As another poster mentioned, many or even most libraries already do things to foster community.
This idea *is* an interesting way to *force* people to interact, but that shouldn't be confused with community, which is a sense of togetherness or belonging to something.
A crucial component of this is having an actual physical, brick-and-mortar presence that enables people to interact when they want to. In a library you can choose to interact with librarians, or you can see someone looking at a book and ask them about the author. The cost of going to the library in terms of time is higher than browsing online (although many libraries let you browse online anyways), but once you get there every operation has a lower overhead. You can search for a book, go to the shelf and see the other books next to it. You can grab a few dozen books you might be interested in, look them over and then just borrow the ones you want. And all of this with a much bigger collection than any member of the proposed club would have.
I think that the identified problem is very valid, but the proposed idea doesn't solve it. Libraries are becoming less viewed as a community resource than they used to be, in part because chain bookstores are kicking their butts in that area, providing a place to read, chat, have a coffee, and even attend events. Maybe it's chicken and egg, because if libraries were better-utilised they'd probably get more funding. I don't know if that's the issue.
So libraries need to improve their current public image, from boring, dusty "whispering-only" collections of old books, to cool places to check out the latest books from your favourite author. Basically that's what the large bookstores are doing. Knowing that the library has copies of *recent* books is important, and borrowing the coffee shop idea from the chain stores is not a bad idea either!
A lot of comments about metaverse-like worlds seem to center around the 3D engine and the quality of the graphics. But is that really the crucial aspect of the metaverse that we find appealing?
One of the most fascinating parts of the metaverse was the way it offered an interactive version of the Internet under a single paradigm. Instead of having the wide range of protocols like HTTP and IRC offering a limited range of interactivity and services, it was all integrated. With the Net right now we can find interesting flat (or semi-interactive) documents on the web, we can play interactive games, or we can engage in primarily useless chatter on IRC.
The metaverse in principle combined all of these principles into a single paradigm. You could go to a library and while reading a reference book, you could engage in mindless chatter (or interesting discussion) within the context of the library.
I think that's a big key--keeping the context. That's what makes blogs with discussion areas (like slashdot) so interesting--we can discuss over the context of the article. But we really need an overlying metaphor, like the metaverse had, for unifying all the information, services, and forms of interaction.
3D is not the key. It's just the glossy exterior that could bring such a paradigm to the next level IF such a paradigm really existed.
If you're interested in that kind of thing... get in touch with me via msg on/.
Cutting off countries that don't prevent spam defeats the whole INTER-NET principle of the Internet. The more networks and nodes attached to the Internet, the more useful the Internet is to its users. Being able to email or receive email from people in other countries is FAR more important to me than getting rid of spam. I would vastly prefer having to twiddle the delete key over losing touch with friends, colleagues and clients in other countries.
The UDP doesn't apply to something as crucial as email, and it's controversial in any case.
There are many ways to deal with spam, but this would really be throwing the baby out with the bath water!!
I wonder if they could create an interface that would allow you to fix bugs by dancing?
Gnu Debugger, the real Dance Dance Revolution?
Haha, only parlty serious. Just as we need new ways to "view" information, it could also be helpful to be able to respond in a way that goes beyond the keyboard and mouse.
Well, the idea would be that each user would have a signature (where user is defined as an instance of a person acting as a user, as referenced by a signature).
The number of signatures wouldn't matter. You'd just use signatures first to decide who is a friend. The zillion keys wouldn't work because they'd need to have an IP address (well server, so at least IP:port combination) per key. They couldn't say "IP address W.X.Y.Z has the following 300,000,000 keys."
Really, when you think about it, the way to get a system to work better (ie. a fairly chaotic P2P system) is to greatly increase the intelligence of the clients, and to base it off the real-life methods that people use in dealing with people.
The clients just need more AI-like intelligence. They need to individually learn who to trust as a "hub," who to look for files from, who to offer files to, and who to tell to @#$% off.
This could be established by gathering statistics about network activity and using a point-based system to determine who to trust and for what purposes. Essentially you'd be automating the process that a human would use.
Person A gave me a file, and it was good. Rating for A goes up. Person B gave me a bad file: mark them down, and warn my friends. Person C doesn't seem to have much bandwidth, so I won't go to them as readily as another. D,E,F and G are all on the same network and all of them gave me bad files. H, I, J and K were all recommended by L, and they gave me good files.
The hardest part would be patterns, of course, a major study of AI.
Digital signatures could be used to establish who your friends are regardless of their changing IP addresses.
It's true that Gnutella has often had problems because of the protocol itself. And building some degrees of trust into the model would help it.
One of the things that could be done to prevent this kind of network abuse is for nodes to block out those programs sending excessive numbers of queries. As soon as a given client receives more than a certain number of queries within a given time span from the same client, it blocks that client out.
I think that the best way to deal with this kind of problem is by building more intelligence into the clients.
If digital signatures were used only for central servers (super nodes) then it might make sense. But that begins to defeat the original principle of Gnutella.
I wish I could say it would, but the introduction of a new alternative OS or improvements to an existing one don't draw away Windows users. The market for non-MS operating systems stays pretty constant. It's a lot more likely that OS X will draw users away from Linux (it already has) or that at some point a new release of a Linux distro could move users away from MacOS.
Why do most people use Windows? It's a no brainer, literally. They really don't care a whole lot about what features it has. The just know that everyone else uses it, and that it works. They know that they have Windows and MS Office at work, and so that's what they buy for home. They know that their tech buddy who helps them install stuff uses Windows, and they know they'll have help when something doesn't work.
What can really help to bring more users to Linux/*BSD is if Apple succeeds in making a strong business case for OS X and getting penetration into the business market. People who use Macs at work or at school will be far more likely to want them at home.
That's the key to ensuring that Mac OS X increases the overall number of "alternative" OS users--increases the market size, that is, rather than just cannibalizing the existing market.
And that's what Linux users need to do, too, of course.
Well, maybe Perl/Tk (which this Perl desktop thing uses) isn't exactly what you're talking about, but it does provide a cross-platform abstracted GUI toolkit for Perl. It's actually pretty decent. It also makes sense to piggy-back on technology (like Tk) which has been around for a while. The technology is more tried-and-true, and there are at least some Perl programmers who have tried Tcl-Tk and so it's not a huge jump.
Now, if someone wanted to write a real abstraction layer, maybe one that would let you use either Perl/Tk, Perl/GTK+, or something else... that coule be interesting:-)
...and people wonder why Comp Sci students aren't known for social skills. Obviously they're self-selecting for people who prefer to work alone.
Compare that with most business schools, where they recognize that group work is crucial to learning how to function in the real world, as well as being an effective way to learn.
Incidentally, most of my software engineering courses have involved group work, and tested the abilities of the individuals through exams. It encourages interaction, which can help people to learn, and it also gets you used to collaboration.
I don't think they're helping students or serving any useful educational function by restricting the students' ability to work together. They're just filtering to exclude people who like working with others, or who don't cheat intelligently. If you really want to test someone's individual understanding of a subject, give them an exam.
Asimove didn't invent the term "robot," but he was the first person to use the word "robotics" in writing.
Re:Globalization without rules == Corporate Heaven
on
Defining Globalism
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· Score: 1
There will ALWAYS be rich and there will ALWAYS be poor. The trick is to do our best to make sure the middle class holds the deciding vote between them.
The issue of rich and poor only matters when it's a matter of extremes and dynamics. That is, it matters when less than %20 have more than 80% of the wealth, and even more so when the gap is increasing.
But I agree that the key is in maintaining a strong, large, empowered middle class.
(ObHistory: The entire history of western civilization, up to and including "globalization" can be summarized in one phrase: "The Rise of the Bourgeosie.")
Right. It could also be summed up as "the rise of the cheeseburger" or "the rise and fall of Protestant values." It's all about perspective, and you're choosing to focus on the bourgeoisie.
I have a real issue with folks who have Internet connections and the ability to speak freely saying we should be transferring more of global wealth to the "poor." If that's the case, please, set an example, sell your computer and donate the $$ from your college tuition to Food For the Poor [foodforthepoor.com].
No, that's actually a very dangerous misconception. The problem is not actually that some people have computers and some don't. The problem is that some people own companies with more wealth than middle-sized nations, and many people are too poor to survive.
Giving away your computer or even donating to charities may relieve a teeny percentage of the problem, but it WILL NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM! The problem of poverty is systematic, not isolated. Giving money is good, but it's like mopping up the rainwater when you have a hole in your roof--you're not getting rid of the problem.
But if your contribution to the fight against global poverty and dispair is to bitch on a/. message board about how a global government should fix the problem, then I have issues.
In order to solve the problem, people have to be aware of what's going on. Maybe posting to Slashdot won't solve it, but informing people is absolutely necessary.
Face it folks. WE are that global government. WE are the ones who can make a difference. Set an Earnings Tax on yourself. Vote in favor of stockholder resolutions that require companies in which we hold stock to act in socially conscious ways.
Sorry, that won't work, and the reason has been known for a long time. It's called the Problem of the Commons. Basically, you need central authorities to enforce things that are for the common good. Otherwise, it's too much to the individual advantage to be selfish. After all, why should I invest responsibly and force the companies I invest in to act responsibly, if it means I might make less money than my neighbour? No, if I'm going to invest responsibly then I want the same rules to apply to everyone. That's the whole idea of government in the first place.
Development is never balanced. It's not driven by structure or conditions. It's driven by individual people deciding to build a better life for their children.
That's it. Why is Singapore rich and peaceful, but unfree, while Uruguay, which arguably has better natural conditions for development, is slipping backwards every day?
No, that's crap. The reason that most South American countries have had such problems economically is BECAUSE of their history of natural resources. When a country has to rely on its people as a resource (eg. Japan), it tends to do fairly well. When it has natural resources, they tend to be owned and exploited by a minority of people in the country, leaving no profit for the majority.
Re:Globalization is not bad
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Defining Globalism
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· Score: 2, Insightful
> Globalization is nothing more than the natural expansion of existing commerce.
I really hate it when people assume that however things are going now, it's the natural progression. It's that linear view of history that pretends we can only go forward or backward.
No. It's not the natural way for things to progress in a vacuum, it's the PRODUCT of a very specific politico-economic situation. It's the product of the laws that have been put into place in the dominant western culture. Certain people have chosen, over the course of a few hundred years, to produce this situation. It's artificial, human-made.
Historically, it's been an abandonment of governmental responsibility. It started with the monarchs of Western Europe choosing to get out of the way and let their merchants have free reign, eventually giving way to democracies. Now we've ended up at the point where the democracies are giving way to transnational corporations. It's based on what makes the most money for those in power.
If it's a natural progression, it's simply the progression of what used to be capitalism, and has now reached a new form based on investment and globalism. Capitalism required finding new markets for expansion, and that's the only thing that hasn't changed much.
> All businesses start out as a small mom-and-pop shop, and either expand or fail.
No, that's wrong. First of all, many businesses are started by other corporations or by entrepreneurs with enough backing to start out big.
Besides, the common theme is for businesses to get bought out by a big corporation before they reach maturity--that's how companies like MS stay on top. So the idea of hard-working mom-and-pop operations turning into transnational corporations is a complete fantasy.
>...you don't become a huge multinational conglomerate by screwing over your customers. Companies like Wal-Mart, Montsano, and Coca Cola got where they are today by offering superior products and services than their competitors.
If you honestly think that companies succeed by offering the best products, then you have probably read too much economics and too little marketing theory. Much of economics rides on models of rational actors that are completely blown away by modern industrial psych and marketing.
Coca Cola is a perfect example of a company that is ALL marketing. What do they sell? Syrup, which other companies bottle and turn into something that's awful for you.
Ah, but you say it must taste better than the competition, which is why people buy it? Nope. In taste-test trials other soft drinks beat the crap out of Coke. Why do people buy Coke? It's exclusively because of effective marketing. Coke has become about as American as apple pie, and it's all through marketing.
Well, it should be noted that there was celebration among the Palestinians when they found out about the bombings.
When another country attacks you, it's not everyone in the country that attacks--just the army. But to a certain degree, the country supports the fight. Similarly, if this is an attack perpetrated by Palestinians, and openly supported by the Palestinians, then why not hold them accountable?
Actually, you're wrong. For one thing, the concept of a "Palestinian" is a modern invention. Two thousand years ago, the Romans created the concept of "Palestine" to describe the way they chopped up the region adminstratively--it wasn't a description of a nation.
The people who were living in Palestine when the British temporarily took it over from the Turks, were not a single group of any name. They were Bedouins, and Arabs who could be best described as Jordanians and Syrians. The concept of a "Palestinian" is a modern invention which has about as much meaning as "Vermontonian."
As for Israelis and Palestinians, or even Jews and Arabs, fighting for thousands of years--that's wrong, too. Actually, until the 20th century, Jews and Arabs got along pretty well. During the time of the Islamic golden age, it was Christians and Arabs that were mortal enemies. Jews and Arabs got along pretty well. It was really only at the end of the Ottoman era, when the Jews in Palestine and those in Europe were trying to re-establish a state of Israel, that the Arab-Jewish problems really began. At first the Arabs and Jews were both fighting on the same side against Ottoman rule, but eventually the two groups split. The Arabs living in the Palestine area realized that after 2000 years of living under foreign rule (from the Babylonians to the British), they too wanted independent rule. The idea of more Jews returning to Palestine and creating a new state of Israel created the rift, as well as some of the underhanded tactics the Jews used as they escaped from Europe to live in Palestine.
Skipping ahead to now, the problem is that Israel is at (risk of) war with the Arab states, and as a result it has more or less kept the people in the occupied territories as prisoners of war.
And incidentally, the PLO has not helped the Palestinian Arabs much at all in terms of improving people's lives. They spend a lot of time and money on weapons and staying in control, and not a lot on helping the people.
There are a lot of reasons why someone might help code an Open Source project for free (remembering that some lucky bums get paid for this, too).
Some people do it to prove what they're capable of, whether just for the geek point or possibly in the hopes that a great employer will see what they've done and hire them to do something similar.
Some people just enjoy sharing, and others just enjoy creation. Maybe in the beginning the programmer didn't even think the end result would be worth paying for.
I think one of the original reasons, though, was that it's a way for you to potentially get the help from other people to finish a project. Say you're a programmer and you really wish there was a Swahili word processor out there. So you start making one yourself, but your objective isn't to make money--you'd be willing to pay for the program if it existed.
So instead, you put a bunch of work into it, and distribute the source, hoping that there are other programmers who also wish there were a good Swahili word processor available (maybe there is, this is just a lame example). So instead of spending $100 on the program, you spend a whole bunch of your time doing something you enjoy anyway, and sharing the work with other people who like doing this stuff.
If you enjoy programming and the feeling of creating something useful, then it's almost a negative cost--you're deriving enjoyment from creating it, instead of paying money for the right to use it.
In that case, asking why someone would participate in an Open Source project is much like asking why someone would choose to play chess or rugby.
Whether this will take succeed or not, there's no doubt that we will keep wanting faster chips.
But a funny thing hit me when I read the words "Gallium Arsenide." It reminded me of a lecture in one of my Comp Sci classes, when the prof described the nasty environmental effects of creating these chips in the first place.
I wonder if, at the same time as we ask what will make for faster and cheaper chips, someone somewhere will start to ask if there's a way to make these manufacturing processes safer.
The plants that manufacture our computer chips are generally pretty nasty environmental hazards.
Note that the people who make money off anti-virus software are the most vociferous in the denouncement of anti-worm worms.
People cite the fact that the viruses use up bandwidth and may go out of control, but since that's already happening with Code Red I/II, I don't see how that's such a valid argument. The negative possibility is that a counter-worm could just do the same damage as the original worm.
But since the counter-worm would prioritize fixing systems and not be as agressive in seeking targets, it would not use as much bandwidth as the exisiting worm, and since it would replace the existing worm every time it infected, it would not make the situation worse.
If the worm were well-designed, and if it sought out a meek infection strategy (going after only computers that it knew to be infected, rather than searching randomly), and if it shut the computer or at least web server down after a certain period of activity, it seems it would be beneficial.
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
Yeah, that means you. You're giving up liberty-- not yours, but theirs.
Sorry Speare, that's not what Franklin is saying. Giving up your own liberty for some safety is like allowing your country to turn into a police state so that it will be harder for people to steal.
That's not the same as taking away someone else's liberty to protect your own safety--which is exactly what we do every time we send a criminal to jail.
Actually, it should be noted that just as the alphabetic system is optimised for speed of input (writing or typing) and to some degree for speed of learning (questionable), the Chinese/Japanese/Korean system of ideographs is optimized for *reading speed*. So, forgetting the difficulty for highly literate cultures of switching over to a phonetic system, there is also the fact that alphabets just aren't innately superior.
Research in Japan showed that people read characters faster than syllabaries, the Japanese equivalent of alphabets. It's just like the reason that weird spellings in English increase reading speed, by making it easier to distinguish between words.
The real issues *is* a technical one. We simply have to learn how to better store characters (developing an encoding scheme that harmonizes with other character sets, as Unicode claims to) and more importantly, how to improve input methods for C/J/K characters. But it's not a flaw in the system.
The point of view of many westerners that the characters are too complex and hard to learn is very much equivalent to the Chinese perspective that conjugating verbs is unneeded complexity.
As a matter of fact, Chinese characters are very easy to learn because of the degree to which the character itself reflects its meaning. I can look at a character and know it's a type of bird without even knowing the character beforehand.
There's no doubt that hardware is being better engineered than software. Most failures in electronic systems are in the software, and the rigorous testing they do on hardware still isn't done on software.
There are some other reasons why software sucks, tho. Check out this article... talks about how where people go wrong when they try to make software "easy."
Part of the problem lies in the complexity of mapping the software paradigms to the implementation. It's all those exceptions to the rule that give coders a headache, and it isn't any better for the users.
So far software engineering itself is full of guesswork, too. Most software houses don't use SE, and using SE doesn't necessarily always help. I think this is because SE is simply still in its infancy.
Scientists tend to group around the scientific interpretation of religion, much as marketers tend to focus on the parts of technology that fit current business models.
That is, science tends to emphasize the question of the existence of a deity. This requires formulating an exact definition of the Supreme Being - something contrary to most religions' interpretations of what the Deity means. The reason for this emphasis seems to be simply that science, ever since its divorce from philosophy around the time of Voltaire, has been obsessed with things that can be proven or disproven.
But proving or disproving the existence of the Deities of our religions isn't really what religions are about. In fact, when religions proclaim that their Deities are "the one and only" usually what they *really* mean is their ethical and spiritual interpretation of life.
In truth, Pseudo-scientific atheism has acquired more of the negative trappings of religions than most traditional religions have kept: it's a religion devoted to denying the existence of something that is only loosely defined, and can't readily be proven or disproven. But it misses the importance of ethics.
I think that science should worry less about proving the non-existence of the Supreme Being and more about reintegrating philosophy and ethics back into science. A science divorced from humans is largely irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
As another poster mentioned, many or even most libraries already do things to foster community.
This idea *is* an interesting way to *force* people to interact, but that shouldn't be confused with community, which is a sense of togetherness or belonging to something.
A crucial component of this is having an actual physical, brick-and-mortar presence that enables people to interact when they want to. In a library you can choose to interact with librarians, or you can see someone looking at a book and ask them about the author. The cost of going to the library in terms of time is higher than browsing online (although many libraries let you browse online anyways), but once you get there every operation has a lower overhead. You can search for a book, go to the shelf and see the other books next to it. You can grab a few dozen books you might be interested in, look them over and then just borrow the ones you want. And all of this with a much bigger collection than any member of the proposed club would have.
I think that the identified problem is very valid, but the proposed idea doesn't solve it. Libraries are becoming less viewed as a community resource than they used to be, in part because chain bookstores are kicking their butts in that area, providing a place to read, chat, have a coffee, and even attend events. Maybe it's chicken and egg, because if libraries were better-utilised they'd probably get more funding. I don't know if that's the issue.
So libraries need to improve their current public image, from boring, dusty "whispering-only" collections of old books, to cool places to check out the latest books from your favourite author. Basically that's what the large bookstores are doing. Knowing that the library has copies of *recent* books is important, and borrowing the coffee shop idea from the chain stores is not a bad idea either!
A lot of comments about metaverse-like worlds seem to center around the 3D engine and the quality of the graphics. But is that really the crucial aspect of the metaverse that we find appealing?
/.
One of the most fascinating parts of the metaverse was the way it offered an interactive version of the Internet under a single paradigm. Instead of having the wide range of protocols like HTTP and IRC offering a limited range of interactivity and services, it was all integrated. With the Net right now we can find interesting flat (or semi-interactive) documents on the web, we can play interactive games, or we can engage in primarily useless chatter on IRC.
The metaverse in principle combined all of these principles into a single paradigm. You could go to a library and while reading a reference book, you could engage in mindless chatter (or interesting discussion) within the context of the library.
I think that's a big key--keeping the context. That's what makes blogs with discussion areas (like slashdot) so interesting--we can discuss over the context of the article. But we really need an overlying metaphor, like the metaverse had, for unifying all the information, services, and forms of interaction.
3D is not the key. It's just the glossy exterior that could bring such a paradigm to the next level IF such a paradigm really existed.
If you're interested in that kind of thing... get in touch with me via msg on
Cutting off countries that don't prevent spam defeats the whole INTER-NET principle of the Internet. The more networks and nodes attached to the Internet, the more useful the Internet is to its users. Being able to email or receive email from people in other countries is FAR more important to me than getting rid of spam. I would vastly prefer having to twiddle the delete key over losing touch with friends, colleagues and clients in other countries.
The UDP doesn't apply to something as crucial as email, and it's controversial in any case.
There are many ways to deal with spam, but this would really be throwing the baby out with the bath water!!
Or maybe the Jitterbug? :)
I wonder if they could create an interface that would allow you to fix bugs by dancing?
Gnu Debugger, the real Dance Dance Revolution?
Haha, only parlty serious. Just as we need new ways to "view" information, it could also be helpful to be able to respond in a way that goes beyond the keyboard and mouse.
Well, the idea would be that each user would have a signature (where user is defined as an instance of a person acting as a user, as referenced by a signature).
The number of signatures wouldn't matter. You'd just use signatures first to decide who is a friend. The zillion keys wouldn't work because they'd need to have an IP address (well server, so at least IP:port combination) per key. They couldn't say "IP address W.X.Y.Z has the following 300,000,000 keys."
Really, when you think about it, the way to get a system to work better (ie. a fairly chaotic P2P system) is to greatly increase the intelligence of the clients, and to base it off the real-life methods that people use in dealing with people.
The clients just need more AI-like intelligence. They need to individually learn who to trust as a "hub," who to look for files from, who to offer files to, and who to tell to @#$% off.
This could be established by gathering statistics about network activity and using a point-based system to determine who to trust and for what purposes. Essentially you'd be automating the process that a human would use.
Person A gave me a file, and it was good. Rating for A goes up. Person B gave me a bad file: mark them down, and warn my friends. Person C doesn't seem to have much bandwidth, so I won't go to them as readily as another. D,E,F and G are all on the same network and all of them gave me bad files. H, I, J and K were all recommended by L, and they gave me good files.
The hardest part would be patterns, of course, a major study of AI.
Digital signatures could be used to establish who your friends are regardless of their changing IP addresses.
It's true that Gnutella has often had problems because of the protocol itself. And building some degrees of trust into the model would help it.
One of the things that could be done to prevent this kind of network abuse is for nodes to block out those programs sending excessive numbers of queries. As soon as a given client receives more than a certain number of queries within a given time span from the same client, it blocks that client out.
I think that the best way to deal with this kind of problem is by building more intelligence into the clients.
If digital signatures were used only for central servers (super nodes) then it might make sense. But that begins to defeat the original principle of Gnutella.
I wish I could say it would, but the introduction of a new alternative OS or improvements to an existing one don't draw away Windows users. The market for non-MS operating systems stays pretty constant. It's a lot more likely that OS X will draw users away from Linux (it already has) or that at some point a new release of a Linux distro could move users away from MacOS.
Why do most people use Windows? It's a no brainer, literally. They really don't care a whole lot about what features it has. The just know that everyone else uses it, and that it works. They know that they have Windows and MS Office at work, and so that's what they buy for home. They know that their tech buddy who helps them install stuff uses Windows, and they know they'll have help when something doesn't work.
What can really help to bring more users to Linux/*BSD is if Apple succeeds in making a strong business case for OS X and getting penetration into the business market. People who use Macs at work or at school will be far more likely to want them at home.
That's the key to ensuring that Mac OS X increases the overall number of "alternative" OS users--increases the market size, that is, rather than just cannibalizing the existing market.
And that's what Linux users need to do, too, of course.
Well, maybe Perl/Tk (which this Perl desktop thing uses) isn't exactly what you're talking about, but it does provide a cross-platform abstracted GUI toolkit for Perl. It's actually pretty decent. It also makes sense to piggy-back on technology (like Tk) which has been around for a while. The technology is more tried-and-true, and there are at least some Perl programmers who have tried Tcl-Tk and so it's not a huge jump.
:-)
Now, if someone wanted to write a real abstraction layer, maybe one that would let you use either Perl/Tk, Perl/GTK+, or something else... that coule be interesting
Well, Perl is an interpreted language but it does go through an internal compile phase. You *can* design an interpreter that doesn't do this.
...and people wonder why Comp Sci students aren't known for social skills. Obviously they're self-selecting for people who prefer to work alone.
Compare that with most business schools, where they recognize that group work is crucial to learning how to function in the real world, as well as being an effective way to learn.
Incidentally, most of my software engineering courses have involved group work, and tested the abilities of the individuals through exams. It encourages interaction, which can help people to learn, and it also gets you used to collaboration.
I don't think they're helping students or serving any useful educational function by restricting the students' ability to work together. They're just filtering to exclude people who like working with others, or who don't cheat intelligently. If you really want to test someone's individual understanding of a subject, give them an exam.
Asimove didn't invent the term "robot," but he was the first person to use the word "robotics" in writing.
But I agree that the key is in maintaining a strong, large, empowered middle class.
Right. It could also be summed up as "the rise of the cheeseburger" or "the rise and fall of Protestant values." It's all about perspective, and you're choosing to focus on the bourgeoisie. No, that's actually a very dangerous misconception. The problem is not actually that some people have computers and some don't. The problem is that some people own companies with more wealth than middle-sized nations, and many people are too poor to survive.Giving away your computer or even donating to charities may relieve a teeny percentage of the problem, but it WILL NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM! The problem of poverty is systematic, not isolated. Giving money is good, but it's like mopping up the rainwater when you have a hole in your roof--you're not getting rid of the problem.
In order to solve the problem, people have to be aware of what's going on. Maybe posting to Slashdot won't solve it, but informing people is absolutely necessary. Sorry, that won't work, and the reason has been known for a long time. It's called the Problem of the Commons. Basically, you need central authorities to enforce things that are for the common good. Otherwise, it's too much to the individual advantage to be selfish. After all, why should I invest responsibly and force the companies I invest in to act responsibly, if it means I might make less money than my neighbour? No, if I'm going to invest responsibly then I want the same rules to apply to everyone. That's the whole idea of government in the first place. No, that's crap. The reason that most South American countries have had such problems economically is BECAUSE of their history of natural resources. When a country has to rely on its people as a resource (eg. Japan), it tends to do fairly well. When it has natural resources, they tend to be owned and exploited by a minority of people in the country, leaving no profit for the majority.No. It's not the natural way for things to progress in a vacuum, it's the PRODUCT of a very specific politico-economic situation. It's the product of the laws that have been put into place in the dominant western culture. Certain people have chosen, over the course of a few hundred years, to produce this situation. It's artificial, human-made.
Historically, it's been an abandonment of governmental responsibility. It started with the monarchs of Western Europe choosing to get out of the way and let their merchants have free reign, eventually giving way to democracies. Now we've ended up at the point where the democracies are giving way to transnational corporations. It's based on what makes the most money for those in power.
If it's a natural progression, it's simply the progression of what used to be capitalism, and has now reached a new form based on investment and globalism. Capitalism required finding new markets for expansion, and that's the only thing that hasn't changed much.
No, that's wrong. First of all, many businesses are started by other corporations or by entrepreneurs with enough backing to start out big.Besides, the common theme is for businesses to get bought out by a big corporation before they reach maturity--that's how companies like MS stay on top. So the idea of hard-working mom-and-pop operations turning into transnational corporations is a complete fantasy. If you honestly think that companies succeed by offering the best products, then you have probably read too much economics and too little marketing theory. Much of economics rides on models of rational actors that are completely blown away by modern industrial psych and marketing.
Coca Cola is a perfect example of a company that is ALL marketing. What do they sell? Syrup, which other companies bottle and turn into something that's awful for you.
Ah, but you say it must taste better than the competition, which is why people buy it? Nope. In taste-test trials other soft drinks beat the crap out of Coke. Why do people buy Coke? It's exclusively because of effective marketing. Coke has become about as American as apple pie, and it's all through marketing.
Some people just can't take a joke.
Well, it should be noted that there was celebration among the Palestinians when they found out about the bombings.
When another country attacks you, it's not everyone in the country that attacks--just the army. But to a certain degree, the country supports the fight. Similarly, if this is an attack perpetrated by Palestinians, and openly supported by the Palestinians, then why not hold them accountable?
Actually, you're wrong. For one thing, the concept of a "Palestinian" is a modern invention. Two thousand years ago, the Romans created the concept of "Palestine" to describe the way they chopped up the region adminstratively--it wasn't a description of a nation.
The people who were living in Palestine when the British temporarily took it over from the Turks, were not a single group of any name. They were Bedouins, and Arabs who could be best described as Jordanians and Syrians. The concept of a "Palestinian" is a modern invention which has about as much meaning as "Vermontonian."
As for Israelis and Palestinians, or even Jews and Arabs, fighting for thousands of years--that's wrong, too. Actually, until the 20th century, Jews and Arabs got along pretty well. During the time of the Islamic golden age, it was Christians and Arabs that were mortal enemies. Jews and Arabs got along pretty well. It was really only at the end of the Ottoman era, when the Jews in Palestine and those in Europe were trying to re-establish a state of Israel, that the Arab-Jewish problems really began. At first the Arabs and Jews were both fighting on the same side against Ottoman rule, but eventually the two groups split. The Arabs living in the Palestine area realized that after 2000 years of living under foreign rule (from the Babylonians to the British), they too wanted independent rule. The idea of more Jews returning to Palestine and creating a new state of Israel created the rift, as well as some of the underhanded tactics the Jews used as they escaped from Europe to live in Palestine.
Skipping ahead to now, the problem is that Israel is at (risk of) war with the Arab states, and as a result it has more or less kept the people in the occupied territories as prisoners of war.
And incidentally, the PLO has not helped the Palestinian Arabs much at all in terms of improving people's lives. They spend a lot of time and money on weapons and staying in control, and not a lot on helping the people.
There are a lot of reasons why someone might help code an Open Source project for free (remembering that some lucky bums get paid for this, too).
Some people do it to prove what they're capable of, whether just for the geek point or possibly in the hopes that a great employer will see what they've done and hire them to do something similar.
Some people just enjoy sharing, and others just enjoy creation. Maybe in the beginning the programmer didn't even think the end result would be worth paying for.
I think one of the original reasons, though, was that it's a way for you to potentially get the help from other people to finish a project. Say you're a programmer and you really wish there was a Swahili word processor out there. So you start making one yourself, but your objective isn't to make money--you'd be willing to pay for the program if it existed.
So instead, you put a bunch of work into it, and distribute the source, hoping that there are other programmers who also wish there were a good Swahili word processor available (maybe there is, this is just a lame example). So instead of spending $100 on the program, you spend a whole bunch of your time doing something you enjoy anyway, and sharing the work with other people who like doing this stuff.
If you enjoy programming and the feeling of creating something useful, then it's almost a negative cost--you're deriving enjoyment from creating it, instead of paying money for the right to use it.
In that case, asking why someone would participate in an Open Source project is much like asking why someone would choose to play chess or rugby.
Whether this will take succeed or not, there's no doubt that we will keep wanting faster chips.
But a funny thing hit me when I read the words "Gallium Arsenide." It reminded me of a lecture in one of my Comp Sci classes, when the prof described the nasty environmental effects of creating these chips in the first place.
I wonder if, at the same time as we ask what will make for faster and cheaper chips, someone somewhere will start to ask if there's a way to make these manufacturing processes safer.
The plants that manufacture our computer chips are generally pretty nasty environmental hazards.
Note that the people who make money off anti-virus software are the most vociferous in the denouncement of anti-worm worms.
People cite the fact that the viruses use up bandwidth and may go out of control, but since that's already happening with Code Red I/II, I don't see how that's such a valid argument. The negative possibility is that a counter-worm could just do the same damage as the original worm.
But since the counter-worm would prioritize fixing systems and not be as agressive in seeking targets, it would not use as much bandwidth as the exisiting worm, and since it would replace the existing worm every time it infected, it would not make the situation worse.
If the worm were well-designed, and if it sought out a meek infection strategy (going after only computers that it knew to be infected, rather than searching randomly), and if it shut the computer or at least web server down after a certain period of activity, it seems it would be beneficial.
Sorry Speare, that's not what Franklin is saying. Giving up your own liberty for some safety is like allowing your country to turn into a police state so that it will be harder for people to steal.- "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
Yeah, that means you. You're giving up liberty-- not yours, but theirs.That's not the same as taking away someone else's liberty to protect your own safety--which is exactly what we do every time we send a criminal to jail.
Actually, it should be noted that just as the alphabetic system is optimised for speed of input (writing or typing) and to some degree for speed of learning (questionable), the Chinese/Japanese/Korean system of ideographs is optimized for *reading speed*. So, forgetting the difficulty for highly literate cultures of switching over to a phonetic system, there is also the fact that alphabets just aren't innately superior.
Research in Japan showed that people read characters faster than syllabaries, the Japanese equivalent of alphabets. It's just like the reason that weird spellings in English increase reading speed, by making it easier to distinguish between words.
The real issues *is* a technical one. We simply have to learn how to better store characters (developing an encoding scheme that harmonizes with other character sets, as Unicode claims to) and more importantly, how to improve input methods for C/J/K characters. But it's not a flaw in the system.
The point of view of many westerners that the characters are too complex and hard to learn is very much equivalent to the Chinese perspective that conjugating verbs is unneeded complexity.
As a matter of fact, Chinese characters are very easy to learn because of the degree to which the character itself reflects its meaning. I can look at a character and know it's a type of bird without even knowing the character beforehand.
There are some other reasons why software sucks, tho. Check out this article... talks about how where people go wrong when they try to make software "easy."
Part of the problem lies in the complexity of mapping the software paradigms to the implementation. It's all those exceptions to the rule that give coders a headache, and it isn't any better for the users.
So far software engineering itself is full of guesswork, too. Most software houses don't use SE, and using SE doesn't necessarily always help. I think this is because SE is simply still in its infancy.
Scientists tend to group around the scientific interpretation of religion, much as marketers tend to focus on the parts of technology that fit current business models.
That is, science tends to emphasize the question of the existence of a deity. This requires formulating an exact definition of the Supreme Being - something contrary to most religions' interpretations of what the Deity means. The reason for this emphasis seems to be simply that science, ever since its divorce from philosophy around the time of Voltaire, has been obsessed with things that can be proven or disproven.
But proving or disproving the existence of the Deities of our religions isn't really what religions are about. In fact, when religions proclaim that their Deities are "the one and only" usually what they *really* mean is their ethical and spiritual interpretation of life.
In truth, Pseudo-scientific atheism has acquired more of the negative trappings of religions than most traditional religions have kept: it's a religion devoted to denying the existence of something that is only loosely defined, and can't readily be proven or disproven. But it misses the importance of ethics.
I think that science should worry less about proving the non-existence of the Supreme Being and more about reintegrating philosophy and ethics back into science. A science divorced from humans is largely irrelevant.