Then I would suggest making sure you are part of the 10%
Me, I'm American in the sense that I view the American people to be my people.
I think it is wrong for some to exploit absolutely artificial differences nation to nation in the cost of the essentials of survival - food, housing, medical care, utilities - by transplanting their manufacturing plants and service centers to those cheaper nations so that they can pay lower wages vis-a-vis America's solely to further enrich themselves faster than they could in America.
That costs America jobs and is bringing great harm to my fellow Americans. Further, I would expect the average citizen of all nations to have precisely the same perspective regarding protecting their fellow countrymen.
But it is not the "average" citizen of any country who is being so tremendously enriched by inequitable free trade, now is it?
I have a difficult time accepting that I should seek to be "among the 10%" and take joy in counting my riches while watching my fellow Americans slide into poverty. I may not be religious, but I still don't believe in abusing my fellow human beings just to satiate my greed.
If you were truly speaking for your "fellow human beings" (instead of your fellow countrymen), and truly detest exploiting the "artificial differences nation to nation", then perhaps you could see it more clearly and simply: those who are willing to work harder gain more, and those enriched by "inequitable free trade" are exactly those at the shorter end of the inequality.
Frankly, although I doubt you're aware of it, the level of hypocrisy displayed in your posts is staggering.
Aren't you yourself "f'ing racist" when you accuse the whole "Han Chinese" race of sharing a same trait? They are all the same, right? Perhaps you can tell us why do you hate "Han Chinese" so much?
In what way does the table linked suggest "the number of hurrican strikes is at a cyclic low"? Perhaps you haven't notice that all except the last entry are for 10-years periods, while the last is only for 3?
Inaction is just another choice, not necessarily less risky. If we wait, we will just be playing another game of roulette: whether we can find another planet in time before Earth can no longer sustain us.
Right now, there's no AI algorithm that requires sleep, or anything that comes even close. On the other hand, the only intelligence that we know of does require it. It's one of the many basic differences between current AI and the brain, so it's not necessarily "the" or even "an" answer.
I predict that if/when such a technology becomes prevalent, it will greatly reduce the human ability to make decisions.
No. It will just train human to make other kinds of decisions; e.g., meta-decisions. So, instead of estimating a likelihood directly, you estimate which computer-aided decision making process will give you the most accurate estimate.
But you have to understand, people like these aren't idiots. They have only heard the sound bites just like the vast majority of corporate world that isn't in IS/IT. They lack the background knowledge of the issue as well as the technical knowledge to be able to make an informed judgment.
People who make judgement without proper background knowledge and careful thinking ARE idiots, IMNSHO.
The RSS size of my current Emacs process is 12MB, VSZ size, 15MB. This process is also my IDE, mail and news reader, file browsers, etc and occasionably, web browser. What is the size of your Office XP process?
And yet, that is modded as "insightful". Idiocy is doubly amusing, if not sad.
Human beings are negative by nature. The constant approach to looking at life is like looking at a glass that is half empty is an inate human characteristic. I can not assume that this has always been the case, however, there are few times that I find people who try look at problems or life as a glass that is half full.
Yeah, yeah. Half of the times, half of the people look at life as a glass that is half empty.
... this tiny bar that sits at the corner of your screen and lets you flip back and forth between English and several other character sets.
It is called xcin in Linux land.
... I am highly doubtful that Linux developers can come up with anything better.
Another FUD attempt. Do you have no shame?
As it stands, I believe your friend's decision to not use Microsoft products may be a bit short-sighted, especially considering that this is one of my client's only reasons to switch to Windows from MacOS.
No; I believe those who decided to use Microsoft products to be short-sighted.
And what about elm? It's a really nice commandline mailer, I haven't used it for a looooong time, but sometimes it's useful to fire it up to look at your inbox without having to launch emacs.
Try mutt: it can behave a lot like elm, read elm mailbox format, plus it has better support for attachments, pgp, etc. (Speaking as somebody who's just migrated from elm to mutt recently.)
Fvwm2, while something I haven't used on my *user* desktop for at least 5 years, is useful for when you want a *quick* login (i.e. you're logging in as root to fix something like the X configuration and you don't want to wait forever for gnome/kde to load up)
Running the sawfish window manager alone without all those Gnome/KDE cra^h^h^h niceties (panel, filemanager, desktop icons, whatever) is as fast as fvwm2.
By your argument, Emacs C hackers would've outnumbered Emacs Lisp hackers. Fact is, it's so much easier (and fun!) to hack Lisp that people contributed more Lisp code than C code.
Look at the number of extension packages contributed by Sawfish users here: http://sawfish.skylab.org/WikiSawfishLibrary Woul d you expect the same enthusiasm without the Lisp scripting interface?
I think dropping Sawfish is a bad move without good justification (language bigotry? incompetent programmers who're unable to learn?), and I hope Gnome won't follow suit. Otherwise it'll alienated people who're willing to contribute even more.
Have it ever occurred to you that, for most foreigners, you and your friends are the "fortunate few"? (House? What house? Too bad they're born in the wrong places, so they don't have the equal right to achieve happiness, etc.)
I'm not saying that you're obliged to help them, or you should suffer because those people are suffering. I only hope there'll be a little bit more understanding, and less antagonism, towards these people who're also working hard and trying to improve their lives.
It's long been observed in AI circle that things that are seemingly difficult for human actually are quite easy for computer, and vice versa. E.g., it is relatively easy to write program to solve sophisticated equations, playing chess, etc, which usually are considered hard, and require long period of training for human to carry out adequately. Things that are easy for human, such as recognizing faces and doing common sense reasoning, are what present the most problem for AI researchers.
Turing test allows opportunity to test for the latter, greater challenge; your suggested test doesn't.
Define a standard task of medium complexity; ask all your slav^h^h^h^h programmers to solve it and obtain the per task LOC for each programmer, PTLOC(ProgrammerX). Then normalized-LOC, NLOC(ProgrammerX) =def LOC(ProgrammerX)/PTLOC(ProgrammerX).
Now you have a relative productivity measure of all your programmers.
If you don't know, and love, the macro system (and sexps), meta object protocol, multi-inheritance/dispatch, readtable, the much more mature condition systems, optimizing native compiler, compiler macro, etc, etc, then you're not qualified to claim yourself as a "big Lisp fan".
If you think it is ok to kill innocent people, civilian targets just to "make us feel better", then what is the difference between you and them?
Please think for a moment: what makes them willing to give up their lives to commit atrocities like these? Might they be under similar emotions that you have been experiencing just now -- the loss of lives of family, friends, or fellow country men and women; or that their values under threated? But does that justify their acts? No!!! (I hope you agree with me here.) So, please don't follow them.
The group behind this need to be punished; but not in the ways you suggested. The things you suggested are not ways to stop terrorisms, but to induce more of them.
People oppose using amimals for research because it is cruelty to lives, and causes suffering. However, it is very hard for me to imagine stem cells suffering pain because of stem cells research.
One distinction needs to be made clear: language definition vs language implementation. Threads, sockets, binary I/O, etc do exists in all major implementations of the CL language, free (CMUCL, CLisp) and commercial (Franz's Allegro, Xanalys' Lispworks, Digitool's MCL) alike. It is true that the ANSI standard for CL doesn't include threads, sockets (it does have binary I/O, well-defined runtime errors; and bit-vector is neither inefficient nor a hack (see for yourself: the standard is online). We'd appreciate it if you'll check your facts first before posting; spreading misinformation is immoral). However, if you insist on using language features only if they're in the standard, then you've even more problems with OCaml: it doesn't even have a standard (ANSI, IEEE, ISO, whatever) yet!
As for type declarations, they're there both for speed and correctness. The optional type declarations in CMUCL can serve both purposes. There is a tradeoff here: on the one hand, the need to keep track of the type information is a burden on the programmer when it is inessential to the logic of the program; OTOH, compiler needs this information to produce compact code and sometimes, catch errors. I like the CL's approach the best: it provides you with the option ONLY when you need it. Also, when programming in CL, I find type errors are rare; most bugs are logical.
Python is a very nice language, especially for beginners. But I doubt anyone who know CL well will prefer Python over CL. The expressiveness, the flexibility, the speed, the maturity of compiler and runtime system technologies; those are enough reasons for me to stick with CL.
As an aside: I like Python, and I've been watching Python's development for a while; however, I've yet to see a PEP (Python Enhancement Proposal) which cannot be implemented *within* the language in CL with a page or two using Macro, MOP, etc. Therefore I concluded that it is much less effort to bring libraries to CL, than it is to bring Python up to the level of CL in terms of language maturity.
In short, I think it is much easier to find happiness in CL! I believe most people will feel the same, too, if they're persistent enough to master the few beautiful concepts underlying the design of CL.
I am a Common Lisp (CL) programmer; OCaml doesn't make me happy:
Because code transformation in OCaml is not pretty. Owning to CL's clean and uniform syntax, macro in CL is simple and elegant; this metaprogramming capability provides it with unlimited expressiveness and adaptibility.
Because OCaml doesn't provide the option to delay deciding types. In CL, I write generic code to speed up development; I then (optionally) declare types in bottleneck code segments to speed up program execution -- it makes perfect sense (remember the 90/10 rules).
Because OCaml doesn't have a Meta Object Protocol.
CMUCL is a highly optimized, Free compiler and execution system for Common Lisp (http://cmucl.cons.org/cmucl). Please come and help making it better (http://www.telent.net/cliki)!
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Then I would suggest making sure you are part of the 10%
Me, I'm American in the sense that I view the American people to be my people.
I think it is wrong for some to exploit absolutely artificial differences nation to nation in the cost of the essentials of survival - food, housing, medical care, utilities - by transplanting their manufacturing plants and service centers to those cheaper nations so that they can pay lower wages vis-a-vis America's solely to further enrich themselves faster than they could in America.
That costs America jobs and is bringing great harm to my fellow Americans. Further, I would expect the average citizen of all nations to have precisely the same perspective regarding protecting their fellow countrymen.
But it is not the "average" citizen of any country who is being so tremendously enriched by inequitable free trade, now is it?
I have a difficult time accepting that I should seek to be "among the 10%" and take joy in counting my riches while watching my fellow Americans slide into poverty. I may not be religious, but I still don't believe in abusing my fellow human beings just to satiate my greed.
If you were truly speaking for your "fellow human beings" (instead of your fellow countrymen), and truly detest exploiting the "artificial differences nation to nation", then perhaps you could see it more clearly and simply: those who are willing to work harder gain more, and those enriched by "inequitable free trade" are exactly those at the shorter end of the inequality. Frankly, although I doubt you're aware of it, the level of hypocrisy displayed in your posts is staggering.
Aren't you yourself "f'ing racist" when you accuse the whole "Han Chinese" race of sharing a same trait? They are all the same, right? Perhaps you can tell us why do you hate "Han Chinese" so much?
In what way does the table linked suggest "the number of hurrican strikes is at a cyclic low"? Perhaps you haven't notice that all except the last entry are for 10-years periods, while the last is only for 3?
Inaction is just another choice, not necessarily less risky. If we wait, we will just be playing another game of roulette: whether we can find another planet in time before Earth can no longer sustain us.
Maxima and Axiom.
I see your ID isn't a coincidence.
My bet is on Gauction, leveraging their expertise in data-mining for fraud detection.
Google for "garbage collection".
No. It will just train human to make other kinds of decisions; e.g., meta-decisions. So, instead of estimating a likelihood directly, you estimate which computer-aided decision making process will give you the most accurate estimate.
The RSS size of my current Emacs process is 12MB, VSZ size, 15MB. This process is also my IDE, mail and news reader, file browsers, etc and occasionably, web browser. What is the size of your Office XP process? And yet, that is modded as "insightful". Idiocy is doubly amusing, if not sad.
Microsoft needs to be destroyed.
Stop being an ostrich. Certainly you can understand not making a decision is a decision in itself: you choose not to choose; you choose inaction.
Rubbish.
l d you expect the same enthusiasm without the Lisp scripting interface?
By your argument, Emacs C hackers would've outnumbered Emacs Lisp hackers. Fact is, it's so much easier (and fun!) to hack Lisp that people contributed more Lisp code than C code.
Look at the number of extension packages contributed by Sawfish users here: http://sawfish.skylab.org/WikiSawfishLibrary
Wou
I think dropping Sawfish is a bad move without good justification (language bigotry? incompetent programmers who're unable to learn?), and I hope Gnome won't follow suit. Otherwise it'll alienated people who're willing to contribute even more.
Have it ever occurred to you that, for most foreigners, you and your friends are the "fortunate few"? (House? What house? Too bad they're born in the wrong places, so they don't have the equal right to achieve happiness, etc.)
I'm not saying that you're obliged to help them, or you should suffer because those people are suffering. I only hope there'll be a little bit more understanding, and less antagonism, towards these people who're also working hard and trying to improve their lives.
I sure hope there won't be blood in the streets.
Common Lisp!
You can find some of the details in this paper: COSI: Adding Constraints to the Object-Oriented Paradigm.
Cool stuff!!
This doesn't make much sense.
It's long been observed in AI circle that things that are seemingly difficult for human actually are quite easy for computer, and vice versa. E.g., it is relatively easy to write program to solve sophisticated equations, playing chess, etc, which usually are considered hard, and require long period of training for human to carry out adequately. Things that are easy for human, such as recognizing faces and doing common sense reasoning, are what present the most problem for AI researchers.
Turing test allows opportunity to test for the latter, greater challenge; your suggested test doesn't.
Define a standard task of medium complexity; ask all your slav^h^h^h^h programmers to solve it and obtain the per task LOC for each programmer, PTLOC(ProgrammerX). Then normalized-LOC, NLOC(ProgrammerX) =def LOC(ProgrammerX)/PTLOC(ProgrammerX).
Now you have a relative productivity measure of all your programmers.
If you don't know, and love, the macro system (and sexps), meta object protocol, multi-inheritance/dispatch, readtable, the much more mature condition systems, optimizing native compiler, compiler macro, etc, etc, then you're not qualified to claim yourself as a "big Lisp fan".
Please think for a moment: what makes them willing to give up their lives to commit atrocities like these? Might they be under similar emotions that you have been experiencing just now -- the loss of lives of family, friends, or fellow country men and women; or that their values under threated? But does that justify their acts? No!!! (I hope you agree with me here.) So, please don't follow them.
The group behind this need to be punished; but not in the ways you suggested. The things you suggested are not ways to stop terrorisms, but to induce more of them.
As for type declarations, they're there both for speed and correctness. The optional type declarations in CMUCL can serve both purposes. There is a tradeoff here: on the one hand, the need to keep track of the type information is a burden on the programmer when it is inessential to the logic of the program; OTOH, compiler needs this information to produce compact code and sometimes, catch errors. I like the CL's approach the best: it provides you with the option ONLY when you need it. Also, when programming in CL, I find type errors are rare; most bugs are logical.
Python is a very nice language, especially for beginners. But I doubt anyone who know CL well will prefer Python over CL. The expressiveness, the flexibility, the speed, the maturity of compiler and runtime system technologies; those are enough reasons for me to stick with CL.
As an aside: I like Python, and I've been watching Python's development for a while; however, I've yet to see a PEP (Python Enhancement Proposal) which cannot be implemented *within* the language in CL with a page or two using Macro, MOP, etc. Therefore I concluded that it is much less effort to bring libraries to CL, than it is to bring Python up to the level of CL in terms of language maturity.
In short, I think it is much easier to find happiness in CL! I believe most people will feel the same, too, if they're persistent enough to master the few beautiful concepts underlying the design of CL.
Because code transformation in OCaml is not pretty. Owning to CL's clean and uniform syntax, macro in CL is simple and elegant; this metaprogramming capability provides it with unlimited expressiveness and adaptibility.
Because OCaml doesn't provide the option to delay deciding types. In CL, I write generic code to speed up development; I then (optionally) declare types in bottleneck code segments to speed up program execution -- it makes perfect sense (remember the 90/10 rules).
Because OCaml doesn't have a Meta Object Protocol.
CMUCL is a highly optimized, Free compiler and execution system for Common Lisp (http://cmucl.cons.org/cmucl). Please come and help making it better (http://www.telent.net/cliki)!