Well, if 66% of Catalonians still support not seceding, then why are you so afraid of them having a vote?
Supporting one position or the other isn't even required to understand the current situation. In any law/constitution-based country, you can only do what agrees with the given laws/constitution. This issue is particularly important if you are part of the government, precisely in charge of applying said laws/constitution.
Logically, there might be some laws which are unfair and, in that case, disobeying them seems like the only valid approach. But nothing of this reflects the current conflict in Catalonia. This isn't about people whose rights, expectations, feelings, etc. are being ignored. This is about a rich regional government unilaterally deciding to ignore the laws/authorities which they should observe. If to get something you have convince someone else and you fail, you should accept that failure; you might try it again, attempt different approaches, support a change of the rules, etc. But if you unilaterally decide to stop applying the rules not allowing you to have what you want, your behaviour would become unlawful according to said rules; what becomes even worse in case that you are supposed to make sure that everyone respects those rules.
As commented in another post up this thread, regions in Spain have a quite relevant autonomy, mainly Catalonia. The mechanisms allowing to extend/reduce the competences of each regional government are are included in the Spanish Constitution. It is a complex process which requires many qualified agreements (= lots of citizens wanting it), nothing to do with unilateral/arbitrary decisions of a few people anywhere.
Spain (and Partido Popular/Mariano Rajoy or any other party) has nothing to do with a country like Turkey and a dictator-like figure like Erdogan. In Spain, talking about corruption means politicians stealing money/getting jobs to friends/family. Nothing to do with arbitrariness at the level of deciding what to do with the faith of a region.
It's really a shame how this conflict is being escalated for no good reason.
Unlikely your previous statements, that one is very accurate, although not because of what seems your intention.
the Partido Popular, is an indirect decendant of the Franco regime.
This is an extremely inaccurate statement. Partido Popular is a typical European centre-right party, on the lines of Conservative Party in the UK or CDU in Germany.
CLARIFICATION: I am a leftist who will never vote or support Partido Popular, much less after their numerous corruption problems.
You and quite a few other people here seem to have a quite distorted perception of the actual reality, presumably mostly promoted by the secessionist parties. A better example for you, Americans (because this is a US-based site, no idea about you), would be: a group of people in one of the US states (Texas, I think that is a good example) decides to unilaterally secede from the USA and, because of happening to be part of the regional government, stops applying the federal laws and starts the secession process.
Catalonia is one of the richest regions in Spain and has one of the highest regional autonomies too (the regional system in Spain isn't exactly as a federal system, but it allows a high level of freedom and competences for its regions). Spain is a very heterogeneous, peaceful and tolerant country where separatism is mainly a reminiscence of the past (Franco being very hard with regions like Catalonia or Basque Country) which has gradually become an easy to say/repeat trend. Almost every region in Spain has movements/parties which talk about secession, but nothing of this is an accurate reflection of the actual reality; it has mostly become a political flavour, a modern-day way to attract revolutionary sentiments. Your comment is comparing what happened hundreds of years ago with something as irrelevant as a rich regional government in a first-world country wanting still more power.
I will not even write here what I think about Catalonia or any other region separating from Spain; not even about my opinion regarding what has lately become the main complaint of the separatists ("we only want to have the option to vote"); I certainly don't support our current president, his party and what he represents (not just conservative views but also lots of corruption). Curiously, nothing of this matters for what is really important here. The only real problem is that the regional government decided to go solo by ignoring/tricking the Spanish (even Catalonian) law/constitution which they are precisely meant to observe. Nobody mistreated them. Nobody censored their rights. They weren't having any kind of serious difficulties. They have even stopped being supported by a big proportion of the Catalan society (apparently, not by the noisy ones). They have been disobeying the orders of judges and national institutions. And they aren't doing all that because they are afraid for their families or because they are hungry or because they don't want their opinions to be silenced or because they are being denied the freedom which they deserve, etc. They are doing all that just because they said that they would do it. The Spanish government is reacting perhaps too aggressively exactly for the same reason: they said that this would be their reaction.
This is a good sample of perfectly-avoidable problem which has been unreasonably blown completely out of proportions. Nothing of what you say is even remotely applicable to this situation. The linked article is a new consequence of this wacky reality, perhaps not a good decision (like many others before it) but very far away from trying to censor or silence those thinking differently. There is a regional government with quite a few attributions (e.g., managing the.cat domain) whose activity has been deemed unlawful; we are simply seeing a conservative/non-understanding reaction to a behaviour against the law. Not liking that reaction is fine, inventing a parallel reality to justify the original unlawful/unjustifiable actions is certainly not.
While it's supposed to be backward compatible,.Net Core is designed so you can embed the (small) copy of whichever version you want right into your application, so you can have multiple versions on the same machine.
Interesting. I will do some tests on Core + Linux ASAP. Thanks for sharing all the info.
Correction to my "the last versions of VS are becoming too bloated": my first posted-on-Slashdot impressions about VS 2017 were quite good and it does seem much quicker/flexible regarding what to install than VS 2015. It still continues in the same line of over-friending the GUI (VS is very user-friendly since long time ago, keeping adding visual helps/information doesn't seem required/useful) but, in principle, I wouldn't mind to use it. The problem is that it is still too new and, as per the usual VS/.NET proceeding, likely to be quite unreliable. So, I will better wait a bit before considering 2017 my main VS, by plainly skipping the 2015 version which I have only used when strictly required.
Web developers will not touch something like VS 2017 or Monodevelop after using one of the 3 above or Sublime.
No idea about that. Firstly, I am not a web developer; and secondly, I have lots of experience in Visual Studio, feel very comfortable with any version of it and like MonoDevelop. Although I do think that the last versions of VS are becoming too bloated and prefer to use a bit older versions like VS 2012; in fact, I have only tested the Community alternatives of VS 2015/2017 and this might also have something to do with my impression. In any case and as you should recall from some of our previous conversations, I am currently moving to Linux, looking for good enough alternatives for my Windows-based everything and might even consider to stop using Visual Studio.
On the other hand, I am not sure that you might easily develop a C#/VB.NET application with one of the editors you refer right away. In principle, they should have a reasonably good syntax support and coupling them with the.NET compiler shouldn't be a problem either; but all this seems too labourious/crappy/unfriendly. Why not using Visual Studio, MonoDevelop or similar right away? You have just to double click on the corresponding solution to get an excellent code editor with lots of visual helps, to compile/debug/run everything right away, etc. What is the problem/difficulty of using a tool whose main purpose is to facilitate your work? How can anyone developing even the simplest piece of software have problems with so user-friendly software? A different story would be to rely on other (non-compiled) languages, where there are multiple alternatives and the requirements are different; but using VS/similar is certainly the best way to develop a.NET-based whatever.
virtual machines are (a) free software and (b) included with your Ubuntu installation. Windows is neither. One might also point out that the JVM or other language-specific virtual machine is much "thinner"
And additionally we are talking about a whole OS which is pretty much the opposite of all what Ubuntu/Linux is supposed to represent. Yes, the differences are clear; but, for the purpose of the current discussion, all of them might be ignored. We are not analysing a list of clearly-defined conditions where all the aforementioned aspects might be brought into consideration; this is about finding a good enough reason justifying why Visual Studio might be included in that list despite not being natively supported by Linux.
As said, I am not in a position to confirm/dismiss your statements; so, I will assume that they are right. On the other hand, you are not saying anything about compatibility issues (perhaps there is a theoretically perfect backwards compatibility with old.NET versions, but what about applications developed before the relatively-new.NET Core was even created?) and actually reliability of this new approach. Personally, I will better stick to Mono for the time being, although I might start testing the native Linux alternatives to get a feeling of how is everything going on that front.
I guess that rules out anything written in Java, C#, or Python, as all three languages run on virtual machines. Eclipse would be running on IcedTea, MonoDevelop would be running on Mono, and even Update Manager would be running on CPython.
In fact, these situations are identical to running Visual Studio on a virtual machine! Any application written in Java is actually being run on its virtual machine rather than on Ubuntu, why should that situation be any different? You are right, there is no difference. So, running Visual Studio on a virtual machine has to be fine, otherwise lots of applications written in various programming languages would have to be ignored too. I stand corrected.
I have recently installed Linux on my main machine for the first time ever and am still getting used to the IDEs/editors. For the time being, Eclipse (for Java) and CodeBlocks (for C/C++) work pretty much like the Windows versions. MonoDevelop (for Mono C#/VB.NET) seems quite nice, but I haven't used it too much. As code/text editor, I am temporarily using Gedit, but its performance isn't as good as the one of the tool I was using on Windows (Notepad++).
Presumably because they can be non-natively installed into a licensed copy of Windows running in a virtual machine on Ubuntu
This shouldn't be an acceptable alternative when assessing applications running on Ubuntu. Visual Studio would be running on Windows and only the corresponding virtual machine on Ubuntu.
Microsoft raised the white flag and surrendered to Linux a year or two ago.
I knew about attempts at natively porting to Linux and even using Windows-based Visual Studio to directly develop on Linux. But this isn't the same than having a proper Visual Studio/.NET support equivalent to the one on Windows. These are just the first versions which are likely to be quite faulty (not criticising Microsoft/.NET Team, just guessing their most likely behaviour on account of their usual proceeding). Additionally,.NET Core isn't the same that the whole.NET Framework. So, for the time being and as per my knowledge (honestly, not too good; as far as I haven't done too much.NET work on Linux), the most reliable comprehensive enough Linux alternative to.NET continues being Mono, where the best IDE seems to be the referred MonoDevelop (I have started using it quite recently, precisely on Ubuntu, and it seems quite nice).
How can Visual Studio be the best IDE for Ubuntu if both it and its defining.NET Framework can only be natively installed on Windows?! I guess that this refers to Visual Studio Code, an enhanced code editor which has little to do with Visual Studio. Apparently, the best Linux alternative for Visual Studio is MonoDevelop.
Visual Studio Code is a simple text editor; making it compatible with a wide variety of scenarios isn't difficult. On the other hand, Visual Studio and the whole.NET Framework working fine on Linux would be quite surprising.
As commented in a previous thread, I think that big companies are mostly using open source as a secondary marketing resource. Why not using it as a real technical resource? At the start, perhaps only for innovative, future, R&D projects, but actually-relevant ones. Treating open-source development as the in-house one, by allocating good enough resources to it (e.g., knowledgeable and motivated managers, realistic/adaptable milestones, adequate promotion of new projects, etc.). The prize? Getting a knowledgeable workforce really motivated to deliver the best products possible. And for us, developers? Seriously feeling that our effort might be actually recognised and rewarded (e.g., relevant contributions in different pieces of software or becoming an important part of our CV).
The main problems I see with the current open-source situation:
- Lots of people with low-to-no technical knowledge, even seeing open source as an acceptable alternative to get software developed for free (?!). Virtually no appraisal/recognition. No interest in actually knowing, improving, coming up with the best solutions. Lots of nepotism. Lots of concerns not related at all with programming. Lots of people mostly interested in discussing about abstract issues or not related to the given project/problem/software development. Lots of people seeing it as a forced milestone within their learning/career ("1 contribution to an open-source project. Checked.").
- Companies not seeing the open-source alternatives as a major source to improve/extend their products. They do everything in-house or by relying on their trusted collaborators. There is no feeling of community of knowledge, where only the objective correctness should be appraised; where thinking about the best long-term outputs should be the only concern. There are lots of marketing, HR, managerial, financial, PR, short-sighted, etc. concerns, rather than engineering/programming ones.
You should take a look at the other post below "A Replacement for C++", presumably written by the same funny troll (because I guess that this can be safely labelled as trolling, a good version though).
I don't think that he gets it either. Microsoft seems to see open source as a secondary promotional source, as a way to look like a modern, adaptable and trendy company. Actually, it seems that most of online efforts of big companies are being focused on marketing, rather than on technical aspects. They are more worried about attracting a huge number of people and getting immediate benefits than about developing proper software. Appearances transmitted in the most childish ways (stars, upvotes, likes, shares, etc.) seem now much more important than objective correctness, reliability and long-term expectations.
I am too young and have been seriously involved in programming just during the last 10 years, but I think that this isn't how the open source world used to be. Back in the day, it seems that there were lots of truly knowledgeable people, really interested in learning, sharing, growing, etc. Internet should have helped overcome the geographical restrictions of those initial efforts, but ignorance and short-sightedness seemed to have temporarily won that war.
Sorry, I can only read what you write, not what you mean.
Good one. I meant exactly what I wrote. This morning, after reading your last comment, I thought that our positions were too different, what is likely to provoke a long abstract discussion to nowhere. Usually, I continue the conversation for a while anyway, but today I was really busy and sped up the process a bit. Your ideas are quite clear (scientific community acting fine and the press and public opinion being the only problem) and I guess that mine too (scientific community not always acting too scientifically). I am happy with that reality and I don't see the point of discussion more about it. Clearer now?
That does not follow. You're arguing that in order to be objective, have properly critical attitudes, etc. scientists need to keep their results secret, or at least avoid letting anyone not sufficiently versed in the relevant science to know about them. The one thing has nothing to do with the other.
I think that my post is quite clear; at least, if you read it completely by trying to understand all the ideas within the right context and as per my intention. Additionally, today I have a pretty busy day and cannot spend too much time here. Sorry, but that first paragraph is enough for me to assume that no possible (quick enough) understanding will happen here. I am not trying to be offensive, just practical. Bye.
As explained in my other comment, capitalising fields of expertise has nothing to do with randomness. In fact, it is a quite common misconception (by assuming that it is completely wrong, what I am not in a position to confirm), as far as they have to be capitalised in certain contexts like when being included in the name of a degree or institute/department.
mean a person is certainly crazy, but the correlation is pretty damn high.
I see. There is no other explanation, right? Because everyone cares about all what you do like properly using English. Because it has nothing to do with the fact that other people might focus on other aspects or that all this is being written in an informal context where certain rules might be easily ignored. Because all of us do, want, think and behave identically; and we all pursue the same goal: you approving what we do and how we do it. Otherwise, you might insult us or draw some crazy conclusion about our behaviour or personality. LOL.
So you don't believe in consciousness? Then how can you be responding to comments on Slashdot? Are you a bot?
There you have a perfect sample of very poor understanding skills. I will try to explain all what is wrong with this, but just once. Today, I have a quite busy day and cannot spend too much time here; additionally, from that first sentence it has become crystal clear to me that no (quick enough) understanding is possible here.
- "So you don't believe in consciousness?" -> I don't believe (actually, the right word is "know"; isn't it kind of weird that you rely on an expression like "believe" when talking about what you think that is scientific stuff?) that we are able to explain it at this point and, consequently, I cannot assume that it might be explained at all by relying on any approach, including our current view of science. I believe that it exist because I have more than enough evidence about this being the case. Understanding that something exists and understanding why it exists or how it works are completely different concepts. For example, I work all the day with computers, I have a quite good understanding of software, engineering and physics, but not too much of electronics. So, I don't know too well how the hardware of my computer works, but I am certain about many people knowing it and also about agreeing with most of their ideas as far as I also know that they are based on physics, engineering and scientific knowledge.
- "Then how can you be responding to comments on Slashdot? " -> ?! Firstly, you terribly misunderstand an initial idea (quite easy to be properly interpreted as explained in the previous point) and then draw one of the most childish conclusions ever! So, you are saying that I need to be conscious to write here?! You are a very insightful person! Are you accepting disciples to learn your ways? Because I am ready to leave everything behind and to start learning from you right now! LOL (-> this means that my last sentences are a joke). Seriously, just by reading those two first sentences I think that there is something off with you. You don't seem to have basic knowledge and/or understanding capabilities. You don't even seem to be aware about what most of people consider basic knowledge.
- "Are you a bot?" -> This makes sense too, right? You don't know why or how, but you have heard the word "bot" a lot, so why not using it here? We are in a webpage, which is run from a computer, bots are run on computers and... a new pearl of wisdom is born! LOL.
capitalize "Physics" it is a subconscious clue to readers that you're nuts.
You assume that someone is crazy just because of having written "Physics" rather than "physics"? Can you understand irony or is it too difficult for you too?
Additionally, that capitalisation rule doesn't seem as evident as you are suggesting. Apparently, it is a matter of context and "Physics" might also be valid. BTW, I only believe in science and in what I can reasonably explain, but have no idea how to explain consciousness; In fact, nobody can. Accepting the limitations of our current understanding is pretty much the opposite of believing in magic. On the other hand, not accepting that fact and blindly assuming that science can certainly explain whatever issue does seem to suggest a magic-prone attitude.
the press reports not what the scientists actually examined, but some generalization of what they examined.
You and the parent poster are mostly focused on what, IMO, is just a consequence of the problem: the non-specialised press, PR, public opinion, etc. You should ask yourselves another question: why are these people who aren't in a position to adequately understand partial outputs being given those at all? Because certain scientific subfields aren't precisely being managed in a too scientific way and this the real problem: objective correctness, critical attitudes, long-term expectations, growth of the scientific knowledge as a whole, etc. are being ignored on exchange of funding or some minutes of fame.
The AI trend, like many others before and after it, has attracted lots of attention, what means easy money, not-knowledgeable interests, decisions not meant to accomplish long-term, sensible scientific goals. Who is to blame for this? All the people involved who have allowed irrelevant, short-sighted concerns to seriously impact the long-term scientific activity. It is isn't just the press not transmitting ideas about which their audience doesn't care anyway. It is also the activity itself, the pursued goals and expectations. The experts not acting as such ("I need this and that to get what you want under very specific conditions"), but as pusillanimous executors ("I will do all what you want"). Additionally, data-related fields are associated with very complex problems which might be seen as simple; blindly trusting abstract conclusions without critically analysing the whole situation seems also relatively easy.
Some things are difficult to be changed, if possible at all; but the first step is to be completely aware about the problem. It is certainly about ignorance, but the whole picture is much bigger than what you seem to imply. And in any case, complaining about others' actions and wishing that everyone was different isn't the best way to proceed. If you don't want AI-related research to be mocked, what about not systematically releasing papers drawing generic conclusions about virtually-incomprehensible realities from a few hand-picked data points? You can find various descriptive samples of this just by looking at the Slashdot articles during the last month.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if 66% of Catalonians still support not seceding, then why are you so afraid of them having a vote?
Supporting one position or the other isn't even required to understand the current situation. In any law/constitution-based country, you can only do what agrees with the given laws/constitution. This issue is particularly important if you are part of the government, precisely in charge of applying said laws/constitution.
Logically, there might be some laws which are unfair and, in that case, disobeying them seems like the only valid approach. But nothing of this reflects the current conflict in Catalonia. This isn't about people whose rights, expectations, feelings, etc. are being ignored. This is about a rich regional government unilaterally deciding to ignore the laws/authorities which they should observe. If to get something you have convince someone else and you fail, you should accept that failure; you might try it again, attempt different approaches, support a change of the rules, etc. But if you unilaterally decide to stop applying the rules not allowing you to have what you want, your behaviour would become unlawful according to said rules; what becomes even worse in case that you are supposed to make sure that everyone respects those rules.
Spain (and Partido Popular/Mariano Rajoy or any other party) has nothing to do with a country like Turkey and a dictator-like figure like Erdogan. In Spain, talking about corruption means politicians stealing money/getting jobs to friends/family. Nothing to do with arbitrariness at the level of deciding what to do with the faith of a region.
It's really a shame how this conflict is being escalated for no good reason.
Unlikely your previous statements, that one is very accurate, although not because of what seems your intention.
the Partido Popular, is an indirect decendant of the Franco regime.
This is an extremely inaccurate statement. Partido Popular is a typical European centre-right party, on the lines of Conservative Party in the UK or CDU in Germany.
CLARIFICATION: I am a leftist who will never vote or support Partido Popular, much less after their numerous corruption problems.
You and quite a few other people here seem to have a quite distorted perception of the actual reality, presumably mostly promoted by the secessionist parties. A better example for you, Americans (because this is a US-based site, no idea about you), would be: a group of people in one of the US states (Texas, I think that is a good example) decides to unilaterally secede from the USA and, because of happening to be part of the regional government, stops applying the federal laws and starts the secession process.
.cat domain) whose activity has been deemed unlawful; we are simply seeing a conservative/non-understanding reaction to a behaviour against the law. Not liking that reaction is fine, inventing a parallel reality to justify the original unlawful/unjustifiable actions is certainly not.
Catalonia is one of the richest regions in Spain and has one of the highest regional autonomies too (the regional system in Spain isn't exactly as a federal system, but it allows a high level of freedom and competences for its regions). Spain is a very heterogeneous, peaceful and tolerant country where separatism is mainly a reminiscence of the past (Franco being very hard with regions like Catalonia or Basque Country) which has gradually become an easy to say/repeat trend. Almost every region in Spain has movements/parties which talk about secession, but nothing of this is an accurate reflection of the actual reality; it has mostly become a political flavour, a modern-day way to attract revolutionary sentiments. Your comment is comparing what happened hundreds of years ago with something as irrelevant as a rich regional government in a first-world country wanting still more power.
I will not even write here what I think about Catalonia or any other region separating from Spain; not even about my opinion regarding what has lately become the main complaint of the separatists ("we only want to have the option to vote"); I certainly don't support our current president, his party and what he represents (not just conservative views but also lots of corruption). Curiously, nothing of this matters for what is really important here. The only real problem is that the regional government decided to go solo by ignoring/tricking the Spanish (even Catalonian) law/constitution which they are precisely meant to observe. Nobody mistreated them. Nobody censored their rights. They weren't having any kind of serious difficulties. They have even stopped being supported by a big proportion of the Catalan society (apparently, not by the noisy ones). They have been disobeying the orders of judges and national institutions. And they aren't doing all that because they are afraid for their families or because they are hungry or because they don't want their opinions to be silenced or because they are being denied the freedom which they deserve, etc. They are doing all that just because they said that they would do it. The Spanish government is reacting perhaps too aggressively exactly for the same reason: they said that this would be their reaction.
This is a good sample of perfectly-avoidable problem which has been unreasonably blown completely out of proportions. Nothing of what you say is even remotely applicable to this situation. The linked article is a new consequence of this wacky reality, perhaps not a good decision (like many others before it) but very far away from trying to censor or silence those thinking differently. There is a regional government with quite a few attributions (e.g., managing the
While it's supposed to be backward compatible, .Net Core is designed so you can embed the (small) copy of whichever version you want right into your application, so you can have multiple versions on the same machine.
Interesting. I will do some tests on Core + Linux ASAP. Thanks for sharing all the info.
Correction to my "the last versions of VS are becoming too bloated": my first posted-on-Slashdot impressions about VS 2017 were quite good and it does seem much quicker/flexible regarding what to install than VS 2015. It still continues in the same line of over-friending the GUI (VS is very user-friendly since long time ago, keeping adding visual helps/information doesn't seem required/useful) but, in principle, I wouldn't mind to use it. The problem is that it is still too new and, as per the usual VS/.NET proceeding, likely to be quite unreliable. So, I will better wait a bit before considering 2017 my main VS, by plainly skipping the 2015 version which I have only used when strictly required.
Web developers will not touch something like VS 2017 or Monodevelop after using one of the 3 above or Sublime.
No idea about that. Firstly, I am not a web developer; and secondly, I have lots of experience in Visual Studio, feel very comfortable with any version of it and like MonoDevelop. Although I do think that the last versions of VS are becoming too bloated and prefer to use a bit older versions like VS 2012; in fact, I have only tested the Community alternatives of VS 2015/2017 and this might also have something to do with my impression. In any case and as you should recall from some of our previous conversations, I am currently moving to Linux, looking for good enough alternatives for my Windows-based everything and might even consider to stop using Visual Studio.
.NET compiler shouldn't be a problem either; but all this seems too labourious/crappy/unfriendly. Why not using Visual Studio, MonoDevelop or similar right away? You have just to double click on the corresponding solution to get an excellent code editor with lots of visual helps, to compile/debug/run everything right away, etc. What is the problem/difficulty of using a tool whose main purpose is to facilitate your work? How can anyone developing even the simplest piece of software have problems with so user-friendly software? A different story would be to rely on other (non-compiled) languages, where there are multiple alternatives and the requirements are different; but using VS/similar is certainly the best way to develop a .NET-based whatever.
On the other hand, I am not sure that you might easily develop a C#/VB.NET application with one of the editors you refer right away. In principle, they should have a reasonably good syntax support and coupling them with the
virtual machines are (a) free software and (b) included with your Ubuntu installation. Windows is neither. One might also point out that the JVM or other language-specific virtual machine is much "thinner"
And additionally we are talking about a whole OS which is pretty much the opposite of all what Ubuntu/Linux is supposed to represent. Yes, the differences are clear; but, for the purpose of the current discussion, all of them might be ignored. We are not analysing a list of clearly-defined conditions where all the aforementioned aspects might be brought into consideration; this is about finding a good enough reason justifying why Visual Studio might be included in that list despite not being natively supported by Linux.
As said, I am not in a position to confirm/dismiss your statements; so, I will assume that they are right. On the other hand, you are not saying anything about compatibility issues (perhaps there is a theoretically perfect backwards compatibility with old .NET versions, but what about applications developed before the relatively-new .NET Core was even created?) and actually reliability of this new approach. Personally, I will better stick to Mono for the time being, although I might start testing the native Linux alternatives to get a feeling of how is everything going on that front.
I guess that rules out anything written in Java, C#, or Python, as all three languages run on virtual machines. Eclipse would be running on IcedTea, MonoDevelop would be running on Mono, and even Update Manager would be running on CPython.
In fact, these situations are identical to running Visual Studio on a virtual machine! Any application written in Java is actually being run on its virtual machine rather than on Ubuntu, why should that situation be any different? You are right, there is no difference. So, running Visual Studio on a virtual machine has to be fine, otherwise lots of applications written in various programming languages would have to be ignored too. I stand corrected.
I have recently installed Linux on my main machine for the first time ever and am still getting used to the IDEs/editors. For the time being, Eclipse (for Java) and CodeBlocks (for C/C++) work pretty much like the Windows versions. MonoDevelop (for Mono C#/VB.NET) seems quite nice, but I haven't used it too much. As code/text editor, I am temporarily using Gedit, but its performance isn't as good as the one of the tool I was using on Windows (Notepad++).
Presumably because they can be non-natively installed into a licensed copy of Windows running in a virtual machine on Ubuntu
This shouldn't be an acceptable alternative when assessing applications running on Ubuntu. Visual Studio would be running on Windows and only the corresponding virtual machine on Ubuntu.
Microsoft raised the white flag and surrendered to Linux a year or two ago.
I knew about attempts at natively porting to Linux and even using Windows-based Visual Studio to directly develop on Linux. But this isn't the same than having a proper Visual Studio/.NET support equivalent to the one on Windows. These are just the first versions which are likely to be quite faulty (not criticising Microsoft/.NET Team, just guessing their most likely behaviour on account of their usual proceeding). Additionally, .NET Core isn't the same that the whole .NET Framework. So, for the time being and as per my knowledge (honestly, not too good; as far as I haven't done too much .NET work on Linux), the most reliable comprehensive enough Linux alternative to .NET continues being Mono, where the best IDE seems to be the referred MonoDevelop (I have started using it quite recently, precisely on Ubuntu, and it seems quite nice).
Winner: Visual Studio
How can Visual Studio be the best IDE for Ubuntu if both it and its defining .NET Framework can only be natively installed on Windows?! I guess that this refers to Visual Studio Code, an enhanced code editor which has little to do with Visual Studio. Apparently, the best Linux alternative for Visual Studio is MonoDevelop.
Visual Studio Code is a simple text editor; making it compatible with a wide variety of scenarios isn't difficult. On the other hand, Visual Studio and the whole .NET Framework working fine on Linux would be quite surprising.
As commented in a previous thread, I think that big companies are mostly using open source as a secondary marketing resource. Why not using it as a real technical resource? At the start, perhaps only for innovative, future, R&D projects, but actually-relevant ones. Treating open-source development as the in-house one, by allocating good enough resources to it (e.g., knowledgeable and motivated managers, realistic/adaptable milestones, adequate promotion of new projects, etc.). The prize? Getting a knowledgeable workforce really motivated to deliver the best products possible. And for us, developers? Seriously feeling that our effort might be actually recognised and rewarded (e.g., relevant contributions in different pieces of software or becoming an important part of our CV).
The main problems I see with the current open-source situation:
- Lots of people with low-to-no technical knowledge, even seeing open source as an acceptable alternative to get software developed for free (?!). Virtually no appraisal/recognition. No interest in actually knowing, improving, coming up with the best solutions. Lots of nepotism. Lots of concerns not related at all with programming. Lots of people mostly interested in discussing about abstract issues or not related to the given project/problem/software development. Lots of people seeing it as a forced milestone within their learning/career ("1 contribution to an open-source project. Checked.").
- Companies not seeing the open-source alternatives as a major source to improve/extend their products. They do everything in-house or by relying on their trusted collaborators. There is no feeling of community of knowledge, where only the objective correctness should be appraised; where thinking about the best long-term outputs should be the only concern. There are lots of marketing, HR, managerial, financial, PR, short-sighted, etc. concerns, rather than engineering/programming ones.
You should take a look at the other post below "A Replacement for C++", presumably written by the same funny troll (because I guess that this can be safely labelled as trolling, a good version though).
Nadella seems to get it.
I don't think that he gets it either. Microsoft seems to see open source as a secondary promotional source, as a way to look like a modern, adaptable and trendy company. Actually, it seems that most of online efforts of big companies are being focused on marketing, rather than on technical aspects. They are more worried about attracting a huge number of people and getting immediate benefits than about developing proper software. Appearances transmitted in the most childish ways (stars, upvotes, likes, shares, etc.) seem now much more important than objective correctness, reliability and long-term expectations.
I am too young and have been seriously involved in programming just during the last 10 years, but I think that this isn't how the open source world used to be. Back in the day, it seems that there were lots of truly knowledgeable people, really interested in learning, sharing, growing, etc. Internet should have helped overcome the geographical restrictions of those initial efforts, but ignorance and short-sightedness seemed to have temporarily won that war.
Very funny.
Sorry, I can only read what you write, not what you mean.
Good one. I meant exactly what I wrote. This morning, after reading your last comment, I thought that our positions were too different, what is likely to provoke a long abstract discussion to nowhere. Usually, I continue the conversation for a while anyway, but today I was really busy and sped up the process a bit. Your ideas are quite clear (scientific community acting fine and the press and public opinion being the only problem) and I guess that mine too (scientific community not always acting too scientifically). I am happy with that reality and I don't see the point of discussion more about it. Clearer now?
That does not follow. You're arguing that in order to be objective, have properly critical attitudes, etc. scientists need to keep their results secret, or at least avoid letting anyone not sufficiently versed in the relevant science to know about them. The one thing has nothing to do with the other.
I think that my post is quite clear; at least, if you read it completely by trying to understand all the ideas within the right context and as per my intention. Additionally, today I have a pretty busy day and cannot spend too much time here. Sorry, but that first paragraph is enough for me to assume that no possible (quick enough) understanding will happen here. I am not trying to be offensive, just practical. Bye.
Random or off capitalization
As explained in my other comment, capitalising fields of expertise has nothing to do with randomness. In fact, it is a quite common misconception (by assuming that it is completely wrong, what I am not in a position to confirm), as far as they have to be capitalised in certain contexts like when being included in the name of a degree or institute/department.
mean a person is certainly crazy, but the correlation is pretty damn high.
I see. There is no other explanation, right? Because everyone cares about all what you do like properly using English. Because it has nothing to do with the fact that other people might focus on other aspects or that all this is being written in an informal context where certain rules might be easily ignored. Because all of us do, want, think and behave identically; and we all pursue the same goal: you approving what we do and how we do it. Otherwise, you might insult us or draw some crazy conclusion about our behaviour or personality. LOL.
So you don't believe in consciousness? Then how can you be responding to comments on Slashdot? Are you a bot?
There you have a perfect sample of very poor understanding skills. I will try to explain all what is wrong with this, but just once. Today, I have a quite busy day and cannot spend too much time here; additionally, from that first sentence it has become crystal clear to me that no (quick enough) understanding is possible here.
- "So you don't believe in consciousness?" -> I don't believe (actually, the right word is "know"; isn't it kind of weird that you rely on an expression like "believe" when talking about what you think that is scientific stuff?) that we are able to explain it at this point and, consequently, I cannot assume that it might be explained at all by relying on any approach, including our current view of science. I believe that it exist because I have more than enough evidence about this being the case. Understanding that something exists and understanding why it exists or how it works are completely different concepts. For example, I work all the day with computers, I have a quite good understanding of software, engineering and physics, but not too much of electronics. So, I don't know too well how the hardware of my computer works, but I am certain about many people knowing it and also about agreeing with most of their ideas as far as I also know that they are based on physics, engineering and scientific knowledge.
- "Then how can you be responding to comments on Slashdot? " -> ?! Firstly, you terribly misunderstand an initial idea (quite easy to be properly interpreted as explained in the previous point) and then draw one of the most childish conclusions ever! So, you are saying that I need to be conscious to write here?! You are a very insightful person! Are you accepting disciples to learn your ways? Because I am ready to leave everything behind and to start learning from you right now! LOL (-> this means that my last sentences are a joke). Seriously, just by reading those two first sentences I think that there is something off with you. You don't seem to have basic knowledge and/or understanding capabilities. You don't even seem to be aware about what most of people consider basic knowledge.
- "Are you a bot?" -> This makes sense too, right? You don't know why or how, but you have heard the word "bot" a lot, so why not using it here? We are in a webpage, which is run from a computer, bots are run on computers and... a new pearl of wisdom is born! LOL.
capitalize "Physics" it is a subconscious clue to readers that you're nuts.
You assume that someone is crazy just because of having written "Physics" rather than "physics"? Can you understand irony or is it too difficult for you too?
Additionally, that capitalisation rule doesn't seem as evident as you are suggesting. Apparently, it is a matter of context and "Physics" might also be valid. BTW, I only believe in science and in what I can reasonably explain, but have no idea how to explain consciousness; In fact, nobody can. Accepting the limitations of our current understanding is pretty much the opposite of believing in magic. On the other hand, not accepting that fact and blindly assuming that science can certainly explain whatever issue does seem to suggest a magic-prone attitude.
the press reports not what the scientists actually examined, but some generalization of what they examined.
You and the parent poster are mostly focused on what, IMO, is just a consequence of the problem: the non-specialised press, PR, public opinion, etc. You should ask yourselves another question: why are these people who aren't in a position to adequately understand partial outputs being given those at all? Because certain scientific subfields aren't precisely being managed in a too scientific way and this the real problem: objective correctness, critical attitudes, long-term expectations, growth of the scientific knowledge as a whole, etc. are being ignored on exchange of funding or some minutes of fame.
The AI trend, like many others before and after it, has attracted lots of attention, what means easy money, not-knowledgeable interests, decisions not meant to accomplish long-term, sensible scientific goals. Who is to blame for this? All the people involved who have allowed irrelevant, short-sighted concerns to seriously impact the long-term scientific activity. It is isn't just the press not transmitting ideas about which their audience doesn't care anyway. It is also the activity itself, the pursued goals and expectations. The experts not acting as such ("I need this and that to get what you want under very specific conditions"), but as pusillanimous executors ("I will do all what you want"). Additionally, data-related fields are associated with very complex problems which might be seen as simple; blindly trusting abstract conclusions without critically analysing the whole situation seems also relatively easy.
Some things are difficult to be changed, if possible at all; but the first step is to be completely aware about the problem. It is certainly about ignorance, but the whole picture is much bigger than what you seem to imply. And in any case, complaining about others' actions and wishing that everyone was different isn't the best way to proceed. If you don't want AI-related research to be mocked, what about not systematically releasing papers drawing generic conclusions about virtually-incomprehensible realities from a few hand-picked data points? You can find various descriptive samples of this just by looking at the Slashdot articles during the last month.