Um, I think I heard that they were not only first computer programmers, but they were the *first programmers*, ever. The word didn't exist before, or something like that.
Considering the period when most healthy young men were in the military, it does not seem too surprising.
I'd be curious to know how similar an authors books are to one another... can this distinguish an author's style, or merely individual works.
This was exactly what I was thinking. I'm studying an authorship problem of a Sanskrit text, and would like to try this on the work and other works allegedly from the same author.
By the way, the applet rendered properly on my iBook with OmniWeb. Didn't need Windows or Pentium III or 256MB RAM.
(I hate to reply to the same post twice, but the post is misleading. And I don't have moderation points.)
This Indus-Saraswati civilization, mehrgarh, Indus script being Sanskrit, etc., are highly controversial.
I am beginning to think that the book reviewed in the page the parent post referred is talking about Rajaram's book on deciphering the Indus script. Many people think it is a revisionist history.
This was a highly controversial book, and even Indian mainstream media picked up the issue.
I would like to suggest a little google search with the words ``mehrgarh, rajaram, witzel''
Ah, OK. My mistake. I didn't realise how far south it was. I just immediately thought "ancient India - Indus valley".
OK.
Nonetheless, that makes it even less likely that the city will have had any aspects of Hindu or Aryan culture in its makeup.
If it ever existed. The parent poster was pointing out that the supposedly remaining temple of the seven is actually a quite famous Hindu temple. And it's from the 7th and 8th century. So, either that the temple is not the surviving temple or there were no 7 temples (6 of which sunk around 5000BC) in the first place.
Interestingly, the first verse of Rig Veda says something like this (paraphrasing...)
"There was no truth before life, no falsehood, no sky, no space. Where was all hidden, who dug it up? Where was all the water?"
That is not true. The first verse of the Rgveda says "agnimILe purohitaM yaj~nasya devaM RtvIjam | hotAraM ratnadhAtamam ||", etc., which praises the god Fire (Agni). And this continues for quite some time.
What you cited sounds vaguely familiar. Maybe that's from one of the Upanishads?
If you read the article linked in the parent post, it is quite evident that the book is not any better than Hancock's book. (And it's darn hard to figure which book the reviewer was reviewing!) It dates Ashoka in 950BC, and Buddha and Mahavira in 1150BC or so. It is quite hard to counter all the evidence that suggests Ashoka was later than Alexander.
By the way, books of that kind are published in tens each year in india.
Indus valley civilization (IVC) is called Indus valley civilization because its prominent sites (Harappa and Mohenjo Daro) are in that valley.
Old school scholars view is that the inhabitants of the civilization moved to the south after the collapse of the civilization (circa 1200BCE). We don't know much about prehistoric South India around 3000BC. There are no large scale sites that are associated with the IVC.
Current view of the IVC is that it spread over up to modern day Gujarat. There are several large scale sites in that state.
Shouldn't there be other large sites like the seven temples in South India if the Indus Valley Civilization was so prevalent. FYI, Mahapariburam is just south of Madras, which is pretty south.
OTOH, there are other more interesting archaeological sites in South India. The most interesting for me is those that belong to a megalith culture. The book I read said that one person (or more than one?) was about 2m (or more) high.
I just read thearticle, but could this be a little late come April fool's joke?
Also, note the name Graham Hancock. Isn't this the Fingerprint of the Gods guy?
I am rather skeptical of the discovery. I, for one, had never heard of the seven pagodas of Mahapariburam. South Asians don't use the word pagoda, in the first place, I think. Pagoda is a word used in Southasian Buddhist architecture context.
Re:Let me count the ways...
on
LoTR Takes 4 Oscars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
[Guess I should post anonymous to save some karma, but...]
Uma should have gotten the most eye-catching breast award last night.
I think everyone in the USA needs to really get introspective, and see if they are brainwashed (oh no you think, the our media is pure truth, not an instrament of social engineering). See if they have chosen a side a priori. Because choosing sides, choosing military solutions - these things will only furthur the violence, furthur the hatred.
Looks like we are going way off topic, but...
A comment like this is why I think the US still has a relatively healthy society at the end of the day. I am not living in the US any more, but after living in several countries (Japan, US, and Germany), I note that the US has the most diverse range of opinions. And there is virtually no barrier in expressing them, which is hard to say about other countries. For example, you cannot talk much about the imperial family publicly in Japan, it is kind of a ``taboo'' to support atomic energy in Germany, etc.
There may be general direction where public opinion in the US heads toward. But I find it nice that there always are critical voices, and they are heard!
I say, ``keep up the good work, 'mericans!''
(While I am writing this comment, the parent was modded down. It was modded up before. I guess this is the evidence that there are many kinds of people even at/.)
I was in a similar opinion until I began using 12.1" LCD screen on an iBook with OS X. I changed my opinion. Anti-aliasing done right is good.
My eyes don't feel strain when I'm looking at the screen with anti-aliased fonts in Mac OS X any more. I first felt that the text was a bit too blurry. But after a while, I can't even look at any text that is not anti-aliased. I came to the point to prefer 12.1" LCD screen to CRT.
Re:Because nothing could ever improve that way
on
Zarf in Mac OS X Land
·
· Score: 1
It's already an old post and I'm not sure if you will read this. But...
You are just like me!
I also wish to have sort options in the column view, and I'm also hoping someone will do cocoa Xemacs. I'm using Xemacs (that thing just compiled with./configure; make!) in Terminal.app. Font-lock mode somehow works with xemacs and Terminal.app.
I also installed X, and tried xemacs on it, but it simply is unusable.
I'd even hope that emacs/xemacs becomes a Framework so that I can use its powerful editing service work in any application.
But it's still nice to have all those common key bindings work in most text editing fields, such as this field in OmniWeb I'm just writing in.
Re:Because nothing could ever improve that way
on
Zarf in Mac OS X Land
·
· Score: 1
I hear you.
I can't even use Cocoa apps, including IE. I installed X (I mean X window system), but hardly feel using any app on it because of the quality of the text drawn on the screen.
It's simply a joy to look at the screen of my iBook in Mac OS X.
By the way, I settled with putting the Dock on the right side, and my desktop is not showing disk icons. This made OS X experience a lot similar to that of using Window Maker, I always use when I use linux. Notable difrerences are menus always visible on top of the screen and a decent file browser (Finder). I also settled in using Finder always with the column view--the right way. Considering where WindowMaker came from, this seems natural. And I think OS X is menat to be used like this.
I longed for using a NeXT computer in early '90s. But they were so expensive that I kept using Mac. But I stopped using dog slow Mac OS on my Mac in 1997. (Mac OS 8 and 9 are basically System 7 in my opinion.) Used LinuxPPC for 5 years, waiting for NeXTSTEP to come back as Mac OS X. And with its arrival, I'm happy.
I can't tell if this new PhotoShop is a carbon app or cocoa app from the tiny screenshot at c|Net. But assuming that it is a cocoa app, which I somewhat doubt, it may not be too difficult to port it to GNUStep. But again, I doubt anybody (Adobe or Apple) would encourage such a port.
I think this topic has become more of on topic rather than off.
I also thought this was about Counter-strike cheats. And I do not think we are responsible for the confusion. I suspect timothy intentionally used the words ``CS cheaters'' to cause confusion. Perhaps subconsciously and a bit trying to be funny.
It has more to do with the context than the abbreviation CS is confusing. For example try google with ``CS cheats.'' Most hits direct to pages that has something to do with counter-strike cheats. These two words are closely associated, and as such, many think about counter-strike cheats when they see those two words in vicinity.
I would think trying to avoid confusion is a responsibility of the author. Timothy could have written something like ``cheats in CS courses'' if he did not want to cause confusion. I think the fact he didn't suggests that responses like ours were expected.
> Can someone please tell me why this is modded at a 4?
Because it was an interesting point of view?
Seriously though, for some people who have been using computers for more than a couple of years have heard of, seen, or used NeXTStep/OpenSTEP, its user-frinedliness, programmer-friendliness, clealiness, and so on.
Some folks were fortunate enough in that the first computer they used was not a PC loaded with Windows. Or some were adventurous or curious to try out other possibilities. And some of them found NeXTStep/OpenSTEP was great.
There seems to be a misconception that NeXT-/Open-/GNUSTep is just a GUI, which is not. Go to gnustep.org and try to learn what it is about.
I'd agree with the original ac to think that "GNUStep is arguably more impoartant than KDE or GNOME for the future of linux." I was trying out GNUStep in combination with WindowMaker on my LinuxPPC machine until my hard drive died last month. I hadn't install Gnome or KDE, but was doing fine.
I'm not sure I'd go back to Linux world very soon since I'm going to buy a Mac to run OS X, arguably an evolution of NeXTStep. Arguably because it has been, in a way, contaminated with Mac OS Classic UI elements to keep the old Mac users to think that OS X is an evolution of Mac OS. But for me, Mac OS X is still an evolution of the NeXTStep which I longed to use myself, but did not have chance. NeXTStep for me was indeed the next step from Mac OS.
Maybe you don't have the same appreciation for the beauty (of desgin, cleanliness of GUI elements). Maybe you do not feel that gnome and KDE are butt-ugly however you'd configure. But there are some people who think the same way as I do. And some poeple (moderators) found that the view was ``interesting.''
I skimmed over the comments but no one seems to have mentioned the underwater structure found off coast of Okinawa.
I remember seeing the first report on TV in Japan in '92 or so. Thanks to the clear water around Okinawa, this site (?) comes with a lot of impressive pictures.
As usual, try google with ``Okinawa underwater structure''
I always wondered why this discovery does not attract as much attention as other discoveries of underwater structures. I suppose it is because it is not in the Atlantic. Or, you'd have to go half way around the earth beyond the columns (?) of Hercules.
There does not seem to have been an agreement on the nature of the structure, but those pictures are simply mind boggling.
It's a shame when I have moderator points, there is something I would like to comment:(
Anyhow, during the WWII, the US used blimps to host radars to detect approaching U-boats on the Atlantic coast. So, your idea does not seem to be too far fetched.
Speaking of the Mongols' attempts to invade Japan,
it should have been quite obvious that if they would park their ships on the northern coast of Kyushu toward the end of summer, a typhoon or two will hit them had they collected meteological data in the area . And that was exactly what happened (twice). I guess the direction of the wind was quite appropriate for them to enbark from Korea to Japan in the season. But that's the high season of tyephoons. That was a matter of statistics rather than magic.
I'm sure that every Buddhis priest and Shinto priest prayed to whatever they think was powerful to rid the Mongols when they invaded. They had conquered the whole Asia and half the Europe by that time. There was no way tiny island nation Japan could push them back.
The reason why the magic seems to have worked sometimes is that at every single war, both sides pray to God/gods/Buddhas to win. Most cultures have rituals for the preparations for war. In most cases there is a winner and their magic have worekd while the others' has not.
Hitler was unique in that he was so much into occult. But the Japanese cannot laugh at him for they (at least officially) believed that the Emperor was living god.
WWII was perhaps the first war the science won (atomic bomb and radar), which I think is good.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, I think I heard that they were not only first computer programmers, but they were the *first programmers*, ever. The word didn't exist before, or something like that.
Considering the period when most healthy young men were in the military, it does not seem too surprising.
BTW, This is another good source.
This was exactly what I was thinking. I'm studying an authorship problem of a Sanskrit text, and would like to try this on the work and other works allegedly from the same author.
By the way, the applet rendered properly on my iBook with OmniWeb. Didn't need Windows or Pentium III or 256MB RAM.
I'd say this is better than blatantly copying ideas from Japanese movies/animes without acknowledgment as certain Mickymouse company does.
(I hate to reply to the same post twice, but the post is misleading. And I don't have moderation points.)
This Indus-Saraswati civilization, mehrgarh, Indus script being Sanskrit, etc., are highly controversial.
I am beginning to think that the book reviewed in the page the parent post referred is talking about Rajaram's book on deciphering the Indus script. Many people think it is a revisionist history.
This was a highly controversial book, and even Indian mainstream media picked up the issue.
I would like to suggest a little google search with the words ``mehrgarh, rajaram, witzel''
Guess you are right. But the name Pagoda still doesn't sound right. Maybe the Brits called the site in that way, seeing 7 towers?
Odd thing is that the seven pagodas refer to ``existing'' temples in the village, according to the article you referred.
OK.
If it ever existed. The parent poster was pointing out that the supposedly remaining temple of the seven is actually a quite famous Hindu temple. And it's from the 7th and 8th century. So, either that the temple is not the surviving temple or there were no 7 temples (6 of which sunk around 5000BC) in the first place.
That is not true. The first verse of the Rgveda says "agnimILe purohitaM yaj~nasya devaM RtvIjam | hotAraM ratnadhAtamam ||", etc., which praises the god Fire (Agni). And this continues for quite some time.
What you cited sounds vaguely familiar. Maybe that's from one of the Upanishads?
And I am a Sanskritist (but not a Vedicist).
The brother poster's joke notwithstanding,
If you read the article linked in the parent post, it is quite evident that the book is not any better than Hancock's book. (And it's darn hard to figure which book the reviewer was reviewing!) It dates Ashoka in 950BC, and Buddha and Mahavira in 1150BC or so. It is quite hard to counter all the evidence that suggests Ashoka was later than Alexander.
By the way, books of that kind are published in tens each year in india.
Indus valley civilization (IVC) is called Indus valley civilization because its prominent sites (Harappa and Mohenjo Daro) are in that valley.
Old school scholars view is that the inhabitants of the civilization moved to the south after the collapse of the civilization (circa 1200BCE). We don't know much about prehistoric South India around 3000BC. There are no large scale sites that are associated with the IVC.
Current view of the IVC is that it spread over up to modern day Gujarat. There are several large scale sites in that state.
Shouldn't there be other large sites like the seven temples in South India if the Indus Valley Civilization was so prevalent. FYI, Mahapariburam is just south of Madras, which is pretty south.
OTOH, there are other more interesting archaeological sites in South India. The most interesting for me is those that belong to a megalith culture. The book I read said that one person (or more than one?) was about 2m (or more) high.
Oops, I meant Southeast Asian, not Southasian.
I just read thearticle, but could this be a little late come April fool's joke?
Also, note the name Graham Hancock. Isn't this the Fingerprint of the Gods guy?
I am rather skeptical of the discovery. I, for one, had never heard of the seven pagodas of Mahapariburam. South Asians don't use the word pagoda, in the first place, I think. Pagoda is a word used in Southasian Buddhist architecture context.
[Guess I should post anonymous to save some karma, but...]
Uma should have gotten the most eye-catching breast award last night.
Looks like we are going way off topic, but...
A comment like this is why I think the US still has a relatively healthy society at the end of the day. I am not living in the US any more, but after living in several countries (Japan, US, and Germany), I note that the US has the most diverse range of opinions. And there is virtually no barrier in expressing them, which is hard to say about other countries. For example, you cannot talk much about the imperial family publicly in Japan, it is kind of a ``taboo'' to support atomic energy in Germany, etc.
There may be general direction where public opinion in the US heads toward. But I find it nice that there always are critical voices, and they are heard!
I say, ``keep up the good work, 'mericans!''
(While I am writing this comment, the parent was modded down. It was modded up before. I guess this is the evidence that there are many kinds of people even at
I think your post deserves a better point.
I was in a similar opinion until I began using 12.1" LCD screen on an iBook with OS X. I changed my opinion. Anti-aliasing done right is good.
My eyes don't feel strain when I'm looking at the screen with anti-aliased fonts in Mac OS X any more. I first felt that the text was a bit too blurry. But after a while, I can't even look at any text that is not anti-aliased. I came to the point to prefer 12.1" LCD screen to CRT.
It's already an old post and I'm not sure if you will read this. But...
./configure; make!) in Terminal.app. Font-lock mode somehow works with xemacs and Terminal.app.
You are just like me!
I also wish to have sort options in the column view, and I'm also hoping someone will do cocoa Xemacs. I'm using Xemacs (that thing just compiled with
I also installed X, and tried xemacs on it, but it simply is unusable.
I'd even hope that emacs/xemacs becomes a Framework so that I can use its powerful editing service work in any application.
But it's still nice to have all those common key bindings work in most text editing fields, such as this field in OmniWeb I'm just writing in.
I hear you.
I can't even use Cocoa apps, including IE. I installed X (I mean X window system), but hardly feel using any app on it because of the quality of the text drawn on the screen.
It's simply a joy to look at the screen of my iBook in Mac OS X.
By the way, I settled with putting the Dock on the right side, and my desktop is not showing disk icons. This made OS X experience a lot similar to that of using Window Maker, I always use when I use linux. Notable difrerences are menus always visible on top of the screen and a decent file browser (Finder). I also settled in using Finder always with the column view--the right way. Considering where WindowMaker came from, this seems natural. And I think OS X is menat to be used like this.
But NeXT is Apple now. Or Apple is NeXT.
I longed for using a NeXT computer in early '90s. But they were so expensive that I kept using Mac. But I stopped using dog slow Mac OS on my Mac in 1997. (Mac OS 8 and 9 are basically System 7 in my opinion.) Used LinuxPPC for 5 years, waiting for NeXTSTEP to come back as Mac OS X. And with its arrival, I'm happy.
One should think Mac OS X as NeXTSTEP.
Weird Al?
But you mentioned him already with "Larry".
I can't tell if this new PhotoShop is a carbon app or cocoa app from the tiny screenshot at c|Net. But assuming that it is a cocoa app, which I somewhat doubt, it may not be too difficult to port it to GNUStep. But again, I doubt anybody (Adobe or Apple) would encourage such a port.
I also thought this was about Counter-strike cheats. And I do not think we are responsible for the confusion. I suspect timothy intentionally used the words ``CS cheaters'' to cause confusion. Perhaps subconsciously and a bit trying to be funny.
It has more to do with the context than the abbreviation CS is confusing. For example try google with ``CS cheats.'' Most hits direct to pages that has something to do with counter-strike cheats. These two words are closely associated, and as such, many think about counter-strike cheats when they see those two words in vicinity.
I would think trying to avoid confusion is a responsibility of the author. Timothy could have written something like ``cheats in CS courses'' if he did not want to cause confusion. I think the fact he didn't suggests that responses like ours were expected.
Because it was an interesting point of view?
Seriously though, for some people who have been using computers for more than a couple of years have heard of, seen, or used NeXTStep/OpenSTEP, its user-frinedliness, programmer-friendliness, clealiness, and so on.
Some folks were fortunate enough in that the first computer they used was not a PC loaded with Windows. Or some were adventurous or curious to try out other possibilities. And some of them found NeXTStep/OpenSTEP was great.
There seems to be a misconception that NeXT-/Open-/GNUSTep is just a GUI, which is not. Go to gnustep.org and try to learn what it is about.
I'd agree with the original ac to think that "GNUStep is arguably more impoartant than KDE or GNOME for the future of linux." I was trying out GNUStep in combination with WindowMaker on my LinuxPPC machine until my hard drive died last month. I hadn't install Gnome or KDE, but was doing fine.
I'm not sure I'd go back to Linux world very soon since I'm going to buy a Mac to run OS X, arguably an evolution of NeXTStep. Arguably because it has been, in a way, contaminated with Mac OS Classic UI elements to keep the old Mac users to think that OS X is an evolution of Mac OS. But for me, Mac OS X is still an evolution of the NeXTStep which I longed to use myself, but did not have chance. NeXTStep for me was indeed the next step from Mac OS.
Maybe you don't have the same appreciation for the beauty (of desgin, cleanliness of GUI elements). Maybe you do not feel that gnome and KDE are butt-ugly however you'd configure. But there are some people who think the same way as I do. And some poeple (moderators) found that the view was ``interesting.''
I skimmed over the comments but no one seems to have mentioned the underwater structure found off coast of Okinawa.
I remember seeing the first report on TV in Japan in '92 or so. Thanks to the clear water around Okinawa, this site (?) comes with a lot of impressive pictures.
As usual, try google with ``Okinawa underwater structure''
I always wondered why this discovery does not attract as much attention as other discoveries of underwater structures. I suppose it is because it is not in the Atlantic. Or, you'd have to go half way around the earth beyond the columns (?) of Hercules.
There does not seem to have been an agreement on the nature of the structure, but those pictures are simply mind boggling.
Anyhow, during the WWII, the US used blimps to host radars to detect approaching U-boats on the Atlantic coast. So, your idea does not seem to be too far fetched.
IIRC one of them sunk the cruiser(?) that had carried one of the atomic bombs to Tenyan.
I'm sure that every Buddhis priest and Shinto priest prayed to whatever they think was powerful to rid the Mongols when they invaded. They had conquered the whole Asia and half the Europe by that time. There was no way tiny island nation Japan could push them back.
The reason why the magic seems to have worked sometimes is that at every single war, both sides pray to God/gods/Buddhas to win. Most cultures have rituals for the preparations for war. In most cases there is a winner and their magic have worekd while the others' has not.
Hitler was unique in that he was so much into occult. But the Japanese cannot laugh at him for they (at least officially) believed that the Emperor was living god.
WWII was perhaps the first war the science won (atomic bomb and radar), which I think is good.