Re:Interesting read, but you're forgetting one thi
on
Freedom or Power?
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· Score: 2
it's a vicious cycle because if one is not making any economic gains as a lower-rung member of the socialist society, then one never becomes part of the gift culture. Thus, you have the same old aristocracy.
Socialism would work if people were inherently good. Sadly, we're self-absorbed bastards (me included).
Most people don't think so because they realize that math is something too important and too useful to let one person have a chokehold over. Same goes with programs.
Wrong, fundamentally.
Programs are a product. They are a manufactured good that, when combined with a type of electronic hardware, performs a certain pattern of calculations, and interprets the results of those calculations to produce information. They are the application of pure logic and hardware and as such have inherent value as capital goods.
Theorems [for brevity I'll lump all mathematical research into that of theorems] are scientific principles that have no inherent capital value. They are ideas that can be applied to capital goods, but theorems are not capital goods in and of themselves because there is no market for them. There is a prestige market for math research, but everyone's still gotta eat.
Programs are created by programmers. Theorems are derived by mathematicians. Programmers get paid for their output, not their capabilities. Write X, get Y. Mathematicians get paid for being capable of figuring things out. Think about X, get Y.
The point is that money is what makes the world work, and if something, such as mathematical research, isn't worth money by itself (thus being sellable), nobody's going to bother trying to own it. This means that math != software, period.
My position is that I'm not willing to do anything about it in the arena that it must be address (the legal system), so I'm not going to bitch about it.
By the same token, all this braying and whining just makes you look like a paranoid ass if you're not somewhere DOING something about it.
If people _really_ want computers that are easy to use why do you think mac is such a failure ?
Because Deer Hunter doesn't run on a mac?
Because the mac software didn't do what they wanted to do?
Because they didn't find the mac easier to use? (there is no 100% objective usability rating)
Because Macs don't come in a funny (huh huh) cow-print box with cute commercials?
Apple had a chance with the iMac to whip the PC and didn't because they marketed in an elitist fashion. Joe Sixpack, who was buying computers at the time, doesn't respond to that and is, in fact turned off by it. Apple may be proud to cater to a "higher class" of users, but you can bet their shareholders aren't..
Most people have only ever tried one OS, they have no idea how easy or difficult another system is.
Why SHOULD they try anything else when what you have does everything they could possibly conceive of doing with a computer? (Notice the THEY in that sentence, we're geeks and don't count)
I've got a friend that's a network engineer. He prefers Linux and other Unixes. His wife is a graphic designer. She prefers Mac and MacOS.
She can use a PC (I used to work with them both) but prefers a Mac because it's most familiar to her. Her computer reflexes and thought patterns reflect the mac way of working.
I find MacOS interface a bit counterintuitive, OS X is better but still not the way I prefer to work. My friend is perfectly content sitting at his linux box, running in text mode, and reading his email with PINE and only occasionally going to a windows machine to surf some message boards.
People want to use a system that is FAMILIAR to them, difficulty is based on experience, its rediculous to say that the average user wants to be treated like an idiot and have the software second guess everything they do.
The average user DOESN'T KNOW what the software is second-guessing!! If they see "are you sure you want to delete that", nine times out of 10 they didn't even know they were going to delete that. You've got to forget what you know when you're talking about the average user and think like someone who doesn't know anything.
Pick something you don't know anything about (for me, I'd say, um, rebuilding a jet engine). Now imagine being stuck in a situation where you have to accomplish this something ASAP, PDQ, and pronto. You don't want the computer to get in your way, you want it to help you.
Here comes the car analogy again: gearheads will only drive cars that have stick shifts, because that gives them direct interface into the car's powertrain. That's why we use CLIs and don't like "are you sure".
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. We're not being liquidated in gas chambers over here, you know.
Here's my philosophy.
When I become a criminal (when they define my behavior as criminal or I commit a criminal act), then I will take appropriate measures to defend myself from persecution if wrongfully accused, or I'll accept responsibility if I get caught fair and square. I only trust myself to defend myself, and I'm not just talking about legal representation. If I can't defend myself, I've only got myself to blame and haven't been let down by anyone else's incompetence.
well, that's what I get for assuming things, sorry.
But, look at most any military and the prime method of motivation is to take a not-so-thoughtful young person (why do you think they like them straight out of high school) and to feed them BS about how evil the enemy is, (I mean, inherently evil, not just opposed to us), and then give him a gun and tell him where to shoot. By the time you're done with your propaganda he's so enraged that he doesn't care about the enemy's culture or how they're just people like us that look different, he just wants to kill.
Teaching diversity will alleviate this, except - surprise! - last generation's soldiers have kids, and they get taught at home not to believe any of that "tolerance crap". Fear of their parents keeps them from internalizing the values of globalism. For each war, repeat one iteration.
When you have a war every generation, like we've had for the last 150 years or so, then a whole hell of a lot of intolerance gets passed down.
Yes, I've seen it, I'm from the south.
So, in the end the whole exercise of globalism is a waste of time, but I guess it's the thought that counts.
But don't you see? The majority of the people out there, the Real People, don't give a shit whether windows is pre-loaded or not, whether there's any competition, or anything. Windows is just what a computer looks like to them, and they know it, so *sigh of relief* they can use any computer anywhere!
Our opinions on this issue are irrelevant, there are so few of us that we are statistically insignificant.
The consumer IS on their side, by default. The average joe that I talk to doesn't want their computer to be harder to use, and they think that, for better or worse, microsoft makes their computer useful.
The fact is that Real People aren't idealistic about software. The computer is analogous to a car in almost every way. Car enthusiasts have the edge in knowledge, but everybody has to use one (unless you live in a large urban area with good public transportation, but I digress) and most people just want to get in and turn the key and start moving.
Windows does that. Nothing else on a PC does that for the average Real Person. So stop it with this idealistic shit and fight MS on its own terms.
Ever wonder why software companies give deep discounts to educational institutions? It's not necessarily for philanthropic reasons. They want to get students, those people that will be in the workforce in a few years, accustomed to THEIR products, not their competitors.
It's not just software, it's every kind of consumer product imaginable. Coke donates coke machines, Pepsi donates pepsi machines, Frito-Lay donates certain brands of chips, then there's fundraising candy (a lot of which is donated by distributors) and stuff like vocational programs where the auto shop gets free Craftsman tools, or the wood shop gets all this nice Makita stuff...
You could, of course, argue that this makes them like the Taliban... screening new ideas and technologies to make sure nothing they don't like gets in. I think the difference is that the Amish don't use violence as a means of enforcing the conventions of their community, nor do they use force as a means of coercing people to stay. They are free to join another community with different standards if they want.
That was poor wording on my part. I therefore apologize to all the Amish that are reading this:)
The Amish also don't begrudge the rest of the world for choosing to adopt high technology. I have no quarrel with that attitude at all. I mean that the Luddite-types were the freaks, not the Amish.
If you want to compare any american institution to the Taliban, I would point at certain Southern Baptist and Pentacostal churches, for their intolerance and shortsighted absolutist doctrines.
I had a grandfather who went to West Point and served with distinction in the U.S. Army in WWII. A good, honorable man in many ways, but also a bigot down to his bones. I can't help but wonder what sort of man he'dve been if he could've clicked on a website growing up and learned how people live in Saudi Arabia or Tokyo or even just the "wrong side of the tracks" in his hometown.
He wouldn't have been able to serve with distinction because there's no xenophobia to tap into to produce the rage that a good combat soldier needs.
1) The Taliban are ignorant and like it that way. They didn't want to know about the US Army because to push around women and children and keep control of one of the poorest countries in the world, they didn't need to. We hit them by surprise as much as anything else.
2) Some of these gun owners are veterans that have HAD the training of the US Army and know everything there is to know about the equipment, including its strengths, weaknesses, and how to sneak into the armory at Fort Whatever.
3) We haven't lost as much freedom as it seems. Basically, only people who were doing shady things to begin with lost freedom. I'm not a criminal so I don't give a shit if they have the right to wiretap all my phones - I'll never give them a reason to, and I know enough cops to know that they won't expend the energy without a good reason. My government doesn't care about me, which in this case is good.
But think about how Americans would react if a fundamentalist government seized power, banning computers, music and TV. Surely there would be a mass hiding of equipment against the day when the government fell.
Nope, there would be a mass march of gun owners on Washington, loaded and ready.
This will never happen, though, because only the Amish and Luddite freaks don't see the value of technology. Even the most rigid fundies still want to be able to proselytize via the net.
NASA and the gov't had a monopoly on rocket technology due to the Cold War. Why? Two reasons:
1) Nationalism requires that We The People (as in the government representing us) defeat the Soviets in the space race
2) Somewhat more logically, if private inventors started building rockets, some mad scientist type would be able to sell missile technology to whoever wanted it, including the enemies.
Don't forget the fact that to really get the benefits you'd have to wait on a whole other
-generation- of users to grow up with the new GUI.
Real People are going to hate any interface if it's not 'like Windows' and it'll bomb horribly. Witness every new-and-superior-but-different technology from MS BOB to the Amiga to electric cars for proof. Incremental change is about all that'll be acceptable.
desktop (probably in scheme for that schweet scriptability)
Can't speak for anyone else, but you lost me here. Please, for the love of all humanity, if you do this, use a normal language so that we ALL can script it?!?!? please?!?!?!
If assuming routines are not used, why can the game design houses not share source (open source drivers for commercial hardware would be a bad thing IMO), but a simple list of what OpenGL calls they use, so that the driver can adapt itself accordingly for -any- program? I'm talking about a paper that says, "we use this, this this" so the driver could adapt itself to not use the missing calls.
I'm sure that UT in OpenGL mode doesn't use all the OpenGL calls, nor does any other 3d engine.
That's totally dependent on your familiarity with the language and the language itself. Try writing something the size of the Linux kernel without comments anywhere and see how long you last.
Java is pretty much self-documenting, but that's because it's not much more than library calls and the names of everything in the standard library are 30 characters long, practically.
Have you never had to maintain someone else's code?
But hey - i guess none of it is Rush, Led Zep, or Van Halen, so it will never be considered "real" music by the slightly scarlet necked masses...
If that's how prejudiced and small-minded that fans of techno/electronica are, then why would I want to be one of them?
It still takes more skill to create real music with real instruments. I've been a musician for about 10 years. I still struggle to write a song on guitar and bass, and don't always succeed. With shit like Acid Music, I can write an [at least] harmonically correct song in a couple of hours. I don't consider that progress.
There are some things that SHOULD be hard work, and the emotion that goes into creating music should not be an easy thing to invoke, nor should it be cheapened through shortcut boxes.
Do you appreciate art? Take Michaelangelo, for example. How impressive would the Sistine Chapel be if he had had airbrushes, power scaffolding, opaque projectors, and a 3D model of the ceiling to help him place his compositions?
Oh well, the technology would be more 'kewl' than laying there with a brush for years, so I'm sure you don't get it.
hear, hear... only those who don't program professionally eschew comments. Anyone's who's had to fix a program under pressure knows that you need all the help you can get..
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it's a vicious cycle because if one is not making any economic gains as a lower-rung member of the socialist society, then one never becomes part of the gift culture. Thus, you have the same old aristocracy.
Socialism would work if people were inherently good. Sadly, we're self-absorbed bastards (me included).
Most people don't think so because they realize that math is something too important and too useful to let one person have a chokehold over. Same goes with programs.
Wrong, fundamentally.
Programs are a product. They are a manufactured good that, when combined with a type of electronic hardware, performs a certain pattern of calculations, and interprets the results of those calculations to produce information. They are the application of pure logic and hardware and as such have inherent value as capital goods.
Theorems [for brevity I'll lump all mathematical research into that of theorems] are scientific principles that have no inherent capital value. They are ideas that can be applied to capital goods, but theorems are not capital goods in and of themselves because there is no market for them. There is a prestige market for math research, but everyone's still gotta eat.
Programs are created by programmers. Theorems are derived by mathematicians. Programmers get paid for their output, not their capabilities. Write X, get Y. Mathematicians get paid for being capable of figuring things out. Think about X, get Y.
The point is that money is what makes the world work, and if something, such as mathematical research, isn't worth money by itself (thus being sellable), nobody's going to bother trying to own it. This means that math != software, period.
All you DMCA and privacy whiners, take note. It could be worse.
I don't argue that it's that bad.
My position is that I'm not willing to do anything about it in the arena that it must be address (the legal system), so I'm not going to bitch about it.
By the same token, all this braying and whining just makes you look like a paranoid ass if you're not somewhere DOING something about it.
If people _really_ want computers that are easy to use why do you think mac is such a failure ?
Because Deer Hunter doesn't run on a mac?
Because the mac software didn't do what they wanted to do?
Because they didn't find the mac easier to use? (there is no 100% objective usability rating)
Because Macs don't come in a funny (huh huh) cow-print box with cute commercials?
Apple had a chance with the iMac to whip the PC and didn't because they marketed in an elitist fashion. Joe Sixpack, who was buying computers at the time, doesn't respond to that and is, in fact turned off by it. Apple may be proud to cater to a "higher class" of users, but you can bet their shareholders aren't..
Most people have only ever tried one OS, they have no idea how easy or difficult another system is.
Why SHOULD they try anything else when what you have does everything they could possibly conceive of doing with a computer? (Notice the THEY in that sentence, we're geeks and don't count)
I've got a friend that's a network engineer. He prefers Linux and other Unixes. His wife is a graphic designer. She prefers Mac and MacOS.
She can use a PC (I used to work with them both) but prefers a Mac because it's most familiar to her. Her computer reflexes and thought patterns reflect the mac way of working.
I find MacOS interface a bit counterintuitive, OS X is better but still not the way I prefer to work. My friend is perfectly content sitting at his linux box, running in text mode, and reading his email with PINE and only occasionally going to a windows machine to surf some message boards.
People want to use a system that is FAMILIAR to them, difficulty is based on experience, its rediculous to say that the average user wants to be treated like an idiot and have the software second guess everything they do.
The average user DOESN'T KNOW what the software is second-guessing!! If they see "are you sure you want to delete that", nine times out of 10 they didn't even know they were going to delete that. You've got to forget what you know when you're talking about the average user and think like someone who doesn't know anything.
Pick something you don't know anything about (for me, I'd say, um, rebuilding a jet engine). Now imagine being stuck in a situation where you have to accomplish this something ASAP, PDQ, and pronto. You don't want the computer to get in your way, you want it to help you.
Here comes the car analogy again: gearheads will only drive cars that have stick shifts, because that gives them direct interface into the car's powertrain. That's why we use CLIs and don't like "are you sure".
Am I getting through yet?
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. We're not being liquidated in gas chambers over here, you know.
Here's my philosophy.
When I become a criminal (when they define my behavior as criminal or I commit a criminal act), then I will take appropriate measures to defend myself from persecution if wrongfully accused, or I'll accept responsibility if I get caught fair and square. I only trust myself to defend myself, and I'm not just talking about legal representation. If I can't defend myself, I've only got myself to blame and haven't been let down by anyone else's incompetence.
well, that's what I get for assuming things, sorry.
But, look at most any military and the prime method of motivation is to take a not-so-thoughtful young person (why do you think they like them straight out of high school) and to feed them BS about how evil the enemy is, (I mean, inherently evil, not just opposed to us), and then give him a gun and tell him where to shoot. By the time you're done with your propaganda he's so enraged that he doesn't care about the enemy's culture or how they're just people like us that look different, he just wants to kill.
Teaching diversity will alleviate this, except - surprise! - last generation's soldiers have kids, and they get taught at home not to believe any of that "tolerance crap". Fear of their parents keeps them from internalizing the values of globalism. For each war, repeat one iteration.
When you have a war every generation, like we've had for the last 150 years or so, then a whole hell of a lot of intolerance gets passed down.
Yes, I've seen it, I'm from the south.
So, in the end the whole exercise of globalism is a waste of time, but I guess it's the thought that counts.
But don't you see? The majority of the people out there, the Real People, don't give a shit whether windows is pre-loaded or not, whether there's any competition, or anything. Windows is just what a computer looks like to them, and they know it, so *sigh of relief* they can use any computer anywhere!
Our opinions on this issue are irrelevant, there are so few of us that we are statistically insignificant.
The consumer IS on their side, by default. The average joe that I talk to doesn't want their computer to be harder to use, and they think that, for better or worse, microsoft makes their computer useful.
The fact is that Real People aren't idealistic about software. The computer is analogous to a car in almost every way. Car enthusiasts have the edge in knowledge, but everybody has to use one (unless you live in a large urban area with good public transportation, but I digress) and most people just want to get in and turn the key and start moving.
Windows does that. Nothing else on a PC does that for the average Real Person. So stop it with this idealistic shit and fight MS on its own terms.
Ever wonder why software companies give deep discounts to educational institutions? It's not necessarily for philanthropic reasons. They want to get students, those people that will be in the workforce in a few years, accustomed to THEIR products, not their competitors.
It's not just software, it's every kind of consumer product imaginable. Coke donates coke machines, Pepsi donates pepsi machines, Frito-Lay donates certain brands of chips, then there's fundraising candy (a lot of which is donated by distributors) and stuff like vocational programs where the auto shop gets free Craftsman tools, or the wood shop gets all this nice Makita stuff...
Sorry. What does voice RECOGNITION have to do with spying or making spying more popular? You still have to have a reason to target the person.
You also have to have a human to double-check the intelligence because no self-respecting cop is going to trust a computer over his own instincts.
They have the technology to follow me around from a satellite if they want, but why would they? They've got bigger fish to fry.
You could, of course, argue that this makes them like the Taliban... screening new ideas and technologies to make sure nothing they don't like gets in. I think the difference is that the Amish don't use violence as a means of enforcing the conventions of their community, nor do they use force as a means of coercing people to stay. They are free to join another community with different standards if they want.
That was poor wording on my part. I therefore apologize to all the Amish that are reading this
The Amish also don't begrudge the rest of the world for choosing to adopt high technology. I have no quarrel with that attitude at all. I mean that the Luddite-types were the freaks, not the Amish.
If you want to compare any american institution to the Taliban, I would point at certain Southern Baptist and Pentacostal churches, for their intolerance and shortsighted absolutist doctrines.
I had a grandfather who went to West Point and served with distinction in the U.S. Army in WWII. A good, honorable man in many ways, but also a bigot down to his bones. I can't help but wonder what sort of man he'dve been if he could've clicked on a website growing up and learned how people live in Saudi Arabia or Tokyo or even just the "wrong side of the tracks" in his hometown.
He wouldn't have been able to serve with distinction because there's no xenophobia to tap into to produce the rage that a good combat soldier needs.
1) The Taliban are ignorant and like it that way. They didn't want to know about the US Army because to push around women and children and keep control of one of the poorest countries in the world, they didn't need to. We hit them by surprise as much as anything else.
2) Some of these gun owners are veterans that have HAD the training of the US Army and know everything there is to know about the equipment, including its strengths, weaknesses, and how to sneak into the armory at Fort Whatever.
3) We haven't lost as much freedom as it seems. Basically, only people who were doing shady things to begin with lost freedom. I'm not a criminal so I don't give a shit if they have the right to wiretap all my phones - I'll never give them a reason to, and I know enough cops to know that they won't expend the energy without a good reason. My government doesn't care about me, which in this case is good.
But think about how Americans would react if a fundamentalist government seized power, banning computers, music and TV. Surely there would be a mass hiding of equipment against the day when the government fell.
Nope, there would be a mass march of gun owners on Washington, loaded and ready.
This will never happen, though, because only the Amish and Luddite freaks don't see the value of technology. Even the most rigid fundies still want to be able to proselytize via the net.
NASA and the gov't had a monopoly on rocket technology due to the Cold War. Why? Two reasons:
1) Nationalism requires that We The People (as in the government representing us) defeat the Soviets in the space race
2) Somewhat more logically, if private inventors started building rockets, some mad scientist type would be able to sell missile technology to whoever wanted it, including the enemies.
ok, MS BOB is NOT superior... need more coffee...
Don't forget the fact that to really get the benefits you'd have to wait on a whole other
-generation- of users to grow up with the new GUI.
Real People are going to hate any interface if it's not 'like Windows' and it'll bomb horribly. Witness every new-and-superior-but-different technology from MS BOB to the Amiga to electric cars for proof. Incremental change is about all that'll be acceptable.
desktop (probably in scheme for that schweet scriptability)
Can't speak for anyone else, but you lost me here. Please, for the love of all humanity, if you do this, use a normal language so that we ALL can script it?!?!? please?!?!?!
and can interface with the TROJAN network.
:)
It's definitely much safer to input and output if you're interfacing with TROJAN
That brings up this question:
If assuming routines are not used, why can the game design houses not share source (open source drivers for commercial hardware would be a bad thing IMO), but a simple list of what OpenGL calls they use, so that the driver can adapt itself accordingly for -any- program? I'm talking about a paper that says, "we use this, this this" so the driver could adapt itself to not use the missing calls.
I'm sure that UT in OpenGL mode doesn't use all the OpenGL calls, nor does any other 3d engine.
That's totally dependent on your familiarity with the language and the language itself. Try writing something the size of the Linux kernel without comments anywhere and see how long you last.
Java is pretty much self-documenting, but that's because it's not much more than library calls and the names of everything in the standard library are 30 characters long, practically.
Have you never had to maintain someone else's code?
Do you appreciate art? Take Michaelangelo, for example. How impressive would the Sistine Chapel be if he had had airbrushes, power scaffolding, opaque projectors, and a 3D model of the ceiling to help him place his compositions?
Oh well, the technology would be more 'kewl' than laying there with a brush for years, so I'm sure you don't get it.
hear, hear... only those who don't program professionally eschew comments. Anyone's who's had to fix a program under pressure knows that you need all the help you can get..
excuse me, but what is the attraction of techno music? are real instruments and musical skill too "20th century" for you techno bigots?