vi works just fine -- i learned to use vi using dvorak. you get used to the cursor keys being in one place instead of another. the 'jk' keys end up being under the 'cv' keys so they're still together for back-forth cursor movement, and using the 'a' for add text, and 'i' for insert, and 'x' for del still work fine. the key is to remember the LETTER for the function and not the POSITION -- then, muscle memory will get built around it.
it is easy to use both. i've used dvorak since 1997, and can still type on a qwerty keyboards just fine.
ich kann auch in deutsch und englisch sprechen. (i can also speak in german and english) -- ONCE YOU'VE LEARNED ANOTHER LANGUAGE (e.g. german / dvorak), it is not difficult to also use your first language (english / qwerty).
j.
Re:Dvorak is very good
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
it IS very good -- i switched back in 1997 over christmas. although the first two weeks were hell, having all the vowels and the most statistically frequent consonants on the home row really increases typing speed and comfort.
the things that have helped most with reducing RSI are:
1) using the dvorak layout for typing.
2) reprogram mouse to eliminate double-clicks, and
3) learning to play a musical instrument (e.g. bass guitar)
to force the muscles into definite 'other' contortions
than are required by using a mouse (handwriting would
also work).
> Disney is simply delivering what American parents want. > Have you forgotten last November already? Some of us realize > that it is futile and counterproductive to try to hide kids > from reality, but we are in the minority.
c.s. lewis would agree with you... it is destructive to be so over-protective that you never allow children to see alarming things -- however when the alarming things are presented, it is important that they are presented side-by-side with that which shows a positive response to those terrors. otherwise, when the kids finally DO encounter such a situation, they will have no context with which to confront it themselves.
to quote:
"I think it possible that by confining your child to blameless stories of child life in which nothing alarming ever happens, you would fail to banish the terrors, and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable. For, in the fairy tales, side by side with the terrible figures, we find the immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones; and the terrible figures are not merely terrible, but sublime." (C.S. Lewis)
"A children's story which is only enjoyed by children is a bad children's story... No book is really worth reading at age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty." (C.S. Lewis)
A children's story which is only enjoyed by children is a bad children's story... No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty. (C.S. Lewis)
There is a well defined research question: "Are the computational procedures by which the brain processes information the same as the procedures by which computers process the same information?"
What I just imagined an opponent saying embodies one of the worst mistakes in cognitive science. The mistake is to suppose that in the sense in which computers are used to process information, brains also process information. To see that that is a mistake contrast what goes on in the computer with what goes on in the brain. In the case of the computer, an outside agent encodes some information in a form that can be processed by the circuitry of the computer. That is, he or she provides a syntactical realization of the information that the computer can implement in, for example, different voltage levels. The computer then goes through a series of electrical stages that the outside agent can interpret both syntactically and semantically even though, of course, the hardware has no intrinsic syntax or semantics: It is all in the eye of the beholder. And the physics does not matter provided only that you can get it to implement the algorithm. Finally, an output is produced in the form of physical phenomena which an observer can interpret as symbols with a syntax and a semantics.
But now contrast that with the brain. In the case of the brain, none of the relevant neurobiological processes are observer relative (though of course, like anything they can be described from an observer relative point of view) and the specificity of the neurophysiology matters desperately. To make this difference clear, let us go through an example. Suppose I see a car coming toward me. A standard computational model of vision will take in information about the visual array on my retina and eventually print out the sentence, "There is a car coming toward me". But that is not what happens in the actual biology. In the biology a concrete and specific series of electro-chemical reactions are set up by the assault of the photons on the photo receptor cells of my retina, and this entire process eventually results in a concrete visual experience. The biological reality is not that of a bunch of words or symbols being produced by the visual system, rather it is a matter of a concrete specific conscious visual event; this very visual experience. Now that concrete visual event is as specific and as concrete as a hurricane or the digestion of a meal. We can, with the computer, do an information processing model of that event or of its production, as we can do an information model of the weather, digestion or any other phenomenon, but the phenomena themselves are not thereby information processing systems.
In short, the sense of information processing that is used in cognitive science, is at much too high a level of abstraction to capture the concrete biological reality of intrinsic intentionality. The "information" in the brain is always specific to some modality or other. It is specific to thought, or vision, or hearing, or touch, for example. The level of information processing which is described in the cognitive science computational models of cognition , on the other hand, is simply a matter of getting a set of symbols as output in response to a set of symbols as input.
We are blinded to this difference by the fact that the same sentence, "I see a car coming toward me", can be used to record both the visual intentionality and the output of the computational model of vision. But this should not obscure from us the fact that the visual experience is a concrete event and is produced in the brain by specific electro-chemical biological processes. To confuse these events and processes with formal symbol manipulation is to confuse the reality with the model. The upshot of this part of the discussion is that in the sense of "information" used in cognitive science it is simply false to say that the
moving to intel allows them to explore a range of processor options -- amd or transmeta -- since they're still designing the whole widget, they can ensure a tightly compatible platform like they did on powerPC.
i remember the day we bid farewell to the venerable OS9 -- apple generally dignified termination releases with a forward migration path that worked transparently for the user (68k->ppc; os9-> classic -> carbon).
if i remember correctly, don't they have XML directories for processor binaries, and darwin has bean maintained for intel processors? if so, they'll have to port the 'crown jewels', provide a processor 'blue box' emulator, and for those they can coax into doing so -- have developers recompile their binaries for the new system; and then have a cascade version upgrade across the board which will take at least two years to grow in some new roots after a transplant.
they can also further couple their strength with the linux community (sometimes contestuous, but they have given back, and along with ibm have been much more accomodating to open source than the likes of microsoft or dell. linux users on intel will just be that much closer to a hop into apple-land...:-P
if 60% of americans believe aliens exist -- then it just 'must be so' -- after all, 7% of americans still think elvis is alive -- can 21 million people be wrong!?!?
'For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled' (Richard Feynman)
trying to get smart without thinking is like to trying to get into shape without exercising. the brain is a muscle, and if you don't use it, you lose it. the more effort you make to think, the stronger your cognitive ability will be.
here's another take on cognition...
--| Devotion Increases Cognition |---
In an epoch of criticism, ideals are lowered; other feelings take the place of veneration, respect, adoration, and wonder. Our own age thrusts these feelings further and further into the background, so that they can only be conveyed to man through his every-day life in a very small degree. Whoever seeks higher knowledge must create it for himself... Whoever, therefore, wishes to become a student of higher knowledge must assiduously cultivate this inner life of devotion. Everywhere in his environment and his experiences he must seek motives of admiration and homage. If I meet a man and blame him for his shortcomings, I rob myself of power to attain higher knowledge; but if I try to enter lovingly into his merits, I gather such power...
It is not easy, at first, to believe that feelings like reverence and respect have anything to do with cognition. This is due to the fact that we are inclined to set cognition aside as a faculty by itself -- one that stands in no relation to what otherwise occurs in the soul. In so thinking we do not bear in mind that it is the soul which exercises the faculty of cognition; and feelings are for the soul what food is for the body. If we give the body stones in place of bread, its activity will cease. It is the same with the soul. Veneration, homage, devotion are like nutriment making it healthy and strong, especially strong for the activity of cognition. Disrespect, antipathy, underestimation of what deserves recognition, all exert a paralyzing and withering effect on this faculty of cognition.
hollywood provides a lot of glitz, with often little substance. although hollywood is capable of producing a good movie, there are a lot of good movies that are never seen in the united states. thank god they managed to open their eyes enough to get out of the hollywood ghetto.
here's a couple contenders for best films:
- Baraka (Ron Frike) - Wings Of Desire (Wim Wenders)
'Der Himmel über Berlin' - La Double Vie de Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski) - Picnic At Hanging Rock (Peter Weir) - The Icicle Thief (Maurizio Nichetti) - The Navigator - A Medieval Odyssey (Vincent Ward) - The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (Terry Gilliam) - The Field (Jim Sheridan) - Yellow Submarine (George Dunning) - Prospero's Books (Peter Greenaway) - Howard's End (James Ivory)
i've been using a palm m500 with QED for three years now, and have used it primarily for long text file (400k - 1Mb) editing and readingfound it a really good system for this. i couldn't care less about the palm's 'organizer' capabilities, but as a wee portable text editor and word processor, it rocks!
i enjoy podcasting every day.:} learning a language is tricky, and berlitz tapes are boring. downloading a three minute podcast each day is a great way to learn or keep fresh on a language -- the one i've been enjoying most is the way this podcaster from munchen uses language -- the musicality of it.
what makes it so good for learning a language, is:
1) because it is largely speech oriented, you get more dialogue to work with than regular radio which often uses dialogue as a seguay between musical segments. a three minute chunk is manageable for a daily thing.
2) unlike live radio, you can rewind, and catch words and phrases that you missed.
3) it stays fresh unlike stale old language learning tapes.
podcasting really has opened up the language for me, because it can be hard to find good local speakers, and these are already encoded as mp3s so you can take it around on an ipod.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
(Thomas Jefferson)
seems to me, that people are rightly concerned that producers of digital content (writings, music, video, apps, data) are adequately compensated for their efforts. They should be compensated, and to achieve this end, an analogue was made -- we will sell you a number (any digital file is just a big number consisting of ones and zeroes) -- and to protect the 'uniqueness' of that number, we will treat that number as if it weren't really a number, but an actually physically tangible good.
but there's one problem with this. If i have an apple and give you an apple, I no longer have an apple. But if i have an idea and give you an idea, then we both have the idea. These inherent properties of matter and bits are ignored for the sake of the analogy, and here lies the crux of problem at the heart of the intellectual property debate.
bits will always tend to be compied. If you pick one lock, you open a million doors. Imposing the artificial scarcity of matter onto the inherently copyable world of bits is absurd -- this fracture will always seep through. What we must ask, is if there is another solution which also compensates artists than the current form of copyright allows?
originally copyright was designed to balance two aspects. one was the rights of society at large, and the other was to give an advantage 'for a limited time' to encourage innovation. it would be wise to return to such a balanced approach, instead of extending copyright hold on cultural artifacts into perpetuity.
over and above the cost it takes to sustain the livelihood of a programmer, the muliplied surplass can be shared for the benefit of society -- this is the basis of open source, and has long been the hallmark of institutions of scientific learning. sharing of knowledge helps everyone who knows it, without diminishing the value one keeps for oneself.
to change the definition of reproduction to also mean self-assembly is simply to decieve ourselves.
unlike animals -- which do two discrete things:
1. NUTRITION: break down the substance of their 'food' at a molecular level and transforming it into the content of their own bodies (in this instance, the electrical power for the servo motors and processing should come from what is being consumed).
2. REPRODUCTION: creating the necessary structures such that a similar being can occupy a seed-structure which also takes up nutrition from the environement in a manner that is consistent with the parent organism.
these robots have demonstrated neither DIGESTION, nor REPRODUCTION, but merely self-assembly.
this is different than a PLANT -- which given only MUD, LIGHT, and WATER can transform that mud into FLOWERS -- that is digestion. after it has done that, the reproductive phase of the plant has already quite different qualities.
plants are able to seperate out the individual mineral qualities it encounters in the soil, and include them in their structures.
but for these robots -- they are not using raw materials like WATER, MUD, and LIGHT -- if it were, you could stick it into a puddle of mud, add water and light, and watch it do its thing -- creating gears and generating power for servo motors out of mud, water and light.
the cubes supplied here are already PRE-MANUFACTURED (conveniently added into frame for the video). so if you wanted to be truthful about the matter -- you would have to include all the processes that humans performed to get the pre-manufactured cubes into place for the self-assembly operation.
but in the case of reproduction, there are at least two stages present which are absent here: it must first draw NUTRITION for its activity from the environment and transform that into the raw materials for sustaining its activity.
then, after it can EAT, it goes on to a second activity of reproduction (creating another like itself, which can also take the raw substance through digestion, and sustain itself).
changing the definition of reproduction to include what is actually self-assembly does a diservice to clear understanding of the phenomenon.
anyone else read lewis' sci-fi novels ('out of the silent planet', perelandra, and 'that hideous strength'?) -- i'd think for a geek, it'd be cooler to see those in film. j.
btw - it is highly ironic that c.s. lewis highly disliked disney.
The sense of information processing that is used in cognitive science, is at much too high a level of abstraction to capture the concrete biological reality of intrinsic intentionality. The "information" in the brain is always specific to some modality or other. It is specific to thought, or vision, or hearing, or touch, for example. The level of information processing which is described in the cognitive science computational models of cognition , on the other hand, is simply a matter of getting a set of symbols as output in response to a set of symbols as input.
We are blinded to this difference by the fact that the same sentence, "I see a car coming toward me", can be used to record both the visual intentionality and the output of the computational model of vision. But this should not obscure from us the fact that the visual experience is a concrete event and is produced in the brain by specific electro-chemical biological processes. To confuse these events and processes with formal symbol manipulation is to confuse the reality with the model. The upshot of this part of the discussion is that in the sense of "information" used in cognitive science it is simply false to say that the brain is an information processing device.
Richard Stallman proposes three remedies that would help enable free software operating systems such as GNU/Linux compete technically while respecting users' freedom. These three remedies directly address the three biggest obstacles to development of free operating systems, and to giving them the capability of running programs written for Windows. They also directly address the methods Microsoft has said (in the "Halloween documents") it will use to obstruct free software. It would be most effective to use all three of these remedies together.
1. Require Microsoft to publish complete documentation of all interfaces between software components, all communications protocols, and all file formats. This would block one of Microsoft's favourite tactics: secret and incompatible interfaces.
To make this requirement really stick, Microsoft should not be allowed to use a nondisclosure agreement with some other organization to excuse implementing a secret interface. The rule must be: if they cannot publish the interface, they cannot release an implementation of it.
It would, however, be acceptable to permit Microsoft to begin implementation of an interface before the publication of the interface specifications, provided that they release the specifications simultaneously with the implementation.
Enforcement of this requirement would not be difficult. If other software developers complain that the published documentation fails to describe some aspect of the interface, or how to do a certain job, the court would direct Microsoft to answer questions about it. Any questions about interfaces (as distinguished from implementation techniques) would have to be answered.
2. Require Microsoft to use its patents for defense only, in the field of software. (If they happen to own patents that apply to other fields, those other fields could be included in this requirement, or they could be exempt.) This would block the other tactic Microsoft mentioned in the Halloween documents: using patents to block development of free software.
We should give Microsoft the option of using either self-defense or mutual defense. Self defense means offering to cross-license all patents at no charge with anyone who wishes to do so. Mutual defense means licensing all patents to a pool which anyone can join -- even people who have no patents of their own. The pool would license all members' patents to all members.
It is crucial to address the issue of patents, because it does no good to have Microsoft publish an interface, if they have managed to work some patented wrinkle into it (or into the functionality it gives access to), such that the rest of us are not allowed to implement it.
3. Require Microsoft not to certify any hardware as working with Microsoft software, unless the hardware's complete specifications have been published, so that any programmer can implement software to support the same hardware.
Secret hardware specifications are not in general Microsoft's doing, but they are a significant obstacle for the development of the free operating systems that can provide competition for Windows. To remove this obstacle would be a great help. If a settlement is negotiated with Microsoft, including this sort of provision in it is not impossible -- it would be a matter of negotiation.
This April, Microsoft's Ballmer announced a possible plan to release source code for some part of
Its pretty cool that Apple choose to include XGrid as part of Tiger -- software to distribute complex tasks among a number of networked machines. Before it was only XCode (now updated to v2) that did distributed compiles. But XGrid should lead to more applications designed to take advantage of networked Macs for CPU-intensive operations.
"Evolution is not a progression to ever greater and greater differentiation. but... is first an ascent to a higher point, and after having reached this point is then a descent to more and more simple forms. (Steiner, Michael IX)
evolution = tree coming out of seed.
involution = tree concentrating itself back down into seeds.
these two geniuses had some interesting comments one might not have expected on the origins of the eye...
"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
and chromatic aberration could have been formed by natural selection,
seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. "
(Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species)
"The eye is created by the light, for the light.
(Goethe)
i've seen the metal from an old nail fuse into a piece of 300 year old stone. matter eventually leaches together.
if you can guarantee a backup regime that will copy your data to a medium every 10-20 years (if your hardware & software format is even still used) -- then you may be able to keep it.
but if you just put it on a magnetic medium and expect it to last without periodic recopying --
the smaller and finer you pack the bits, the less long they'll last.
Slashdot Mirror
vi works just fine -- i learned to use vi using dvorak.
you get used to the cursor keys being in one place instead
of another. the 'jk' keys end up being under the 'cv' keys
so they're still together for back-forth cursor movement,
and using the 'a' for add text, and 'i' for insert,
and 'x' for del still work fine. the key is to remember
the LETTER for the function and not the POSITION -- then,
muscle memory will get built around it.
j.
it is easy to use both. i've used dvorak since 1997,
and can still type on a qwerty keyboards just fine.
ich kann auch in deutsch und englisch sprechen.
(i can also speak in german and english) -- ONCE YOU'VE
LEARNED ANOTHER LANGUAGE (e.g. german / dvorak), it is
not difficult to also use your first language (english / qwerty).
j.
it IS very good -- i switched back in 1997 over christmas.
although the first two weeks were hell, having all the vowels
and the most statistically frequent consonants on the home row
really increases typing speed and comfort.
the things that have helped most with reducing RSI are:
1) using the dvorak layout for typing.
2) reprogram mouse to eliminate double-clicks, and
3) learning to play a musical instrument (e.g. bass guitar)
to force the muscles into definite 'other' contortions
than are required by using a mouse (handwriting would
also work).
(btw - this is typed using a dvorak layout).
> Disney is simply delivering what American parents want.
> Have you forgotten last November already? Some of us realize
> that it is futile and counterproductive to try to hide kids
> from reality, but we are in the minority.
c.s. lewis would agree with you... it is destructive
to be so over-protective that you never allow children
to see alarming things -- however when the alarming things
are presented, it is important that they are presented side-by-side
with that which shows a positive response to those terrors.
otherwise, when the kids finally DO encounter such a situation,
they will have no context with which to confront it themselves.
to quote:
"I think it possible that by confining your child to blameless stories of child life in which nothing alarming ever happens, you would fail to banish the terrors, and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable. For, in the fairy tales, side by side with the terrible figures, we find the immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones; and the terrible figures are not merely terrible, but sublime." (C.S. Lewis)
"A children's story which is only enjoyed by children is a bad children's story... No book is really worth reading at age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty." (C.S. Lewis)
best regards,
j
A children's story which is only enjoyed by children
is a bad children's story... No book is really worth reading
at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more)
worth reading at the age of fifty. (C.S. Lewis)
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
(John Lennon)
Is the Brain a Digital Computer?
John Searle
There is a well defined research question: "Are the computational procedures by which the brain processes information the same as the procedures by which computers process the same information?"
What I just imagined an opponent saying embodies one of the worst mistakes in cognitive science. The mistake is to suppose that in the sense in which computers are used to process information, brains also process information. To see that that is a mistake contrast what goes on in the computer with what goes on in the brain. In the case of the computer, an outside agent encodes some information in a form that can be processed by the circuitry of the computer. That is, he or she provides a syntactical realization of the information that the computer can implement in, for example, different voltage levels. The computer then goes through a series of electrical stages that the outside agent can interpret both syntactically and semantically even though, of course, the hardware has no intrinsic syntax or semantics: It is all in the eye of the beholder. And the physics does not matter provided only that you can get it to implement the algorithm. Finally, an output is produced in the form of physical phenomena which an observer can interpret as symbols with a syntax and a semantics.
But now contrast that with the brain. In the case of the brain, none of the relevant neurobiological processes are observer relative (though of course, like anything they can be described from an observer relative point of view) and the specificity of the neurophysiology matters desperately. To make this difference clear, let us go through an example. Suppose I see a car coming toward me. A standard computational model of vision will take in information about the visual array on my retina and eventually print out the sentence, "There is a car coming toward me". But that is not what happens in the actual biology. In the biology a concrete and specific series of electro-chemical reactions are set up by the assault of the photons on the photo receptor cells of my retina, and this entire process eventually results in a concrete visual experience. The biological reality is not that of a bunch of words or symbols being produced by the visual system, rather it is a matter of a concrete specific conscious visual event; this very visual experience. Now that concrete visual event is as specific and as concrete as a hurricane or the digestion of a meal. We can, with the computer, do an information processing model of that event or of its production, as we can do an information model of the weather, digestion or any other phenomenon, but the phenomena themselves are not thereby information processing systems.
In short, the sense of information processing that is used in cognitive science, is at much too high a level of abstraction to capture the concrete biological reality of intrinsic intentionality. The "information" in the brain is always specific to some modality or other. It is specific to thought, or vision, or hearing, or touch, for example. The level of information processing which is described in the cognitive science computational models of cognition , on the other hand, is simply a matter of getting a set of symbols as output in response to a set of symbols as input.
We are blinded to this difference by the fact that the same sentence, "I see a car coming toward me", can be used to record both the visual intentionality and the output of the computational model of vision. But this should not obscure from us the fact that the visual experience is a concrete event and is produced in the brain by specific electro-chemical biological processes. To confuse these events and processes with formal symbol manipulation is to confuse the reality with the model. The upshot of this part of the discussion is that in the sense of "information" used in cognitive science it is simply false to say that the
moving to intel allows them to explore a range of processor options -- amd or transmeta -- since they're still designing the whole widget, they can ensure a tightly compatible platform like they did on powerPC.
:-P
i remember the day we bid farewell to the venerable OS9 -- apple generally dignified termination releases with a forward migration path that worked transparently for the user (68k->ppc; os9-> classic -> carbon).
if i remember correctly, don't they have XML directories for processor binaries, and darwin has bean maintained for intel processors? if so, they'll have to port the 'crown jewels', provide a processor 'blue box' emulator, and for those they can coax into doing so -- have developers recompile their binaries for the new system; and then have a cascade version upgrade across the board which will take at least two years to grow in some new roots after a transplant.
they can also further couple their strength with the linux community (sometimes contestuous, but they have given back, and along with ibm have been much more accomodating to open source than the likes of microsoft or dell. linux users on intel will just be that much closer to a hop into apple-land...
regards,
j
if 60% of americans believe aliens exist -- then it
just 'must be so' -- after all, 7% of americans still
think elvis is alive -- can 21 million people be wrong!?!?
'For a successful technology, reality must take precedence
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled'
(Richard Feynman)
trying to get smart without thinking is like to trying to
get into shape without exercising. the brain is a muscle,
and if you don't use it, you lose it. the more effort
you make to think, the stronger your cognitive ability will be.
here's another take on cognition...
--| Devotion Increases Cognition |---
In an epoch of criticism, ideals are lowered; other feelings take the place of veneration, respect, adoration, and wonder. Our own age thrusts these feelings further and further into the background, so that they can only be conveyed to man through his every-day life in a very small degree. Whoever seeks higher knowledge must create it for himself... Whoever, therefore, wishes to become a student of higher knowledge must assiduously cultivate this inner life of devotion. Everywhere in his environment and his experiences he must seek motives of admiration and homage. If I meet a man and blame him for his shortcomings, I rob myself of power to attain higher knowledge; but if I try to enter lovingly into his merits, I gather such power...
It is not easy, at first, to believe that feelings like reverence and respect have anything to do with cognition. This is due to the fact that we are inclined to set cognition aside as a faculty by itself -- one that stands in no relation to what otherwise occurs in the soul. In so thinking we do not bear in mind that it is the soul which exercises the faculty of cognition; and feelings are for the soul what food is for the body. If we give the body stones in place of bread, its activity will cease. It is the same with the soul. Veneration, homage, devotion are like nutriment making it healthy and strong, especially strong for the activity of cognition. Disrespect, antipathy, underestimation of what deserves recognition, all exert a paralyzing and withering effect on this faculty of cognition.
(How to Know Higher Worlds)
hollywood provides a lot of glitz, with often little substance.
although hollywood is capable of producing a good movie,
there are a lot of good movies that are never seen
in the united states. thank god they managed to open
their eyes enough to get out of the hollywood ghetto.
here's a couple contenders for best films:
- Baraka (Ron Frike)
- Wings Of Desire (Wim Wenders)
'Der Himmel über Berlin'
- La Double Vie de Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
- Picnic At Hanging Rock (Peter Weir)
- The Icicle Thief (Maurizio Nichetti)
- The Navigator - A Medieval Odyssey (Vincent Ward)
- The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (Terry Gilliam)
- The Field (Jim Sheridan)
- Yellow Submarine (George Dunning)
- Prospero's Books (Peter Greenaway)
- Howard's End (James Ivory)
i've been using a palm m500 with QED for three years now,
and have used it primarily for long text file (400k - 1Mb) editing
and readingfound it a really good system for this. i couldn't care
less about the palm's 'organizer' capabilities, but as a wee portable
text editor and word processor, it rocks!
regards,
j.
i enjoy podcasting every day.
learning a language is tricky, and berlitz tapes are boring.
downloading a three minute podcast each day is a great way
to learn or keep fresh on a language -- the one i've been
enjoying most is the way this podcaster from munchen
uses language -- the musicality of it.
annik rubens - schlafloss in munchen
what makes it so good for learning a language, is:
1) because it is largely speech oriented, you get more
dialogue to work with than regular radio which often uses
dialogue as a seguay between musical segments.
a three minute chunk is manageable for a daily thing.
2) unlike live radio, you can rewind, and catch words
and phrases that you missed.
3) it stays fresh unlike stale old language learning tapes.
podcasting really has opened up the language for me,
because it can be hard to find good local speakers, and
these are already encoded as mp3s so you can take it around
on an ipod.
in diese sinn...
roland.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive
property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an
individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but
the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one,
and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because
every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me,
receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his
taper at mine, receives light without darkening me... Inventions then
cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
(Thomas Jefferson)
seems to me, that people are rightly concerned that producers
of digital content (writings, music, video, apps, data) are
adequately compensated for their efforts. They should be compensated,
and to achieve this end, an analogue was made -- we will sell you a number
(any digital file is just a big number consisting of ones and zeroes) -- and
to protect the 'uniqueness' of that number, we will treat that number
as if it weren't really a number, but an actually physically tangible good.
but there's one problem with this. If i have an apple and give you an
apple, I no longer have an apple. But if i have an idea and give you an
idea, then we both have the idea. These inherent properties of matter and
bits are ignored for the sake of the analogy, and here lies the crux of
problem at the heart of the intellectual property debate.
bits will always tend to be compied.
If you pick one lock, you open a million doors.
Imposing the artificial scarcity of matter onto the
inherently copyable world of bits is absurd -- this fracture
will always seep through. What we must ask, is if there is another
solution which also compensates artists than the current form
of copyright allows?
originally copyright was designed to balance two aspects.
one was the rights of society at large, and the other was
to give an advantage 'for a limited time' to encourage innovation.
it would be wise to return to such a balanced approach,
instead of extending copyright hold on cultural artifacts
into perpetuity.
over and above the cost it takes to sustain the livelihood
of a programmer, the muliplied surplass can be shared for the
benefit of society -- this is the basis of open source, and
has long been the hallmark of institutions of scientific learning.
sharing of knowledge helps everyone who knows it, without
diminishing the value one keeps for oneself.
this is not reproduction, this is self-assembly.
to change the definition of reproduction to also mean
self-assembly is simply to decieve ourselves.
unlike animals -- which do two discrete things:
1. NUTRITION: break down the substance of their 'food'
at a molecular level and transforming it into the
content of their own bodies (in this instance, the
electrical power for the servo motors and processing
should come from what is being consumed).
2. REPRODUCTION: creating the necessary structures
such that a similar being can occupy a seed-structure
which also takes up nutrition from the environement in
a manner that is consistent with the parent organism.
these robots have demonstrated neither DIGESTION,
nor REPRODUCTION, but merely self-assembly.
this is different than a PLANT -- which given
only MUD, LIGHT, and WATER can transform that
mud into FLOWERS -- that is digestion. after
it has done that, the reproductive phase of
the plant has already quite different qualities.
plants are able to seperate out the
individual mineral qualities it encounters in
the soil, and include them in their structures.
but for these robots -- they are not using raw materials
like WATER, MUD, and LIGHT -- if it were, you could
stick it into a puddle of mud, add water and light,
and watch it do its thing -- creating gears and
generating power for servo motors out of mud, water
and light.
the cubes supplied here are already PRE-MANUFACTURED
(conveniently added into frame for the video). so if
you wanted to be truthful about the matter -- you would
have to include all the processes that humans performed
to get the pre-manufactured cubes into place for the
self-assembly operation.
but in the case of reproduction, there are at least two
stages present which are absent here: it must first draw
NUTRITION for its activity from the environment and transform
that into the raw materials for sustaining its activity.
then, after it can EAT, it goes on to a second activity
of reproduction (creating another like itself, which can
also take the raw substance through digestion, and
sustain itself).
changing the definition of reproduction
to include what is actually self-assembly
does a diservice to clear understanding of
the phenomenon.
j.
anyone else read lewis' sci-fi novels ('out of the silent planet',
perelandra, and 'that hideous strength'?) -- i'd think for a geek,
it'd be cooler to see those in film.
j.
btw - it is highly ironic that c.s. lewis highly disliked disney.
--| John Searle - Is the Brain a Digital Computer? |---
The sense of information processing that is used in cognitive science, is at much too high a level of abstraction to capture the concrete biological reality of intrinsic intentionality. The "information" in the brain is always specific to some modality or other. It is specific to thought, or vision, or hearing, or touch, for example. The level of information processing which is described in the cognitive science computational models of cognition , on the other hand, is simply a matter of getting a set of symbols as output in response to a set of symbols as input.
We are blinded to this difference by the fact that the same sentence, "I see a car coming toward me", can be used to record both the visual intentionality and the output of the computational model of vision. But this should not obscure from us the fact that the visual experience is a concrete event and is produced in the brain by specific electro-chemical biological processes. To confuse these events and processes with formal symbol manipulation is to confuse the reality with the model. The upshot of this part of the discussion is that in the sense of "information" used in cognitive science it is simply false to say that the brain is an information processing device.
--
The will is not set upon a surplus of pleasure,
but upon the amount of pleasure that remains after getting over the pain.
This is the essence of all genuine will... It achieves its aim
though the path be full of thorns.
It lies in human nature to pursue it so long as the displeasure
connected with it does not extinguish the desire altogether.
(The Philosophy of Freedom - Chapter 13)
--| Richard Stallman on How to Deal with Microsoft |-----
The following is Mirrored from: http://linuxtoday.com/stories/4999.html
Richard Stallman proposes three remedies that would help enable free
software operating systems such as GNU/Linux compete technically while
respecting users' freedom. These three remedies directly address the three
biggest obstacles to development of free operating systems, and to giving
them the capability of running programs written for Windows. They also
directly address the methods Microsoft has said (in the "Halloween
documents") it will use to obstruct free software. It would be most
effective to use all three of these remedies together.
1. Require Microsoft to publish complete documentation of all interfaces
between software components, all communications protocols, and all file
formats. This would block one of Microsoft's favourite tactics: secret and
incompatible interfaces.
To make this requirement really stick, Microsoft should not be allowed to
use a nondisclosure agreement with some other organization to excuse
implementing a secret interface. The rule must be: if they cannot publish
the interface, they cannot release an implementation of it.
It would, however, be acceptable to permit Microsoft to begin
implementation of an interface before the publication of the interface
specifications, provided that they release the specifications
simultaneously with the implementation.
Enforcement of this requirement would not be difficult. If other software
developers complain that the published documentation fails to describe
some aspect of the interface, or how to do a certain job, the court would
direct Microsoft to answer questions about it. Any questions about
interfaces (as distinguished from implementation techniques) would have to
be answered.
Similar terms were included in an agreement between IBM and the European
Community in 1984, settling another antitrust dispute. See
http://www.essential.org/antitrust/ibm/ibm1984ec.h tml.
2. Require Microsoft to use its patents for defense only, in the field of
software. (If they happen to own patents that apply to other fields, those
other fields could be included in this requirement, or they could be
exempt.) This would block the other tactic Microsoft mentioned in the
Halloween documents: using patents to block development of free software.
We should give Microsoft the option of using either self-defense or mutual
defense. Self defense means offering to cross-license all patents at no
charge with anyone who wishes to do so. Mutual defense means licensing all
patents to a pool which anyone can join -- even people who have no patents
of their own. The pool would license all members' patents to all members.
It is crucial to address the issue of patents, because it does no good to
have Microsoft publish an interface, if they have managed to work some
patented wrinkle into it (or into the functionality it gives access to),
such that the rest of us are not allowed to implement it.
3. Require Microsoft not to certify any hardware as working with Microsoft
software, unless the hardware's complete specifications have been
published, so that any programmer can implement software to support the
same hardware.
Secret hardware specifications are not in general Microsoft's doing, but
they are a significant obstacle for the development of the free operating
systems that can provide competition for Windows. To remove this obstacle
would be a great help. If a settlement is negotiated with Microsoft,
including this sort of provision in it is not impossible -- it would be a
matter of negotiation.
This April, Microsoft's Ballmer announced a possible plan to release
source code for some part of
Its pretty cool that Apple choose to include XGrid as part of Tiger -- software to distribute complex tasks among a number of networked machines. Before it was only XCode (now updated to v2) that did distributed compiles. But XGrid should lead to more applications designed to take advantage of networked Macs for CPU-intensive operations.
users as innovators -- isn't this what
inspired stallman to invent open source?
he wanted to tweak a laser printer.
j
"Evolution is not a progression to ever greater and greater differentiation.
but... is first an ascent to a higher point, and after having reached this point
is then a descent to more and more simple forms. (Steiner, Michael IX)
evolution = tree coming out of seed.
involution = tree concentrating itself back down into seeds.
these two geniuses had some interesting comments
one might not have expected on the origins of the eye...
"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
and chromatic aberration could have been formed by natural selection,
seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. "
(Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species)
"The eye is created by the light, for the light.
(Goethe)
i've seen the metal from an old nail
fuse into a piece of 300 year old stone.
matter eventually leaches together.
if you can guarantee a backup regime that will
copy your data to a medium every 10-20 years
(if your hardware & software format is even
still used) -- then you may be able to keep it.
but if you just put it on a magnetic medium
and expect it to last without periodic recopying --
the smaller and finer you pack the bits,
the less long they'll last.
j.
if you absolutely HAVE to get up - the most reliable
alarm clock is a glass of water before bed.
j.