And really, ever those first few decades after Christianity was founded isn't that just waht it was? An advertising tool to get people to buy the Powers-that-be's product, Be it obedience, tithes, or whatever.
And maps.
(If you don't know what I'm talking about, try reading a history book)
You are the only person alive. You live on an island. You can do whatever the fuck you want and the only consequences would be to yourself. You have 100% freedom.
Lesson 2:
There is someone else on the island with you. Now, if you piss on his living room rug, he'll be upset with you. You will get in a fight and one of you may die as a result. Right, so you make a rule: No pissing on the other guy's rug. You both agree to the rule and everything's hunky dory. You no longer have 100% freedom (you can piss anywhere except on his rug), but you have a companion who can help you if you fall in a pit or something, and the gains outweigh the loss.
Lesson 3:
There are many people on the island. Now, with many people on the island, you can take a piss on someone's rug, and when they attack you, run to the others and say he is attacking you without provocation. Okay, so now we need some form of arbitration, as well as a code of ethics and conduct to ensure that this society works well. Freedom down some more, but a happy society results.
I'm sure you can see where I'm going here. You cannot have absolute freedom and a working society. You have to give up some freedom in order to live peacefully.
Religion was a very effective tool (and still is) in keeping the masses under control. Think about it: If you do something "bad", your karma goes down, or your god (who sees everything. convenient that) will get angry. This saves a fortune on policing.
every other possible religion out there except for American Christianity. I'm surprised the guy wasn't a Southern Baptist. But I'm Greek Orthodox and don't appreciate my religion being called a cult.
I'm surprised you haven't yet realized that your religions are simply not compatible.
Jews follow the One True God (tm). They've had lots of fun throughout history killing in his name, and mostly enjoy not following his commands. Their spiritual leaders enjoy the bulk of the wealth.
Mormons believe they will become gods themselves, and that Jesus came to the americas. They have another book, the book of mormon, which is even more hole-ridden and contradictory than the scriptures in today's bible. All mormon apostles are correct, even if they are not (they are, after all, prophets). They enjoy badgering us in the streets and brainwashing.
Jehova's witnesses believe that Jesus is not God. The JW bible is pathetic translation of the original scriptures, full of errors. The Watchtower provides all the answers they need. They must convert more people than their neighbor or risk not being one of the 144,000 who are saved at the end of the world. They enjoy not answering serious questions. We enjoy slamming doors in their faces.
Catholics pray to Mary as well as Jesus, and have a long series of traditions which are followed before their scripture, even if they are contradictory, not to mention the history of being singlehandedly resposible for 1000 years of darkness in Europe.
Muslims follow Allah and Muhammed, and believe that the scriptures of all prophets of god are true, even though they contradict each other. They also enjoy killing for their god.
Sikhs follow the Indian gods, and enjoy fighting Hindus (and vice versa). They also enjoy getting rich at the expense of their faithful. Most of the money that is supposed to help build their golden temple never gets there.
Buddhists believe in no "gods" per se, and usually waste their entire lives attempting to reach enlightenment (Though the fighting monks are pretty cool). They pride themselves in the fact that their religion is completely contradictory.
Protestant Christians, when they're not busy fighting amongst themselves over baptism, the sacrements, and other trivialities, follow the officially accepted dogma that you find in today's protestant bible. Oh, and let's not forget their history with the american indians and their puritan influence which still reverbrates through american society. In Ireland, they enjoy killing Catholics (and vice versa).
Now please explain to me how they can get along. They are cults to each other by very definition.
I honestly do not want to get done with writing a really groovy perl script, or finish a sweet game of quakeIII, and then go to my wife for loving, and she's in there playing starcraft.
Heck, I would! I'd join her. Then when we've whooped ass, we can fool around a bit.
And yes, introvertedness makes relationships so much more difficult. Not just in the sense of meeting people, but also in maintaining relationships.
The strange thing is, being introverted myself, I am able to lay my soul bare in text, but completely shut myself in if it comes to a face-to-face encounter.
I'm glad to hear that there are indeed women out there who enjoy thought (There are so few people who think to begin with).
My roommate is one of those few who can think, but since he's male and we're not gay, I must continue my search =)
5. Church, I know i said an unheard of word as far as some people are concerned, but going to your local house of worship is often a very good place to find funny and entertaining women. There is something to be said for being active in your religion of choice.
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!
This is a VERY BAD IDEA. As an ex-christian, I have witnessed countless people come into the church to find a girl. What you're not realizing is that the church elders will have a lot of say on this issue, and will always speak against this kind of relationship. The reasoning behind this is that in dating someone, you are essentially courting them for marriage. And marriage between the believer and the non-believer ("Do not be yoked together with unbelievers") is a Bad Thing (tm).
Essentially, don't expect to get anywhere with a Christian girl unless you plan to be converted.
Are you all so clueless that you need *Slashdot*, of all places, to teach you how to pick up women?
You'd be surprised.
The realm of romance is to me a completely foreign element. It's like being thrust into a far-off country where the language and customs are so completely alien as to paralyze you. I wander about in this maze, trying to find a way of participating, but when someone tries to explain it, they explain it in that language that I don't understand.
All the time, I have friends give me advice like "just be yourself", and "just look for the signals" and other such things. Apparently, women will do things in their comportment and manner of speech and even physical positioning to show that she's interested, but I wouldn't pick it up unless she jumped on me.
I mean, you spend your adolescence reading these trashy magazines where the women are in obvious sultry poses, and suddenly you realize that no girls are doing that to you. By the time you enter adulthood, you realize that the magazines were only a fantasy, but you are still completely baffled about the reality that IS there.
When I am with a girl, I spend so much time petrified with fear that I'm going too far, that I end up turning into a cold fish (which is even worse).
I always feel like I'm trying to make a crystal figurine with a sledgehammer.
A well rounded article for the most part. Some comments:
On the other hand, the information revolution ushered in by the Internet allows terrorists to access articles and documents from the World Wide Web about the manufacture or acquisition of BW or CW agents, and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software products can easily be obtained to conduct cyberterrorism, making CB/Cyber attacks much more feasible to launch than hitherto.
These documents (called anarchy philes for the uninitiate) have been around as long as the modem. I remember first encountering them in 1989, and even then they had been around for ages. It wasn't until the "Information Revolution" that the media finally clued in to the existance of documents such as the Jolly Rogers Cookbook and the Terrorist's Handbook (the better known of many more documents) and started scaring the public with them. About the best you'd get from these documents are a few stupid pranks from the average idiot. Attempting to control these documents will have no effect whatsoever on any organized force of terrorists. To launch a cyber attack, a terrorist group could purchase relatively inexpensive commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software and hardware, with some weapons of mass disruption software available on hacker bulletin boards and Web sites.
The "weapons of mass destruction software" available online is script kiddie material. It's like using a handgun. You might be able to kill a soldier, but not a tank.
Most cracking that could do any real damage requires a highly skilled cracker at the wheel. Most skilled crackers make their own tools, and, like any profession, would NEVER release their best tools to anyone.
Always remember: The best protection from cyber attack is not to have the system hooked up to anything external.
When a program I'm developing under linux hits a bad pointer, it core dumps.
When a program I'm developing under Windows hits a bad pointer, the entire system freezes solid.
This can increase bug hunting time from a few minutes to a few hours easily since you have to reboot the machine every time it hits the bad reference.
Quite often, even the tenacious mouse pointer dies (How much nicer windows would be if the rest of the OS were as crash-resistant as the beloved mouse pointer!). Sometimes I get a spontaneous reboot or some crash so bad the video card turns off.
Working under windows (I mean REALLY working) is an excercise in rebooting, especially for software development.
Perhaps I have not made myself clear on this subject.
Do not think for a moment that I am creating this category to arbitrarily slam people into one camp or the other.
This method of categorization is a tool used to express the current understanding on a subject (Much like the theory of the atom as it developped).
I could very well be completely out to lunch but I'm convinced there is enough truth to what I am saying to make it a worthwhile intellectual endeavor. I am using terminology (mapper/packet) which has only been recently introduced, and as such is subject to many different interpretations, as we have seen during the progression of this discussion. There is, however, a certain behavior that has been observed that is pervasive throughout western culture, and perhaps even other cultures. I know for a fact that the Japanese exhibit this kind of behavior (though it's not so bad nowadays, unless you are filling in a form) to the point of draconian and pointless rules and procedures that must be met exactly - because I live there. There is a Japanese saying: The nail that sticks out is hit on the head.
These kinds of behavior are being categorized by the author of the essay in an attempt to isolate to some degree the cause of this behavior and examine possible solutions to this problem. It's not expected to be an end-all. Nothing ever is. This theory will either be debunked or refined. This is the scientific method, not the gospel. Your reacting to my mulling these ideas over with statements such as: You willingness to dismissively throw a label on so many people you have never met, whom you know nothing about by observation, but only by assumption, and to suggest that all of the problems of the world are their fault (for obviously, you as a mapper are above any responsibility for the ills of the world) is the worst sort of uncritical and bigoted thinking, rooted, if you look deeply, not in any observation on your part, but rather on your prejudice, and, if you'll forgive me joining in, rather packerish.
is showing that you are completely unwilling to consider my point of view without taking what I say and simply showing what the extreme of this line of thinking would produce, in order to debunk it. I could very well adopt the same argument strategy and say that you're suggesting that we completely ignore what ails our society and just give them a placebo and say everything will be fine in the morning. You can see how easy it is, (though this is an oversimplification, I know), and how I can simply put you on the defensive, thus avoiding the core of the discussion and any intelligent argument that could have happened.
Surely you must realize that I was making a paper outline, not a concrete box when I was referring to packer / mapper thinking patterns. Surely you must realize that I am not suggesting an intellectual elite, a "Berlin Wall" separation between PACKER and MAPPER, with nothing in between. I'm not that stupid. You can't contain the human spirit that easily.
What I was suggesting is that there is some validity to what the author had said: that people are mappers by nature, that we are taught packer thinking to excess in our current education system, and that people are missing their full potential (not to mention annoying others incessantly) as a result of it. Granted, there are many, many other factors involved here, but this is simply an attempt to model a spacific aspect of this and suggest a possible cause.
I happen to find his reasonings very interesting, and I am inclined to agree with much of what he said because I have observed the same phenomena on countless occasions during my life and his arguments are logical based on the knowledge we currently have. If I am wrong, so be it. Give me arguments to the contrary, but PLEASE refrain from childish statements like "You're bigoted".
As for Judge Dredd, it is a popular character from a cyberpunk magazine who is obsessed with the LAW. All citizens must follow the LAW to the letter. The movie made from this encapsulates his thinking like so:
A guy comes back to the city after being in prison for hacking a computer. His block is currently engaged in block war with another block. He enters his apartment to find it full of gun-toting madmen who are shooting into the street. To make a long story short, he stays alive by hacking a food driod and hiding inside of it. Dredd finds him and then proceeds to judge him (He broke the law, and is now a repeat offender. Minimum 5 years). The dialog goes like this:
Civillian: "I had to get out somehow! They were shooting at everyone!" Dredd: You could have used the window." Civillian: "What? on the 21's floor!? It'd be suicide!" Dredd: "Maybe, but it's legal."
- These are administrative functions and my experience with experienced administrators is that they prefer to rtf dox.
I don't mind reading dox as long as they are good dox. Unfortunately there aren't very many good document writers out there, and all too often the documentation is out-of-date. I know there are some projects that specifically ask for doc writers, which is a very good thing IMHO.
>We have this knowledge of the "nitty gritty" >details because we find them interesting.
You find them interesting because you learned enough of them for your innate ability to think (to "map" as these folks put it) began to get interested in acquiring facts because you began to see a "map."
Actually, no. I found them interesting because one day I went to my friend's house and he was playing games on his TV. I asked him how he did it and he said his dad programmed the games into the machine. I thought "COOL! I wanna do that too!", and a programmer was born.
I learned the concepts of a computer by playing around with it and consulting the user's manual when I needed more information, not from a textbook. This is the difference between knowledge and faith, and the application of judgement based on observation rather than belief is the difference between wisdom and dogma.
Precicely. I rely on observation. Most people just believe what they're told. My first question about anything is "how do you know it's true", not because there's some huge conspiracy... [checking my tinfoil hat] ... but because non-truths tend to become the collective truth of a society once it has been thrown around for long enough. The problem is that our school system doesn't teach the kids to use their brains to question things, to check things out for themselves and prove to themselves that something is true. I find it a satisfying excercise to just out of the blue start questioning the validity of something I've always implicitely believed in and bash it around a bit. The results can be startling, not from the fact that you were throwing around, but from the other ideas that are introduced as you do it. There is no substitute for study, for the exercise of memory. There is no subsitute for rote learning when it comes to the acquisition of "facts." Facts become the arsenal for the expression of "thought," which is the higher synthesis of information, the only truly human act.
Obviously, facts are important. Dry facts, however, are not. Facts with a story behind them are interesting to read. Facts alone compartmentalized into lists are not. When I hear about an explorer of the americas, I want to hear about what he did, about the trials of the open sea, about how the boats were constructed to survive the tempests of the Atlantic. I want to hear of their first contact with the peoples of the new world and how they survived their first winter here (Thankfully, the trials of Cabot in his first winter up the St Laurence were included in my history book, and as a result it is pretty much all I remember about that era). In essence, I want a mapper's account of history.
This is a FAR cry from a bland list of explorer's names and dates (the packer's account of history). I completely agree that mapper thinking exists. I just think it arises from a combination of wide knowledge AND self-confidence that one's thoughts are worthy of expression.
Mapper thinking is the ability to examine what you DO know in order to formulate the right questions you need to ask to expand your knowledge. Mapping is a technique designed to find the optimal route to the facts you need. Packing is a pre-packaged list that everyone is expected to learn, whether it is useful or not. All facts are, of course, useful, but only at the correct time and in the correct context.
I know nothing about the social etiquette and customs of the bushmen in Australia, but if I were going to the outback to meet some, I sure would find out in a hurry.
Granted, there are certain things that a human being must know in order to function in society, but most of what they teach you (content, not topic) is of little value. Feynman's DAD on the other hand is a miracle. Feynman's dad would not say, "No, that's wrong." instead he would say, "Interesting idea. I wonder how we can test that?" Feynman being a genius was inevitable after that.
This is the very essence of mapper thinking. Mapper thinking is a means to get the facts, not a replacement to them. Yes, I can. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not sure why you think there is. You never know when those facts may become integral to a much more sophisticated thought. No datum is without value.
You know, that's exactly what my teachers told me. Guess what? it's still useless. I do have an interest in the area of the explorers, but I can easily read up on it in an interesting book about the subject. I am currently reading "The Discoverers", a highly recommended book (It's about the discovery of everything; the history of history, if you will). If we had been reading this book in school, I would have been at the head of the class. All the "mapper" thinking in the world doesn't prevent you from having to rediscover a fact that others already knew and you could have learned if only you had shut up and listened.
Shutting up and listening is at the very core of the mapper thinking. I listen to everything someone has to say on a subject. I am interested in collecting facts, not having them forced down my throat. I went to college precicely because I noticed that my programming style was atrocious. I'd rather ask someone who knows (and ask questions to be sure they're worth their salt) than reinvent the wheel. In college, I met instructors who were mappers, and instructors who were packers.
The mapper instructors had a genuine interest in what they were teaching. I was able to carry on a discussion about which caching scheme was good in which situation (we even discussed a "most recently used" substitution scheme - where the most recently used entry is flushed - which we knew was totally bogus, but was an intellectual experience nontheless. We even found cases where it outperformed the least recently used and least frequently used algorithm =).
Then came the packers. In the packer classes, the students sat totally silent (usually sleeping) while the instructor droned on and on about this and that from his pre-made script, answering all questions with "I'll get back to you later, can we PLEASE continue the lesson?".
Mappers do not substitute facts with their own thoughts. Quite the contrary actually. They hungrily take in a bunch of facts and then run with them until they've hit every permutation possible, then they come back for more.
In order for a mapper to be happy, the class must be dynamic. There must be discussion (Within limits, of course. We only have an hour). The students must be allowed to suggest preposterous solutions which the instructor will run through to completion so that the student can come to the conclusion (and the teacher can verify that indeed it wouldn't work). Mappers need to be allowed to be wrong. I learn much more when I'm wrong than when I'm right. - The Wright brothers were NOT the first to fly a manned airplane.
Right again. Still not sure what your point is...
My point is that we are filled with these "facts" and no visible way to verify them (there are, of course, plenty of ways to someone who hasn't forgotten how to think mapper-style). It's always a great shock to find chinks in an armour you thought to be flawless. No, I think the only evil is the crushing of self-expression, the discouragement of child-like wonder, the disconnection of inference and imagination. It isn't memorization of dates. You are going to find through your life that people sometimes get the facts wrong; that some of the things you think are important to memorize turn out to be useless (to YOU); that things you beleieve turn out to be wrong. What matters then is your willingness to explore. That's what gets shot out.
So we do agree after all! =)
My point throughout this is that students are discouraged from exploring, questioning etc. We are just filled up with facts (both right and wrong) and sent on our way, as confused as when we arrived. Post-secondary education is different. You can usually learn something there.
I can still remember going up to 100% students the day after an exam and asking them questions, only to find that they know nothing outside of the types of questions they studied for. These people would know all the factors leading up to the Russian revolution, and all the factors leading up to the French revolution (as prescribed in their books), but would be unable to compare the two. These are the people who "choose" the "correct" response to a question or situation. These are the people who love to regurgitate tired old cliches like "think outside the box" when subjects such as this one arise. These are the people who push for political correctness. These are the people who take on a cause, but can only give arguments based on the information pamphlet and whatever they heard someone else say. These are the people who participate in any given mass-hysteria that results in yet-another-stupid-law being passed. These are the people who know nothing outside of their TV (and don't care to either, since they went to school and got an education and are therefore smart). These are the people who say this-and-that war villain was sooo evil and country X was sooo right in killing him off, not realizing that country X put him into power in the first place! These are the people who hold a Judge Dredd-like attitude regarding rules, regulations, and policy.
What I dislike about this is that this non-linear thinking arises most frequently from the fertile soil of "packer" knoweldge and experience. Every programming "genuis" I have known has not only been capable of this instinctual synthesis, but has also been posessed of encyclopedic knowledge of these nitty-gritty technical details.
You've completely missed the point. We have this knowledge of the "nitty gritty" details because we find them interesting. The acquisition of knowledge is drudgery.
No, the acquisition of knowledge is learning, a new discovery, a source of exhiliration. Having useless facts rammed down your throats by clueless teachers in the cesspit we like to call public education is drudgery. All the creativity in the world will not help you, however, if you are writing and operating system and you don't know that the interrupt enable flag is cleared on entry to an interrupt service routine and must be set on exit.
It will if you are capable of mapper thinking. Ever heard of tech manuals? A mapper is not daunted by lack of knowledge. A packer is limited by lack of thinking. I tend to believe that the problem lies not in how education teaches facts, but rather in that we have "dumbed down" the number facts taught. I think the human mind is so hungry for patterns that, if taught enough facts, and allowed the speculate, this facility for insight will develop on its own. When you are not taught enough about anything to see the interconnectedness of things, is it any wonder we are locked in this "packer" mode?
No, the problem is that they teach you WHAT to think instead of HOW to think (packer vs mapper, anyone?).
There is a BIG difference between how the function code pins work on the m68000 CPU and the dates that each explorer came to the americas (Can you believe that in grade 9 I had to memorize this shit in order to pass the course?)
I gained my knowledge of computers and programming through "mapping"-like thinking, if you will. I was fascinated by computers and how they worked. The knowledge was a natural result of an inquiring mind. As for the explorer dates, they are all gone, wiped clean from my short-term memory once the exam was over. I lost interest in school after getting straight A's in first and second grade.
Oh, and by the way:
- Thomas Edison did NOT invent the lightbulb. - The Wright brothers were NOT the first to fly a manned airplane. - Columbus did NOT discover America. - "Honest" Abe Lincoln, your favorite president, was very much in favor of the slave trade.
1) There seems to be a trend in this for broad over-generalization and labeling. Things in life never fit into tidy little packages, and writing should reflect that. In the second section of chapter 1, for example, the author claims that the state of programming as a whole is horrendous.
I just can't agree with that belief. The book also labels people and idea's in a manner which is inconsistant with reality.
You obviously haven't worked as a programmer for a big company.
2) Secondly, I feel that the author has a pretentious, arrogant tone that makes me question the foundation from which the author is working. A bit of modesty, in my opionion, never hurts writing.
Bullshit. Arrogance is usually a good sign of genius.
The author knows what he is talking about. He may not be very eloquant, and he may not know how to structure an essay properly, but he knows his stuff.
Why can't the linux installer check the hardware automatically like windoze does? Why can't you ever back up in an installer menu system? Why aren't installers ever checked to see if they work properly in situations other than the "everything worked perfectly and the user didn't deviate from the script" situation?
I've yet to see a linux installer that a) works properly and b) is low on headaches.
I even tried the new Caldera installer (the one with all the flashy animations running around) but it has its own share of headaches.
What really bothers me is how the braindead distribution creators choose what programs get installed on your machine.
Ever try to install Redhat without X? Ever try to install it with ftp/http and no X? I'm not sure if it's possible.
Caldera has an install that supposedly doesn't install X, but if you look under the hood afterwards, there it is.
Have you ever looked at all the crap that gets installed? Why do I need to have giftrans and xfig installed on a non-X machine that will only run a web server? Why did it install TeX? Why did it install gimp? Why did it install xbill and a bunch of other stupid games? I could probably shave off a few hundred megs if I went and manually selected files (like I do in redhat) but Caldera doesn't offer that option, and I'd rather not spend an hour doing it anyway. What was redhat smoking when they decided how to categorize the programs in the installer?
Why do I have to select and deselect, only to find dependancies on something I don't want to install (because it has dependancies on a few hundred megs of other stuff)? Why is there no option to deselect the packages causing the dependancy failures? Don't they realize how LONG it takes to go back through the million categories (chosen by random number generator, I'm sure) to try to find the packages causing the dependancy failures? (after writing them down on pad and paper because they forgot to include a dependancy window)
Linux is fine if you don't have to change anything. If you do, get ready for a week of document reading and cryptic rc file configuring (and don't expect all the config files to be in the same place!). Want to add a user that has ftp access, but no web page and no mail, or has mail but nothing else? Want to change the permissions of one ftp user but don't want to create a bunch of groups? Want to make an ftp user that doesn't exist anywhere else on your system? Good luck, and good hunting (in the dox)!
This is what NT has over Linux. If Linux can't address these (serious) issues, it won't get very far.
I do hope that once Borland gets c++ builder out for linux, developers will start to realize the benefits of a gui-based configuration system (designed by gui designers, not engineers!!!).
On the subject of Linux servers, I have had no end of trouble trying to setup a networked box.
I have an AMD K62-300 running through dual-ISDN (the router uses dhcp to assign addresses, set to permanent, of course!). and a Redhat 6 CD.
What I want to do is set up Your Average Server (i.e. smtp, pop3, ftp, http).
I read through my copies of nag and sag, and read almost all the HOWTOs that pertain to networking.
I gave up on sendmail after a week. Was that a configuration file or line noise? There was another alternative that was suggested in the HOWTOs, but it would never run. The best I got from the mail subsytem was sending mail out (sometimes), but any mail sent in was happily received by whatever program and subsequently disappeared into the ether. ftpd doesn't seem to allow permissions based on user (i.e. allow upload but not delete for user X). httpd (apache) appears to work out of the box, but ALL network access to the box is flakey (sometimes it is lightning fast, sometimes it is pathetically slow, getting to 300 cps, even from an adjacent machine! - I am using a recent PCI Realtek 10baseT card)
The configuration options for most Linux programs appear to be arbitrary, almost deliberatly cryptic, and stored in the most unlikely of places.
Isn't there some way to configure a linux box that doesn't take more than a day? a week? (I gave up after 2).
When you must take care of a family, if you actually want to be involved in it, you lose your ability to excel at your job.
This was the exact reason why women were not allowed to work in any job in the past. The problem is that you are confusing quantity with quality.
I realized that I had a choice, a successful career as a programmer or a successful career as a father, and I chose the latter. I knew I couldn't continue programming so I gave it up and did something else.
You and I must have completely different notions about a career in programming. I am quite capable of working 8 hour days, get bonuses & payraises & promotions, and stay on top of the technology. Mind you, the pay is not as high as in the sweatshops, but I'm in for a career, not a burnout.
If you can't devote whatever time is needed to the job, you shouldn't be doing it.
How much time must be devoted to a programming job? Certainly not 16 hours. It wasn't that way in the past. There's nothing more time-critical about programming than there is about mechanical engineering, except for the fact that employers are noticing that people are willing to sacrifice their life for a few years in exchange for some quick bucks. What I'm seeing these days is a tendancy for employers to demand more, faster, sooner! We see software houses in a mad dash to get that damn product out the door, and guess what? Quality is decreasing. Remember how stable Netscape used to be (1.1N)? Then along came IE and suddenly both are worse than useless as they enter a mad race against each other.
The fact that you said this shows me that you missed the point of my entire post. People work long hours because they choose to work those hours.
The point is that since the majority of the workers were willing to work 16 hour days, the rest were left out in the cold. Conform or get out, essentially. Choice no longer enters the picture. The 8 hour workday was enacted to protect the quality of life of the workers. Allowing this "choice" for 16 hour days undoes that.
Employers are rewarding this with some of the highest wages in the country. If programming becomes an 8 hour a day job, that high pay will become a thing of the past.
What this mentality does is force the family out of the picture. When I start a family, I will not give them up for work. But, if the entire industry goes the way of 16 hour workdays, I won't be able to work as a programmer anymore. Why should I have to sacrifice my livelyhood to some industrial revolution-era thinking?
I'm not sure I quite follow you... If you carry out a program, you can do statistical analysis to measure the results. A quota is a pre-determined amount that must be met. Who determines the quota? Someone who professes to know the "correct" amount that "should be".
And as we all know in the real world, once a quota is in place, it must be met, even if it doesn't match reality.
Of course, if you are carrying out a political program, you would want to measure it's success.
I'm not criticizing the measurement. I am criticizing the political program.
I hope that things have improved, but I hold out few hopes.
Things don't improve until you improve them.
I was a good student at school. I took chemistry, physics and biology at A-level. The usual trio was two of those and maths.
I had a C to C+ average. Hey! come to think of it, I learned C, then C++. Coincidence?
The head of physics was all for girls doing physics - provided they didn't hold back the boys.
Yes, and?
In another science department, the newly-recruited female head of chemistry received trouble from some of the male staff (one of whom thought he should have had the job).
If someone had my job, I'd let them know about it. Nothing new here...
Despite it being totally illegal, her school split by gender: girls did needlework and boys did woodwork. No choice in the matter.
So what did you do about it? Let me guess.. NOTHING!
I remember being shunted out of the way when the school computer arrived, despite knowing more than the others did about how to work the thing, because I was female.
So what did you do about it? Let me guess.. NOTHING!
And it pisses me off bigtime to see this "Well, girls and boys are just different, that's all" crap
And it will persist in the vacum of evidence. What are you gonna do about it?
jokes about "We could do with more women, especially pretty ones" aren't funny.
Okay, I'll give you that one. Mind you, some of the geek girls did say they were available...
So tell me, what have you done to better the world in your life? What have you done to get where you want to go and do what you want to do? You certainly won't get there whining and complaining about everything.
You've done enough talking, now DO SOMETHING.
My life wasn't a cakewalk. I had my share of problems in the world. I VERY RARELY received any encouragement from anybody. My mother tried, but she suffered from severe depression. My father was always detached and never showed approval. I never took CS in highschool, nor was I encouraged to do so. I even had a teacher deliberately avoid me because I asked him some questions about C.
And yet somehow I became a success.
In grade school, I was told I couldn't use certain programs (which were password protected) on the school computers because they were for the older kids. So I hacked the passwords.
In highschool, the electonics course just plain SUCKED. So I swiped the microprocessor manuals from the book rack and learned assembly. (I think I still have some of them around too =)
The library computer had a modem but it was protected (Anyone remember Integrity?). So I hacked in and used the modem to dial into the local university's access ports (because they were too stupid to put in logins) to get onto the net.
It's called ambition, babe. If you had any, you'd have overcome all of these obstacles instead of complaining about them.
As for the "compliment", yeah, there is room for debate over its appropriateness and if I am overreacting in feeling that it was inappropriate.
You are not overreacting. It was inappropriate. The fact is that he is a teacher. His only interest in the matter should be with her mind.
I'd have felt pretty uneasy if my teacher had said "You are not only the smartest, but the most handsome as well". I'd feel even more uneasy if he was a guy =)
- little girls *are* given Barbies and baby dolls, and boys are given mechanical toys. Girls are expected to be quiet and feminine, while boys are encouraged to get dirty and take apart the toaster.
... There is a lack of good software for girls right now... The fact that girls aren't drawn to the blood-and-gore shoot-em-ups does NOT reflect a lack of ability to program!
These two sentences seem contradictory. In the top one you are suggesting that girls should not be raised in the stereotypical "girl" sense. In the second sentence you are suggesting that computer games should be tailored to match the stereotypical "girl".
Here are some interesting questions raised:
- Are girls by nature more nurturing, or is it purely of environmental influence? - Are dolls more appropriate toys for girls? - Are girls really into the ruff n tumble play to the same degree that boys are?
When I was in gradeschool, the boys' favorite lunchtime game was war, using sticks for guns, and watching the lunchtime fight, if there was one. The girls' favorite game was gossiping about the latest events (i.e. which girl everyone hated now) and playing dolls.
Play tended to merge somewhat in the later grades, though.
I suppose encouragement and role models will help with some people. It didn't help for me, but maybe since I'm male I had some innate ability to not be thrown by that. As far as computers went, I received no encouragement and had no role models.
I went through school picking and choosing what I wanted to learn (And boy did my grades suffer for it). When it came to computers, I learned outside of the curriculum (I didn't take CS in highschool. I snuck some of the microprocessor and assembly manuals from the electronics shop and read them on the bus and during my boring school subjects).
I'm probably not the same as most programmers out there. I'm probably not the same as most people out there either. Then again, most people wouldn't write CPU emulation cores in their spare time.
Even with that support, it was still difficult to be an intelligent girl interested in science and technology.
It's difficult being intelligent. Period. I'm sure you must realize just how annoying it is trying to hold a technical/political/whatever discussion with the general riff-raff who's only experience with books amounts to leveling the sofa.
(Recently a VB instructor commented to me that as well as being one of his "best" students, I was one of his "prettiest"... what an effective way to reduce me to a superficial level!!!)
Ok, this is just plain lame. I'd have decked him one. Better yet, you should have decked him one. If he complained, just tell him you're evening the score (sexual harassment and all).
So what you are saying is that because women in general are taking care of kids & family, they are ill-suited to be programmers?
Please explain your logic here.
How do domestic responsibilities affect someone's ability to program?
First it was the hours. The company paid us extremely well, but expected us to work our asses off for it. Sixteen hour days were the norm, and the women didn't care for it.
16 hour days??? Are you insane???? I certainly wouldn't want to work for your company.
(they had to pick up their kids, they had to make dinner for their families, they wanted to spend time with their kids, etc.), but because of this they didn't get nearly as much work done as the men. The next step was predictable. Time came for promotions and raises...and the men got FAR more than the women. To me, and the rest of the male programmers, this was fair. We did more work and we got a greater reward for it.
I see... so you expected to be adequately compensated because you willingly deprived your children of a father during the most needy part of their lives?
I can sure see how far off-base the women were for complaining about this situation.
There is a reason why the law protects the 8 hour work day. Happy marriage.
I can't believe I actually defended you guys in my earlier posts.
Slashdot Mirror
And really, ever those first few decades after Christianity was founded isn't that just waht it was? An advertising tool to get people to buy the Powers-that-be's product, Be it obedience, tithes, or whatever.
And maps.
(If you don't know what I'm talking about, try reading a history book)
Ugh that freedom argument again...
Okay, people, Philosophy 101.
Lesson 1:
You are the only person alive.
You live on an island.
You can do whatever the fuck you want and the only consequences would be to yourself.
You have 100% freedom.
Lesson 2:
There is someone else on the island with you.
Now, if you piss on his living room rug, he'll be upset with you. You will get in a fight and one of you may die as a result.
Right, so you make a rule: No pissing on the other guy's rug. You both agree to the rule and everything's hunky dory.
You no longer have 100% freedom (you can piss anywhere except on his rug), but you have a companion who can help you if you fall in a pit or something, and the gains outweigh the loss.
Lesson 3:
There are many people on the island.
Now, with many people on the island, you can take a piss on someone's rug, and when they attack you, run to the others and say he is attacking you without provocation.
Okay, so now we need some form of arbitration, as well as a code of ethics and conduct to ensure that this society works well. Freedom down some more, but a happy society results.
I'm sure you can see where I'm going here.
You cannot have absolute freedom and a working society. You have to give up some freedom in order to live peacefully.
Religion was a very effective tool (and still is) in keeping the masses under control.
Think about it: If you do something "bad", your karma goes down, or your god (who sees everything. convenient that) will get angry.
This saves a fortune on policing.
every other possible religion out there except for American Christianity. I'm surprised the guy wasn't a Southern Baptist. But I'm Greek Orthodox and don't appreciate my religion being called a cult.
I'm surprised you haven't yet realized that your religions are simply not compatible.
Jews follow the One True God (tm). They've had lots of fun throughout history killing in his name, and mostly enjoy not following his commands. Their spiritual leaders enjoy the bulk of the wealth.
Mormons believe they will become gods themselves, and that Jesus came to the americas. They have another book, the book of mormon, which is even more hole-ridden and contradictory than the scriptures in today's bible. All mormon apostles are correct, even if they are not (they are, after all, prophets). They enjoy badgering us in the streets and brainwashing.
Jehova's witnesses believe that Jesus is not God. The JW bible is pathetic translation of the original scriptures, full of errors. The Watchtower provides all the answers they need. They must convert more people than their neighbor or risk not being one of the 144,000 who are saved at the end of the world. They enjoy not answering serious questions. We enjoy slamming doors in their faces.
Catholics pray to Mary as well as Jesus, and have a long series of traditions which are followed before their scripture, even if they are contradictory, not to mention the history of being singlehandedly resposible for 1000 years of darkness in Europe.
Muslims follow Allah and Muhammed, and believe that the scriptures of all prophets of god are true, even though they contradict each other. They also enjoy killing for their god.
Sikhs follow the Indian gods, and enjoy fighting Hindus (and vice versa). They also enjoy getting rich at the expense of their faithful. Most of the money that is supposed to help build their golden temple never gets there.
Buddhists believe in no "gods" per se, and usually waste their entire lives attempting to reach enlightenment (Though the fighting monks are pretty cool). They pride themselves in the fact that their religion is completely contradictory.
Protestant Christians, when they're not busy fighting amongst themselves over baptism, the sacrements, and other trivialities, follow the officially accepted dogma that you find in today's protestant bible. Oh, and let's not forget their history with the american indians and their puritan influence which still reverbrates through american society. In Ireland, they enjoy killing Catholics (and vice versa).
Now please explain to me how they can get along.
They are cults to each other by very definition.
I honestly do not want to get done with writing a really groovy perl script, or finish a sweet game of quakeIII, and then go to my wife for loving, and she's in there playing starcraft.
Heck, I would!
I'd join her. Then when we've whooped ass, we can fool around a bit.
And yes, introvertedness makes relationships so
much more difficult. Not just in the sense of
meeting people, but also in maintaining
relationships.
The strange thing is, being introverted myself, I am able to lay my soul bare in text, but completely shut myself in if it comes to a face-to-face encounter.
I'm glad to hear that there are indeed women out there who enjoy thought (There are so few people who think to begin with).
My roommate is one of those few who can think, but since he's male and we're not gay, I must continue my search =)
5. Church, I know i said an unheard of word as far as some people are concerned, but going to your local house of worship is often a very good place to find funny and entertaining women. There is something to be said for being active in your religion of choice.
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!
This is a VERY BAD IDEA.
As an ex-christian, I have witnessed countless people come into the church to find a girl.
What you're not realizing is that the church elders will have a lot of say on this issue, and will always speak against this kind of relationship.
The reasoning behind this is that in dating someone, you are essentially courting them for marriage. And marriage between the believer and the non-believer ("Do not be yoked together with unbelievers") is a Bad Thing (tm).
Essentially, don't expect to get anywhere with a Christian girl unless you plan to be converted.
Are you all so clueless that you need *Slashdot*, of all places, to teach you how to pick up women?
You'd be surprised.
The realm of romance is to me a completely foreign element.
It's like being thrust into a far-off country where the language and customs are so completely alien as to paralyze you.
I wander about in this maze, trying to find a way of participating, but when someone tries to explain it, they explain it in that language that I don't understand.
All the time, I have friends give me advice like "just be yourself", and "just look for the signals" and other such things.
Apparently, women will do things in their comportment and manner of speech and even physical positioning to show that she's interested, but I wouldn't pick it up unless she jumped on me.
I mean, you spend your adolescence reading these trashy magazines where the women are in obvious sultry poses, and suddenly you realize that no girls are doing that to you.
By the time you enter adulthood, you realize that the magazines were only a fantasy, but you are still completely baffled about the reality that IS there.
When I am with a girl, I spend so much time petrified with fear that I'm going too far, that I end up turning into a cold fish (which is even worse).
I always feel like I'm trying to make a crystal figurine with a sledgehammer.
A well rounded article for the most part.
Some comments:
On the other hand, the information revolution ushered in by the Internet allows terrorists to access articles and documents from the World Wide Web about the manufacture or acquisition of BW or CW agents, and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software products can easily be obtained to conduct cyberterrorism, making CB/Cyber attacks much more feasible to launch than hitherto.
These documents (called anarchy philes for the uninitiate) have been around as long as the modem.
I remember first encountering them in 1989, and even then they had been around for ages. It wasn't until the "Information Revolution" that the media finally clued in to the existance of documents such as the Jolly Rogers Cookbook and the Terrorist's Handbook (the better known of many more documents) and started scaring the public with them. About the best you'd get from these documents are a few stupid pranks from the average idiot. Attempting to control these documents will have no effect whatsoever on any organized force of terrorists.
To launch a cyber attack, a terrorist group could purchase relatively inexpensive commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software and hardware, with some weapons of mass disruption software available on hacker bulletin boards and Web sites.
The "weapons of mass destruction software" available online is script kiddie material.
It's like using a handgun. You might be able to kill a soldier, but not a tank.
Most cracking that could do any real damage requires a highly skilled cracker at the wheel. Most skilled crackers make their own tools, and, like any profession, would NEVER release their best tools to anyone.
Always remember: The best protection from cyber attack is not to have the system hooked up to anything external.
When a program I'm developing under linux hits a bad pointer, it core dumps.
When a program I'm developing under Windows hits a bad pointer, the entire system freezes solid.
This can increase bug hunting time from a few minutes to a few hours easily since you have to reboot the machine every time it hits the bad reference.
Quite often, even the tenacious mouse pointer dies (How much nicer windows would be if the rest of the OS were as crash-resistant as the beloved mouse pointer!).
Sometimes I get a spontaneous reboot or some crash so bad the video card turns off.
Working under windows (I mean REALLY working) is an excercise in rebooting, especially for software development.
Perhaps I have not made myself clear on this subject.
Do not think for a moment that I am creating this category to arbitrarily slam people into one camp or the other.
This method of categorization is a tool used to express the current understanding on a subject (Much like the theory of the atom as it developped).
I could very well be completely out to lunch but I'm convinced there is enough truth to what I am saying to make it a worthwhile intellectual endeavor.
I am using terminology (mapper/packet) which has only been recently introduced, and as such is subject to many different interpretations, as we have seen during the progression of this discussion.
There is, however, a certain behavior that has been observed that is pervasive throughout western culture, and perhaps even other cultures. I know for a fact that the Japanese exhibit this kind of behavior (though it's not so bad nowadays, unless you are filling in a form) to the point of draconian and pointless rules and procedures that must be met exactly - because I live there. There is a Japanese saying: The nail that sticks out is hit on the head.
These kinds of behavior are being categorized by the author of the essay in an attempt to isolate to some degree the cause of this behavior and examine possible solutions to this problem.
It's not expected to be an end-all. Nothing ever is. This theory will either be debunked or refined. This is the scientific method, not the gospel.
Your reacting to my mulling these ideas over with statements such as:
You willingness to dismissively throw a label on so many people you have never met, whom you know nothing about by observation, but only by assumption, and to suggest that all of the problems of the world are their fault (for obviously, you as a mapper are above any responsibility for the ills of the world) is the worst sort of uncritical and bigoted thinking, rooted, if you look deeply, not in any
observation on your part, but rather on your prejudice, and, if you'll forgive me joining in, rather packerish.
is showing that you are completely unwilling to consider my point of view without taking what I say and simply showing what the extreme of this line of thinking would produce, in order to debunk it.
I could very well adopt the same argument strategy and say that you're suggesting that we completely ignore what ails our society and just give them a placebo and say everything will be fine in the morning.
You can see how easy it is, (though this is an oversimplification, I know), and how I can simply put you on the defensive, thus avoiding the core of the discussion and any intelligent argument that could have happened.
Surely you must realize that I was making a paper outline, not a concrete box when I was referring to packer / mapper thinking patterns.
Surely you must realize that I am not suggesting an intellectual elite, a "Berlin Wall" separation between PACKER and MAPPER, with nothing in between. I'm not that stupid. You can't contain the human spirit that easily.
What I was suggesting is that there is some validity to what the author had said: that people are mappers by nature, that we are taught packer thinking to excess in our current education system, and that people are missing their full potential (not to mention annoying others incessantly) as a result of it.
Granted, there are many, many other factors involved here, but this is simply an attempt to model a spacific aspect of this and suggest a possible cause.
I happen to find his reasonings very interesting, and I am inclined to agree with much of what he said because I have observed the same phenomena on countless occasions during my life and his arguments are logical based on the knowledge we currently have. If I am wrong, so be it. Give me arguments to the contrary, but PLEASE refrain from childish statements like "You're bigoted".
As for Judge Dredd, it is a popular character from a cyberpunk magazine who is obsessed with the LAW. All citizens must follow the LAW to the letter.
The movie made from this encapsulates his thinking like so:
A guy comes back to the city after being in prison for hacking a computer. His block is currently engaged in block war with another block. He enters his apartment to find it full of gun-toting madmen who are shooting into the street.
To make a long story short, he stays alive by hacking a food driod and hiding inside of it. Dredd finds him and then proceeds to judge him (He broke the law, and is now a repeat offender. Minimum 5 years).
The dialog goes like this:
Civillian: "I had to get out somehow! They were shooting at everyone!"
Dredd: You could have used the window."
Civillian: "What? on the 21's floor!? It'd be suicide!"
Dredd: "Maybe, but it's legal."
- These are administrative functions and my experience with experienced administrators is that they prefer to rtf dox.
I don't mind reading dox as long as they are good dox. Unfortunately there aren't very many good document writers out there, and all too often the documentation is out-of-date.
I know there are some projects that specifically ask for doc writers, which is a very good thing IMHO.
>We have this knowledge of the "nitty gritty" >details because we find them interesting.
You find them interesting because you learned enough of them for your innate ability to think (to "map" as these folks put it) began to get interested in acquiring facts because you began to see a "map."
Actually, no.
I found them interesting because one day I went to my friend's house and he was playing games on his TV. I asked him how he did it and he said his dad programmed the games into the machine.
I thought "COOL! I wanna do that too!", and a programmer was born.
I learned the concepts of a computer by playing around with it and consulting the user's manual when I needed more information, not from a textbook.
This is the difference between knowledge and faith, and the application of judgement based on observation rather than belief is the difference between wisdom and dogma.
Precicely.
I rely on observation. Most people just believe what they're told.
My first question about anything is "how do you know it's true", not because there's some huge conspiracy...
[checking my tinfoil hat]
... but because non-truths tend to become the collective truth of a society once it has been thrown around for long enough.
The problem is that our school system doesn't teach the kids to use their brains to question things, to check things out for themselves and prove to themselves that something is true.
I find it a satisfying excercise to just out of the blue start questioning the validity of something I've always implicitely believed in and bash it around a bit. The results can be startling, not from the fact that you were throwing around, but from the other ideas that are introduced as you do it.
There is no substitute for study, for the exercise of memory. There is no subsitute for rote learning when it comes to the acquisition of "facts." Facts become the arsenal for the expression of "thought," which is the higher synthesis of information, the only truly human act.
Obviously, facts are important. Dry facts, however, are not.
Facts with a story behind them are interesting to read. Facts alone compartmentalized into lists are not.
When I hear about an explorer of the americas, I want to hear about what he did, about the trials of the open sea, about how the boats were constructed to survive the tempests of the Atlantic. I want to hear of their first contact with the peoples of the new world and how they survived their first winter here (Thankfully, the trials of Cabot in his first winter up the St Laurence were included in my history book, and as a result it is pretty much all I remember about that era). In essence, I want a mapper's account of history.
This is a FAR cry from a bland list of explorer's names and dates (the packer's account of history).
I completely agree that mapper thinking exists. I just think it arises from a combination of wide knowledge AND self-confidence that one's thoughts are worthy of expression.
Mapper thinking is the ability to examine what you DO know in order to formulate the right questions you need to ask to expand your knowledge.
Mapping is a technique designed to find the optimal route to the facts you need.
Packing is a pre-packaged list that everyone is expected to learn, whether it is useful or not.
All facts are, of course, useful, but only at the correct time and in the correct context.
I know nothing about the social etiquette and customs of the bushmen in Australia, but if I were going to the outback to meet some, I sure would find out in a hurry.
Granted, there are certain things that a human being must know in order to function in society, but most of what they teach you (content, not topic) is of little value.
Feynman's DAD on the other hand is a miracle. Feynman's dad would not say, "No, that's wrong." instead he would say, "Interesting idea. I wonder how we can test that?" Feynman being a genius was inevitable after that.
This is the very essence of mapper thinking.
Mapper thinking is a means to get the facts, not a replacement to them.
Yes, I can. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not sure why you think there is. You never know when those facts may become integral to a much more sophisticated thought. No datum is without value.
You know, that's exactly what my teachers told me.
Guess what? it's still useless.
I do have an interest in the area of the explorers, but I can easily read up on it in an interesting book about the subject. I am currently reading "The Discoverers", a highly recommended book (It's about the discovery of everything; the history of history, if you will).
If we had been reading this book in school, I would have been at the head of the class.
All the "mapper" thinking in the world doesn't prevent you from having to rediscover a fact that others already knew and you could have learned if only you had shut up and listened.
Shutting up and listening is at the very core of the mapper thinking. I listen to everything someone has to say on a subject.
I am interested in collecting facts, not having them forced down my throat.
I went to college precicely because I noticed that my programming style was atrocious.
I'd rather ask someone who knows (and ask questions to be sure they're worth their salt) than reinvent the wheel.
In college, I met instructors who were mappers, and instructors who were packers.
The mapper instructors had a genuine interest in what they were teaching. I was able to carry on a discussion about which caching scheme was good in which situation (we even discussed a "most recently used" substitution scheme - where the most recently used entry is flushed - which we knew was totally bogus, but was an intellectual experience nontheless. We even found cases where it outperformed the least recently used and least frequently used algorithm =).
Then came the packers. In the packer classes, the students sat totally silent (usually sleeping) while the instructor droned on and on about this and that from his pre-made script, answering all questions with "I'll get back to you later, can we PLEASE continue the lesson?".
Mappers do not substitute facts with their own thoughts. Quite the contrary actually. They hungrily take in a bunch of facts and then run with them until they've hit every permutation possible, then they come back for more.
In order for a mapper to be happy, the class must be dynamic. There must be discussion (Within limits, of course. We only have an hour).
The students must be allowed to suggest preposterous solutions which the instructor will run through to completion so that the student can come to the conclusion (and the teacher can verify that indeed it wouldn't work).
Mappers need to be allowed to be wrong.
I learn much more when I'm wrong than when I'm right.
- The Wright brothers were NOT the first to fly a manned airplane.
Right again. Still not sure what your point is...
My point is that we are filled with these "facts" and no visible way to verify them (there are, of course, plenty of ways to someone who hasn't forgotten how to think mapper-style). It's always a great shock to find chinks in an armour you thought to be flawless.
No, I think the only evil is the crushing of self-expression, the discouragement of child-like wonder, the disconnection of inference and imagination. It isn't memorization of dates. You are going to find through your life that people sometimes get the facts wrong; that some of the things you think are important to memorize turn out to be useless (to YOU); that things you beleieve turn out to be wrong. What matters then is your willingness to explore. That's what gets shot out.
So we do agree after all! =)
My point throughout this is that students are discouraged from exploring, questioning etc. We are just filled up with facts (both right and wrong) and sent on our way, as confused as when we arrived.
Post-secondary education is different. You can usually learn something there.
I can still remember going up to 100% students the day after an exam and asking them questions, only to find that they know nothing outside of the types of questions they studied for.
These people would know all the factors leading up to the Russian revolution, and all the factors leading up to the French revolution (as prescribed in their books), but would be unable to compare the two.
These are the people who "choose" the "correct" response to a question or situation.
These are the people who love to regurgitate tired old cliches like "think outside the box" when subjects such as this one arise.
These are the people who push for political correctness.
These are the people who take on a cause, but can only give arguments based on the information pamphlet and whatever they heard someone else say.
These are the people who participate in any given mass-hysteria that results in yet-another-stupid-law being passed.
These are the people who know nothing outside of their TV (and don't care to either, since they went to school and got an education and are therefore smart).
These are the people who say this-and-that war villain was sooo evil and country X was sooo right in killing him off, not realizing that country X put him into power in the first place!
These are the people who hold a Judge Dredd-like attitude regarding rules, regulations, and policy.
These are the people who drive me mad.
What I dislike about this is that this non-linear thinking arises most frequently from the fertile soil of "packer" knoweldge and experience. Every programming "genuis" I have known has not only been capable of this instinctual synthesis, but has also been posessed of encyclopedic knowledge of these nitty-gritty technical details.
You've completely missed the point.
We have this knowledge of the "nitty gritty" details because we find them interesting.
The acquisition of knowledge is drudgery.
No, the acquisition of knowledge is learning, a new discovery, a source of exhiliration.
Having useless facts rammed down your throats by clueless teachers in the cesspit we like to call public education is drudgery.
All the creativity in the world will not help you,
however, if you are writing and operating system and you don't know that the interrupt enable flag is cleared on entry to an interrupt service routine and must be set on exit.
It will if you are capable of mapper thinking.
Ever heard of tech manuals?
A mapper is not daunted by lack of knowledge.
A packer is limited by lack of thinking.
I tend to believe that the problem lies not in how education teaches facts, but rather in that we have "dumbed down" the number facts taught. I think the human mind is so hungry for patterns that, if taught enough facts, and allowed the speculate, this facility for insight will develop on its own. When you are not taught enough about anything to see the interconnectedness of things, is it any wonder we are locked in this "packer" mode?
No, the problem is that they teach you WHAT to think instead of HOW to think (packer vs mapper, anyone?).
There is a BIG difference between how the function code pins work on the m68000 CPU and the dates that each explorer came to the americas (Can you believe that in grade 9 I had to memorize this shit in order to pass the course?)
I gained my knowledge of computers and programming through "mapping"-like thinking, if you will.
I was fascinated by computers and how they worked. The knowledge was a natural result of an inquiring mind.
As for the explorer dates, they are all gone, wiped clean from my short-term memory once the exam was over.
I lost interest in school after getting straight A's in first and second grade.
Oh, and by the way:
- Thomas Edison did NOT invent the lightbulb.
- The Wright brothers were NOT the first to fly a manned airplane.
- Columbus did NOT discover America.
- "Honest" Abe Lincoln, your favorite president, was very much in favor of the slave trade.
So, what else did you "learn" in school?
1) There seems to be a trend in this for broad over-generalization and labeling. Things in life never fit into tidy little packages, and writing should reflect that. In the second section of chapter 1, for example, the author claims that the state of programming as a whole is horrendous.
I just can't agree with that belief. The book also labels people and idea's in a manner which is inconsistant with reality.
You obviously haven't worked as a programmer for a big company.
2) Secondly, I feel that the author has a pretentious, arrogant tone that makes me question the foundation from which the author is working. A bit of modesty, in my opionion, never hurts writing.
Bullshit. Arrogance is usually a good sign of genius.
The author knows what he is talking about.
He may not be very eloquant, and he may not know how to structure an essay properly, but he knows his stuff.
Stop looking at the surface.
Actually, he has a point there.
Why can't the linux installer check the hardware automatically like windoze does?
Why can't you ever back up in an installer menu system?
Why aren't installers ever checked to see if they work properly in situations other than the "everything worked perfectly and the user didn't deviate from the script" situation?
I've yet to see a linux installer that a) works properly and b) is low on headaches.
I even tried the new Caldera installer (the one with all the flashy animations running around) but it has its own share of headaches.
What really bothers me is how the braindead distribution creators choose what programs get installed on your machine.
Ever try to install Redhat without X?
Ever try to install it with ftp/http and no X? I'm not sure if it's possible.
Caldera has an install that supposedly doesn't install X, but if you look under the hood afterwards, there it is.
Have you ever looked at all the crap that gets installed?
Why do I need to have giftrans and xfig installed on a non-X machine that will only run a web server? Why did it install TeX? Why did it install gimp? Why did it install xbill and a bunch of other stupid games?
I could probably shave off a few hundred megs if I went and manually selected files (like I do in redhat) but Caldera doesn't offer that option, and I'd rather not spend an hour doing it anyway.
What was redhat smoking when they decided how to categorize the programs in the installer?
Why do I have to select and deselect, only to find dependancies on something I don't want to install (because it has dependancies on a few hundred megs of other stuff)? Why is there no option to deselect the packages causing the dependancy failures? Don't they realize how LONG it takes to go back through the million categories (chosen by random number generator, I'm sure) to try to find the packages causing the dependancy failures? (after writing them down on pad and paper because they forgot to include a dependancy window)
Linux is fine if you don't have to change anything. If you do, get ready for a week of document reading and cryptic rc file configuring (and don't expect all the config files to be in the same place!).
Want to add a user that has ftp access, but no web page and no mail, or has mail but nothing else?
Want to change the permissions of one ftp user but don't want to create a bunch of groups?
Want to make an ftp user that doesn't exist anywhere else on your system?
Good luck, and good hunting (in the dox)!
This is what NT has over Linux. If Linux can't address these (serious) issues, it won't get very far.
I do hope that once Borland gets c++ builder out for linux, developers will start to realize the benefits of a gui-based configuration system (designed by gui designers, not engineers!!!).
On the subject of Linux servers, I have had no end of trouble trying to setup a networked box.
I have an AMD K62-300 running through dual-ISDN (the router uses dhcp to assign addresses, set to permanent, of course!). and a Redhat 6 CD.
What I want to do is set up Your Average Server (i.e. smtp, pop3, ftp, http).
I read through my copies of nag and sag, and read almost all the HOWTOs that pertain to networking.
I gave up on sendmail after a week. Was that a configuration file or line noise? There was another alternative that was suggested in the HOWTOs, but it would never run. The best I got from the mail subsytem was sending mail out (sometimes), but any mail sent in was happily received by whatever program and subsequently disappeared into the ether. ftpd doesn't seem to allow permissions based on user (i.e. allow upload but not delete for user X).
httpd (apache) appears to work out of the box, but ALL network access to the box is flakey (sometimes it is lightning fast, sometimes it is pathetically slow, getting to 300 cps, even from an adjacent machine! - I am using a recent PCI Realtek 10baseT card)
The configuration options for most Linux programs appear to be arbitrary, almost deliberatly cryptic, and stored in the most unlikely of places.
Isn't there some way to configure a linux box that doesn't take more than a day? a week? (I gave up after 2).
The outer wave may be related to an awesome sonic boom resulting from this collision.
Funny.. I never knew there was an atmosphere in space =P
When you must take care of a family, if you actually want to be involved in it, you lose your ability to excel at your job.
This was the exact reason why women were not allowed to work in any job in the past.
The problem is that you are confusing quantity with quality.
I realized that I had a choice, a successful career as a programmer or a successful career as a father, and I chose the latter. I knew I couldn't continue programming so I gave it up and did something else.
You and I must have completely different notions about a career in programming.
I am quite capable of working 8 hour days, get bonuses & payraises & promotions, and stay on top of the technology.
Mind you, the pay is not as high as in the sweatshops, but I'm in for a career, not a burnout.
If you can't devote whatever time is needed to the job, you shouldn't be doing it.
How much time must be devoted to a programming job?
Certainly not 16 hours. It wasn't that way in the past. There's nothing more time-critical about programming than there is about mechanical engineering, except for the fact that employers are noticing that people are willing to sacrifice their life for a few years in exchange for some quick bucks.
What I'm seeing these days is a tendancy for employers to demand more, faster, sooner!
We see software houses in a mad dash to get that damn product out the door, and guess what? Quality is decreasing.
Remember how stable Netscape used to be (1.1N)? Then along came IE and suddenly both are worse than useless as they enter a mad race against each other.
The fact that you said this shows me that you missed the point of my entire post. People work long hours because they choose to work those hours.
The point is that since the majority of the workers were willing to work 16 hour days, the rest were left out in the cold. Conform or get out, essentially. Choice no longer enters the picture.
The 8 hour workday was enacted to protect the quality of life of the workers.
Allowing this "choice" for 16 hour days undoes that.
Employers are rewarding this with some of the highest wages in the country. If programming becomes an 8 hour a day job, that high pay will become a thing of the past.
What this mentality does is force the family out of the picture.
When I start a family, I will not give them up for work. But, if the entire industry goes the way of 16 hour workdays, I won't be able to work as a programmer anymore.
Why should I have to sacrifice my livelyhood to some industrial revolution-era thinking?
I'm not sure I quite follow you...
If you carry out a program, you can do statistical analysis to measure the results.
A quota is a pre-determined amount that must be met.
Who determines the quota? Someone who professes to know the "correct" amount that "should be".
And as we all know in the real world, once a quota is in place, it must be met, even if it doesn't match reality.
Of course, if you are carrying out a political program, you would want to measure it's success.
I'm not criticizing the measurement.
I am criticizing the political program.
I'm nearing thirty now.
I'm nearing 25.
I hope that things have improved, but I hold out few hopes.
Things don't improve until you improve them.
I was a good student at school. I took chemistry, physics and biology at A-level. The usual trio was two of those and maths.
I had a C to C+ average.
Hey! come to think of it, I learned C, then C++.
Coincidence?
The head of physics was all for girls doing physics - provided they didn't hold back the boys.
Yes, and?
In another science department, the newly-recruited female head of chemistry received trouble from some of the male staff (one of whom thought he should have had the job).
If someone had my job, I'd let them know about it. Nothing new here...
Despite it being totally illegal, her school split by gender: girls did needlework and boys did woodwork. No choice in the matter.
So what did you do about it?
Let me guess.. NOTHING!
I remember being shunted out of the way when the school computer arrived, despite knowing more than the others did about how to work the thing, because I was female.
So what did you do about it?
Let me guess.. NOTHING!
And it pisses me off bigtime to see this "Well, girls and boys are just different, that's all" crap
And it will persist in the vacum of evidence.
What are you gonna do about it?
jokes about "We could do with more women, especially pretty ones" aren't funny.
Okay, I'll give you that one.
Mind you, some of the geek girls did say they were available...
So tell me, what have you done to better the world in your life?
What have you done to get where you want to go and do what you want to do? You certainly won't get there whining and complaining about everything.
You've done enough talking, now DO SOMETHING.
My life wasn't a cakewalk. I had my share of problems in the world. I VERY RARELY received any encouragement from anybody. My mother tried, but she suffered from severe depression. My father was always detached and never showed approval.
I never took CS in highschool, nor was I encouraged to do so. I even had a teacher deliberately avoid me because I asked him some questions about C.
And yet somehow I became a success.
In grade school, I was told I couldn't use certain programs (which were password protected) on the school computers because they were for the older kids. So I hacked the passwords.
In highschool, the electonics course just plain SUCKED. So I swiped the microprocessor manuals from the book rack and learned assembly. (I think I still have some of them around too =)
The library computer had a modem but it was protected (Anyone remember Integrity?).
So I hacked in and used the modem to dial into the local university's access ports (because they were too stupid to put in logins) to get onto the net.
It's called ambition, babe. If you had any, you'd have overcome all of these obstacles instead of complaining about them.
As for the "compliment", yeah, there is room for debate over its appropriateness and if I am overreacting in feeling that it was inappropriate.
You are not overreacting. It was inappropriate.
The fact is that he is a teacher. His only interest in the matter should be with her mind.
I'd have felt pretty uneasy if my teacher had said "You are not only the smartest, but the most handsome as well". I'd feel even more uneasy if he was a guy =)
- little girls *are* given Barbies and baby dolls, and boys are given mechanical toys. Girls are expected to be quiet and feminine, while boys are encouraged to get dirty and take apart the toaster.
...
There is a lack of good software for girls right now
These two sentences seem contradictory.
In the top one you are suggesting that girls should not be raised in the stereotypical "girl" sense.
In the second sentence you are suggesting that computer games should be tailored to match the stereotypical "girl".
Here are some interesting questions raised:
- Are girls by nature more nurturing, or is it purely of environmental influence?
- Are dolls more appropriate toys for girls?
- Are girls really into the ruff n tumble play to the same degree that boys are?
When I was in gradeschool, the boys' favorite lunchtime game was war, using sticks for guns, and watching the lunchtime fight, if there was one.
The girls' favorite game was gossiping about the latest events (i.e. which girl everyone hated now) and playing dolls.
Play tended to merge somewhat in the later grades, though.
I suppose encouragement and role models will help with some people. It didn't help for me, but maybe since I'm male I had some innate ability to not be thrown by that. As far as computers went, I received no encouragement and had no role models.
I went through school picking and choosing what I wanted to learn (And boy did my grades suffer for it). When it came to computers, I learned outside of the curriculum (I didn't take CS in highschool. I snuck some of the microprocessor and assembly manuals from the electronics shop and read them on the bus and during my boring school subjects).
I'm probably not the same as most programmers out there. I'm probably not the same as most people out there either. Then again, most people wouldn't write CPU emulation cores in their spare time.
Even with that support, it was still difficult to be an intelligent girl interested in science and technology.
It's difficult being intelligent. Period.
I'm sure you must realize just how annoying it is trying to hold a technical/political/whatever discussion with the general riff-raff who's only experience with books amounts to leveling the sofa.
(Recently a VB instructor commented to me that as well as being one of his "best" students, I was one of his "prettiest"... what an effective way to reduce me to a superficial level!!!)
Ok, this is just plain lame. I'd have decked him one.
Better yet, you should have decked him one. If he complained, just tell him you're evening the score (sexual harassment and all).
-- A true hack's computer never has the case on.
Hear, hear!
I'm tired of being in the minority at work.
Whoa! hang on there!
So what you are saying is that because women in general are taking care of kids & family, they are ill-suited to be programmers?
Please explain your logic here.
How do domestic responsibilities affect someone's ability to program?
First it was the hours. The company paid us extremely well, but expected us to work our asses off for it. Sixteen hour days were the norm, and the women didn't care for it.
16 hour days??? Are you insane????
I certainly wouldn't want to work for your company.
(they had to pick up their kids, they had to make dinner for their families, they wanted to spend time with their kids, etc.), but because of this they didn't get nearly as much work done as the men.
The next step was predictable. Time came for promotions and raises...and the men got FAR more than the women. To me, and the rest of the male programmers, this was fair. We did more work and we got a greater reward for it.
I see... so you expected to be adequately compensated because you willingly deprived your children of a father during the most needy part of their lives?
I can sure see how far off-base the women were for complaining about this situation.
There is a reason why the law protects the 8 hour work day. Happy marriage.
I can't believe I actually defended you guys in my earlier posts.
And people wonder why I'd NEVER send my kids to public school...