try arguing that maybe, just maybe, deposing a brutal dictator that has been steadily murdering his own people for decades (and who, by the way, was a Soviet client long before he recieved any American support) wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Odd, that the US never lifted a finger against either Pinochet or Franco, who were much nastier dictators than Saddam.. and of course the North Korean communists, who without question have WMD merit nothing more than strong language. Hell, I'd *love* it if the US was a force against dictatorships in general, but it isn't -- it's just a force against dictatorships that somehow threaten US businesses.
bash, gcc, and other utilities (like, what, groff?)
Yes, and the GNU versions of ls, ps, more, etc. which are installed on nearly every Sun workstation I see nowadays as replacements for the official BSD versions.
are installed on pretty much every BSD as part of the core system. The BSDs are, of course, compiled using gcc. There's no distinction between the "functionality" of Linux vs. BSD from that point of view.
But that's exactly my point. You've given up the authenticity in favor of practicality, which basically means giving in to the Linux viewpoint. Yes, the systems *calling* themselves BSDs today have bash and gcc, but if you are going to be pulling the authenticity card, you should use csh and K&R cc. That's what was found on every *real* BSD system that I used as an undergraduate. The modern BSDs might be nice operating systems, but they remind me of classic rock bands that claim they have regrouped but have a new drummer and a new lead singer.
It's one thing when BSD fans argue that their system is more stable or more secure (not that I'm sure they're correct), but this authenticity stuff just doesn't ring true.
Lots of people would be willing to go, even if it meant probably only a year of survival. They could get an amazing about of research done in that time, including great applying human-style reasoning as to what makes sense to examine.
Like what, exactly? I love science -- I ought to, I'm a scientist at a genomics center. But the whole trend of even Earth-bound science is to do as much as possible by machine, and just have the humans look at the *data*. People don't sequence by hand any more -- there are automated sequencing machines. So the whole idea of manned spaceflight just looks anachronistic to me -- something out of the 19th century age of gentlemen explorers. As far as science is concerned, robots in space are far more useful than people. They just make less exciting TV.
It's even worse -- a Martian would come and take over all our newspapers.
Re:site is slashdotted, here's the 1st page
on
BSD For Linux Users
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Now, I like that quip, not because it's some sort of absolute revealed truth, but because it gives a very good feel for some of the differences. The BSDs, in general, are very much more like traditional Unices than Linux
Yep. No argument there. If someone wants an authentic 1980's feel to their system, by *all means* use BSD. It's just that authenticity to traditional UNIX is not of high priority to most folks -- it's getting things done that is. That's why bash, gcc, and other utilities traditionally associated with Linux systems seem to be installed even on "real" UNIX systems nowadays.
Although this, like the Sokal hoax does have a lot of fun at the expense of literary critics, it is hardly a problem merely in postmodernist circles. Evidently in modern physics one can fairly easily do the same thing -- the Bogdanov twins evidently published several physics papers that are complete nonsense in the respected journal Classical and Quantum Gravity
Re:I hated it
on
Oryx and Crake
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, considering the whole point of the book is to *attack* science, not getting the facts right destroys her entire argument. But then, much like Creationist tracts, anti-science books are normally only preaching to the choir anyway, so there isn't much point to getting the facts right, I suppose.
And the sex was only there to further libel scientists -- "look -- scientists are not just mad -- they're pedophiles too."
Another review
on
Oryx and Crake
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Exactly. There's no new ideas there, just the old mildewy mad scientist meme, that goes all the way to Frankenstein and actually even further into the medieval legend of Dr. Faustus.
I wrote a review of the book shortly after returning from four years living in Canada, where Atwood is of course revered.
Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood, 2003 Doubleday
Margaret Atwood is probably the most famous living Canadian author. However, despite living in Canada for four years, I never got around to reading any of her works, and so I resolved to rectify this by reading her latest novel, "Oryx and Crake". Atwood is well known to write speculative fiction that addresses trends in society that she finds distressing -- if her literary credentials weren't so impeccable, she would be called a science fiction author. In the case of "Oryx and Crake", the trend she is addressing is biotechnology.
Now, I'll admit that I am not the most receptive audience to books attacking biotech -- I am after all a microbiologist, and, although my own research is more basic than applied, I am naturally sympathetic to applications of biotechnology. On the other hand, I agree that there are ethical problems with some applications of biotechnology that cannot be ignored. So, does "Oryx and Crake" address these ethical problems?
In a word, no. Basically, Atwood's arguments boil down to the assertions that 1) tampering with organisms is creepy and disgusting and 2) scientists are insane and will destroy society for the hell of it. Oh, and they're also pedophiles to boot.
The book is written as a flashback, as the hero, Jimmy (or Snowman), describes how he ended up as one of the last human survivors on Earth. He was a high school friend of Glenn (or Crake), the guy who later created a plague to kill everyone off. This is all evident in the first few pages, so I'm not giving much away here. Plotwise, the only reason to continue reading is to learn Crake's motivation, but this is never fully revealed in any case. I suspect we are to accept that Crake was warped by attending a university dedicated to molecular biology, while noble Jimmy attended a liberal arts college and thus became a better person.
But enough about plot. This isn't a novel by a hack like Crichton, but a work by a serious author. How is the writing? I'd have to say somewhat disappointing. While certainly much better than that of Crichton, I'd have to say that the more literary science fiction authors such as William Gibson and Neal Stephenson actually write better prose than Atwood, if "Oryx and Crake" is representative of her work.
In summary, I don't think that Atwood's high reputation could have been based on such cartoonish work. I can only assume this is one of her lesser works.
No, actually maybe YOU should read something about WWI - I think you've rather misunderstood the root causes. It was hardly a matter of "gee, we have all these guns lying about, we've gotta use them on something" - no matter how that might fit your weak historical analogy. Which wouldn't parallel the current period anyway, so what was your point?
Actually, it is an excellent analogy. Every historian agrees that the build up of standing armies and the development of new technologies were a major causes of WWI. The Archduke getting blown up was just a rationalization for fighting, much like the invisible WMAs of Iraq.
if the Republican drunkard could accomplish this in 3 years, why the heck couldn't the previous Democratic drunkard get half as much accomplished in 8? I know that doesn't fit your political worldview, sorry about that.
Or the worldview of the majority of the world, which takes a very dim view on people starting wars. And how could going from a surplus to a deficit be economic growth in any way shape or form?
"Socially, policy makers have made a series of choices very similar to what preceded the collapse into World War I." Huh? Like?
Read something about WWI. Then the leaders of Europe weren't thinking hard about the economy but instead were spending tons of money on war equipment, which eventually the politicians were just too eager to try out, thus the pointless first world war. Sound familiar?
"we've really turned our backs on a world that could have been pleasant, delight-ful, peaceful, and technocratic. Now we face a world that is religious, narrow-minded, fundamentalist, and violent."
This is precisely the sort of vapid utopianism that begs so many questions it's meaningless. Really? How did "we" turn our backs on it Bruce?
I can think of at least one country that went from being lead by a Rhodes scholar to being lead by a drunkard who nearly flunked out of college. In theory the drunkard was elected, and thus the people were to blame but there was quite some doubt about the election as I recall.
Yes, we know here on Slashdot that there are adult gamers. We also know that that there are comic books that aren't for little Jimmy. But to the mainstream, games and comic books are just things to buy for the kids, and so the immediate assumption when a violent/sexual game or comic book is published is that the publisher is a sicko who wants to corrupt children.
...is that an awful lot of those "heretical" ideas are nothing more than outdated *majority* opinions of the past, rather than new ideas worth considering, which it what real heretics like Galileo, Darwin, and Einstein gave the world.
For example, in any bar you'll find some middle aged white guy who will try to tell you "The problem with this country is the blacks/asians/jews/hispanics, but you can't say that anymore because of political correctness". There's nothing *original* about such ideas -- when such guys were young those were typical opinions.
Well, a more likely inspiration for the "Cryptonomicon" manuscript mentioned in Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver is the Steganographia of Trithemius. In the late 1990's the book was briefly in the news because a well known cryptographer, Jim Reeds, found and deciphered a hidden message from it.
Wow. You can't be an American, can you? Do you understand how stupid that statement is? Yes, in the US, if you are actively plotting to kill the President or encourage armed rebellion against the Powers That Be, no shit you will be jailed. That is true of every nation on the earth.
And all that says is that "every nation on the earth" has imperfect freedom of speech, doesn't it?
More importantly, "everything is biased" just feels like an excuse. It's ok because everybody does it. With that formula, all media is about deception "the more a source claims to be 'balanced' the more likely it is biased." Nobody is trustworthy.
Bias isn't always a conscious, malicious affair. And it happens everywhere, even in science. For example, when I read a scientific paper, I like to know who the author's graduate advisor was. Sometimes that's the only way to understand the article -- "Oh, Fred Smith doesn't support John Doe's theory because Smith was Bill Jones grad student, and John Doe and Bill Jones are well known rivals". Fred Smith may not be trying to be biased, but working for 5 years in a lab where the "party line" says "John Doe's theory is full of crap" certainly is going to have an effect.
The Wiki things are cool in a way, but too filled with unqualified opinion.
And Britannica isn't? Yes, everyone says "You can't trust the Web because everyone has an agenda to push", but that's true for *all media*. In fact, the more a source claims to be "balanced" the more likely it is biased. Rather than trying to find an unbiased source, learn to read between the lines and figure out what the biases are.
"Back" to hard-line communism? The last time people in China felt that they could speak their mind in public, they were assaulted by tanks.
That was a different China, one that was living in a world where communist regimes in Europe had just toppled. No wonder the government was paranoid. The reforms towards a free-market have been largely made in the last ten years.
China still jails their citizens for the slightest criticism of government policy and regularly suppresses religious freedom
That's what it was like in the Cultural Revolution but it really isn't *that* bad these days. I'm not saying that they have perfect freedom of speech (but then the US hardly does either -- people have been jailed in the US for websites encouraging rebellion just like they would in China), but talk to some Chinese students -- when I was an undergrad in the '80s, they all wanted to get green cards and stay in the US because they were frightened that a new Mao was going to rise to power in China. These days most of the ones I know want to take their US degree back to China and start a business.
Re:The battles would have been a lot better
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Message in a Battle
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· Score: 1
Why isn't it appropriate? What makes you think the inhabitants of Middle Earth aren't familiar with the concept of a sled?
I *want* to be entertained by the LOTR movies, really! I've been a huge fan of the books since I was ten. But little of the magic seems to have reached the screen.
They aren't terrible, by any means (and given that they are directed by the director of "Meet the Feebles", that could have been a real possibility). It's just that I inwardly cringe when I see LOTR reduced to something not much better than 1980's fantasy films like "Krull" or "Willow".
Re:The battles would have been a lot better
on
Message in a Battle
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· Score: 1
Had Tony Hawk done it, I'll bet half the/. crew would've shouted, "AWESOME, DUDE!"
Maybe that's because it would be *appropriate* for Tony Hawk (or even an actor portraying James Bond) to do it whereas it isn't for an elf in a pseudo-medieval culture?
GA: At the end of the trial, the Progressive magazine lost a small fortune, even though it managed to get the Morland article published without censor. Essentially, it was a case of limited private funds versus a bottomless pot of Government gold
I'm not sure where I stand on the article and its attempted censorship, but I am somewhat amused that one of its authors said the above. Doesn't it sound *exactly* like a typical right-wing diatribe against the government? The article in question was in the well known *leftist* magazine "The Progressive".
My parents never paid a cent of my tuition either -- and I didn't use financial aid or loans either -- I simply worked 20-30 hours a week when I was an undergrad and I paid for my education myself too. So what?
And as others have mentioned, graduate school (at least in the sciences) is free (well, I had to TA), so my parents didn't spend a cent on my doctorate either.
Slashdot Mirror
Such a language did exist, but it was eventually called Object Pascal and was released in 1985 by Apple
try arguing that maybe, just maybe, deposing a brutal dictator that has been steadily murdering his own people for decades (and who, by the way, was a Soviet client long before he recieved any American support) wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Odd, that the US never lifted a finger against either Pinochet or Franco, who were much nastier dictators than Saddam.. and of course the North Korean communists, who without question have WMD merit nothing more than strong language. Hell, I'd *love* it if the US was a force against dictatorships in general, but it isn't -- it's just a force against dictatorships that somehow threaten US businesses.
bash, gcc, and other utilities (like, what, groff?)
Yes, and the GNU versions of ls, ps, more, etc. which are installed on nearly every Sun workstation I see nowadays as replacements for the official BSD versions.
are installed on pretty much every BSD as part of the core system. The BSDs are, of course, compiled using gcc. There's no distinction between the "functionality" of Linux vs. BSD from that point of view.
But that's exactly my point. You've given up the authenticity in favor of practicality, which basically means giving in to the Linux viewpoint. Yes, the systems *calling* themselves BSDs today have bash and gcc, but if you are going to be pulling the authenticity card, you should use csh and K&R cc. That's what was found on every *real* BSD system that I used as an undergraduate. The modern BSDs might be nice operating systems, but they remind me of classic rock bands that claim they have regrouped but have a new drummer and a new lead singer.
It's one thing when BSD fans argue that their system is more stable or more secure (not that I'm sure they're correct), but this authenticity stuff just doesn't ring true.
Lots of people would be willing to go, even if it meant probably only a year of survival. They could get an amazing about of research done in that time, including great applying human-style reasoning as to what makes sense to examine.
Like what, exactly? I love science -- I ought to, I'm a scientist at a genomics center. But the whole trend of even Earth-bound science is to do as much as possible by machine, and just have the humans look at the *data*. People don't sequence by hand any more -- there are automated sequencing machines. So the whole idea of manned spaceflight just looks anachronistic to me -- something out of the 19th century age of gentlemen explorers. As far as science is concerned, robots in space are far more useful than people. They just make less exciting TV.
It's even worse -- a Martian would come and take over all our newspapers.
Now, I like that quip, not because it's some sort of absolute revealed truth, but because it gives a very good feel for some of the differences. The BSDs, in general, are very much more like traditional Unices than Linux
Yep. No argument there. If someone wants an authentic 1980's feel to their system, by *all means* use BSD. It's just that authenticity to traditional UNIX is not of high priority to most folks -- it's getting things done that is. That's why bash, gcc, and other utilities traditionally associated with Linux systems seem to be installed even on "real" UNIX systems nowadays.
no worry about someone else seeing my pictures and keeping them for their private photo album
I think you have been watching too many Robin Williams movies...and not the funny ones either.
Although this, like the Sokal hoax does have a lot of fun at the expense of literary critics, it is hardly a problem merely in postmodernist circles. Evidently in modern physics one can fairly easily do the same thing -- the
Bogdanov twins evidently published several physics papers that are complete nonsense in the respected journal Classical and Quantum Gravity
Well, considering the whole point of the book is to *attack* science, not getting the facts right destroys her entire argument. But then, much like Creationist tracts, anti-science books are normally only preaching to the choir anyway, so there isn't much point to getting the facts right, I suppose.
And the sex was only there to further libel scientists -- "look -- scientists are not just mad -- they're pedophiles too."
Exactly. There's no new ideas there, just the old mildewy mad scientist meme, that goes all the way to Frankenstein and actually even further into the medieval legend of Dr. Faustus.
I wrote a review of the book shortly after returning from four years living in Canada, where Atwood is of course revered.
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood, 2003
Doubleday
Margaret Atwood is probably the most famous living Canadian author. However, despite living in Canada for four years, I never got around to reading any of her works, and so I resolved to rectify this by reading her latest novel, "Oryx and Crake". Atwood is well known to write speculative fiction that addresses trends in society that she finds distressing -- if her literary credentials weren't so impeccable, she would be called a science fiction author. In the case of "Oryx and Crake", the trend she is addressing is biotechnology.
Now, I'll admit that I am not the most receptive audience to books attacking biotech -- I am after all a microbiologist, and, although my own research is more basic than applied, I am naturally sympathetic to applications of biotechnology. On the other hand, I agree that there are ethical problems with some applications of biotechnology that cannot be ignored. So, does "Oryx and Crake" address these ethical problems?
In a word, no. Basically, Atwood's arguments boil down to the assertions that 1) tampering with organisms is creepy and disgusting and 2) scientists are insane and will destroy society for the hell of it. Oh, and they're also pedophiles to boot.
The book is written as a flashback, as the hero, Jimmy (or Snowman), describes how he ended up as one of the last human survivors on Earth. He was a high school friend of Glenn (or Crake), the guy who later created a plague to kill everyone off. This is all evident in the first few pages, so I'm not giving much away here. Plotwise, the only reason to continue reading is to learn Crake's motivation, but this is never fully revealed in any case. I suspect we are to accept that Crake was warped by attending a university dedicated to molecular biology, while noble Jimmy attended a liberal arts college and thus became a better person.
But enough about plot. This isn't a novel by a hack like Crichton, but a work by a serious author. How is the writing? I'd have to say somewhat disappointing. While certainly much better than that of Crichton, I'd have to say that the more literary science fiction authors such as William Gibson and Neal Stephenson actually write better prose than Atwood, if "Oryx and Crake" is representative of her work.
In summary, I don't think that Atwood's high reputation could have been based on such cartoonish work. I can only assume this is one of her lesser works.
No, actually maybe YOU should read something about WWI - I think you've rather misunderstood the root causes. It was hardly a matter of "gee, we have all these guns lying about, we've gotta use them on something" - no matter how that might fit your weak historical analogy. Which wouldn't parallel the current period anyway, so what was your point?
Actually, it is an excellent analogy. Every historian agrees that the build up of standing armies and the development of new technologies were a major causes of WWI. The Archduke getting blown up was just a rationalization for fighting, much like the invisible WMAs of Iraq.
if the Republican drunkard could accomplish this in 3 years, why the heck couldn't the previous Democratic drunkard get half as much accomplished in 8? I know that doesn't fit your political worldview, sorry about that.
Or the worldview of the majority of the world, which takes a very dim view on people starting wars. And how could going from a surplus to a deficit be economic growth in any way shape or form?
"Socially, policy makers have made a series of choices very similar to what preceded the collapse into World War I."
Huh? Like?
Read something about WWI. Then the leaders of Europe weren't thinking hard about the economy but instead were spending tons of money on war equipment, which eventually the politicians were just too eager to try out, thus the pointless first world war. Sound familiar?
"we've really turned our backs on a world that could have been pleasant, delight-ful, peaceful, and technocratic. Now we face a world that is religious, narrow-minded, fundamentalist, and violent."
This is precisely the sort of vapid utopianism that begs so many questions it's meaningless. Really? How did "we" turn our backs on it Bruce?
I can think of at least one country that went from being lead by a Rhodes scholar to being lead by a drunkard who nearly flunked out of college. In theory the drunkard was elected, and thus the people were to blame but there was quite some doubt about the election as I recall.
Yes, we know here on Slashdot that there are adult gamers. We also know that that there are comic books that aren't for little Jimmy. But to the mainstream, games and comic books are just things to buy for the kids, and so the immediate assumption when a violent/sexual game or comic book is published is that the publisher is a sicko who wants to corrupt children.
...is that an awful lot of those "heretical" ideas are nothing more than outdated *majority* opinions of the past, rather than new ideas worth considering, which it what real heretics like Galileo, Darwin, and Einstein gave the world.
For example, in any bar you'll find some middle aged white guy who will try to tell you "The problem with this country is the blacks/asians/jews/hispanics, but you can't say that anymore because of political correctness". There's nothing *original* about such ideas -- when such guys were young those were typical opinions.
Well, a more likely inspiration for the "Cryptonomicon" manuscript mentioned in Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver is the Steganographia of Trithemius. In the late 1990's the book was briefly in the news because a well known cryptographer, Jim Reeds, found and deciphered a hidden message from it.
Wow. You can't be an American, can you? Do you understand how stupid that statement is? Yes, in the US, if you are actively plotting to kill the President or encourage armed rebellion against the Powers That Be, no shit you will be jailed. That is true of every nation on the earth.
And all that says is that "every nation on the earth" has imperfect freedom of speech, doesn't it?
More importantly, "everything is biased" just feels like an excuse. It's ok because everybody does it. With that formula, all media is about deception "the more a source claims to be 'balanced' the more likely it is biased." Nobody is trustworthy.
Bias isn't always a conscious, malicious affair. And it happens everywhere, even in science. For example, when I read a scientific paper, I like to know who the author's graduate advisor was. Sometimes that's the only way to understand the article -- "Oh, Fred Smith doesn't support John Doe's theory because Smith was Bill Jones grad student, and John Doe and Bill Jones are well known rivals". Fred Smith may not be trying to be biased, but working for 5 years in a lab where the "party line" says "John Doe's theory is full of crap" certainly is going to have an effect.
The Wiki things are cool in a way, but too filled with unqualified opinion.
And Britannica isn't? Yes, everyone says "You can't trust the Web because everyone has an agenda to push", but that's true for *all media*. In fact, the more a source claims to be "balanced" the more likely it is biased. Rather than trying to find an unbiased source, learn to read between the lines and figure out what the biases are.
"Back" to hard-line communism? The last time people in China felt that they could speak their mind in public, they were assaulted by tanks.
That was a different China, one that was living in a world where communist regimes in Europe had just toppled. No wonder the government was paranoid. The reforms towards a free-market have been largely made in the last ten years.
China still jails their citizens for the slightest criticism of government policy and regularly suppresses religious freedom
That's what it was like in the Cultural Revolution but it really isn't *that* bad these days. I'm not saying that they have perfect freedom of speech (but then the US hardly does either -- people have been jailed in the US for websites encouraging rebellion just like they would in China), but talk to some Chinese students -- when I was an undergrad in the '80s, they all wanted to get green cards and stay in the US because they were frightened that a new Mao was going to rise to power in China. These days most of the ones I know want to take their US degree back to China and start a business.
Why isn't it appropriate? What makes you think the inhabitants of Middle Earth aren't familiar with the concept of a sled?
A sled maybe, a snowboard/surfboard no.
I *want* to be entertained by the LOTR movies, really! I've been a huge fan of the books since I was ten. But little of the magic seems to have reached the screen.
They aren't terrible, by any means (and given that they are directed by the director of "Meet the Feebles", that could have been a real possibility). It's just that I inwardly cringe when I see LOTR reduced to something not much better than 1980's fantasy films like "Krull" or "Willow".
Had Tony Hawk done it, I'll bet half the /. crew would've shouted, "AWESOME, DUDE!"
Maybe that's because it would be *appropriate* for Tony Hawk (or even an actor portraying James Bond) to do it whereas it isn't for an elf in a pseudo-medieval culture?
GA: At the end of the trial, the Progressive magazine lost a
small fortune, even though it managed to get the Morland article
published without censor. Essentially, it was a case of limited
private funds versus a bottomless pot of Government gold
I'm not sure where I stand on the article and its attempted censorship, but I am somewhat amused that one of its authors said the above. Doesn't it sound *exactly* like a typical right-wing diatribe against the government? The article in question was in the well known *leftist* magazine "The Progressive".
My parents never paid a cent of my tuition either -- and I didn't use financial aid or loans either -- I simply worked 20-30 hours a week when I was an undergrad and I paid for my education myself too. So what?
And as others have mentioned, graduate school (at least in the sciences) is free (well, I had to TA), so my parents didn't spend a cent on my doctorate either.
The non-believers were painted as heathens, but I did not see that as being equated to Arabs specifically, just to all nonbelievers.
Well, the Calormenese wore turbans and had titles like "Grand Vizier" so I really doubt they were supposed to be Wiccans or something.