On the individual level you're right of course: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But if you consider life to be "all human beings", and take snapshots of it at various times, you will no longer see a zero sum game.
someone (was it you?) found fault in my previous.sig, too.
Heh, no it wasn't me.
I've tried to be an agent for constructive change, and being publicly known has been one of the tools I use. I'm sorry that offends you, but I like myself the way I am.
hey, I'm not offended. I just wondered if it was deliberate, or if you meant to say something like "question everything". And I think you're a thoroughly decent chap and an asset to the community.
OK, is this some en-masse trolling exercise, or is there really such widespread ignorance of fairly basic economics?
If I discover a tonne of gold in the ground today, then true, everyone else's gold is worth less. But the world is still a richer place because we know about more gold.
Admittedly, gold was a bad example because it is material. The most convincing arguments that we live in a positive-sum world are to be found in technological progress, which often enrichens many people at the expense of very few people.
Another example: suppose there is nuclear holocaust tomorrow. Is there still the same total wealth in the world?
SubtleNuance is a truly ironic name for someone with such a shallow grasp of reasoning. You are quite right about energy. You couldn't be more wrong with your analogy between energy and wealth. Are you seriously trying to tell me that there is the same amount of wealth in existence today as there was 100 years ago? Nobody with a basic grasp of history and some empathy skills would. Ever heard the term "GDP growth"? Ever wondered what it means?
Who the fuck moderated the parent as informative? It's the most ludicrous misapplication of physics I've seen for almost a day on Slashdot! Hey, guess what nomadic, there is currently no thermodynamic metric of human happiness.
Energy may be conserved, but human happiness and well-being aren't.
Even in a closed system. Put two people in a box with just each other for company. They might start tearing each other's hair out immediately. Or they might start an interesting discussion, comfort each other, entertain each other, etc. The laws of thermodynamics are being obeyed all the time, but the total amount of human happiness is quite obviously *not* conserved.
No, life is *not* a zero sum game because when people act in certain ways, everyone becomes better off. For example, caveman bob discovers how to use some machinery to plough a field and settles down to live a more comfortable life. He no longer has to spend his life hunting and gathering. He has some spare time to do more cerebral and satisfying activities. Others copy him. Everyone now has more time to do what they want because of this technological innovation.
In fact, technological progression is nearly always the best catalyst of overall quality of life improvements. Technological progression is also unlikely to flower in a socialist society.
You say that 'For each "rich" person there must exist a small army of "poor" people'. This is *exactly* the attitude I'm talking about. It may be true that for each "richer" person there are, by definition, people who are "poorer" than him. But these are relative terms, and because life is not a zero sum game, it is disingenuous to talk about wealth in this way.
Essentially, you are assuming that if we had some mechanism in place to stop that one person getting rich, then everyone else would be less poor. You're wrong.
The best example of a non-zero sum game is life itself. Most left wing theory is built upon the presumption that life is a zero sum game (when people start talking about "redistribution of wealth" you know they are a bit nuts). People often mistakenly assume that someone's gain is necessarily someone else's loss.
Does this mean that you are questioning authority???
By questioning him, are you acknowledging his authority?
No way man! I totally reject his pumped up commands to me to question authority. Just because he is an open source leader doesn't give him the right to tell me who to question. Does it?
Look, the point is that unless your data *looks* like a random string of bits, it is still possible to compress it. Only when entropy is maximised is your information completely non-redundant.
No, it really isn't. The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard for interfacing external applications with information servers, such as HTTP or Web servers. It has nothing to do with the urlencoding of the form data by the client. See
here for a link that backs me up. This page comes top of a google search for "cgi".
You've got the wrong end of the stick mate. This is a development tool for executing local programs using the CGI. There is no mechanism proposed to download such scripts from web sites and automically execute them.
Yes, it means that it could be used as a freenet front end in that you could arrange that you just the freenet URI in the address bar and would get the appropriate file.
This couldn't directly be used for napster because files shared on napster do not have URIs. However, Mozilla is certainly extensible enough that with (a lot) of coding, you could use the Mozilla UI for your napster clone.
Good point well made. CGI is just one of those things that most people refuse to understand, even though it's perfectly simple. It really pisses me off.
Wow -- the Mozilla team to implement a perl interpreter!
Nope. That's not how CGI works. All you need is an executable that can read from STDIN, and write to STDERR and STDOUT. Being able to parse the CGI parameters is a bonus, but not mandatory. So the Mozilla team don't have to implement a perl interpreter, or a c compiler or binary loaders or anything. Where did you get that idea from?
All web languages use CGI, java, mod_perl, mod_python, everything.
Incorrect. There exist several other interfaces to use for dynamic content generation. ISAPI, NSAPI, and fastCGI are all faster alternatives.
When you put text in a textbox, and hit submit, thats normally CGI.
OK, you're quite some way from the truth now. When you put text in a text box and hit submit, you are performing a HTTP GET or HTTP POST. Whether the web server then uses CGI or fastCGI to interface with an out of process executable, or one of the many ways of dealing with the request in-process, has nothing to do with your form.
(unless the form uses mail, or whatnot).
You've finally lost me there. Could you explain how a form can "use mail". Surely you aren't talking about hyperlinks to mailto: URLs, which have nothing to o with forms?
Someone correct the 'informative' moderation on parent post. mod_perl, mod_php etc are not run via CGI. They are quite similar to things that use the fastcgi interface, however. The important difference is that with cgi, every request is dealt with by launching a new process, whereas under fastcgi or mod_* the program doesn't exit, it's still running when the next request is made.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear nomadic,
I hope you don't stay awake at nights obsessing over me obsessing over wrongly distributed karma on slashdot. That would be such a shame.
And you lose me towards the end there. What is economics if not the study of many human beings, each trying to maximise their happiness?
On the individual level you're right of course: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But if you consider life to be "all human beings", and take snapshots of it at various times, you will no longer see a zero sum game.
Heh, no it wasn't me.
hey, I'm not offended. I just wondered if it was deliberate, or if you meant to say something like "question everything". And I think you're a thoroughly decent chap and an asset to the community.
If I discover a tonne of gold in the ground today, then true, everyone else's gold is worth less. But the world is still a richer place because we know about more gold.
Admittedly, gold was a bad example because it is material. The most convincing arguments that we live in a positive-sum world are to be found in technological progress, which often enrichens many people at the expense of very few people.
Another example: suppose there is nuclear holocaust tomorrow. Is there still the same total wealth in the world?
SubtleNuance is a truly ironic name for someone with such a shallow grasp of reasoning. You are quite right about energy. You couldn't be more wrong with your analogy between energy and wealth. Are you seriously trying to tell me that there is the same amount of wealth in existence today as there was 100 years ago? Nobody with a basic grasp of history and some empathy skills would. Ever heard the term "GDP growth"? Ever wondered what it means?
Energy may be conserved, but human happiness and well-being aren't.
Even in a closed system. Put two people in a box with just each other for company. They might start tearing each other's hair out immediately. Or they might start an interesting discussion, comfort each other, entertain each other, etc. The laws of thermodynamics are being obeyed all the time, but the total amount of human happiness is quite obviously *not* conserved.
In fact, technological progression is nearly always the best catalyst of overall quality of life improvements. Technological progression is also unlikely to flower in a socialist society.
You say that 'For each "rich" person there must exist a small army of "poor" people'. This is *exactly* the attitude I'm talking about. It may be true that for each "richer" person there are, by definition, people who are "poorer" than him. But these are relative terms, and because life is not a zero sum game, it is disingenuous to talk about wealth in this way.
Essentially, you are assuming that if we had some mechanism in place to stop that one person getting rich, then everyone else would be less poor. You're wrong.
The best example of a non-zero sum game is life itself. Most left wing theory is built upon the presumption that life is a zero sum game (when people start talking about "redistribution of wealth" you know they are a bit nuts). People often mistakenly assume that someone's gain is necessarily someone else's loss.
No way man! I totally reject his pumped up commands to me to question authority. Just because he is an open source leader doesn't give him the right to tell me who to question. Does it?
He's certainly something. He's the most ego-inflated guy on /.
Perens: are you aware that your sig implies you are some sort of authority? Do you really consider yourself an authority?
Look, the point is that unless your data *looks* like a random string of bits, it is still possible to compress it. Only when entropy is maximised is your information completely non-redundant.
Bwawahaha! I knew Perens was arrogant, but I never foresaw him appointing himself as an "authority". What a wanker ;-)
Bwawahaha! I knew Perens was arrogant, but I never foresaw him appointing himself as "authority". What a wanker ;-)
Twat
Please can you explain what "shorting" is, in the context of share dealing?
But thanks for the information about the ACTION=mailto: thang. I didn't know you could do that.
No, it really isn't. The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard for interfacing external applications with information servers, such as HTTP or Web servers. It has nothing to do with the urlencoding of the form data by the client. See here for a link that backs me up. This page comes top of a google search for "cgi".
You've got the wrong end of the stick mate. This is a development tool for executing local programs using the CGI. There is no mechanism proposed to download such scripts from web sites and automically execute them.
This couldn't directly be used for napster because files shared on napster do not have URIs. However, Mozilla is certainly extensible enough that with (a lot) of coding, you could use the Mozilla UI for your napster clone.
Good point well made. CGI is just one of those things that most people refuse to understand, even though it's perfectly simple. It really pisses me off.
Nope. That's not how CGI works. All you need is an executable that can read from STDIN, and write to STDERR and STDOUT. Being able to parse the CGI parameters is a bonus, but not mandatory. So the Mozilla team don't have to implement a perl interpreter, or a c compiler or binary loaders or anything. Where did you get that idea from?
Correct.
All web languages use CGI, java, mod_perl, mod_python, everything.
Incorrect. There exist several other interfaces to use for dynamic content generation. ISAPI, NSAPI, and fastCGI are all faster alternatives.
When you put text in a textbox, and hit submit, thats normally CGI.
OK, you're quite some way from the truth now. When you put text in a text box and hit submit, you are performing a HTTP GET or HTTP POST. Whether the web server then uses CGI or fastCGI to interface with an out of process executable, or one of the many ways of dealing with the request in-process, has nothing to do with your form.
(unless the form uses mail, or whatnot).
You've finally lost me there. Could you explain how a form can "use mail". Surely you aren't talking about hyperlinks to mailto: URLs, which have nothing to o with forms?
So the parent is misinformative.
people always try and pretend that theregister.co.uk is killfiled from the /. submission queue. This post shows what a load of balls that theory is.