The "ability to produce solutions in some problem domain" is horribly vague. This is an example of popular culture affecting language.
Sorry, no. The usage has nothing to do with pop culture. It's well established in terms and phrases like "library science", "arts and useful
sciences", "medical sciences", "literary sciences", "Motion Picture Arts and Sciences", and "science of war" are pop culture. Is Lucent's "Mathematical Sciences Research Center" (where, to tie in another thread, Claude Shannon did his thing) a misnomer?
Like it or not - and I can tell that you don't - any body of systemized knowledge can be called a "science". Yes, today that usage usually refers to a specific method of inquiry - the "scientific method - but not always.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
This is not relevant to man pages, but certain operating systems' [Linux] man pages.
True, but don't pick on Linux too much here. I often telent into my Linux box to check a man page because the AIX man pages are worse!
Texinfo has its place for longer docs - I love the emacs info pages. Remember that it can generate TeX as well as info, so you can get pretty hard copy as well as hypertext, which is pretty sweet. Still, failing to have a man page that at least documents the basic usage is k-lame.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
In short, my point is that experiment is vital to "sciences."
"Science" has more than one meaning. From dictionary.com:
science n 1: any domain of knowledge accumulated by systematic study and organized by general principles; "mathematics is important for science" [syn: scientific knowledge] 2: a particular branch of scientific knowledge; "the science of genetics" [syn: scientific discipline] 3: ability to produce solutions in some problem domain; "the skill of a
well-trained boxer"; "the science of pugilism" [syn: skill]
So "science" doesn't necessarily mean the applicatoin of the scientific method of hypothesis and experimentation or observation. In the term "computer science" it's got mostly defintion 3 above.
If thought-experiments are all that make up "Computer Science" then it would be best classified as a branch of mathematics.
I think CS can indeed be classified as a branch of mathematics. Of course, CS is typically applied to the fields of software development or "engineering" (which is another loaded word), so CS students usually study these skills as well.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The idea is to translate automatically from model to code using robust, time-proven translators...Interesting properties are proven on the model.
Sounds like you're talking about code generation, not verification. That's a different kettle of fish - essentially, you're picking a programming language that better matches your problem domain, so that the code becomes tractable enough to prove. A neat idea, but it requires that a model/language and code generator that are useful for your problem domain already exist.
Perhaps you thought of, say, UML when you read "formal methods"?
No, I was thinking of the proofs of "while" loops I sweated over back in school. B-)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Problem is, in general for any software complex enough to be useful, proving it correct is just as error prone as writing code (if it is even possible at all). Maybe moreso - you have to prove that the code matches the mathematical model, then demonstrate correctness within the model, so there are two very distinct areas for error.
To ensure that the proof is correct, you have to use many of the same techniques that you could just apply to the code.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Bandwidth providers charge you for access to the network. They also charge the
sites for access to the network. Who benifits in this senerio?
Obviously, the bandwidth providers benefit.
Now, if there's no content, no one's going to buy bandwidth. So bandwidth providers have a vested interest in seeing that content is out there. A random thought - maybe they should act as patrons?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Is what you are doing right? Would
you like someone to take something you made without compensating you for it at all?
You are reading - "taking" - my words right now.
You are not compensating me one bit. Oh, I am wounded!
Seriously...if someone got a hold of one of the minidisc recordings of my band's practice sessions and found it so intriguing that they made copys for their friends, or put it up on Napster, I'd have no problem with that at all. (Providing that it was properly credited as our work.)
Some might say this is okay, but if
you don't make anything off of what you do, why continue to do it?
Do you make any money for making love to your SO? Why continue to do it, then?
Come to think of it, my dogs aren't making me any money. Hell, they cost me hundreds of dollars in vet bills a year. Guess I ought to sell their furry butts.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
For 6 years, Ive slid by in college, and the night before our thesis papers are due, I break into your dorm room and copy your paper, and hand it in as mine...
The misdeed here (may or may not be a crime, depending) is fraud, not copying. It would be just as wrong to represent a work placed in the public domain (by expiration of copyright, or by deliberate act) as your own as to represent a copyrighted work as your own.
The idea of an exclusive right to copy is no longer worthwhile. However, the ideas of a right to be recognized as an author or creator and a right to receive royalties from for-profit use (like songwriter royalties today) would still be of benefit.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Unfortunately for the government, the Supreme Court has explicitly stated that copyrighted material is not property for the purposes of the ITSP statute. In Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985), the Court held
that interests in copyright are outside the scope of the ITSP statute. (Dowling involved a prosecution for interstate shipments of pirated Elvis Presley recordings.) In reaching its decision, the Court held, among other things, that 18 U.S.C. ' 2314 contemplates "a physical identity
between the items unlawfully obtained and those eventually transported, and hence some prior physical taking of the subject goods." Unauthorized copies of copyrighted material do not meet this "physical identity" requirement.
The Court also reasoned that intellectual property is different in character from property protected by generic theft statutes: "The copyright owner, however, holds no ordinary chattel. A copyright, like other intellectual property, comprises a series of carefully defined and carefully delimited interests to which the law affords correspondingly exact protections." The Court went on to note that a special term of art, "infringement," is used in reference to violations of copyright interests--thus undercutting any easy equation between unauthorized copying and "stealing" or "theft."
...and for good reasons. Being able to control copying allows content producers to profit from their work.
The purpose of copyright is to promote progress in the arts and sciences, not to allow artists to profit. (Which they don't anyway...the profits accrue to the parasitic recording labels.) In the presence of easy copying, copying restrictions no longer server to promote such progress.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The argument here is akin to saying "you left your front door unlocked, so of course you were inviting me to take your stereo"
No. A better analogy would be if I had a sign on my door, meant for a visting friend, which said "Come on in and have a beer". If a stranger sees it and comes in and helps himself to a cold one, has he done anything morally or legally wrong?
Opening your shares is inviting other people in. If you fail to specify who you're inviting, that's your fault.
...steal music using Napster who would never dream of stealing a CD...
Copying is not theft. HTH. HAND.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
However, our protests have to be intelligent, well thought out, and above all, non-threatening to the average citizen, which is who we're supposedly trying to get on our side. Tattooed rioters smashing windows and attacking cops to 'send out a message against corporatism' is simply counterproductive.
Which is exactly why the corporate media focus on thet very very tiny number of l4m3rs who smash windows, etc., and do not present the more reasoned and articulate voices of protest.
"See what a threat these activists are to your Cherished American Values? They are bad, bad people. But do not fear...your corporate masters will protect you.
"We need your help, though. We just need you to give us a few little things you weren't using anyway...unimportant things. You don't need that `freedom of speech' bit to talk with your buddies at the office about watching `Temptation Island'. You don't need to be able to reverse engineer to figure out how to work the remote control.
"So don't worry! Just sit back and watch our 12-hour Survivor marathon instead!
"The megacorps are your friends. Trust the corps."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re: All Haikus Go Under Here.
on
The DeCSS Haiku
·
· Score: 2
All of your base are belong to us...
All of your movies
(In the DVD format)
Are belong to us.
(Sorry.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Um, you seem to be laboring under a mighty misapprehension about the word "pagan". (Or maybe you're a lame-ass troll, but for the sake of potentially being educational I'll assume not.) Might I suggest ESR's Neopagan FAQ?
Oh please, the left doesn't just want socialism, the right doesn't just want a free market. If life were only about economics then your comment might just make sense.
"Left" and "right" refer to positions on the socialist/capitalist (or labor/property) continuum. (Note thats "capitalist", not "market"; socialism does not necessarily imply a command economy.)
Like it or not, you have to defend that crap or the orthodox PC types are going to kick your butt all over the place.
I don't have to defend any "crap", in fact if it's crap I refuse to do so.
However, the example you cite of reducing disease and unplanned pregancies amoung teens with free condoms, and preventing parents from forcing pregnant teens to carry the fetus to full-term, is not "crap", but astoundingly simple good sense.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
For instance, I doubt that "Red Dwarf" and "Family Circus" have much overlap.
Red Dwarf and the Dysfunctional Family Circus, though...the mind boggles at the potential overlap. "Mommy, is this Soylent Green we're eating, or smeg? And when is Uncle Rimmer coming to visit Daddy again?"
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
So I think we can see that we need to be sensitive to other cultures before we go on screaming about censorship.
Riiiiight. I guess we shouldn't condem slavery, religious intolerance, or ethnic cleansing in other nations either. After all, their ways are different from our own.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Most professional programmers that I know of have never taken a single computer class...In addition, many professional programmers have no time to write 'good' code.
Gee, maybe if your friends took the time to learn about their chosen field, they'd come to realize that writing "good" code ultimately saves time.
That's why you don't see too many comp sci people making the big bucks as professionals.
Interesting...I've worked at companies like TRW, IBM, and Raytheon, and I think 95% of the professional programmers I worked with had CS degrees. (Yes, one can be a good programmer without a degree; however, without at least some classes, I'd say it's very very unlikely.)
Where are all these "professional" programmers who've never taken a class working? I'd like to know so I can be sure to avoid their products...would you go to a dentist who proudly claimed he'd never taken a class? Or even a mechanic who bragged about never taking even auto shop?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Why else would someone write a message board when ten already exist? To scratch an itch? Partially, but that only explains why they write it, not why they gift it. They gift it in order to win the acclaim of their peers.
Sure, words of praise are nice, but that's hardly the only benefit from giving.
If you've written mainly to "scratch an itch", there's little reason not to give it away. You can gift it, try to sell it, or keep it for yourself. Keeping gains you nothing (unless you've written The Program That Will Enable You To Take Over The World); and as for selling, the population of people who have the same itch and are willing to pay to have it scratched could be very small.
When you've put time into something, you want it to be seen and used. I've spent years working on projects that never amounted to anything except a dusty tape on someone's shelf - that sucks.
If you gift it, they will come - maybe only to snag parts for other program they're writing, maybe to take what you've written and keep it alive and growing. A program that only I ever use is like a poem that only I ever read...I don't share my poetry primarily for acclaim, I share it because I'm wired to delight in infecting others with my memes.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Oh, and here's something to ponder the next time you're masturbating about Linux: VA Linux's stock dropped another 25 to 30 percent today, so the king dork of Linux, ESR, has now seen the value of his stock officially fall below 1 million dollars.
Since when is ESR the "king dork" of Linux? First, I wouldn't refer to anyone as well-armed as ESR as a "dork", if I were you B-), second I think Linus would have dibs on "king anything" of Linux, third the validity of an idea has no relationship to the stock price of a company seeking to profit from that idea.
Network Associates stock has fallen to about one tenth of its peak value. Does that mean that firewalls, virus scanners, and PGP are only one tenth as good ideas now as they were two or three years ago?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Teachers in US public schools teach a mixed up grab bag of leftist claptrap...
Leftist? Please. How much discussion of the labor theory of value is going on in high school classes? Are teachers lecturing about libertarian vs. state forms of socialism?
Yes, there's a lot of mush-headedness going on in the schools in the name of promoting self-esteem. (I happen to think that the best way to promote self-esteem is to promote competence, but I digress.) But that has nothing to do with the left/right dichotomty of a labor or capital based economy.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Of course, all thic could be because in the UK teachers are employed by the government, who don't want them to produce a bunch of people who might not vote for them.
Well, I haven't noticed that privately-run schools are exactly hotbeds of freethinking either, at least here in the U.S. Many of them are run by a church or synagogue, or are military-style academies, neither of which are good for encouraging free inquiry. Even home schooling is often (not always) an excuse to keep children from coming into contact with unapproved ideas.
Schooling, public or private, is often more about indoctrination than education. I don't think that's much more or less true now than it was 10, or 100, years ago. There are small fluctuations, yes, but social pressures always push for conformity.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, no. The usage has nothing to do with pop culture. It's well established in terms and phrases like "library science", "arts and useful sciences", "medical sciences", "literary sciences", "Motion Picture Arts and Sciences", and "science of war" are pop culture. Is Lucent's "Mathematical Sciences Research Center" (where, to tie in another thread, Claude Shannon did his thing) a misnomer?
Like it or not - and I can tell that you don't - any body of systemized knowledge can be called a "science". Yes, today that usage usually refers to a specific method of inquiry - the "scientific method - but not always.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
True, but don't pick on Linux too much here. I often telent into my Linux box to check a man page because the AIX man pages are worse!
Texinfo has its place for longer docs - I love the emacs info pages. Remember that it can generate TeX as well as info, so you can get pretty hard copy as well as hypertext, which is pretty sweet. Still, failing to have a man page that at least documents the basic usage is k-lame.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
"Science" has more than one meaning. From dictionary.com:
So "science" doesn't necessarily mean the applicatoin of the scientific method of hypothesis and experimentation or observation. In the term "computer science" it's got mostly defintion 3 above.
I think CS can indeed be classified as a branch of mathematics. Of course, CS is typically applied to the fields of software development or "engineering" (which is another loaded word), so CS students usually study these skills as well.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Sounds like you're talking about code generation, not verification. That's a different kettle of fish - essentially, you're picking a programming language that better matches your problem domain, so that the code becomes tractable enough to prove. A neat idea, but it requires that a model/language and code generator that are useful for your problem domain already exist.
No, I was thinking of the proofs of "while" loops I sweated over back in school. B-)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Problem is, in general for any software complex enough to be useful, proving it correct is just as error prone as writing code (if it is even possible at all). Maybe moreso - you have to prove that the code matches the mathematical model, then demonstrate correctness within the model, so there are two very distinct areas for error.
To ensure that the proof is correct, you have to use many of the same techniques that you could just apply to the code.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Obviously, the bandwidth providers benefit.
Now, if there's no content, no one's going to buy bandwidth. So bandwidth providers have a vested interest in seeing that content is out there. A random thought - maybe they should act as patrons?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You are reading - "taking" - my words right now.
You are not compensating me one bit. Oh, I am wounded!
Seriously...if someone got a hold of one of the minidisc recordings of my band's practice sessions and found it so intriguing that they made copys for their friends, or put it up on Napster, I'd have no problem with that at all. (Providing that it was properly credited as our work.)
Do you make any money for making love to your SO? Why continue to do it, then?
Come to think of it, my dogs aren't making me any money. Hell, they cost me hundreds of dollars in vet bills a year. Guess I ought to sell their furry butts.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The misdeed here (may or may not be a crime, depending) is fraud, not copying. It would be just as wrong to represent a work placed in the public domain (by expiration of copyright, or by deliberate act) as your own as to represent a copyrighted work as your own.
The idea of an exclusive right to copy is no longer worthwhile. However, the ideas of a right to be recognized as an author or creator and a right to receive royalties from for-profit use (like songwriter royalties today) would still be of benefit.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
No. Copying is (or rather, may be) an infringement of copyright. Theft is theft. They may both be crimes, but they are distinct actions.
Mike Godwin of the EFF writes about this here:
The purpose of copyright is to promote progress in the arts and sciences, not to allow artists to profit. (Which they don't anyway...the profits accrue to the parasitic recording labels.) In the presence of easy copying, copying restrictions no longer server to promote such progress.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
No. A better analogy would be if I had a sign on my door, meant for a visting friend, which said "Come on in and have a beer". If a stranger sees it and comes in and helps himself to a cold one, has he done anything morally or legally wrong?
Opening your shares is inviting other people in. If you fail to specify who you're inviting, that's your fault.
Copying is not theft. HTH. HAND.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Which is exactly why the corporate media focus on thet very very tiny number of l4m3rs who smash windows, etc., and do not present the more reasoned and articulate voices of protest.
"See what a threat these activists are to your Cherished American Values? They are bad, bad people. But do not fear...your corporate masters will protect you.
"We need your help, though. We just need you to give us a few little things you weren't using anyway...unimportant things. You don't need that `freedom of speech' bit to talk with your buddies at the office about watching `Temptation Island'. You don't need to be able to reverse engineer to figure out how to work the remote control.
"So don't worry! Just sit back and watch our 12-hour Survivor marathon instead!
"The megacorps are your friends. Trust the corps."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
All of your movies
(In the DVD format)
Are belong to us.
(Sorry.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Um, you seem to be laboring under a mighty misapprehension about the word "pagan". (Or maybe you're a lame-ass troll, but for the sake of potentially being educational I'll assume not.) Might I suggest ESR's Neopagan FAQ?
You're also laboring under a mighty misapprehension about the word "socialist", for which I'd recommend some reading about libertarian socialism.
And if I were afraid of gun owners I'd be unable to look in the mirror without my knees quaking.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I don't have to defend any "crap", in fact if it's crap I refuse to do so.
However, the example you cite of reducing disease and unplanned pregancies amoung teens with free condoms, and preventing parents from forcing pregnant teens to carry the fetus to full-term, is not "crap", but astoundingly simple good sense.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
ESR has some stuff on his personal pages that someone might take offense too, stuff about firearms, anarchy, paganism, polyamory, and so on.
Who makes your filtering software? Being an armed anrchist pagan hacker, I'm offended by someone labeling that content as offensive.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Riiiiight. I guess we shouldn't condem slavery, religious intolerance, or ethnic cleansing in other nations either. After all, their ways are different from our own.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Ghostscript includes pdf2ps. libtiff provides tiff2ps and fax2ps. Both are shipped as part of Red Hat, RPMs available in the usual places.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Gee, maybe if your friends took the time to learn about their chosen field, they'd come to realize that writing "good" code ultimately saves time.
Interesting...I've worked at companies like TRW, IBM, and Raytheon, and I think 95% of the professional programmers I worked with had CS degrees. (Yes, one can be a good programmer without a degree; however, without at least some classes, I'd say it's very very unlikely.)Where are all these "professional" programmers who've never taken a class working? I'd like to know so I can be sure to avoid their products...would you go to a dentist who proudly claimed he'd never taken a class? Or even a mechanic who bragged about never taking even auto shop?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Yes, but that's because software very rarely seems to go through a proper build, test, fix stage! B-(
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Sure, words of praise are nice, but that's hardly the only benefit from giving.
If you've written mainly to "scratch an itch", there's little reason not to give it away. You can gift it, try to sell it, or keep it for yourself. Keeping gains you nothing (unless you've written The Program That Will Enable You To Take Over The World); and as for selling, the population of people who have the same itch and are willing to pay to have it scratched could be very small.
When you've put time into something, you want it to be seen and used. I've spent years working on projects that never amounted to anything except a dusty tape on someone's shelf - that sucks.
If you gift it, they will come - maybe only to snag parts for other program they're writing, maybe to take what you've written and keep it alive and growing. A program that only I ever use is like a poem that only I ever read...I don't share my poetry primarily for acclaim, I share it because I'm wired to delight in infecting others with my memes.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Since when is ESR the "king dork" of Linux? First, I wouldn't refer to anyone as well-armed as ESR as a "dork", if I were you B-), second I think Linus would have dibs on "king anything" of Linux, third the validity of an idea has no relationship to the stock price of a company seeking to profit from that idea.
Network Associates stock has fallen to about one tenth of its peak value. Does that mean that firewalls, virus scanners, and PGP are only one tenth as good ideas now as they were two or three years ago?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I forget who said that you can judge a man by the enemies he makes. RMS and the GPL are looking better all the time.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Yes, there's a lot of mush-headedness going on in the schools in the name of promoting self-esteem. (I happen to think that the best way to promote self-esteem is to promote competence, but I digress.) But that has nothing to do with the left/right dichotomty of a labor or capital based economy.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Well, I haven't noticed that privately-run schools are exactly hotbeds of freethinking either, at least here in the U.S. Many of them are run by a church or synagogue, or are military-style academies, neither of which are good for encouraging free inquiry. Even home schooling is often (not always) an excuse to keep children from coming into contact with unapproved ideas.
Schooling, public or private, is often more about indoctrination than education. I don't think that's much more or less true now than it was 10, or 100, years ago. There are small fluctuations, yes, but social pressures always push for conformity.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/