Because there isn't any real alternative to the almighty MS Word, no matter how much we hope otherwise.
Really, who wants to pay hundreds of $ for every copy of MS word? Considering today's hardware prices, the price of Windows + Office may well be more than the price of the hardware itself...
OO.o is not there yet, although it's close. Abiword lacks the features (and it only takes one important person in your group who can't live without those features for the whole group to abandon it) LaTeX is too complicated for the lay user PS is for print.
I haven't used KOffice for a while, but I doubt it's significantly better than OO.o to the extent that it could be a viable competitor to MS word.
> Additionally, software such as NIS exists to fill the role of a single-sign-on, although I've only had painful experiences with it, personally (using Solaris in a completely crazy setup).
> But when you consider other religions, you should always consider them at their best - at what the believers aspire to be. No one lives up to all their own ideals, that doens't mean that no one is trying.
It doesn't mean that everybody is trying like you. I believe the GP was not addressing people like you. I'm sure you have come across people which falls under what the GP's ranted against, and I don't think there are just a few of those people hanging out there. And that's what he is concerned about.
When you consider other religions, you dont just consider their best, you consider how they've been really doing, and also their potential to do bad. Just like how you consider other things, may it be countries, nations, governments, organizations, companies, communities, etc.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but the mere fact that you're one of the "exceptions" does not negate the fact that there are many many people who are not as enlightened as you are. And even if those people are not the vast majority, the fact that there is a substantial number is something to be concerned about.
You're just plain wrong. The value of a networked computer is the ease of finding and getting information, not as a tool for homework submission that works perfectly fine with the traditional medium called "paper". The "majority of problems" is that schools and teachers use computers in teaching where there is simply no fscking need for it.
More so for third world countries where the problem is the lack of information and teaching materials. Books may be a given for most of you here, but it's a luxury for many poorer parts of the world. You may think kids would only get distracted if given internet access, but then in third world countries it is exactly this vast amount of information available on the internet that would help them get on par (information-wise if not intellectually) with the rest of the world. With all the information out there, it's possible to learn and to great things, whereas with all the problems of getting adequate teaching materials shipped over to remote places, it's simply impossible even for the brightest genius.
Look at it in another way. Apparently from the name of the contest they focus mainly on functional programming languages. It is therefore natural that they would be inclined to pick AI-ish problems that are more suitable for functional programming. I believe it wasn't a (conscious) intention that they allowed other languages in the contest for the purpose of tilting the playing ground to their (functional programming) favor. If you think about it, ICFP problems might be fun even for those who prefer an imperative language, and excluding them would be a lose-lose situation: the contest gets fewer contestants, and those who want to participate, couldn't.
And for your last question, probably not. It seems that many slashdotters would prefer "real" problems in contests than "hypothetical" ones. But there are reasons why there aren't many of these "real" problems.
First, "real" problems usually contain sub-problems that are tedious and a PITA to solve. (Think writing an OS like Linux - I've heard that making things work on a dozen different architectures and working around crappy hardware is a nightmare.) Besides, most people have enough of "real" problems to solve in their normal lives, may it be work or study. "hypothetical" problems tend to be fun, for the same reason people spend time playing MMORPG.
Second, "real" problems tend to have quite a bit of economic value, and once you get to the situation where you can get people to attempt solving your "real" problems, you wouldn't want a dozen of developers working on the same thing (to illustrate, think about GNOME and KDE - there has been criticisms that effort is diverged and distracted with merely two projects, and to think of holding a competition where all contestants write the same fscking thing and duplicating the effort many many times?). And when you come to realize this point, there's a very fine line between a "real problem contest" and a bounty like those of Google, GNOME and other OSS projects.
And really, if you want a contest of "real programming problems", just go out and find a good job, (or even start an OSS project and see whether somebody awards you with something;-p), and try to achieve whatever you aim to be. If you really want a "contest" feel, you might want to take upon the motto of "He who dies with the most toys, wins";-p
At least most other "experts" do contribute (whether positively or negatively) to society and humanity in some ways.
And these "experts" are "experts in solving algorithmic problems in 30 minutes", yet an intelligent person well versed in algorithms etc would be able to solve them in a few hours without all those mindless grinding that they do.
I don't doubt that there are people who could become "experts in solving algorithmic problems in 30 minutes" without all that grinding, but from what I've seen this would be the exception rather than the norm.
I'm not saying there's nothing to be gained from all that practice, but when it becomes excessive, it's doing more harm than good.
Reverting again to my previous analogy, "chess experts" don't limit themselves to 5 second moves. I believe "programming experts" need that time too. Otherwise they are simply "high-level code monkeys", trained to produce code that solves familiar problems that they have been trained to do again and again.
> why don't you found your own site, so that you > have the final editorial say? I've been thinking (fantastizing) of this for quite some time lately.
I mean, I come to slashdot to read the comments, not to see what the lame editors have to say. All they do is clicking the "approve" button from the submissions they get, and god knows what they do with their spare time. Quoth the famous saying "I could replace you (editors) with a very small shell script.".
It would be great if somebody with a big pipe and a few machines would start an alternate slashdot and dump this crap filled (as regards to "stories") one for good.
> And no, custom pre-written libraries won't win this for you Um... those "professional" contestants would have already solved a similar task like you've just mentioned 10 times before... The "libraries" are basically hard-wired into their brains.
I despise those competitions that put too much restraint on time given to solve the tasks. To get "good" at it, you have to grind through hundreds (if not thousands) of problems to the extent that when you see the tasks in the competition, you can immediately relate: "aha! this is almost identical the XXX that I solved a year ago!". I'd describe these people as "solution generating machines". And the time and effort spent to train to that state is a total waste of human resources, IMHO.
It's like playing chess with a 5 second time limit for every move...
And yes, I had been involved in these competitions for years. (A few local/national competitions and the IOI 2003, I wonder if there are any slashdotters who was also there...:-p) It's a good thing that the rules in the "Olympiad in Informatics" give (partial) credit to non-standard, partial or even downright bizzare solutions instead of the rigid rules of the ACM ICPC, Topcoder and the like (to have to solve the problem completely). And 5 hours for 3 problems, plenty of time to think, and that's the part which I think is most fun and challenging.
In general you'll meet people who like programming (I'm just referring to "programming" in the narrower sense, which doesn't include other computer-related-stuff that you guys may relate to when talking about "programming"), and through trying to solve the tasks there's a sense of accomplishment when you finally get it right.
Of course, it's not for everyone, and I know people who are gurus in computers and tech in general yet clueless in these competitions, and OTOH I know some people whose computer literacy is little more than knowing how to fire-up an IDE and type do well in these competitions.
If you expect these competitions to be any "computer related", you're going to be disappointed. It's all about programming (in the narrower sense), algorithms and problem solving.
You sound like a person who thinks you have some "technical skills" and heard the hype about Linux, but got bitten when you tried to jump on the bandwagon.
Here: A) Use the package manager that comes with the distro. Don't upgrade your kernel unless you have good reasons. If you do, still use the one packaged by your distro. B) It's just the preferred way of doing things in Linux (and most Unices). If that bugs you, don't use this method and use the GUI tools available. The major desktop environments like KDE and GNOME supports most (if not all) commonly used configuration options. C) man pages are fine, thank you (at least on Debian). It's not to provide you with an introduction to Linux, and definitely not to tell you what you should be doing if you have no damn clue. It's a reference for those who know what they are doing -- the command line options, the config file format, the arguments of the C-library/system calls... etc. If you want documentation in the sense of "linux-for-dummies", then buy a book or something.
All of your ramblings suggest that you've heard somewhere (probably from some Gentoo zealots...) that you NEED to compile your own kernels, edit config files by hand, type in cryptic commands in a CLI and RTFM like nuts. No. Most Linux users do use it that way because they prefer it, but if you install and use a decent "user-friendly" distribution as some other posters have suggested and stay out of the dirty work like tweaking your system, you wouldn't need to even KNOW anything about compiling kernels, shell commands and man pages.
Yep, so quit trolling. Go back to your warm and fuzzy Photoshop and Illustrator apps and stop pretending to be 1337 in Linux (or in tech). All the "feats" that you have mentioned is nothing extraordinary and are things any computer-literate person with a sound mind could do easily -- except perhaps the Photoshop/Illustrator part, in which (if your claim is true) I'll acknowledge you as a decent graphics designer, but nothing else.
300 years ago, the West was probably at least on par technologically wise with China, with all the enlightenment and stuff, while progress in China pretty much stalled.
> 1) What is the IP address of www.HP.com? (Ethernet cable was unplugged) > 2) Install this printer driver. (lpt1 disabled in BIOS)...etc...
The competent programmer/developer/sysadmin/etc doesn't waste their brain cycles/memory on things like that.
I for one wouldn't want to work for a company with these kinds of interview questions. I mean, the things that you mention are really things that are do-able with "with a very small shell script". A competent company would have better things to do than to work on memorizing the IP address of www.whatever.com.
As a side note, I don't see how people could linger on these kinds of questions for two hours... I'd have left within half an hour or so maximum if I had no idea about the answers.
I'd like to add that, in fact, things that are 100% based on mathematics are quite certainly not applicable to the real world.
Science that base their theories on mathematics work by making observations and constructing mathematical formulas to generalize their observations. But then those observations can be false or inaccurate, or that the generalization does not work (*).
The only reason why "pure" mathematics is "true" is because we believe it is true. Think about it. All the axioms in mathematics do not have further explanations other than "how can that be false?!". But that's practically no different to "we think it's true, no further questions".
(*): This is how science works: f(1) = 2, f(2) = 4, f(3) = 6, f(4) = 8,... [finite observations]... etc therefore f(x) = x * 2. As you can easily see, it's possible for such generalizations to fail.
(Wow, I love this. Constructive discussion on slashdot!!)
Well, I am skeptical of this "soul", "angel", "god" gibberish as much as you are. The term "soul" is rather vague, and I still have no idea what it is supposed to be, and personally I've never seen any "angels", or "gods" or whatever. And it's funny to say anything non-physical that exists in our physical world. By definition it does not.
However, I am going to insist is that your own consciousness, your self-awareness, may not be fully explainable in physical terms. I hope my following illustration is helpful:
Imagine a typical MMORPG world. In that world there are of course laws of "physics" in that world, namely rules that are dictated by the game server. Now imagine one of the characters saying: "Everything could be explained by the laws of (our) 'physics'". Is that true? Is there something beyond the MMORPG world that affects it? I would say so. If you play in the game as a character, you interact with the MMORPG world, yet you are not really "physical" of the game world. Now apply that idea to the "real" world.
As I was typing it out, I noticed a problem, namely that the characters in the fictional world described above had no brains of their own, and probably relied on the players for any action. This is obviously not true for the real world.
Let's make some modifications. Imagine all characters in that world are now intelligent and do everything on their own without any "external" intervention. But imagine you have a 1st person view of one particular character, and that character alone. Now someone in the game world proclaims "Everything could be explained by the laws of (our) 'physics'". Would you agree?
There is of course, a different and opposite flaw in this version. But reality is probably more close to something in between those two extremes (it's actually a determinism and free will thing, but don't let it deter us from the main point). In the real world "you" have some control over your body (thinking, most conscious actions), but not over all (heartbeat, reflex actions, etc, and sometimes habits, thinking patterns, etc). So perhaps if you think of it that way, and apply the concept to the real world, you might be able to see that the "you" may be more than a collection of atoms and cells. "May" because I do not know for sure, and nobody really knows. Besides, using the MMORPG example again, who knows if "I" am the only "real" player while all other characters are merely NPC's?
I hope that helps. I've never been much good at discussing philosophical stuff clearly, logically and consistently......;-p
Why do you believe that there is more to it? Why do people want to believe that there is more to the universe than that which we perceive?
I am not satisfied by the answers given by physics (and other traditional sciences) regarding questions like "why am I here?", "what is the meaning of life?", "who am I?", "what will happen when I die?", etc. In fact, it doesn't even explain why the laws of physics exists!
There is no doubt that physics will eventually explain much of our universe in terms of _how_ things work, even perhaps how our brains work. However, I don't see how it could explain why we are so blatantly aware of ourselves and our own existence, why we actually "feel" feelings instead of mechanically reacting to them, what "I" was before I was born, and what would happen to "me" when I die.
I'm not saying that there definitely exists an answer to these questions, but I don't trust physics to provide me with an answer -- it's not meant for that.
People have different belief systems. I have no problem with people believing only in the physical world and the laws of physics -- at least it's a sane system. In fact, as long as other people don't coerce me into their belief systems, I have no problem with them either.
Since I'm feeling rather empty and unmotivated today, I shall amuse myself by breaking down your post and commenting on each individual point. I don't care about moderation, my mod points are here for you guys to burn.
1- Consider the following sentence... [snip] Where did this statement come from? The grandparent never said that. You're taking on yourself, your biases towards people with different perspectives than the comments posted by the grandparent.
2- There are a few things wrong with this line of reasoning. First, the thinking is absolute. As if one way of knowing is any more important than another. Agreed. Entirely. But that doesn't make materialism more important than what not. This is a main flaw of your whole argument. Remember that the grandparent merely suggested a new perspective to view ourselves and the world, he never asserted it. Quote: "What if it were true", not "it's TRUE!! Believe it!!".
3-Second, a rose only exists for you to ponder its beauty because of material processes. A thing is accomplished due to many reasons. In normal speech we usually attribute the "reason" to the most "significant" one instead of tiny minor causes that have no apparent influence to the outcome. There can be another statement, perfectly valid, along the lines of "a rose only exists for you to ponder its beauty because the sensations you feel". Not being a perfect compliment to your statement, I would go on to reject the argument (remember, rejecting an argument is not neccessarily for the other) that feelings are all embeded within the neurons etc in the brain. Sure you may find 1-to-1 mappings of different states of your brain to your feelings, but that doesn't explain why, subjectively, you _FEEL_ it. I don't think it could be said, with confidence, that your subjective feelings are 100% material processes, unless you define everything that exists as "material".
4-Beauty is a judgement made by the viewer. Exactly. How is that related to any "materialistic philosophy"? It seems that you just shot yourself in the foot.
5-Third, is the assumption that the experience of feeling beauty isn't something that could be given to a machine. How can you claim this assumption wrong if you have no evidence to the contrary?
6-The experience of beauty is very likely to be [a] simple reaction. Even if I grant that, there is nothing in support of your argument. Assuming for the sake of discussion, the algorithm of IS_BEAUTIFUL equivalent to IS_PRIME. I now program a computer to "taste" a number and tell me whether it thinks it is beautiful. I give it "4", it tells me "4" is not beautiful. I give it "5", and Voila! it tells me "5" is beautiful. Do you mean this "feeling" given to a machine? Or what do you really mean by "giving a feeling to a machine"? Suppose somebody came up with a sophisticated, accurate algorithm that determines whether a flower is beautiful as in human eyes. Do you think that machine now "feels" the flower emotionally the same way you feel when you see it?
7-I have a real problem with anyone who tries to discount "materialism" as being outright wrong. Where did you see this kind of person? I have been scorching the web these days for information about the occult and "supernatural", and I've yet to see anybody discounting "materialism" outright. It follows directly from simple logic that these people could not exist: You need to eat, drink water, breathe, etc to survive, otherwise you die.
8-Most of the people who do have a very hard time understanding the interconnectedness of physical and electrical systems. I do agree that some tend to believe in fluffery buffery fairy tales, but those who knows their stuff are actually very logical and consistent, and embraces the scientific method. There is much danger in ending up in a mental hospital if you simply create make believe theories from thin air.
9-Many people who talk about the mind being some ki
You don't need to know exactly how something works in order to duplicate it. Example: "cp/usr/bin/gcc./gcc_copy".
You don't, but the guy who wrote cp, the guy who wrote the OS providing the syscalls, the guy who built the hardware have to know their shit to let you, the _USER_, use it. You don't have to know every single detail about a system to use it, but eventually somebody has to.
OTOH, the question of "Why" instead of "How" is a totally different matter.
And your scientific basis for this is?
Actually, I think this is the exact issue the grandparent post raised:
Grandparent: This whole business of uploading the mind onto a computer is so much unmitigated crackpottery. Star-Trek voodoo science, that's all.
He was saying that there is no scientific basis for the claim that duplicating your mind / brain is possible.
Slashdot Mirror
and how many people are just surfing slashdot while at work anyways.....
;-p
Ooo, cleaning worms! Now that's real work
Only on slashdot would somebody pay for the "priviledge" to do work that editors are supposed to be paid to do.
Meanwhile, CmdrTaco continues playing WoW...
Because there isn't any real alternative to the almighty MS Word, no matter how much we hope otherwise.
Really, who wants to pay hundreds of $ for every copy of MS word? Considering today's hardware prices, the price of Windows + Office may well be more than the price of the hardware itself...
OO.o is not there yet, although it's close.
Abiword lacks the features (and it only takes one important person in your group who can't live without those features for the whole group to abandon it)
LaTeX is too complicated for the lay user
PS is for print.
I haven't used KOffice for a while, but I doubt it's significantly better than OO.o to the extent that it could be a viable competitor to MS word.
[ Yes, you anti-MS zealots may mod me down ]
> Additionally, software such as NIS exists to fill the role of a single-sign-on, although I've only had painful experiences with it, personally (using Solaris in a completely crazy setup).
If you run a Windows Domain -- winbind.
> No one MADE me go on a mission, no one MAKES me go to church every Sunday, and no one MAKES me believe what I believe.
Hmm... this?
> But when you consider other religions, you should always consider them at their best - at what the believers aspire to be. No one lives up to all their own ideals, that doens't mean that no one is trying.
It doesn't mean that everybody is trying like you. I believe the GP was not addressing people like you. I'm sure you have come across people which falls under what the GP's ranted against, and I don't think there are just a few of those people hanging out there. And that's what he is concerned about.
When you consider other religions, you dont just consider their best, you consider how they've been really doing, and also their potential to do bad. Just like how you consider other things, may it be countries, nations, governments, organizations, companies, communities, etc.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but the mere fact that you're one of the "exceptions" does not negate the fact that there are many many people who are not as enlightened as you are. And even if those people are not the vast majority, the fact that there is a substantial number is something to be concerned about.
It's not "funny". I believe the poster was serious.
No, really.
Imagine a Beowolf cluster of these...
You're just plain wrong.
The value of a networked computer is the ease of finding and getting information, not as a tool for homework submission that works perfectly fine with the traditional medium called "paper". The "majority of problems" is that schools and teachers use computers in teaching where there is simply no fscking need for it.
More so for third world countries where the problem is the lack of information and teaching materials. Books may be a given for most of you here, but it's a luxury for many poorer parts of the world. You may think kids would only get distracted if given internet access, but then in third world countries it is exactly this vast amount of information available on the internet that would help them get on par (information-wise if not intellectually) with the rest of the world. With all the information out there, it's possible to learn and to great things, whereas with all the problems of getting adequate teaching materials shipped over to remote places, it's simply impossible even for the brightest genius.
Look at it in another way. Apparently from the name of the contest they focus mainly on functional programming languages. It is therefore natural that they would be inclined to pick AI-ish problems that are more suitable for functional programming. I believe it wasn't a (conscious) intention that they allowed other languages in the contest for the purpose of tilting the playing ground to their (functional programming) favor. If you think about it, ICFP problems might be fun even for those who prefer an imperative language, and excluding them would be a lose-lose situation: the contest gets fewer contestants, and those who want to participate, couldn't.
;-p), and try to achieve whatever you aim to be. If you really want a "contest" feel, you might want to take upon the motto of "He who dies with the most toys, wins" ;-p
And for your last question, probably not. It seems that many slashdotters would prefer "real" problems in contests than "hypothetical" ones. But there are reasons why there aren't many of these "real" problems.
First, "real" problems usually contain sub-problems that are tedious and a PITA to solve. (Think writing an OS like Linux - I've heard that making things work on a dozen different architectures and working around crappy hardware is a nightmare.) Besides, most people have enough of "real" problems to solve in their normal lives, may it be work or study. "hypothetical" problems tend to be fun, for the same reason people spend time playing MMORPG.
Second, "real" problems tend to have quite a bit of economic value, and once you get to the situation where you can get people to attempt solving your "real" problems, you wouldn't want a dozen of developers working on the same thing (to illustrate, think about GNOME and KDE - there has been criticisms that effort is diverged and distracted with merely two projects, and to think of holding a competition where all contestants write the same fscking thing and duplicating the effort many many times?). And when you come to realize this point, there's a very fine line between a "real problem contest" and a bounty like those of Google, GNOME and other OSS projects.
And really, if you want a contest of "real programming problems", just go out and find a good job, (or even start an OSS project and see whether somebody awards you with something
... are belong to us.
At least most other "experts" do contribute (whether positively or negatively) to society and humanity in some ways.
And these "experts" are "experts in solving algorithmic problems in 30 minutes", yet an intelligent person well versed in algorithms etc would be able to solve them in a few hours without all those mindless grinding that they do.
I don't doubt that there are people who could become "experts in solving algorithmic problems in 30 minutes" without all that grinding, but from what I've seen this would be the exception rather than the norm.
I'm not saying there's nothing to be gained from all that practice, but when it becomes excessive, it's doing more harm than good.
Reverting again to my previous analogy, "chess experts" don't limit themselves to 5 second moves. I believe "programming experts" need that time too. Otherwise they are simply "high-level code monkeys", trained to produce code that solves familiar problems that they have been trained to do again and again.
> why don't you found your own site, so that you
> have the final editorial say?
I've been thinking (fantastizing) of this for quite some time lately.
I mean, I come to slashdot to read the comments, not to see what the lame editors have to say. All they do is clicking the "approve" button from the submissions they get, and god knows what they do with their spare time. Quoth the famous saying "I could replace you (editors) with a very small shell script.".
It would be great if somebody with a big pipe and a few machines would start an alternate slashdot and dump this crap filled (as regards to "stories") one for good.
(Yes I know kuro5hin, but it's different...)
> And no, custom pre-written libraries won't win this for you
:-p) It's a good thing that the rules in the "Olympiad in Informatics" give (partial) credit to non-standard, partial or even downright bizzare solutions instead of the rigid rules of the ACM ICPC, Topcoder and the like (to have to solve the problem completely). And 5 hours for 3 problems, plenty of time to think, and that's the part which I think is most fun and challenging.
Um... those "professional" contestants would have already solved a similar task like you've just mentioned 10 times before... The "libraries" are basically hard-wired into their brains.
I despise those competitions that put too much restraint on time given to solve the tasks. To get "good" at it, you have to grind through hundreds (if not thousands) of problems to the extent that when you see the tasks in the competition, you can immediately relate: "aha! this is almost identical the XXX that I solved a year ago!". I'd describe these people as "solution generating machines". And the time and effort spent to train to that state is a total waste of human resources, IMHO.
It's like playing chess with a 5 second time limit for every move...
And yes, I had been involved in these competitions for years. (A few local/national competitions and the IOI 2003, I wonder if there are any slashdotters who was also there...
In general you'll meet people who like programming (I'm just referring to "programming" in the narrower sense, which doesn't include other computer-related-stuff that you guys may relate to when talking about "programming"), and through trying to solve the tasks there's a sense of accomplishment when you finally get it right.
Of course, it's not for everyone, and I know people who are gurus in computers and tech in general yet clueless in these competitions, and OTOH I know some people whose computer literacy is little more than knowing how to fire-up an IDE and type do well in these competitions.
If you expect these competitions to be any "computer related", you're going to be disappointed. It's all about programming (in the narrower sense), algorithms and problem solving.
> We drive about 10x more than you guys.
As if it were a God-given-right.
Use less oil damnit!
You sound like a person who thinks you have some "technical skills" and heard the hype about Linux, but got bitten when you tried to jump on the bandwagon.
Here:
A) Use the package manager that comes with the distro. Don't upgrade your kernel unless you have good reasons. If you do, still use the one packaged by your distro.
B) It's just the preferred way of doing things in Linux (and most Unices). If that bugs you, don't use this method and use the GUI tools available. The major desktop environments like KDE and GNOME supports most (if not all) commonly used configuration options.
C) man pages are fine, thank you (at least on Debian). It's not to provide you with an introduction to Linux, and definitely not to tell you what you should be doing if you have no damn clue. It's a reference for those who know what they are doing -- the command line options, the config file format, the arguments of the C-library/system calls... etc. If you want documentation in the sense of "linux-for-dummies", then buy a book or something.
All of your ramblings suggest that you've heard somewhere (probably from some Gentoo zealots...) that you NEED to compile your own kernels, edit config files by hand, type in cryptic commands in a CLI and RTFM like nuts. No. Most Linux users do use it that way because they prefer it, but if you install and use a decent "user-friendly" distribution as some other posters have suggested and stay out of the dirty work like tweaking your system, you wouldn't need to even KNOW anything about compiling kernels, shell commands and man pages.
Yep, so quit trolling. Go back to your warm and fuzzy Photoshop and Illustrator apps and stop pretending to be 1337 in Linux (or in tech). All the "feats" that you have mentioned is nothing extraordinary and are things any computer-literate person with a sound mind could do easily -- except perhaps the Photoshop/Illustrator part, in which (if your claim is true) I'll acknowledge you as a decent graphics designer, but nothing else.
Indeed. The English "R" is no problem for me, but Mandarin has this strong "R" that I sometimes have problem pronouncing.
(My mother tongue is Cantonese.)
The Tang dynasty of China was more than 1000 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Dynasty
300 years ago, the West was probably at least on par technologically wise with China, with all the enlightenment and stuff, while progress in China pretty much stalled.
What??!
Remove your stupid index.html
End of story.
Granted, it's only HTML instead of XML, but it's been there way before XML, so you can't blame them for that...
> 1) What is the IP address of www.HP.com? (Ethernet cable was unplugged) ...etc...
> 2) Install this printer driver. (lpt1 disabled in BIOS)
The competent programmer/developer/sysadmin/etc doesn't waste their brain cycles/memory on things like that.
I for one wouldn't want to work for a company with these kinds of interview questions. I mean, the things that you mention are really things that are do-able with "with a very small
shell script". A competent company would have better things to do than to work on memorizing the IP address of www.whatever.com.
As a side note, I don't see how people could linger on these kinds of questions for two hours... I'd have left within half an hour or so maximum if I had no idea about the answers.
I'd like to add that, in fact, things that are 100% based on mathematics are quite certainly not applicable to the real world.
... [finite observations]... etc therefore f(x) = x * 2. As you can easily see, it's possible for such generalizations to fail.
Science that base their theories on mathematics work by making observations and constructing mathematical formulas to generalize their observations. But then those observations can be false or inaccurate, or that the generalization does not work (*).
The only reason why "pure" mathematics is "true" is because we believe it is true. Think about it. All the axioms in mathematics do not have further explanations other than "how can that be false?!". But that's practically no different to "we think it's true, no further questions".
(*): This is how science works:
f(1) = 2, f(2) = 4, f(3) = 6, f(4) = 8,
(Wow, I love this. Constructive discussion on slashdot!!)
...... ;-p
Well, I am skeptical of this "soul", "angel", "god" gibberish as much as you are. The term "soul" is rather vague, and I still have no idea what it is supposed to be, and personally I've never seen any "angels", or "gods" or whatever. And it's funny to say anything non-physical that exists in our physical world. By definition it does not.
However, I am going to insist is that your own consciousness, your self-awareness, may not be fully explainable in physical terms. I hope my following illustration is helpful:
Imagine a typical MMORPG world. In that world there are of course laws of "physics" in that world, namely rules that are dictated by the game server. Now imagine one of the characters saying: "Everything could be explained by the laws of (our) 'physics'". Is that true? Is there something beyond the MMORPG world that affects it? I would say so. If you play in the game as a character, you interact with the MMORPG world, yet you are not really "physical" of the game world. Now apply that idea to the "real" world.
As I was typing it out, I noticed a problem, namely that the characters in the fictional world described above had no brains of their own, and probably relied on the players for any action. This is obviously not true for the real world.
Let's make some modifications. Imagine all characters in that world are now intelligent and do everything on their own without any "external" intervention. But imagine you have a 1st person view of one particular character, and that character alone. Now someone in the game world proclaims "Everything could be explained by the laws of (our) 'physics'". Would you agree?
There is of course, a different and opposite flaw in this version. But reality is probably more close to something in between those two extremes (it's actually a determinism and free will thing, but don't let it deter us from the main point). In the real world "you" have some control over your body (thinking, most conscious actions), but not over all (heartbeat, reflex actions, etc, and sometimes habits, thinking patterns, etc). So perhaps if you think of it that way, and apply the concept to the real world, you might be able to see that the "you" may be more than a collection of atoms and cells. "May" because I do not know for sure, and nobody really knows. Besides, using the MMORPG example again, who knows if "I" am the only "real" player while all other characters are merely NPC's?
I hope that helps. I've never been much good at discussing philosophical stuff clearly, logically and consistently
Why do you believe that there is more to it? Why do people want to believe that there is more to the universe than that which we perceive?
I am not satisfied by the answers given by physics (and other traditional sciences) regarding questions like "why am I here?", "what is the meaning of life?", "who am I?", "what will happen when I die?", etc. In fact, it doesn't even explain why the laws of physics exists!
There is no doubt that physics will eventually explain much of our universe in terms of _how_ things work, even perhaps how our brains work. However, I don't see how it could explain why we are so blatantly aware of ourselves and our own existence, why we actually "feel" feelings instead of mechanically reacting to them, what "I" was before I was born, and what would happen to "me" when I die.
I'm not saying that there definitely exists an answer to these questions, but I don't trust physics to provide me with an answer -- it's not meant for that.
People have different belief systems. I have no problem with people believing only in the physical world and the laws of physics -- at least it's a sane system. In fact, as long as other people don't coerce me into their belief systems, I have no problem with them either.
Since I'm feeling rather empty and unmotivated today, I shall amuse myself by breaking down your post and commenting on each individual point. I don't care about moderation, my mod points are here for you guys to burn.
1- Consider the following sentence... [snip]
Where did this statement come from? The grandparent never said that. You're taking on yourself, your biases towards people with different perspectives than the comments posted by the grandparent.
2- There are a few things wrong with this line of reasoning. First, the thinking is absolute. As if one way of knowing is any more important than another.
Agreed. Entirely. But that doesn't make materialism more important than what not. This is a main flaw of your whole argument. Remember that the grandparent merely suggested a new perspective to view ourselves and the world, he never asserted it. Quote: "What if it were true", not "it's TRUE!! Believe it!!".
3-Second, a rose only exists for you to ponder its beauty because of material processes.
A thing is accomplished due to many reasons. In normal speech we usually attribute the "reason" to the most "significant" one instead of tiny minor causes that have no apparent influence to the outcome. There can be another statement, perfectly valid, along the lines of "a rose only exists for you to ponder its beauty because the sensations you feel". Not being a perfect compliment to your statement, I would go on to reject the argument (remember, rejecting an argument is not neccessarily for the other) that feelings are all embeded within the neurons etc in the brain. Sure you may find 1-to-1 mappings of different states of your brain to your feelings, but that doesn't explain why, subjectively, you _FEEL_ it. I don't think it could be said, with confidence, that your subjective feelings are 100% material processes, unless you define everything that exists as "material".
4-Beauty is a judgement made by the viewer.
Exactly. How is that related to any "materialistic philosophy"? It seems that you just shot yourself in the foot.
5-Third, is the assumption that the experience of feeling beauty isn't something that could be given to a machine.
How can you claim this assumption wrong if you have no evidence to the contrary?
6-The experience of beauty is very likely to be [a] simple reaction.
Even if I grant that, there is nothing in support of your argument. Assuming for the sake of discussion, the algorithm of IS_BEAUTIFUL equivalent to IS_PRIME. I now program a computer to "taste" a number and tell me whether it thinks it is beautiful. I give it "4", it tells me "4" is not beautiful. I give it "5", and Voila! it tells me "5" is beautiful. Do you mean this "feeling" given to a machine? Or what do you really mean by "giving a feeling to a machine"? Suppose somebody came up with a sophisticated, accurate algorithm that determines whether a flower is beautiful as in human eyes. Do you think that machine now "feels" the flower emotionally the same way you feel when you see it?
7-I have a real problem with anyone who tries to discount "materialism" as being outright wrong.
Where did you see this kind of person? I have been scorching the web these days for information about the occult and "supernatural", and I've yet to see anybody discounting "materialism" outright. It follows directly from simple logic that these people could not exist: You need to eat, drink water, breathe, etc to survive, otherwise you die.
8-Most of the people who do have a very hard time understanding the interconnectedness of physical and electrical systems.
I do agree that some tend to believe in fluffery buffery fairy tales, but those who knows their stuff are actually very logical and consistent, and embraces the scientific method. There is much danger in ending up in a mental hospital if you simply create make believe theories from thin air.
9-Many people who talk about the mind being some ki
Holes in your reasoning:
/usr/bin/gcc ./gcc_copy".
You don't need to know exactly how something works in order to duplicate it. Example: "cp
You don't, but the guy who wrote cp, the guy who wrote the OS providing the syscalls, the guy who built the hardware have to know their shit to let you, the _USER_, use it. You don't have to know every single detail about a system to use it, but eventually somebody has to.
OTOH, the question of "Why" instead of "How" is a totally different matter.
And your scientific basis for this is?
Actually, I think this is the exact issue the grandparent post raised:
Grandparent: This whole business of uploading the mind onto a computer is so much unmitigated crackpottery. Star-Trek voodoo science, that's all.
He was saying that there is no scientific basis for the claim that duplicating your mind / brain is possible.