If it was inferior it would of never gotten to the point where mac users where begging for an update. People write off IE far too quickly. Then again its just standard OSS zealotness with a healthy dose of MS bigotry thrown in
Well, for a while, IE was the only decent browser out there for OS X. Of course people were begging for an update. But the fact is that nowadays Camino and Safari simply are better. People talk about sites that require IE, but I've never run into a single one.
you can bet your bottom dollar that the US government would intervene if a movie were to be released in the country showed terrorism in a positive light
And _The Matrix_ *doesn't* do this? A bunch of incredibly self-righteous people hide from a more technological society, occasionally venturing out to do battle with the mainstream world. Innocent people get killed, but that's considered a-okay by the group's leaders.
A rich man may not buy more things, but he ends up buying more expensive things. While you may buy say a little Fiat - he'll buy an expensive BMW.
It still doesn't add up. Even the most expensive car available is maybe 20x more expensive than a little Fiat, yet certainly many rich people make more than 20x the average salary.
Assuming that governments have to collect taxes somehow, why is this a bad way to do it, as opposed to income or corporate tax?
Because in a fair tax, the rich pay either the same, or more than the poor. Income tax handles this -- either with a flat percent or with increasing brackets. The problem with sales tax is that while Mr. Millionaire might buy more things than you do, he doesn't buy *proportionally* more things -- a man can only drink so much beer, after all.
So as a total percentage of income, Mr, Millionaire pays *less* sales tax than you! Not very socially progressive, eh? Not surprisingly, the rich have always hated income tax and preferred sales tax for exactly this reason.
Well, Bertrand Meyer is a CS professor (having posts at UCSB and Monash University), but more to the point he has a company which tries to commerialize his "Effiel" programming language. Meyer was annoyed that a group (amusingly, from Meyer's native France) made an free version of Effiel. Meyer then saw fit to attack the icons of free software in revenge. Pretty childish, really.
Unfortunately, Betrand Meyer is probably one of the few people *more* bombastic and annoying than ESR. Really, there is nothing of interest in Meyer's bogus ad hominem attack against ESR. I don't like guns either, but what in the hell does that have to do with software?
And the whole "Tartuffe" attack against RMS was just sickening. Does anyone have any evidence that RMS is *not* sincere? Just because a famous French play showed that some noble-seeming people are hypocrites, doesn't mean that all are hypocrites.
It could speak English with the right software!! I assume you are talking about SAM (Software Automated Mouth). There was an Apple ][ version as well, but I agree that the C64 version sounded better.
It also had graphics that didn't look like some bizarre hack, and it had a number of somewhat useful interfacing ports.
Well, the graphics literally were a hack. Woz basically invented color computer graphics. I rather liked them though. As for ports, the Apple ][ actually had slots, just like a modern PC -- it was much more expandable than the C64.
Mainly because I think its inferiorness clogged up the market for the Commodore 64.
Yes -- you're right. Having a disk drive that was actualy reasonably quick was really inferior. The glacial speed of the C64's disk drive was a design feature. It let you do Zen or something while things were loading.
In all seriousness, the only real advantage of the C64 was that it did have superior sound to the Apple ][. But think about it -- it came out *five years* after the Apple ][. (1982 vs 1977).
You make a good point, but taking Names (TM) that already has a meaning and copyright it is stealing from the commons.
Yes, only M$ would be so evil to trademark common nouns. Well, I have to go connect to the Oracle(tm) server using my Apple(tm). I'll be using the web interface so I'll probably be using Safari(tm)
Re:Der Ring des Nibelungen
on
LOTR The Musical!
·
· Score: 2, Informative
his would only make sense since an influence of LOTR was Wagner's opera Ring Cycle. Both are based on Norse mythology
Well, the latter part is certainly true -- they are based on the same myths. But according to a biography of Tolkien that I've read, he detested Wagner's works as a betrayal of the meaning of the legends.
Getting away from a flamewar but returning to the subject of books, perhaps I could suggest a book to you: Wen Li's _Molecular Evolution_. I don't consider ethologists idiots, nor do I suppose that their theories *must* be wrong -- only that they have been left behind by the paradigm shift in biology towards molecular methods -- and increased rigour. In all other fields of biology, people would laugh if you proposed that something was genetic without genetic evidence. Why does ethology still get away with it?
There are lots and lots of testable predictions in the mathematical models for behaviour in animals. (What an ethologist study.) And that has been well tested and argued for decades. Can you give any pointers to research that e.g. contradicts Hamilton's kinship relationships?
No, but on the other hand there isn't much genetic evidence that *supports* it either. There is not much to test without first demonstrating that a particular genetic sequence is actually tied to a behavior. Without this evidence, a lot of ethology is pretty circular in reasoning.
Come back with this argument in ten years when we understand the brain enough to understand how genetic changes influence behaviour through the brain for any larger organisms...
Precisely. Get data first, *then* theorize. The signal to noise ratio will surely increase.
TSG is about research done by e.g. Hamilton and Maynard-Smith in the '60s. Those guys are as heavy as heavy can be in evolutionary biology.
Yes, in the old school, pre-molecular era of theoretical evolution. One of the wonderful things about molecular biology is that it has turned evolutionary biology into a real experimental science.
As you said, it is better to have facts *before* making the theories. Only through experiment can we get the facts.
(-: Gould wasn't exactly using enzymes on DNA either, if that is a demand for credibility... Even though he wasn't half as much a card-carrying marxist as to Lewontin... but then, who is?
John Maynard Smith, for example, was just as much a Marxist as Lewontin. So was Maynard Smith's famous advisor JBS Haldane.That's why the "Red Scare" tactics that Ed Wilson liked to use to attack his opponents was rather dishonest -- he didn't mind if his *supporters* were Marxists -- only his opponents.
Be aware that religious people (e.g. christians, marxists, etc) tend to hate the research presented by TSG. The idealists can't accept that some of people's mental characteristics are partially genetic. (Personally, I have the ambition to look at facts first and build opinions on how the world works after that. No theory that goes the other way will succeed since there are so many more ways of being totally wrong than close to correct.)
Yes -- let's look at the facts. Dawkins is an ethologist -- he studies animals frolicking about. He's not a geneticist. People with a genetics background tend to be rather wary of Dawkins, Wilson, Pinker, etc. We tend to think that before one devises elaborate evolutionary schemes for how genes evolved to govern behavior, it is better to actually look and see if any such genes actually exist in the genome. While there is some evidence for a few genes influencing some behaviors, it's nothing close to what the sociobiologists claim.
PDF is useful for packaging a paginated series of scanned images. that's about it.
Well, it's more than that -- for example, practically every scientific journal these days distributes the papers as PDF files, not because they are scanned, but because HTML still has a long ways to go in representing equations and figures (including links to non-scalable bitmaps hardly counts).
What does a CS professor do when he's not teaching? Some bullshit ass consulting work?
No -- they actually do research into new algorithms and systems that eventually get used by the world, perhaps after being commercialized, but more recently with Open Source, etc., often directly.
On the other hand, I know personally at least two English profs who are working on books about Shakespeare. Although I probably like the Bard more than most geeks, I'm unconvinced that any additional commentary on his works would be worth the lives of the trees that would be killed.
hank god the EU has some humanity and dignity left. I praise their stance on GM foods which is basically denying them completely
And not surprisingly, a major export of the EU is *scientists*. What scientist in his or her right mind would want to work in a such a luddite environment? It amazes me that the Slashdot crowd, which is presumably in favor of technological advances in computer technology, would not be in favor of advances in other fields.
Xerox is not a good example. All photocopiers are xerox machines.. The 'science' of photocopiers is xerography.
No, generic photocopiers are "xerography machines", not "xerox machines". Yes, the name "Xerox" is derived from "xerography", just like the name "Kleenex" is presumably derived from "clean". That doesn't mean they aren't valid trademarks.
There is a wide, yawning gulf between a father who takes an interest in his child's life in order to be a part of it, and a father still plays with (today they call it "collecting") toys because he never grew up in the first place.
This isn't anything modern though -- model train sets have been popular gifts for children for decades, and then as now, the fathers always seem to get more enjoyment from them than the children do.
I thought it might have made a good 300pager but it had more padding than story
Well, Cryptonomicon isn't SF, where "story" is the only thing important. Really, outside genre paperbacks (like SF, mystery, and romance -- the descendants of the 1920's pulps), "story" is pretty unimportant compared to style and mood, just like modern art isn't about making a photographic quality painting of Aunt Edna, but rather a study of form and color.
Nostalgia certainly is a factor, but the simple fact is that the average computer user in the 1980's was smarter, more creative, and more interesting than now. That doesn't mean that smart, creative and interesting people don't use computers now -- just that everyone else does too.
I remember going to users' groups in the 1980's and running into really diverse people -- geologists trying to write software to track samples, people trying to automate model train layouts, control telescopes, and lots more. I stopped going when these do-it-yourselfers became the exception and not the rule.
The Annals of Improbable Research, the humor magazine for scientists, once had an article entitled "Advances in Artificial Intelligence". After the title and author affiliations, the page was appropriately completely blank...
Slashdot Mirror
If it was inferior it would of never gotten to the point where mac users where begging for an update. People write off IE far too quickly. Then again its just standard OSS zealotness with a healthy dose of MS bigotry thrown in
Well, for a while, IE was the only decent browser out there for OS X. Of course people were begging for an update. But the fact is that nowadays Camino and Safari simply are better. People talk about sites that require IE, but I've never run into a single one.
you can bet your bottom dollar that the US government would intervene if a movie were to be released in the country showed terrorism in a positive light
And _The Matrix_ *doesn't* do this? A bunch of incredibly self-righteous people hide from a more technological society, occasionally venturing out to do battle with the mainstream world. Innocent people get killed, but that's considered a-okay by the group's leaders.
A rich man may not buy more things, but he ends up buying more expensive things. While you may buy say a little Fiat - he'll buy an expensive BMW.
It still doesn't add up. Even the most expensive car available is maybe 20x more expensive than a little Fiat, yet certainly many rich people make more than 20x the average salary.
Assuming that governments have to collect taxes somehow, why is this a bad way to do it, as opposed to income or corporate tax?
Because in a fair tax, the rich pay either the same, or more than the poor. Income tax handles this -- either with a flat percent or with increasing brackets. The problem with sales tax is that while Mr. Millionaire might buy more things than you do, he doesn't buy *proportionally* more things -- a man can only drink so much beer, after all.
So as a total percentage of income, Mr, Millionaire pays *less* sales tax than you! Not very socially progressive, eh? Not surprisingly, the rich have always hated income tax and preferred sales tax for exactly this reason.
Typical Slashdot. Bluetooth has been dead since 981 and only *now* we have an article? Is this news for nerds or news for fans of dead Danish kings?
Who does this guy work for?
Well, Bertrand Meyer is a CS professor (having posts at UCSB and Monash University), but more to the point he has a company which tries to commerialize his "Effiel" programming language. Meyer was annoyed that a group (amusingly, from Meyer's native France) made an free version of Effiel. Meyer then saw fit to attack the icons of free software in revenge. Pretty childish, really.
Unfortunately, Betrand Meyer is probably one of the few people *more* bombastic and annoying than ESR. Really, there is nothing of interest in Meyer's bogus ad hominem attack against ESR. I don't like guns either, but what in the hell does that have to do with software?
And the whole "Tartuffe" attack against RMS was just sickening. Does anyone have any evidence that RMS is *not* sincere? Just because a famous French play showed that some noble-seeming people are hypocrites, doesn't mean that all are hypocrites.
It could speak English with the right software!!
I assume you are talking about SAM (Software Automated Mouth). There was an Apple ][ version as well, but I agree that the C64 version sounded better.
It also had graphics that didn't look like some bizarre hack, and it had a number of somewhat useful interfacing ports.
Well, the graphics literally were a hack. Woz basically invented color computer graphics. I rather liked them though. As for ports, the Apple ][ actually had slots, just like a modern PC -- it was much more expandable than the C64.
Mainly because I think its inferiorness clogged up the market for the Commodore 64.
Yes -- you're right. Having a disk drive that was actualy reasonably quick was really inferior. The glacial speed of the C64's disk drive was a design feature. It let you do Zen or something while things were loading.
In all seriousness, the only real advantage of the C64 was that it did have superior sound to the Apple ][. But think about it -- it came out *five years* after the Apple ][. (1982 vs 1977).
You make a good point, but taking Names (TM) that already has a meaning and copyright it is stealing from the commons.
Yes, only M$ would be so evil to trademark common nouns. Well, I have to go connect to the Oracle(tm) server using my Apple(tm). I'll be using the web interface so I'll probably be using Safari(tm)
his would only make sense since an influence of LOTR was Wagner's opera Ring Cycle. Both are based on Norse mythology
Well, the latter part is certainly true -- they are based on the same myths. But according to a biography of Tolkien that I've read, he detested Wagner's works as a betrayal of the meaning of the legends.
Getting away from a flamewar but returning to the subject of books, perhaps I could suggest a book to you: Wen Li's _Molecular Evolution_. I don't consider ethologists idiots, nor do I suppose that their theories *must* be wrong -- only that they have been left behind by the paradigm shift in biology towards molecular methods -- and increased rigour. In all other fields of biology, people would laugh if you proposed that something was genetic without genetic evidence. Why does ethology still get away with it?
There are lots and lots of testable predictions in the mathematical models for behaviour in animals. (What an ethologist study.) And that has been well tested and argued for decades. Can you give any pointers to research that e.g. contradicts Hamilton's kinship relationships?
No, but on the other hand there isn't much genetic evidence that *supports* it either. There is not much to test without first demonstrating that a particular genetic sequence is actually tied to a behavior. Without this evidence, a lot of ethology is pretty circular in reasoning.
Come back with this argument in ten years when we understand the brain enough to understand how genetic changes influence behaviour through the brain for any larger organisms...
Precisely. Get data first, *then* theorize. The signal to noise ratio will surely increase.
TSG is about research done by e.g. Hamilton and Maynard-Smith in the '60s. Those guys are as heavy as heavy can be in evolutionary biology.
Yes, in the old school, pre-molecular era of theoretical evolution. One of the wonderful things about molecular biology is that it has turned evolutionary biology into a real experimental science.
As you said, it is better to have facts *before* making the theories. Only through experiment can we get the facts.
(-: Gould wasn't exactly using enzymes on DNA either, if that is a demand for credibility... Even though he wasn't half as much a card-carrying marxist as to Lewontin... but then, who is?
John Maynard Smith, for example, was just as much a Marxist as Lewontin. So was Maynard Smith's famous advisor JBS Haldane.That's why the "Red Scare" tactics that Ed Wilson liked to use to attack his opponents was rather dishonest -- he didn't mind if his *supporters* were Marxists -- only his opponents.
Be aware that religious people (e.g. christians, marxists, etc) tend to hate the research presented by TSG. The idealists can't accept that some of people's mental characteristics are partially genetic. (Personally, I have the ambition to look at facts first and build opinions on how the world works after that. No theory that goes the other way will succeed since there are so many more ways of being totally wrong than close to correct.)
Yes -- let's look at the facts. Dawkins is an ethologist -- he studies animals frolicking about. He's not a geneticist. People with a genetics background tend to be rather wary of Dawkins, Wilson, Pinker, etc. We tend to think that before one devises elaborate evolutionary schemes for how genes evolved to govern behavior, it is better to actually look and see if any such genes actually exist in the genome. While there is some evidence for a few genes influencing some behaviors, it's nothing close to what the sociobiologists claim.
So, how has PDF improved representing equations and figures over Postscript?
It hasn't really. Postscript and even DVI would work as well -- my point was that HTML isn't much of a replacement, although some claim it is.
PDF is useful for packaging a paginated series of scanned images. that's about it.
Well, it's more than that -- for example, practically every scientific journal these days distributes the papers as PDF files, not because they are scanned, but because HTML still has a long ways to go in representing equations and figures (including links to non-scalable bitmaps hardly counts).
What does a CS professor do when he's not teaching? Some bullshit ass consulting work?
No -- they actually do research into new algorithms and systems that eventually get used by the world, perhaps after being commercialized, but more recently with Open Source, etc., often directly.
On the other hand, I know personally at least two English profs who are working on books about Shakespeare. Although I probably like the Bard more than most geeks, I'm unconvinced that any additional commentary on his works would be worth the lives of the trees that would be killed.
hank god the EU has some humanity and dignity left. I praise their stance on GM foods which is basically denying them completely
And not surprisingly, a major export of the EU is *scientists*. What scientist in his or her right mind would want to work in a such a luddite environment? It amazes me that the Slashdot crowd, which is presumably in favor of technological advances in computer technology, would not be in favor of advances in other fields.
Say whaaa? If a doctor came in clutching a GBA..even a silver one..I'd be seriously worried.
Hey, I have a GBA and a PhD! Oh wait -- you were worried about physicians,,,
Xerox is not a good example. All photocopiers are xerox machines.. The 'science' of photocopiers is xerography.
No, generic photocopiers are "xerography machines", not "xerox machines". Yes, the name "Xerox" is derived from "xerography", just like the name "Kleenex" is presumably derived from "clean". That doesn't mean they aren't valid trademarks.
There is a wide, yawning gulf between a father who takes an interest in his child's life in order to be a part of it, and a father still plays with (today they call it "collecting") toys because he never grew up in the first place.
This isn't anything modern though -- model train sets have been popular gifts for children for decades, and then as now, the fathers always seem to get more enjoyment from them than the children do.
I thought it might have made a good 300pager but it had more padding than story
Well, Cryptonomicon isn't SF, where "story" is the only thing important. Really, outside genre paperbacks (like SF, mystery, and romance -- the descendants of the 1920's pulps), "story" is pretty unimportant compared to style and mood, just like modern art isn't about making a photographic quality painting of Aunt Edna, but rather a study of form and color.
Nostalgia certainly is a factor, but the simple fact is that the average computer user in the 1980's was smarter, more creative, and more interesting than now. That doesn't mean that smart, creative and interesting people don't use computers now -- just that everyone else does too.
I remember going to users' groups in the 1980's and running into really diverse people -- geologists trying to write software to track samples, people trying to automate model train layouts, control telescopes, and lots more. I stopped going when these do-it-yourselfers became the exception and not the rule.
The Annals of Improbable Research, the humor magazine for scientists, once had an article entitled "Advances in Artificial Intelligence". After the title and author affiliations, the page was appropriately completely blank...