Look, this 'watch' analogy (and Aqunas's 'Unmoved Mover') bugged the hell out of me when I was taking classes at a Jesuit college, and I'm going to say something about it.
You find a bottle of beer (or a watch, for the traditionalists) in the sand on a beach. It's reasonable to assume that a brewer exists somewhere. No problem, I'm with you so far.
You notice that every object moves because a force is acted upon it, every object (particle or wave, for you quantum physics nitpickers) exerts force or otherwise moves. It's reasonable that there was an inert object (or, classically, the Unmoved Mover) that started the system from the outside. Not only does this make sense, but it's sympatico with the Laws of Thermodynamics which not even the most exotic clergy will dare wrestle with.
At what point does someone assume the nature of the brewer, or the nature of the Unmoved Mover? To say that the creator of the universe is anthropomorphic, aware of it's environment or even self-aware (or dare I say it, divine,) is as unfounded as assuming our brewer is German, two-legged, mustachioed and voted for Bill Clinton, or that our Unmoved Mover resembles a photon, a small cup of tea, or a carelessly flung tortilla dyed like the Shroud of Turin. Something I never thought about until now is why the Divine Watchmaker or the Unmoved Mover has to be a *single* entity anyways.
Was there an Unmoved Mover? Yes, of course, it's true a priori. Was there a Divine Watchmaker? See above about umoved movers. What is the nature of the Divine Watchmaker or Unmoved Mover? Is the Divine Watchmaker still alive, or the Unmoved Mover still moving? If you'll forgive the phrase, Ghod only knows.
The Unmoved Mover and Divine Watchmaker analogies are as easily satisfied by the solid-state cosmos, burping multiverses or spirtual cows licking an iceberg as it is by a bearded benevolent father-figure with a penchant for biology and engineering (yes yes, I'm picking on Christians. Sorry, did I mention the Jesuit college? Substitute your own anthropomorphism).
Oh, and for the zebra comment, if you're surrounded by a herd of zebras, must you think of horses first and zebras second?
Caveat: My statements aren't an argument against the existence of God, just a rebuttal of two of the 'proofs'.
Ah, I wish I could, but when I told my boss, G----, that I was planning to use an OSS MUD server to handle the avatars and virtual world stuff, I thought he was going to blow a valve. We argued bitterly for a while about what was best for the product (technology proven to work) and what was best for the investors (technology we can say we own 'completely'). In the end, I gave up.
Luckily, I was able to reasses the product's needs while G---- was away on a business trip, and I declared that a virtual world wasn't as necessary as mere chatting and scalability, and managed to change the company's momentum into that direction. An IRC server satisfies these needs.
I won't tell G---- that the IRC server is GNU Licensed if you don't. Just in case I found an IRC server that he can pay thousands of dollars for if he really wants to. Yes, I understand the irony that the price tag doesn't give ownership anymore than a GNU License does. He hasn't clued in to the fact that the same GNU License also covers our Apache web server. (Maybe I should be writing this for fuckedcompany.com)
I will investigate Crystal Space on my own. Thank you for mentioning it.
I've been working for two companies now that are in the 'vurtual world for chat' business, and I'm really questioning whether the idea of whether using avatar-based-chat (read: graphical MUDs) is worth the time and expense to write the software. For chat and collaberation, IRC or whiteboard software is fine. Want people to see a picture of you? Post a JPEG or use a webcam. Where I'm working now is a startup where avatar-chat is one of a list of 16 features (to be delivered December 15h, but that's another story), yet we're spending 3/4 of our time on it... and I can't see it as anything more than something pretty to help sell to investors.
There've been a few companies that are already in the avatar-chat market, and as far as I can tell only two of them has had significant financial success:
ActiveWorlds aka Alphaworld, VRML-like without using VRML, the most impressive of the bunch.
Blaxxun, actually does use VRML but looks like IRC with a VRML plug-in viewer tacked on top
The Palace, made by the original Habitat authors, doesn't have any pretense of being 3D so it focuses more on chat.
Rational Rose for yet another webbrowser with avatars built in.
If graphics are so much better, why are these companies sort of floundering while IRC services like EFnet, DALnet and Undernet are getting swamped with 50,000 + users during any given minute of the day?
It makes me think heretical thoughts about the product I'm developing now.
I've found some free zooming software for WinXX machines, called Lupe2 (appaently it's Polish for "lens"). Some zooming software will cost you $295 (no joke. see www.hj.com) Lupe2 is a free demo of an ActiveX control, but very useful in it's own right.
Manager: "Mozai, R., I know you're busy but could I meet with you? We're trying to deploy a beta test of our new product and we need it to be done as soon as possible. We've got a list of names and passwords to be added to the beta server, so we'll need you to add them to the server and make a special login form --" Mozai: "They're logging in through the test database. R. would spend too much time trying to figure it out, so I should do it since I know the database." Manager: "Oh, great. We've got a few hundred here, so if you could get this done Saturday that would be great." Mozai: "... I'd rather not work on the weekend. I've got plans." Manager: "Ah. Well, R., are you okay with coming in on Saturday and maybe Sunday to get this done?" R.: "Well, sure, I could --" Mozai: "No. If you're going to tell R. to come in on the weekend, then I'll get it done. It would take him too long."
So I ended up working really late Friday on an alternate solution where the hundred or so users could make their own accounts on the beta server and database. A few emergency phone calls to our other office on the East Coast, and the beta test was ready to go before midnight. I told the manager I had a problem with being expected to work weekends. He looked at me strangely, so I qualified it by saying I don't mind so much working weekends, just his assumption that I would. He got confused and later said that he did appreciate the extra time I was putting in. I feel that he's lying because he never noticed I was working the last three Sundays, despite the fact that he signs my timesheets.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, this 'watch' analogy (and Aqunas's 'Unmoved Mover') bugged the hell out of me when I was taking classes at a Jesuit college, and I'm going to say something about it.
You find a bottle of beer (or a watch, for the traditionalists) in the sand on a beach. It's reasonable to assume that a brewer exists somewhere. No problem, I'm with you so far.
You notice that every object moves because a force is acted upon it, every object (particle or wave, for you quantum physics nitpickers) exerts force or otherwise moves. It's reasonable that there was an inert object (or, classically, the Unmoved Mover) that started the system from the outside. Not only does this make sense, but it's sympatico with the Laws of Thermodynamics which not even the most exotic clergy will dare wrestle with.
At what point does someone assume the nature of the brewer, or the nature of the Unmoved Mover? To say that the creator of the universe is anthropomorphic, aware of it's environment or even self-aware (or dare I say it, divine,) is as unfounded as assuming our brewer is German, two-legged, mustachioed and voted for Bill Clinton, or that our Unmoved Mover resembles a photon, a small cup of tea, or a carelessly flung tortilla dyed like the Shroud of Turin. Something I never thought about until now is why the Divine Watchmaker or the Unmoved Mover has to be a *single* entity anyways.
Was there an Unmoved Mover? Yes, of course, it's true a priori. Was there a Divine Watchmaker? See above about umoved movers. What is the nature of the Divine Watchmaker or Unmoved Mover? Is the Divine Watchmaker still alive, or the Unmoved Mover still moving? If you'll forgive the phrase, Ghod only knows.
The Unmoved Mover and Divine Watchmaker analogies are as easily satisfied by the solid-state cosmos, burping multiverses or spirtual cows licking an iceberg as it is by a bearded benevolent father-figure with a penchant for biology and engineering (yes yes, I'm picking on Christians. Sorry, did I mention the Jesuit college? Substitute your own anthropomorphism).
Oh, and for the zebra comment, if you're surrounded by a herd of zebras, must you think of horses first and zebras second?
Caveat: My statements aren't an argument against the existence of God, just a rebuttal of two of the 'proofs'.
Ah, I wish I could, but when I told my boss, G----, that I was planning to use an OSS MUD server to handle the avatars and virtual world stuff, I thought he was going to blow a valve. We argued bitterly for a while about what was best for the product (technology proven to work) and what was best for the investors (technology we can say we own 'completely'). In the end, I gave up.
Luckily, I was able to reasses the product's needs while G---- was away on a business trip, and I declared that a virtual world wasn't as necessary as mere chatting and scalability, and managed to change the company's momentum into that direction. An IRC server satisfies these needs.
I won't tell G---- that the IRC server is GNU Licensed if you don't. Just in case I found an IRC server that he can pay thousands of dollars for if he really wants to. Yes, I understand the irony that the price tag doesn't give ownership anymore than a GNU License does. He hasn't clued in to the fact that the same GNU License also covers our Apache web server. (Maybe I should be writing this for fuckedcompany.com)
I will investigate Crystal Space on my own. Thank you for mentioning it.
- VZones, the inheritors of the Habitat legacy.
- ActiveWorlds aka Alphaworld, VRML-like without using VRML, the most impressive of the bunch.
- Blaxxun, actually does use VRML but looks like IRC with a VRML plug-in viewer tacked on top
- The Palace, made by the original Habitat authors, doesn't have any pretense of being 3D so it focuses more on chat.
- Rational Rose for yet another webbrowser with avatars built in.
If graphics are so much better, why are these companies sort of floundering while IRC services like EFnet, DALnet and Undernet are getting swamped with 50,000 + users during any given minute of the day? It makes me think heretical thoughts about the product I'm developing now.I've found some free zooming software for WinXX machines, called Lupe2 (appaently it's Polish for "lens"). Some zooming software will cost you $295 (no joke. see www.hj.com) Lupe2 is a free demo of an ActiveX control, but very useful in it's own right.
t .gif
Lupe2: http://www.controtex.com/lupa2.htm
Sample screenshot: http://netdesign.net/~moses/vzones/lupa_screensho
Does something similar exist for MacOS, BeOS or X-Windows/Motif? I dunno, but it should.
You do realize that NeoPlanet is only Internet Explorer with customizable chrome.
After blowing away IE, Neoplanet was crippled but my Netscape and Opera (and Perl's LWP::Agent for that matter) browsers were fine.
Manager: "Mozai, R., I know you're busy but could I meet with you? We're trying to deploy a beta test of our new product and we need it to be done as soon as possible. We've got a list of names and passwords to be added to the beta server, so we'll need you to add them to the server and make a special login form --"
Mozai: "They're logging in through the test database. R. would spend too much time trying to figure it out, so I should do it since I know the database."
Manager: "Oh, great. We've got a few hundred here, so if you could get this done Saturday that would be great."
Mozai: "... I'd rather not work on the weekend. I've got plans."
Manager: "Ah. Well, R., are you okay with coming in on Saturday and maybe Sunday to get this done?"
R.: "Well, sure, I could --"
Mozai: "No. If you're going to tell R. to come in on the weekend, then I'll get it done. It would take him too long."
So I ended up working really late Friday on an alternate solution where the hundred or so users could make their own accounts on the beta server and database. A few emergency phone calls to our other office on the East Coast, and the beta test was ready to go before midnight. I told the manager I had a problem with being expected to work weekends. He looked at me strangely, so I qualified it by saying I don't mind so much working weekends, just his assumption that I would. He got confused and later said that he did appreciate the extra time I was putting in. I feel that he's lying because he never noticed I was working the last three Sundays, despite the fact that he signs my timesheets.
Unappreciated? Yeah, I feel it.