What they discussed wasn't the fact, broadly acknowledged, that the human soul is absolutely linked to the body, but what this link was and how it was structured.
Interesting clarification. I dig it. It brings up a question, though. If they spoke in terms of linking the two, wouldn't that imply the two were/technically/ though perhaps not functionally, separate things? I know that for the hebrews, there simply was no distinction in any meaningful sense. The two were hopelessly intermingled and not thought of as separate at all. Just curious.
Let me ask you a question. Isn't it true that your cells are constantly regenerating themselves? The matter you were made up of when you were born no longer is the same matter, but you are still you. So if your qunatum state was duplicated and during the process the original was destroyed then you would still think you are you. Would you still BE you?
I'd argue the answer is no, but it is, as you point out, an existential problem. For many people there is a qualitative difference between the slow regeneration of that which constitutes you and a transfer of the information that is your current state of being. That's slow regeneration creations a continuity of self that the latter doesn't afford. Does it matter existentially? Well, as Kierkegaard said, Truth is subjectivity. You'll need to decide that for yourself. For me, that continuity is key to selfhood.
The question in my mind is can quantum teleportation bring along your soul?
Agreed that this is the million dollar question, made all the more difficult because of the muddying of the term 'soul' itself in the Western world.
In the Hebrew context of the dominant Western faiths (Judaism and it's derivatives, Christianity, and Islam) the soul is not separate of the body. There is no distinction of body and soul in the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic holy texts. The Christian resurrection is a bodily resurrection. The Islamic understanding of heaven is a physical one. The Jewish people never made that distinction. In that context, the question falls away. The soul isn't brought along in any different a manner than your liver or skin. Indeed, by virtue of bringing liver and skin over, you subsume the soul in the transfer in a very real tangible sense. In the Hebrew context, the soul is in no more danger than the body of being labeled a copy.
In the Greek context that informs our Western philosophical outlook, and often works at odds with our religion outlook, there is very much a distinction of Mind, Body, and Soul. So, in that context, the question gets even broader in that you must also ask the same question of the mind. Is it brought over with the body? Is the soul as well? Being separate and noumenal, the mind and soul may not be brought over but copied or a new one created in the reconstitution of the copied body. In that Greek context, teleportation is existentially dangerous, I'd think.
Personally, I've always tended to adhere to the Hebrew context for these sorts of questions, as they seem to make more logical sense and fit closer with my understanding of how the world appears to work.
Not sure that I was coming to any conclusions in this comment, but rather just adding to the thought-noise.:)
having been a first-hand observer, I saw the leakage and it is immense.
As Thomas Sowell said, profits are the price of efficiency.
I agree with you when you say that the money doesn't all go directly to beakers, superconductors, and lab coats. That said, the leakage (in the U.S. we encourage it and call it profit, not leakage, but either term is accurate enough) exists. It is, nonetheless, overstated in my experience. As you've pointed out, the same has been said of the healthcare industry. Having been a consultant in healthcare and other industries, I can say that the leakage is no different than any other business.
I think when we are talking about industries that touch on altuism we are more sensitive to the profit people make off it. In healthcare and the sciences, therefore, we see the same profit that we might overlook in car sales or shipbuilding with a more jaundiced eye. We are less willing to accept skimming profit from a common good. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it's true that we, as a people, do that. At least I know I'm guilty of it and anecdotally, I've seen others doing the same.
Still, even accounting for more skimmed profit in U.S. research, the numbers are vast and orders of magnitude greater. Even with our built-in profit (which some would argue makes us more, not less efficient), we are head and shoulders ahead of our closest competitor. As the blog entry states, China's spending amounts to little more than a rounding error of the amount we spend. It's pretty crazy.
I'm not trying to push an "America! Fuck Yeah!" attitude here at all. Indeed, I would like to see a more equitable situation than exists now, but rahter just saying the numbers show that we aren't in any real danger of losing the high ground for a while.
Now, if we drive ourselves broke buying missiles to shoot at other countries....;-)
That only covers China vs the US. How about all of Europe?
I refer you to the linked UNESCO report that details the numbers for every country. Short answer: Europe isn't even on our radar as a competitor. The numbers are pretty clear.
We outspend every other country by FAR on science and technology. This may be useful propaganda to get the US to reinvigorate public interest in science again, but private and governmental interest has never waned.
"Sometimes I think it might make more sense to make a browser-like framework for programs, but built from the ground up for applications instead of static pages."
That is/has been the promise of technologies like XAML and XUL.
It doesn't do audio. I dislike DRM as much as the next geek, but even I have to acknowledge the ease-of-installation-and-use factor of a single cable connect between all devices. I have a significant home theater set up. Whenever I can replace 2--7 cables with a single line, I will do it.
Why is everyone so HDMI-centric?
Becuase the industry is pushing us that way. I don't like it either. The reality is, however, that if I intend to have a high-end home theater (OK, mid-range if you are one of the $75k+ for a theater crowd!) then I am gonna be using HDMI for any recent purchases. It carries advantages, but I also dislike the DRM side of it. Hasn't bit me yet, but I dislike the potential for lameness that it carries.
Point being, I am not pro-HDMI. I am pro-WantACoolTheater. HDMI is just an unfortunate side effect.:(
OK, so we are violating an unknown subset of your patents. Fair enough. It's possible you are right. If, however, you want to be able to enforce those patents later, you'll need to com e forward right away. Also, you might be needing to prove you didn't wait too long already.
You can't watch a contractor put a new roof on your home and then only afterwards inform him he's at the wrong house. Or, more specifically, you can, but you are paying for a new roof. That's how it works.
If Microsoft intentionally waited until these patents were entrenched and difficult to remove before they acted for the purposes of maximizing their own legal position, then mightn't the doctrine of Estoppel by Silence come into play? Just wondering. I'm no lawyer (though I have been arrested enough times to pass the bar, I think!), but what they are doing seems like it might not be, you know, legal and stuff?
Only if you are squinting so hard you're blind. Linux is the only desktop operating system in which if your distributor decides to not include software, getting it anyway is extremely difficult. If a package isn't included in Ubuntu, your only option is either to compile it from source (good luck with that if you aren't technical) or using something like an autopackage.
I empathize with your overall point (and largely agree) but you are kind of hijacking the thread here since you probably already know that Ubuntu does include an easy to install (but not default installed) Wine package. Wine is in the repos.
Click on the Applications menu and at the bottom click "Add/Remove". In the list of applications that comes up you can find Wine (it's got a 5 star rating) alng with a user-friendly plain text explanation of what it is and does. No squinting needed.
That said, I'd love to see something like ZeroInstall or Autopackage become the norm and I strongly suppot the work you ae doing there.:)
Maybe because after reviewing the evidence, I've decided this is the correct viewpoint? Maybe because I have a deep distrust for marketing techniques and am loath to see it applied to the things I love? Maybe because the world needs less spin and more direct talk? I dunno. You seem to think you have the answer, so please tell me why I think like this.
Do you honestly think it sounds as though you're quoting something that's come from your own mind?
Do you honestly think that we have original thoughts that pop de nouveau into our heads? I never said I was the first person to point it out. What sort of point is it you want make so badly that you are willing to put words in my mouth?
Maybe being drones is something that some people actually enjoy.
Yeah, because I totally don't agree with you, apparently, so I must be doing so in a drone-like fashion.:-|
I mean, just because there are a boatload of people who agree with you (as their are with me) and just because they pushed your ideas before you did (as they did with mine) doesn't mean you are being a drone (unlike me?).
I disagree with you. Your childish insults don't really address the matter at hand, do they? Insulting me doesn't in any way move this discussion forward. If you disagree with my argument, explain why. Don't waste either of our time with your Ad Hominem attacks. They speak more poorly of you than me.
The thing I can't explain is that for a while, the above type of thinking seemed to be fading away
I have not changed my position on this and neither have a great many people. If you perceived a fading away, it was probably wishful thinking on your part.
the faithful seem more fanatical and zombie-like now than ever before.
Glad we have such strong free-thinkers as yourself to show us the light.
Steve Ballmer has genuinely behaved recently in a manner which reinforces the FSF's fearmongering.
So in other words, what the FSF has been saying all along is bearing out to be true? And this is how you end your diatribe against people who agree with the FSF viewpoint? Damn, you are a wily tactician. I'd hate to sit across from you at the debate table. I am SO dreading the moment when I find out how you admitting that reality proves me right will prove that I should not believe as I currently do!
I'm glad to hear someone finally say it. Freedom has totally jumped the shark. It's soooo "post-Enlightenment" and lame./sarcasm
OK, seriously, though, I am honestly hopeful that "Open Source" has jumped the shark. It's Free Software, dammit, not Open Source, that is what's important here. "Free" as in "Freedom", not "Open" as in "I Can See It". So, yeah, if this whole "Let's call it Open, because business won't like us if we call ourselves what we are, which is Free" thing goes away, I won't be crying myself to sleep.
There's no such thing as a "box model" in XHTML 1.0. The box model is a feature of CSS.
I agree with everything else you said, but have to defer to the other guy on this one.
CSS allows you to play with the box properties (like borders and padding and margins), but the box model is the direct result of the div structure of XHTML 1.*. I know why you say otherwise. Conventionally, when we talk about the box model, we are talking about CSS's use of it, but technically, convention is wrong, in that the box is defined in the XHTML rather than the CSS.
God. I am such a 'tard that I couldn't let this minor point go uncorrected. lol! Forgive my pedantry.;-)
Could someone explain the slashdot community's priciple or consistency on this issue. Or are we just all selfish assholes with selective morality?
Short answer: Government involvement. We dislike when companies (or anyone for that matter) seeks to perpetuate a lopsided arrangement in collusion with our own government. When the RIAA gets the government involved, it gets guns involved. What the government tells us to do, they enforce with police and military. When Corporate America colludes with the government to increase H1B visas and eliminate service tarriffs and so on, they are involving the Men with Guns. Government is essentially a collective coercion system to keep us moving forward. Kill someone? We make corrections with our police force. Steal? Same thing. Rape? Same thing. The RIAA and Corporate America want to include "Enforce our self-interest" to that list---a list that should be damn short!
So, when we bitch about the RIAA, it's because we know that we can be forced to obey. When Corporate America gets the government to side with them on H1B Visas and outsourcing, they have eliminated the threat of them having to follow the trade laws the rest of us agreed to follow.
And also, we are selfish with selective morality...like the rest of the planet and everyone on it. Community contains a measure of bargaining for a good position. We try to minimize it, but it's always there. We want rules that accommodate us better than others. There is nothing wrong with that as long as we continue to compromise. The RIAA and Corporate America have decided they no longer want to compromise. This upsets me. Like most geeks, I am predisposed to prefer Justice. Right now, they are effectively escaping it. Moreover, it looks like they will get (have gotten?) away with it entirely. They get richer. We get poorer. Why? The deck is stacked against us because the people writing the rules we play by have allegiance to the rich, not the poor.
OK. Turns out this wasn't a short answer after all.:(
if we ever have to write a term paper for our job in the real world
Yeah, because, I mean, seriously, why should you ever have to do a single thing in college that doesn't directly and immediately relate to how you will earn your paychecks later in life. To suggest otherwise would be tantamount to suggesting that college were about, I don't know, education?
The focus is much more about getting facts on paper from whatever sources we deem suitable, not doing elaborate research to look impressive.
That's good. Research is for pussies who just want to "look good" by "advancing human knowledge". There is nothing more irritating than some nerdy little do-gooder lording his "I cured cancer" bullshit over the rest of us.
Another benefit of the memo style over a term paper is that we can't be long-winded. We're given a maximum page length, not a minimum
This professor sounds like a wise man. Nothing valuable or worth saying ever comes from difficult-to-read, long-winded texts. Sound bites, baby. That's the way to do it. "Drop that zero and get you a hero" "Put up or shut up" "Sit on it" Yeah, the shorter and pithier, the better. What did Summa Theologica, The Wasteland, War and Peace, Republic, or The Origin of Species ever do for anybody? Nothing, that's what! It was wordy crap when they wrote it. It's wordy crap now. Besides, they probably used some of that "research" to write those works, which all but invalidates it totally.
Real-world types: does this sound accurate (and/or wise)?
OK, enough with the sarcasm. And don't take this message as a rant against you, per se. Rather, take it as a rant against your professor (who I will happily debate on these issues). To answer your two questions: 1) Yes this is accurate to the real world, which expects sound bites and pseudo-thought to rule human communication. 2) No, it's not wise. It's giving in to ignorance. It's eroding that best part of humanity---the part that lets us see farther and know deeper. It's a summary of what is wrong with many (not all) colleges today. It's a damnable trial of what's wrong with parents and students that they expect every moment of their education to be job training without seeing that, whether they like it or not, the two are not always congruous goals. No, it's not wise. It's what worries me about the future. My great grandmother learned latin at the age of 12. So did all her peers. This was in the public school system. No one thought she'd go on to do work as a latin translator. They simply thought that knowing latin would offer her a linguistic perspective she might find valuable existentially. They were right.
There are a host of jokes and Liberal Arts degrees floating around, and I find many of them funny as well, but underlying them is the sad reality that we as a people are slowly turning anti-intellectual and that really saddens me.
But none of it justifies the sarcastic tone I took in the beginning of this message. It probably wasn't the best way to make my point. Sorry if it sounded offensive. It's something I feel passionately about.
And why do all of his projects follow some tech Microsoft convolutes from some REAL tech(OOP, Java, etc)?
Huh?
De Icaza was at the forefront of Gnome development, the forefront Ximian development, and the forefront of Novell development (pre-MS deal). You may not like his choice here, but seriously, what's with the 'tude? I'm pretty sure he's done more for open source than Locutus of Slashdot...unless "Locutus" is RMS's/. screenname (in which case I take it all back and you are, of course perfectly correct!).
Seriously, attack his decision wrt mono if you must, but not his track record, which is fairly solid. He's earned the right to a little wiggle room on this.
Also, he's right about mono. Linux needs it, whether you 'get' it or not. Explaining why is too involved for a/. forum, but the arguements are out there and they are pretty good. I wouldn't mind seeing more of a break between mono and.NET, but overall his ideas and direction are good on this one.
So in a thread about the beta of the next version of Ubuntu, you chime in that it isn't ready, citing as proof a problem your friend had with the/previous/ version of the software whilst doing something that could hose/any/ Windows OR Linux system (power down interruption of an install)?
And you got modded "Insightful"?
Perhaps moderators thought it said "Inciteful". Otherwise, as much as I appreciate your comment as valid for what it was discussing, this mod makes no damn sense.
Seriously? Tell your friend to power down like that while a Windows app is writing to the registry (hint: this occurs more than just at install time!) and watch what happens next. Voila! Instant "non-perfection"! We don't need perfection to get people to use Linux. We need people to stop pirating Windows. If A person has to spend $200 to get the latest version, they will be more inclined to consider a switch. If their techie buddy wil just hand em a copy for free, they wil just sit back and bitch that Linux ain't perfect enough, as if Windows were.
Google is a U.S. Company Yahoo is a U.S. Company Microsoft is a U.S. Company AskJeeves is a U.S. Company etc etc etc
I appreciate that you wanna be all "screw you guys in the U.S. for your stupid laws" but if you think they don't or won't affect you in other countries, your head is in the sand.
Not saying it's right or fair or good or bad, but the U.S. is largely in control of the companies that drive the Internet and its content.
So, yes, this ruling can change the nature of the Internet for everyone online.
Tom Caudron http://tom.digitalelite.com/ (and yes, you may spider my site 'til your eyes bleed and your brain gets a bruise)
Instead educators are trying to turn education into entertainment. Lessons are reduced to wacky fun facts. Everything has to be packaged into bite-sized chunks. It isn't just the curriculum.
I had to reply when I read to this point.
Educators are not responsible to the curriculum in the classroom. Politicians are. Your School Board determines what books and materials are official, what goals are to be reached, and what methods are employed to reach those goals with those materials.
Why? Pay. Whether you think it's relevant or not, teacher ARE paid poorly compared to professionals with similar degrees, which means you end up with two sorts of teacher: those who'd do it no matter the pay and love what they do and those for whom this was the last chance at career. To fix the problem created by the latter, rather than spend money on pay to bring in a better candidate pool, school systems impose strict guidelines and requirements on both sorts of teachers, which hamstrings the former while protecting students (somewhat) against the latter.
Bite sized chunks are easier to teach for poor teachers, which is what you get when you don't offer enough money (across the board, not just in science and math!) and edutainment is what you get when educators don't get to create the curriculum. Parents and politicians end up deciding what the teacher in going to teach, and GOD FORBID little Billy isn't pleased as punch with every lesson else his parents are at the school asking why the teacher is discouraging Billy from academia...rather than asking themselves whey they aren't raising a kid who can listen without needing to be wholly entertained.
The school system has serious problems and those problems are making the whole system mediocre, but don't go blaming teachers for a problem the taxpayers and voters are creating. For all our grandstanding about education, we as a society, put little bite behind our bark when it comes to actually getting the job done. We don't give a fuck if kids are educated for real. We just want the world to think we do. And when our kids aren't educated, we'd rather blame the poorly paid teachers than ourselves for creating an environment where even the best teachers can't succeed beyond a certain (far too low) point.
Raise pay > Raise expectations of teachers > Raise expectations of students. That's how it works. You can't skip a step there. Expect more from students? How if the teachers you hire aren't all qualified? How can you expect them to be qualified if you aren't willing to pay for qualified candidates?
This shit is simple and all the rhetoric from the "Teachers are the problem" camp is just a crock of crap.
so, my question is, is there any (easy) way i could be running the.net framework on ubuntu ? no virtual machine if possible, no emulation, just run.net framework on ubuntu ?
That's about all you need. Now, that said, I'm a bit confused about something else you said...
At work, we do ASP and ASP.net. Not c#, vb.net. I can read c# but i don't really program with it.
ASP.NET is nothing more than c# or vb.net applied to the code-behind files for ASP. If you do ASP.NET at work, then you/are/ using either c# or vb.net or you are just writing html, in which case, you don't need the.net framework anyway. Find out from those doing to coding which language they use for their ASP.NET files. If they use c# you're golden, if it's vb.net, well the support is not quite as solid yet in mono.
To see which language they use just open an aspx file in notepad and look near the top, you'll find a line like this:
<% Page Language="C#" etc.... or <% Page Language="VB" etc....
That'll tell you what language they are using.
Hope that helps.
As a side note, you ae making a good choice moving to linux for hosting. Once you get used to the idiosyncracies, you'll find it much easier to maintain. Congrats.
I read the rant by Opera's CTO about how shit both standards are (a memory dump between angle brackets)
Either the CTO was lying or he's retarded. (There, my obligatory inciting opening is out of the way).
Seriously though, open up OpenOffice.org, make a document, save it to disk, then open the document up in File Roller or Winzip or 7-zip or whatever you use for archives and actually look at the underlying xml. It's pretty damn far from a serialized binary object. A serialized Binary object is what MS's first xml attempt consisted of (essentially a CDATA tag encapsulating a blob). They improved it a bit in the latest iteration, but ODF is most certainly not that. It uses a format similar to the jar format: a set of internal files that each have a function, one for the text, one for the formatting, etc...). It's not XHTML+CSS, but rather it's own XML format. Of course that's because they are smart. XHTML+CSS has a place and advanced print document layout and spreadsheets and presentation animations is not it. If it were XHTML+CSS then Opera could read it much easier, though. Hmmm, I wonder why the CTO of Opera is pushing for that?
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting clarification. I dig it. It brings up a question, though. If they spoke in terms of linking the two, wouldn't that imply the two were
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
I'd argue the answer is no, but it is, as you point out, an existential problem. For many people there is a qualitative difference between the slow regeneration of that which constitutes you and a transfer of the information that is your current state of being. That's slow regeneration creations a continuity of self that the latter doesn't afford. Does it matter existentially? Well, as Kierkegaard said, Truth is subjectivity. You'll need to decide that for yourself. For me, that continuity is key to selfhood.
Agreed that this is the million dollar question, made all the more difficult because of the muddying of the term 'soul' itself in the Western world.
In the Hebrew context of the dominant Western faiths (Judaism and it's derivatives, Christianity, and Islam) the soul is not separate of the body. There is no distinction of body and soul in the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic holy texts. The Christian resurrection is a bodily resurrection. The Islamic understanding of heaven is a physical one. The Jewish people never made that distinction. In that context, the question falls away. The soul isn't brought along in any different a manner than your liver or skin. Indeed, by virtue of bringing liver and skin over, you subsume the soul in the transfer in a very real tangible sense. In the Hebrew context, the soul is in no more danger than the body of being labeled a copy.
In the Greek context that informs our Western philosophical outlook, and often works at odds with our religion outlook, there is very much a distinction of Mind, Body, and Soul. So, in that context, the question gets even broader in that you must also ask the same question of the mind. Is it brought over with the body? Is the soul as well? Being separate and noumenal, the mind and soul may not be brought over but copied or a new one created in the reconstitution of the copied body. In that Greek context, teleportation is existentially dangerous, I'd think.
Personally, I've always tended to adhere to the Hebrew context for these sorts of questions, as they seem to make more logical sense and fit closer with my understanding of how the world appears to work.
Not sure that I was coming to any conclusions in this comment, but rather just adding to the thought-noise.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
...can't wait to live off the fruits of robotic labor.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
As Thomas Sowell said, profits are the price of efficiency.
I agree with you when you say that the money doesn't all go directly to beakers, superconductors, and lab coats. That said, the leakage (in the U.S. we encourage it and call it profit, not leakage, but either term is accurate enough) exists. It is, nonetheless, overstated in my experience. As you've pointed out, the same has been said of the healthcare industry. Having been a consultant in healthcare and other industries, I can say that the leakage is no different than any other business.
I think when we are talking about industries that touch on altuism we are more sensitive to the profit people make off it. In healthcare and the sciences, therefore, we see the same profit that we might overlook in car sales or shipbuilding with a more jaundiced eye. We are less willing to accept skimming profit from a common good. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it's true that we, as a people, do that. At least I know I'm guilty of it and anecdotally, I've seen others doing the same.
Still, even accounting for more skimmed profit in U.S. research, the numbers are vast and orders of magnitude greater. Even with our built-in profit (which some would argue makes us more, not less efficient), we are head and shoulders ahead of our closest competitor. As the blog entry states, China's spending amounts to little more than a rounding error of the amount we spend. It's pretty crazy.
I'm not trying to push an "America! Fuck Yeah!" attitude here at all. Indeed, I would like to see a more equitable situation than exists now, but rahter just saying the numbers show that we aren't in any real danger of losing the high ground for a while.
Now, if we drive ourselves broke buying missiles to shoot at other countries....
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
I refer you to the linked UNESCO report that details the numbers for every country. Short answer: Europe isn't even on our radar as a competitor. The numbers are pretty clear.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
I've said this before, but the real numbers say that this article is wrong.
We outspend every other country by FAR on science and technology. This may be useful propaganda to get the US to reinvigorate public interest in science again, but private and governmental interest has never waned.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
"Sometimes I think it might make more sense to make a browser-like framework for programs, but built from the ground up for applications instead of static pages."
That is/has been the promise of technologies like XAML and XUL.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
It doesn't do audio. I dislike DRM as much as the next geek, but even I have to acknowledge the ease-of-installation-and-use factor of a single cable connect between all devices. I have a significant home theater set up. Whenever I can replace 2--7 cables with a single line, I will do it.
Becuase the industry is pushing us that way. I don't like it either. The reality is, however, that if I intend to have a high-end home theater (OK, mid-range if you are one of the $75k+ for a theater crowd!) then I am gonna be using HDMI for any recent purchases. It carries advantages, but I also dislike the DRM side of it. Hasn't bit me yet, but I dislike the potential for lameness that it carries.
Point being, I am not pro-HDMI. I am pro-WantACoolTheater. HDMI is just an unfortunate side effect.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
OK, so we are violating an unknown subset of your patents. Fair enough. It's possible you are right. If, however, you want to be able to enforce those patents later, you'll need to com e forward right away. Also, you might be needing to prove you didn't wait too long already.
You can't watch a contractor put a new roof on your home and then only afterwards inform him he's at the wrong house. Or, more specifically, you can, but you are paying for a new roof. That's how it works.
If Microsoft intentionally waited until these patents were entrenched and difficult to remove before they acted for the purposes of maximizing their own legal position, then mightn't the doctrine of Estoppel by Silence come into play? Just wondering. I'm no lawyer (though I have been arrested enough times to pass the bar, I think!), but what they are doing seems like it might not be, you know, legal and stuff?
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
I empathize with your overall point (and largely agree) but you are kind of hijacking the thread here since you probably already know that Ubuntu does include an easy to install (but not default installed) Wine package. Wine is in the repos.
Click on the Applications menu and at the bottom click "Add/Remove". In the list of applications that comes up you can find Wine (it's got a 5 star rating) alng with a user-friendly plain text explanation of what it is and does. No squinting needed.
That said, I'd love to see something like ZeroInstall or Autopackage become the norm and I strongly suppot the work you ae doing there.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
Maybe because after reviewing the evidence, I've decided this is the correct viewpoint? Maybe because I have a deep distrust for marketing techniques and am loath to see it applied to the things I love? Maybe because the world needs less spin and more direct talk? I dunno. You seem to think you have the answer, so please tell me why I think like this.
Do you honestly think that we have original thoughts that pop de nouveau into our heads? I never said I was the first person to point it out. What sort of point is it you want make so badly that you are willing to put words in my mouth?
Yeah, because I totally don't agree with you, apparently, so I must be doing so in a drone-like fashion.
I mean, just because there are a boatload of people who agree with you (as their are with me) and just because they pushed your ideas before you did (as they did with mine) doesn't mean you are being a drone (unlike me?).
I disagree with you. Your childish insults don't really address the matter at hand, do they? Insulting me doesn't in any way move this discussion forward. If you disagree with my argument, explain why. Don't waste either of our time with your Ad Hominem attacks. They speak more poorly of you than me.
I have not changed my position on this and neither have a great many people. If you perceived a fading away, it was probably wishful thinking on your part.
Glad we have such strong free-thinkers as yourself to show us the light.
So in other words, what the FSF has been saying all along is bearing out to be true? And this is how you end your diatribe against people who agree with the FSF viewpoint? Damn, you are a wily tactician. I'd hate to sit across from you at the debate table. I am SO dreading the moment when I find out how you admitting that reality proves me right will prove that I should not believe as I currently do!
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
I'm glad to hear someone finally say it. Freedom has totally jumped the shark. It's soooo "post-Enlightenment" and lame. /sarcasm
OK, seriously, though, I am honestly hopeful that "Open Source" has jumped the shark. It's Free Software, dammit, not Open Source, that is what's important here. "Free" as in "Freedom", not "Open" as in "I Can See It". So, yeah, if this whole "Let's call it Open, because business won't like us if we call ourselves what we are, which is Free" thing goes away, I won't be crying myself to sleep.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
Dear Sir,
Stop. Looking. For. A. Payout. You. Asshole.
The world isn't fair. Sometimes things suck. Deal with it and quit looking for someone to owe you every time something changes.
Sincerely,
Tom Caudron, Esquire[1]
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
[1]The undersigned is not an attorney, but would like to play one on reality TV.
I agree with everything else you said, but have to defer to the other guy on this one.
CSS allows you to play with the box properties (like borders and padding and margins), but the box model is the direct result of the div structure of XHTML 1.*. I know why you say otherwise. Conventionally, when we talk about the box model, we are talking about CSS's use of it, but technically, convention is wrong, in that the box is defined in the XHTML rather than the CSS.
God. I am such a 'tard that I couldn't let this minor point go uncorrected. lol! Forgive my pedantry.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
Short answer: Government involvement. We dislike when companies (or anyone for that matter) seeks to perpetuate a lopsided arrangement in collusion with our own government. When the RIAA gets the government involved, it gets guns involved. What the government tells us to do, they enforce with police and military. When Corporate America colludes with the government to increase H1B visas and eliminate service tarriffs and so on, they are involving the Men with Guns. Government is essentially a collective coercion system to keep us moving forward. Kill someone? We make corrections with our police force. Steal? Same thing. Rape? Same thing. The RIAA and Corporate America want to include "Enforce our self-interest" to that list---a list that should be damn short!
So, when we bitch about the RIAA, it's because we know that we can be forced to obey. When Corporate America gets the government to side with them on H1B Visas and outsourcing, they have eliminated the threat of them having to follow the trade laws the rest of us agreed to follow.
And also, we are selfish with selective morality...like the rest of the planet and everyone on it. Community contains a measure of bargaining for a good position. We try to minimize it, but it's always there. We want rules that accommodate us better than others. There is nothing wrong with that as long as we continue to compromise. The RIAA and Corporate America have decided they no longer want to compromise. This upsets me. Like most geeks, I am predisposed to prefer Justice. Right now, they are effectively escaping it. Moreover, it looks like they will get (have gotten?) away with it entirely. They get richer. We get poorer. Why? The deck is stacked against us because the people writing the rules we play by have allegiance to the rich, not the poor.
OK. Turns out this wasn't a short answer after all.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
Just a clarification. That should be "jokes about Liberal Arts degrees". big difference!
Yeah, because, I mean, seriously, why should you ever have to do a single thing in college that doesn't directly and immediately relate to how you will earn your paychecks later in life. To suggest otherwise would be tantamount to suggesting that college were about, I don't know, education?
That's good. Research is for pussies who just want to "look good" by "advancing human knowledge". There is nothing more irritating than some nerdy little do-gooder lording his "I cured cancer" bullshit over the rest of us.
This professor sounds like a wise man. Nothing valuable or worth saying ever comes from difficult-to-read, long-winded texts. Sound bites, baby. That's the way to do it. "Drop that zero and get you a hero" "Put up or shut up" "Sit on it" Yeah, the shorter and pithier, the better. What did Summa Theologica, The Wasteland, War and Peace, Republic, or The Origin of Species ever do for anybody? Nothing, that's what! It was wordy crap when they wrote it. It's wordy crap now. Besides, they probably used some of that "research" to write those works, which all but invalidates it totally.
OK, enough with the sarcasm. And don't take this message as a rant against you, per se. Rather, take it as a rant against your professor (who I will happily debate on these issues). To answer your two questions: 1) Yes this is accurate to the real world, which expects sound bites and pseudo-thought to rule human communication. 2) No, it's not wise. It's giving in to ignorance. It's eroding that best part of humanity---the part that lets us see farther and know deeper. It's a summary of what is wrong with many (not all) colleges today. It's a damnable trial of what's wrong with parents and students that they expect every moment of their education to be job training without seeing that, whether they like it or not, the two are not always congruous goals. No, it's not wise. It's what worries me about the future. My great grandmother learned latin at the age of 12. So did all her peers. This was in the public school system. No one thought she'd go on to do work as a latin translator. They simply thought that knowing latin would offer her a linguistic perspective she might find valuable existentially. They were right.
There are a host of jokes and Liberal Arts degrees floating around, and I find many of them funny as well, but underlying them is the sad reality that we as a people are slowly turning anti-intellectual and that really saddens me.
But none of it justifies the sarcastic tone I took in the beginning of this message. It probably wasn't the best way to make my point. Sorry if it sounded offensive. It's something I feel passionately about.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
....it's not like their corporate charter says "Buy no evil". :)
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
Huh?
De Icaza was at the forefront of Gnome development, the forefront Ximian development, and the forefront of Novell development (pre-MS deal). You may not like his choice here, but seriously, what's with the 'tude? I'm pretty sure he's done more for open source than Locutus of Slashdot...unless "Locutus" is RMS's
Seriously, attack his decision wrt mono if you must, but not his track record, which is fairly solid. He's earned the right to a little wiggle room on this.
Also, he's right about mono. Linux needs it, whether you 'get' it or not. Explaining why is too involved for a
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
So in a thread about the beta of the next version of Ubuntu, you chime in that it isn't ready, citing as proof a problem your friend had with the /previous/ version of the software whilst doing something that could hose /any/ Windows OR Linux system (power down interruption of an install)?
And you got modded "Insightful"?
Perhaps moderators thought it said "Inciteful". Otherwise, as much as I appreciate your comment as valid for what it was discussing, this mod makes no damn sense.
Seriously? Tell your friend to power down like that while a Windows app is writing to the registry (hint: this occurs more than just at install time!) and watch what happens next. Voila! Instant "non-perfection"! We don't need perfection to get people to use Linux. We need people to stop pirating Windows. If A person has to spend $200 to get the latest version, they will be more inclined to consider a switch. If their techie buddy wil just hand em a copy for free, they wil just sit back and bitch that Linux ain't perfect enough, as if Windows were.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
Google is a U.S. Company
Yahoo is a U.S. Company
Microsoft is a U.S. Company
AskJeeves is a U.S. Company
etc etc etc
I appreciate that you wanna be all "screw you guys in the U.S. for your stupid laws" but if you think they don't or won't affect you in other countries, your head is in the sand.
Not saying it's right or fair or good or bad, but the U.S. is largely in control of the companies that drive the Internet and its content.
So, yes, this ruling can change the nature of the Internet for everyone online.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ (and yes, you may spider my site 'til your eyes bleed and your brain gets a bruise)
I had to reply when I read to this point.
Educators are not responsible to the curriculum in the classroom. Politicians are. Your School Board determines what books and materials are official, what goals are to be reached, and what methods are employed to reach those goals with those materials.
Why? Pay. Whether you think it's relevant or not, teacher ARE paid poorly compared to professionals with similar degrees, which means you end up with two sorts of teacher: those who'd do it no matter the pay and love what they do and those for whom this was the last chance at career. To fix the problem created by the latter, rather than spend money on pay to bring in a better candidate pool, school systems impose strict guidelines and requirements on both sorts of teachers, which hamstrings the former while protecting students (somewhat) against the latter.
Bite sized chunks are easier to teach for poor teachers, which is what you get when you don't offer enough money (across the board, not just in science and math!) and edutainment is what you get when educators don't get to create the curriculum. Parents and politicians end up deciding what the teacher in going to teach, and GOD FORBID little Billy isn't pleased as punch with every lesson else his parents are at the school asking why the teacher is discouraging Billy from academia...rather than asking themselves whey they aren't raising a kid who can listen without needing to be wholly entertained.
The school system has serious problems and those problems are making the whole system mediocre, but don't go blaming teachers for a problem the taxpayers and voters are creating. For all our grandstanding about education, we as a society, put little bite behind our bark when it comes to actually getting the job done. We don't give a fuck if kids are educated for real. We just want the world to think we do. And when our kids aren't educated, we'd rather blame the poorly paid teachers than ourselves for creating an environment where even the best teachers can't succeed beyond a certain (far too low) point.
Raise pay > Raise expectations of teachers > Raise expectations of students. That's how it works. You can't skip a step there. Expect more from students? How if the teachers you hire aren't all qualified? How can you expect them to be qualified if you aren't willing to pay for qualified candidates?
This shit is simple and all the rhetoric from the "Teachers are the problem" camp is just a crock of crap.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
you could just go to a reputable source and do your own research:
http://www.bluebookarchive.org/
No zombies or esp, just government docs about ufo's.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
http://www.mono-project.com/ASP.NET
That's about all you need. Now, that said, I'm a bit confused about something else you said...
ASP.NET is nothing more than c# or vb.net applied to the code-behind files for ASP. If you do ASP.NET at work, then you
To see which language they use just open an aspx file in notepad and look near the top, you'll find a line like this:
<% Page Language="C#" etc....
or
<% Page Language="VB" etc....
That'll tell you what language they are using.
Hope that helps.
As a side note, you ae making a good choice moving to linux for hosting. Once you get used to the idiosyncracies, you'll find it much easier to maintain. Congrats.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
Either the CTO was lying or he's retarded. (There, my obligatory inciting opening is out of the way).
Seriously though, open up OpenOffice.org, make a document, save it to disk, then open the document up in File Roller or Winzip or 7-zip or whatever you use for archives and actually look at the underlying xml. It's pretty damn far from a serialized binary object. A serialized Binary object is what MS's first xml attempt consisted of (essentially a CDATA tag encapsulating a blob). They improved it a bit in the latest iteration, but ODF is most certainly not that. It uses a format similar to the jar format: a set of internal files that each have a function, one for the text, one for the formatting, etc...). It's not XHTML+CSS, but rather it's own XML format. Of course that's because they are smart. XHTML+CSS has a place and advanced print document layout and spreadsheets and presentation animations is not it. If it were XHTML+CSS then Opera could read it much easier, though. Hmmm, I wonder why the CTO of Opera is pushing for that?
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/