "couldn't survive in the jungle".
And how about those damn Kosovo refugees, whining about being "victims" 'n all that, they should learn to defend themselves, damnit.
We better watch our backs
Sure, 'the system' isn't perfect - but like I'm trying to say here, instead of trying to improve the system where it has failed victims, we should just sit on our asses and do nothing, or better, accuse the victims that they werent tough enough! Like maybe your wife gets raped one day
Disclaimer, this article is parody of the article it responds to, etc etc.
Sorry to bust your bubble, but NOT everyone in school has to deal with being physically assaulted every day for literally years on end. At least, back in my school, probably less than 5% of the students got beaten up at all, let alone every single day for years.
.. tell me, pleeeease, I would love to know, what is the "intelligent rational manner" to respond to that? Make witty comments? Threaten these people with a lawsuit? Um, yeah, I really see that all helping!
.. were you physically assaulted, day-in, day-out, for years on end? If so, do you really believe that everyone else was also?
:) You see the same behaviour cropping up in many other situations, for example, as a clinical depressive, I've often had to deal with the "sheez, everyone gets depressed sometimes" crap, from people who know absolutely nothing about clinical depression. Now its the "sheez, everyone gets picked on at school" crap.
And, if I may ask, lets say I am in a situation where I am approached by a group of "popular, athletic-type students", and they decide to start beating me up, and I am on my own, nowhere to run/hide, and noone is around to help me, and the teachers etc that I have told about this have all in the past said "just ignore them" or "try harder to fit in"
You say you were "treated as weird" in HS
Apparently some people are feeling left out of the whole "victimhood" thing or something
.. how about we just remove all of those authoritarian rules stating that it is illegal to commit acts of physical assault against others. And how about we take away those oppressive little laws saying that it is illegal to rape women. I mean, those laws just address the problem after its already started. The only real way to solve the problem of physical assault and rape is by education .. parents should teach kids that it is wrong to rape women, beat up other people, hate others because of their class/race etc. Just this education alone should be enough .. but applying authoritarian tactics such as anti-child-abuse and anti-murder laws will just harbor resentment and make everyone feel oppressed, failing to solve anything.
... you know, all those "cute-little-things-that-kids-do, that are part-of-growing-up, and if-you-just-ignore-them-they-will-go-away, and you-must-have-done-something-to-provoke-them, and why-dont-you-try-fit-in".
Think carefully about this -- the types of behaviour this poster suggested passing legislation against - peer abuse - falls into the same class as all of the other physically violent crimes. He did not make suggestions to the effect of "ban people wearing trenchcoats" (an obvious violation of freedom of expression for an act that cannot harm others). Rather, he wants to pass rules against physical violence, such as "smash someones head into a locker", "punch someone in the stomach so that they cant breath for five minutes", "beat someone with metal chains till they're covered in bruises", "throw glass bottles at someone", "break someones arm", "stab someone with a knife"
"the teasing that goes on, has gone on, and probably will go on for years to come"
Again and again I see people in the media and people posting on /. and other forums perpetuate this myth that "teasing" is the problem, and also that "everyone gets teased at that age", etc etc.
We are not, I'm afraid, talking about teasing .. heck, school wouldve been a breeze if I just had to put up with some teasing ... what many here are talking about is being victims of physically violent crimes for years on end. Being *physically* assaulted - understand that. Many kids are getting beaten up and knocked around *daily*. In the "adult world", people get thrown in jail for doing the types of things that teachers turn a blind eye to every single day - beating up people is not considered protected free speech, I'm afraid.
You have a great point - the main thing is to have fun. I was a very serious person at school (probably largely due to the fact that I'm a depressive), but one of my big regrets is that I just did not make enough of an attempt to just go out and have fun. Sure, it isn't easy to do this in the first place if you're not popular -- but I did have some attitude problems, at least in the sense that I was very anti-superficial (anything vaguely superficial I hated, curiously this stopped in University at the exact same time I started on anti-depressants, but thats another story); I was also somewhat "anti-people". I also made a point of not getting too involved with sport, which was DUMB of me. Sport can be an excellent mindless way to let loose, have fun and "bond" with peers.
I was in too much of a hurry to grow up - mainly because I hated school.
I suspect that teachers, and in fact the school system, do NOT help out in this regard. I think that the system serves to perpetuate cliched stereotypes, probably not intentionally. If a kid starts showing intelligence, he is from a very early age "singled out" by the teachers and treated differently -- obviously his peers will start seeing him differently if he is treated differently, and thus begins the "I don't seem to fit in" snowball. Intelligent kids seem to be pushed into cliched "roles" - things like "nerdy kids dont need/want social skills", "nerdy kids don't belong on the sportsfield", etc etc. Nerdy kids aren't encouraged to do many of the things that a kid needs to do. ALL kids should be encouraged to actively participate, learn social skills, play sports (not necessarily for the school but just for fun) etc. I learnt at University how much fun it is playing sports with peers, even though I'm crap at it.
Dang, those wasted years.
"I hated school just because I wasn't free to do with my time what I wanted"
Strangely, although I hated school, once I left I began to think to myself that one of the few things I *liked* about school was that I was free to do with my time what I wanted. When I was a student at University (working part-time) I had nearly no free time. Now that I'm working full-time I have almost no free time. But back at school I seemed to have all the time in the world .. the workload was light and easy, the "workday" was five hours; I often lazed away many an afternoon in the sun, or drawing, or programming.
BTW I grew up in "urban white" South Africa; we also for some reason have this odd cultural view that dumb is good and that if you're smart you're some sort of freak.
.. because in my school, it always seemed to me that only a small handful of kids, less than 5% of them, were getting physically assaulted on an almost daily basis.
.. heck, if it was just name-calling, school would have been a breeze for me. It wasn't. I was hit and beaten on a near-daily basis for years on end. As far as I could tell, this was not happening to anywhere near the majority of my peers.
You need to get over this idea that we are just talking about "natural teenage feelings of being an outcast" and "a bit of teasing". We are talking about all-out abuse, physical violent crimes that these kids are victims of. The press seems to say a lot "these kids were teased", "these kids were called name"
"Do the kids who got pushed around ... say something to their teachers"
Generally, no. I can't remember what happened with the stab-wound case, but the broken-hand victim claimed that it was some or other accident. (If it was my hand broken I would have taken persecution of the perpetrator as far as I could.)
Obviously it can be argued that the victims are partly to blame here for keeping quiet. Unfortunately, a combination of factors makes it extremely difficult to not keep quiet;
I could probably think of a few more reasons if I had more time.
The real way to "solve" this problem, I believe, is to attempt to reverse this seeming cultural "double-standard", which says that criminally violent behaviour is not OK except in a school situation. This means engendering(?) people, teachers particularly, with a culture of complete intolerance to bullying - an attitude towards it that is similar to the intolerance of other related "abuse" perpetrators, such as child abusers. The crime is quite similar. Society just sees one as evil and the other as "a part of growing up".
"Was such violence really ignored?"
The stabbing couldnt really be ignored because it was on school grounds and the victim had to be treated. Like I say, I can't remember too clearly what happened, but I think the "punishment" amounted to little more than a warning and perhaps a caning (which was still legal then here in South Africa, but isn't anymore.) In general, every other case was ignored, especially the "everyday" stuff. I saw time and again kids being horribly victimized while teachers, watching the whole thing, would stand by, staring 'past' this as if nothing was happening. I have no recollection of a teacher ever punishing this sort of thing, or even mentioning it out loud.
You are right, children should be taught to deal with such problems in a real-world manner. But this involves a widespread change of attitude amongst educators. I for one don't remember ever feeling that there was anyone I could go to, or anything I could say, that would have changed the situation. My situation was compounded by the fact that I suffer from clinical depression.
I believe the school system should serve as a catch-net for problems that either originate in the home or that are missed by parents. Children simply in most cases do not have the capacity to seek out solutions to their problems by themselves, and often may not even realise there is a problem. There are way too many screwed up families to just hope that wishing for better parenting is going to solve these problems. This only leaves one possible catch-point for these problems - the school system. There is no other system that has the potential to serve such a useful purpose.
For "real" psychology regarding the psychological aspects of online environments, a worthwhile read is Sherry Turkle's paper, "Constructions and Reconstructions of the Self in Virtual Reality" ( http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/co nstructions.html). I suggest reading the entire thing before passing judgment, the paper seems much weaker than it is if you only glance over it. It basically discusses how online social environments (in particular, MUDs) can be used to help people deal with real-life problems through role-playing and enactment.
She has a bunch of other papers on similar topics (which I haven't read yet) at her homepage http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/ .
Definitely better than the "games are evil, the spawn of satan, they possess our children and make them do evil things" type crap that the mass-media latches onto.