Sharing source code with other developers is not the same as opening the source code to the whole world and relinquishing your copyright.I know how _most_ OSS works.However, from your post I guess you must have meant some other kind of OSS.
I seem to remember POKE-ing many of the games on my Amstrad CPC 464.I seem to remember you used to be able to buy dedicated hardware for the purpose as well!!I'm not sure it is fair to say that cheating on computer games is new.
Sorry, but who is going to be interested in coding a boring, routine, business application like that. Certainly not me. I do shit like that all day at work. I imagine it's exactly the same for most open source guys.
Sorry about this but....
How is teaching children our morals and our sense of right and wrong not indoctrination.You are right that property laws are not genetically implanted, nor is their implementation in the USA in 2001 in any way _obvious_. However, teaching children your prejuduces does not count as letting them make up their own minds.
Too true.You forgot: Newsgroups, fan sites, the music press, going to gigs.I haven't noticed a flood of radical new music which would never have been discovered without Napster.
How do you make sure that every single solitary gun stays with it's registered owner?Do you demand that every registered gun owner produces his\her gun at the police station every week to make sure none are stolen \ sold on?This is a completely bogus argument.
According the dictionary intelligence is the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. It does not mention the knowledge itself, and does not address wether a skill (knowledge) that augments the natural abilities is included in the term intelligence, but the absence of a statement to that effect suggests that that is not the definition. If it is your definition, then we are arguing semantics, not the subject of intelligence.
Agreed 100%. I believe that the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge is largely learnt.
In my high school biology class there were at the time (i believe) five or six genes thought to influence intelligence. Not being into genetics, I lack more current data.
Much as I dislike the habit of bringing up qualifications when discussing items like this I took my degree is in Biochemistry (yuk, sorry, got it over with - will shut up now). The link between genetics and intelligence is in a _very_ germinal stage and is more "stamp collecting" than a unified theory. I agree though (I don't think your argument is distasteful) that at least a portion of these abilities might be attributable to genetics. However, for those of us within a couple of standard deviations of the mean I believe that what is percieved as intelligence is mostly the result of early training.
I do agree with your main point broadly speaking (sorry about the diversion - pet hobby horse of mine - can you tell?:-) You are quite right that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Kids who are taught from a young age to value learning will learn from the instruments they have be they books computers etc. My issue is with the idea that people are born intelligent or otherwise. This is unsubstantiated and relieves the parents \ teachers of their responsibility to instill a lifelong love of learning into kids.
All these points are fine.However, I still do not see that you have any reason to believe that the intelligence was not learnt pattern recognition.
In the case of the two adopted children example you have forgotten the extremely important element of the interaction between the two children (you know, the one which results in "middle child" or "younger child" syndrome) - I know that the children are supposed to be the same age but the effect of competition \interaction will still be there.I still assert that there is no _evidence_ to support your view as evidence for such an experiment would require that all the factors start, and remain, constant for the duration of the experiment.
Your view is what your experience suggests.My view is that the nurture argument is much, much stronger. By the time a child is old enough to take part in tests they have already recieved a _vast_ amount of input from their surroundings, their parents (computers?) etc.I think you will find that the view of the behavioural scientists which do such experiments skews towards the nurture side as well (but perhaps it would... depends how conspiritorially minded you are I guess).
Until a genetic component for 'intelligence' is found the nature argument remains speculation, however, the effect of education upon ability is well proven.
Basic intelligence is not effected by education, or the tools used to acquire information.
I'm curious about what you define as Basic Intelligence. AFAIK the input you give a child, especially in the early years of life will have a very significant effect on all tests which measure "intelligence".Dammit, listening to classical music is supposed to increase kids' performance in IQ tests.Surely using computers would mould a child's way of thinking in some way. That way might give every appearance of making the child more intelligent.They would be better problem solvers, be able to bring a larger base of knowledge to solving problems, be more logical in their approach to things, read things more carefully (e.g. RTFM).All this stuff looks extremely like intelligence to the outside world.To say that education does not effect intelligence you would need to measure intelligence without tests which used any of the above skills as these can definately be learnt and honed.Basically what I asking the question - What is the difference between the intelligence you refer to and being able to learn, and do, things well and how do you propose to tell the difference?
Let's be honest: by interoperability you mean "apps and OS work together through proprietary, binary format methods that prevent interoperability with the rest of the world."
You are forgetting of course that microsoft expose an interfaces to word \ excel \ outlook through COM \ OLE so programming with them is a breeze. Or perhaps you didn't know that?
Another important thing to remember is that an IT job is not soley concerned with technology. In many, if not most, IT jobs there is an important human interaction element (understanding your users, requirements gathering, teamworking, effective communication with those for whom setting up a network etc is not a piece of cake....). From your post I recon you'd last about 5 seconds before they sacked you and got someone with a bit more empathy. Remember, one ant cannot build a nest.
As an windows user (at work at least) I object to the image all the clueless morons and dumbasses that use windows give those of us who know something about it. If the user base of Linux is judged based on script kiddies then the user base of windows (especially here on slashdot) is judged according to the lowest common denominator user.
Very true. An important example is Microsoft's free MDAC libraries including the ADODB objects which make database programming very easy indeed. In exactly the same way as freely available pre-written modules makes CGI scripting tolerable (who here uses Perl \ PHP without any modules written by other people - hands up??). The best remedy I've found (only win32 sadly:-() is to use Perl for ASP - the best of both worlds.
Another point of using asp is that you can use the Visual Interdev IDE and the design time ActiveX controls included with it to write web "Application" with a richer functionality than with just plain ol' HTML. Please note, I am talking about INTRAnet or EXTRAnet applications (e.g. site management, order processing etc), where you can limit the delivery platform to IE. I would not advocate ASP's use for anything else as it is not that scalable. But as a tool for allowing the latest version of your application to be used anywhere on the corporate intranet (or even for home workers!) it's pretty good and more than fast enough for 50-100 simultaneous users.
Slashdot Mirror
How many times in your life do you have to do something like this?
Sharing source code with other developers is not the same as opening the source code to the whole world and relinquishing your copyright.I know how _most_ OSS works.However, from your post I guess you must have meant some other kind of OSS.
I seem to remember POKE-ing many of the games on my Amstrad CPC 464.I seem to remember you used to be able to buy dedicated hardware for the purpose as well!!I'm not sure it is fair to say that cheating on computer games is new.
That's all
Sorry, but who is going to be interested in coding a boring, routine, business application like that. Certainly not me. I do shit like that all day at work. I imagine it's exactly the same for most open source guys.
Actually, I think some translations of The Bible are copyrighted.Remember, translating the ancient texts accurately requires huge teams of scholars.
For example, the Good News Bible.
These people seem quite upset about it.
Sorry about this but....
How is teaching children our morals and our sense of right and wrong not indoctrination.You are right that property laws are not genetically implanted, nor is their implementation in the USA in 2001 in any way _obvious_.
However, teaching children your prejuduces does not count as letting them make up their own minds.
Not to be a mega nerd nitpicker?
Be proud of being a mega nerd nitpicker dammit!
Too true.You forgot: Newsgroups, fan sites, the music press, going to gigs.I haven't noticed a flood of radical new music which would never have been discovered without Napster.
How do you make sure that every single solitary gun stays with it's registered owner?Do you demand that every registered gun owner produces his\her gun at the police station every week to make sure none are stolen \ sold on?This is a completely bogus argument.
Try tera term pro It's much better than the standard windows telnet client.
The disadvantage wrt "standard" companies being that there is little or no roaming.
Surely for a _mobile_ phone, little or no roaming is a pretty serious downside?
I prefer Squeal myself
According the dictionary intelligence is the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. It does not mention the knowledge itself, and does not address wether a skill (knowledge) that augments the natural abilities is included in the term intelligence, but the absence of a statement to that effect suggests that that is not the definition. If it is your definition, then we are arguing semantics, not the subject of intelligence.
Agreed 100%. I believe that the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge is largely learnt.
In my high school biology class there were at the time (i believe) five or six genes thought to influence intelligence. Not being into genetics, I lack more current data.
Much as I dislike the habit of bringing up qualifications when discussing items like this I took my degree is in Biochemistry (yuk, sorry, got it over with - will shut up now). The link between genetics and intelligence is in a _very_ germinal stage and is more "stamp collecting" than a unified theory. I agree though (I don't think your argument is distasteful) that at least a portion of these abilities might be attributable to genetics. However, for those of us within a couple of standard deviations of the mean I believe that what is percieved as intelligence is mostly the result of early training.
I do agree with your main point broadly speaking (sorry about the diversion - pet hobby horse of mine - can you tell?:-) You are quite right that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Kids who are taught from a young age to value learning will learn from the instruments they have be they books computers etc. My issue is with the idea that people are born intelligent or otherwise. This is unsubstantiated and relieves the parents \ teachers of their responsibility to instill a lifelong love of learning into kids.
All these points are fine.However, I still do not see that you have any reason to believe that the intelligence was not learnt pattern recognition.
In the case of the two adopted children example you have forgotten the extremely important element of the interaction between the two children (you know, the one which results in "middle child" or "younger child" syndrome) - I know that the children are supposed to be the same age but the effect of competition \interaction will still be there.I still assert that there is no _evidence_ to support your view as evidence for such an experiment would require that all the factors start, and remain, constant for the duration of the experiment.
Your view is what your experience suggests.My view is that the nurture argument is much, much stronger. By the time a child is old enough to take part in tests they have already recieved a _vast_ amount of input from their surroundings, their parents (computers?) etc.I think you will find that the view of the behavioural scientists which do such experiments skews towards the nurture side as well (but perhaps it would... depends how conspiritorially minded you are I guess).
Until a genetic component for 'intelligence' is found the nature argument remains speculation, however, the effect of education upon ability is well proven.
Basic intelligence is not effected by education, or the tools used to acquire information.
I'm curious about what you define as Basic Intelligence. AFAIK the input you give a child, especially in the early years of life will have a very significant effect on all tests which measure "intelligence".Dammit, listening to classical music is supposed to increase kids' performance in IQ tests.Surely using computers would mould a child's way of thinking in some way. That way might give every appearance of making the child more intelligent.They would be better problem solvers, be able to bring a larger base of knowledge to solving problems, be more logical in their approach to things, read things more carefully (e.g. RTFM).All this stuff looks extremely like intelligence to the outside world.To say that education does not effect intelligence you would need to measure intelligence without tests which used any of the above skills as these can definately be learnt and honed.Basically what I asking the question - What is the difference between the intelligence you refer to and being able to learn, and do, things well and how do you propose to tell the difference?
Let's be honest: by interoperability you mean "apps and OS work together through proprietary, binary format methods that prevent interoperability with the rest of the world."
You are forgetting of course that microsoft expose an interfaces to word \ excel \ outlook through COM \ OLE so programming with them is a breeze. Or perhaps you didn't know that?
Another important thing to remember is that an IT job is not soley concerned with technology. In many, if not most, IT jobs there is an important human interaction element (understanding your users, requirements gathering, teamworking, effective communication with those for whom setting up a network etc is not a piece of cake....). From your post I recon you'd last about 5 seconds before they sacked you and got someone with a bit more empathy. Remember, one ant cannot build a nest.
As an windows user (at work at least) I object to the image all the clueless morons and dumbasses that use windows give those of us who know something about it. If the user base of Linux is judged based on script kiddies then the user base of windows (especially here on slashdot) is judged according to the lowest common denominator user.
Very true. An important example is Microsoft's free MDAC libraries including the ADODB objects which make database programming very easy indeed. In exactly the same way as freely available pre-written modules makes CGI scripting tolerable (who here uses Perl \ PHP without any modules written by other people - hands up??). The best remedy I've found (only win32 sadly :-() is to use Perl for ASP - the best of both worlds.
Absolutely. Does anyone know if you can use Perl or Javascript with Chillisoft ASP?
I write asp in Perl. What's your problem again?
Exactamundo!! Mod parent up.
Another point of using asp is that you can use the Visual Interdev IDE and the design time ActiveX controls included with it to write web "Application" with a richer functionality than with just plain ol' HTML. Please note, I am talking about INTRAnet or EXTRAnet applications (e.g. site management, order processing etc), where you can limit the delivery platform to IE. I would not advocate ASP's use for anything else as it is not that scalable. But as a tool for allowing the latest version of your application to be used anywhere on the corporate intranet (or even for home workers!) it's pretty good and more than fast enough for 50-100 simultaneous users.
-- the crucial difference being that in contrast to the Holocaust, Stalin's killings weren't focused on the eradication of a single people.
Hitlers killings weren't focused on the eradication of a single people either.
Thanks, I will have another look. I'm kinda post-skeptic these days though. Must be getting old;-(