first respect the rights of *other* authors before complaining about people infringing on his rights. Do a search on his "Last Dangerous Visions" project if you don't know about what is probably the most infamous scandal in SF. Nobody is without sin but this is just too ironic for words.
that cross-time communication should not be relied on for investment advice. It is well known (see the documentary Frequency) that a major Yahoo stockholder received his information in this way.
I agree that Adams hasn't completely sold out -- but the beauty of it is if he does, it is totally appropriate as something his alter-ego Dogbert would do. I still love Adams (writing as Dogbert) answering a complaint about banner ads on the Dilbert site (then unofficial, I believe): "Yes, banner ads are evil. Because every click on them costs the advertiser money, I recommend showing your disapproval by repeatedly reloading the page and clicking on the ads"
Why on earth do our protests have to be non-threatening to the average citizen!?
Um... maybe because it is actually helpful to *encourage* support for your cause if you want it to succeed? Terrorists and rioters only serve to harm their own causes.
How do you know it isn't the undercover cops who are the ones destroying the property in order to discredit the protestors?
Because that's the job of the so called "astronauts" when they aren't prancing around secret NASA soundstages pretending that they are in space. The black helicopters take them to riot areas when needed.
capitalism requires a government for, by, and of the people.
There is a common belief that capitalism and democracy go hand-in-hand, but there is at least one rather obvious exception: Singapore. There's a country that is as capitalistic as possible, with McDonalds and Gap stores on every block, and yet has a rather oppressive government.
Historians love to read old snail-mail -- reading letters written by Victorians tells far more about their culture than any books written in the time. What should it be any different for USENET?
It's a commen myth, again repeated by the Microsoft drone, that says that software funded by public money is somehow different from other software and is somehow magically always Open Source. This is simply not true.
I've written software at several universities in the US and Canada. Generally either the *university* owns the rights and licenses the software -- take a look at the Internet Explorer "about" box some time -- you'll see that Microsoft licensed the original NCSA Mosaic source from the University of Illinois. The authors had nothing to do with that (as several of the authors left to found Netscape, I'm sure they weren't in favor of giving Microsoft a helping hand)
Or as in incentive for working there, a university may choose to give all rights to the originators. This is in fact the policy of the University of Waterloo and resulted in many spinoffs such as WATCOM and Open Text.
I have nothing against the GPL -- indeed I have written a gene-finding program that is licensed under it. However nothing except my own wish to do so required me to do so.
While I'm no fan of Dennett -- he has absolutely no qualifications to write about evolution and is not a scientist at all, (unlike Gould who is quite qualified) I have to agree that Gould certainly likes to make waves: One of my most favorite science quotes is from David Hull and is quite appropriate:
"From the beginning of their careers, scientists are presented with a dilemma. They can make their work look as conventional as possible -- just one more brick in the edifice of science -- or as novel and controversial as possible -- declaring a whole new theory or possibly even a whole new science... From my own reading of the recent history of science, I see no strong correlation between my own estimates of the novelty of an idea and the strategy that an author adopts."
--David Hull in Science as a Process (1988).
Gould is a paleontologist (and therefore a biologist). However, like the late Carl Sagan, Gould's professional reputation is far less impressive than his public popularity would suggest.
The acceptance of sociobiology? Since when? Sociobiology is a great seller of books (walk into a bookstore and you'll see lots of books like "The Language Instinct" and "The Moral Animal", incidentally both written by non-biologists) But open up major scientific journals like Science and Nature and you'll find hardly any papers about it. While the sociobiologists and their Marxist critics like to duke it out in the popular press over Nature vs. Nuture, mainstream biologists have long since accepted Nature *and* Nuture.
Actually the DNA-RNA-Protein direction of information flow has absolutely *nothing* to do with the 30,000 vs 100,000 question, because the same information is encoded in all three formats, thus adding nothing to complexity (BTW: transcripts are RNA. Neither DNA nor protein are transcripts)
The fact is, until about six months ago, biologists (including me) really did think that there were about 100,000 human genes. The media is *not* confused about that.
Personally, when I read the phrase "Kent State Starcraft" I assumed that somebody with rather poor taste created a mod that replaced the existing sides with National Guardsmen and students...
Maybe my experience was unusual but I've only had two hard drives fail in the 20 years I've been using computers -- and both were Maxtors. Needless to say, I'm leery about ever buying one again.
In other words, no, you don't support the freedom to work. Why don't you just come out and say it?
Because the phrase "freedom to work" is really just a rhetorical device -- no such freedom exists -- if it did nobody would ever be allowed to be fired because this would violate their freedom. Instead the device must be understood in terms of what it really means: enjoying the benefits of a unionized environment without actually paying for them. This is exactly like not paying taxes but enjoying the benefits of roads, police protection, and so forth.
Why should I have to pay for the righ to work?
You don't. You can always work in a non-unionized company just as you are free to move to a third world country with minimal (or no) taxes. However, taxes and dues are what provide a safer and fairer place to live or work in.
Well, professors, probably the most respected (and certainly the most educated), group of professionals in existence, are either unionized or unionizing in quite a few universities...
Hmm, do you have the right to not pay your taxes if you a resident of a country? No? Then why should you have the right not to pay your union dues if you are a worker at a unionized company? In both cases, if taxes or dues were voluntary, the system wouldn't work.
What you do have the right to do is vote for leaders that will reduce your taxes or dues if that is a major issue for you. Like civilized countries, unions are democracies and leaders must follow the wishes of their members or they will be replaced by others.
I really don't understand why Akira isn't "understandable" -- what exactly is confusing? It deals in cosmic themes, yes, but so does "2001" and "Solaris". Then again, some people claim not to understand the connection between the Monolith and directed evolution in "2001" -- go figure.
it says something important that most people dont know about statistics: ie cause and effect relations _CANNOT_ be determined from correllary data. this is pretty basic and one of the first things you learn in a statistics class.
That old chestnut is only true in a theoretical sense. In practice, cause and effect relationships are determined all the time by correlations, because.common sense can also be applied in addition to mindless equations. Consider -- what would be the alternative to cell phone use causing cancer? Cancer causing cell phone use? While mathematically possible that explaination is just silly,
The article claims that a program "claiming to be a Gameboy emulator for PalmOS" is really a virus. This isn't true. The program (Liberty) in question is quite real, although shareware. The "virus" (really just a trojan) is a different program which claims to convert the shareware version to the registered version.
Read about it here
That would explain the total absense of a dam on the MIT campus, yes. But I loved "the Lurking Horror" and its "beyond the state of the art PC". Wow -- it has a hard drive AND a network connection -- what will they think of next?:-)
Sometimes slashdot seems like a cesspit full "intellectualism" (I spit the term like a curse). Its like this place people gather to revel in a shared sense of superiority
Perhaps. However it is worth remembering that anti-intellectualism is also often worn as a badge of honor, as you appear to be doing.
I bet your life is this really deep "poem" that nobody quite understands.
A metaphor. Oh dear. That borders on your hated intellectualism, you know, even if is intended to be mocking.
A message to you and half the people here on slashdot: get off your f***ing high horse!
Just as soon as you get off your populist nag. My grandfather was a proletarian so I probably have a greater right to it than you anyway.
Well, for starters, it is genuine literature rather than genre fiction, which is both good and bad -- literature is heavy and the very words themselves are to be savored, but that takes work, and not everyone wants to put that amount of work in. I have to admit that sometimes I simply like to veg out with a cheap paperback SF novel as well.
Secondly, the amount of detail in the LoTR is simply astounding. Entire cultures with histories and linguistically plausible languages are created. The background material is so immense that Tolkien's son makes a good living simply editing and publishing his father's notes that didn't make it into the books. Other authors simply don't do this. Scratch the paper-thin facade of the "Dune" novels, for example, and you'll find nothing behind it -- for example "Bene Gesserit" is just a cool sounding name Herbert thought up -- it doesn't *mean* anything.
Well, as a postdoctoral fellow, I've met hundreds of scientists (some of them quite famous), so I think I can make a pretty good generalization. What I mean about not being charasmatic is not that they are in general jerks (although there are certainly some of those) but that they don't go out of their way to be polite or liked, and they generally say exactly what they are thinking, whether it is tactful or not.
Personally I enjoy the company of such people more than that of people with more "social skills" (such skills really are mostly just knowing when it would be more polite to lie when asked a question)
Oh, quite a few scientists I know are *funny* and pleasant to talk to -- most intelligent people are. What I mean is that essentially none of them go for the back-slapping but insincere "Hiya Bob, how's it going? How are the wife and kids? Gee that's great/terrible!" approach that passes for social skills among society at large.
Slashdot Mirror
first respect the rights of *other* authors before complaining about people infringing on his rights. Do a search on his "Last Dangerous Visions" project if you don't know about what is probably the most infamous scandal in SF. Nobody is without sin but this is just too ironic for words.
that cross-time communication should not be relied on for investment advice. It is well known (see the documentary Frequency) that a major Yahoo stockholder received his information in this way.
I agree that Adams hasn't completely sold out -- but the beauty of it is if he does, it is totally appropriate as something his alter-ego Dogbert would do. I still love Adams (writing as Dogbert) answering a complaint about banner ads on the Dilbert site (then unofficial, I believe): "Yes, banner ads are evil. Because every click on them costs the advertiser money, I recommend showing your disapproval by repeatedly reloading the page and clicking on the ads"
Why on earth do our protests have to be non-threatening to the average citizen!?
Um... maybe because it is actually helpful to *encourage* support for your cause if you want it to succeed? Terrorists and rioters only serve to harm their own causes.
How do you know it isn't the undercover cops who are the ones destroying the property in order to discredit the protestors?
Because that's the job of the so called "astronauts" when they aren't prancing around secret NASA soundstages pretending that they are in space. The black helicopters take them to riot areas when needed.
capitalism requires a government for, by, and of the people.
There is a common belief that capitalism and democracy go hand-in-hand, but there is at least one rather obvious exception: Singapore. There's a country that is as capitalistic as possible, with McDonalds and Gap stores on every block, and yet has a rather oppressive government.
Historians love to read old snail-mail -- reading letters written by Victorians tells far more about their culture than any books written in the time. What should it be any different for USENET?
It's a commen myth, again repeated by the Microsoft drone, that says that software funded by public money is somehow different from other software and is somehow magically always Open Source. This is simply not true.
I've written software at several universities in the US and Canada. Generally either the *university* owns the rights and licenses the software -- take a look at the Internet Explorer "about" box some time -- you'll see that Microsoft licensed the original NCSA Mosaic source from the University of Illinois. The authors had nothing to do with that (as several of the authors left to found Netscape, I'm sure they weren't in favor of giving Microsoft a helping hand)
Or as in incentive for working there, a university may choose to give all rights to the originators. This is in fact the policy of the University of Waterloo and resulted in many spinoffs such as WATCOM and Open Text.
I have nothing against the GPL -- indeed I have written a gene-finding program that is licensed under it. However nothing except my own wish to do so required me to do so.
While I'm no fan of Dennett -- he has absolutely no qualifications to write about evolution and is not a scientist at all, (unlike Gould who is quite qualified) I have to agree that Gould certainly likes to make waves: One of my most favorite science quotes is from David Hull and is quite appropriate:
... From my own reading of the recent history of science, I see no strong correlation between my own estimates of the novelty of an idea and the strategy that an author adopts."
"From the beginning of their careers, scientists are presented with a dilemma. They can make their work look as conventional as possible -- just one more brick in the edifice of science -- or as novel and controversial as possible -- declaring a whole new theory or possibly even a whole new science
--David Hull in Science as a Process (1988).
Gould is a paleontologist (and therefore a biologist). However, like the late Carl Sagan, Gould's professional reputation is far less impressive than his public popularity would suggest.
The acceptance of sociobiology? Since when? Sociobiology is a great seller of books (walk into a bookstore and you'll see lots of books like "The Language Instinct" and "The Moral Animal", incidentally both written by non-biologists) But open up major scientific journals like Science and Nature and you'll find hardly any papers about it. While the sociobiologists and their Marxist critics like to duke it out in the popular press over Nature vs. Nuture, mainstream biologists have long since accepted Nature *and* Nuture.
Actually the DNA-RNA-Protein direction of information flow has absolutely *nothing* to do with the 30,000 vs 100,000 question, because the same information is encoded in all three formats, thus adding nothing to complexity (BTW: transcripts are RNA. Neither DNA nor protein are transcripts)
The fact is, until about six months ago, biologists (including me) really did think that there were about 100,000 human genes. The media is *not* confused about that.
Personally, when I read the phrase "Kent State Starcraft" I assumed that somebody with rather poor taste created a mod that replaced the existing sides with National Guardsmen and students...
Maybe my experience was unusual but I've only had two hard drives fail in the 20 years I've been using computers -- and both were Maxtors. Needless to say, I'm leery about ever buying one again.
In other words, no, you don't support the freedom to work. Why don't you just come out and say it?
Because the phrase "freedom to work" is really just a rhetorical device -- no such freedom exists -- if it did nobody would ever be allowed to be fired because this would violate their freedom. Instead the device must be understood in terms of what it really means: enjoying the benefits of a unionized environment without actually paying for them. This is exactly like not paying taxes but enjoying the benefits of roads, police protection, and so forth.
Why should I have to pay for the righ to work?
You don't. You can always work in a non-unionized company just as you are free to move to a third world country with minimal (or no) taxes. However, taxes and dues are what provide a safer and fairer place to live or work in.
Well, professors, probably the most respected (and certainly the most educated), group of professionals in existence, are either unionized or unionizing in quite a few universities...
Hmm, do you have the right to not pay your taxes if you a resident of a country? No? Then why should you have the right not to pay your union dues if you are a worker at a unionized company? In both cases, if taxes or dues were voluntary, the system wouldn't work.
What you do have the right to do is vote for leaders that will reduce your taxes or dues if that is a major issue for you. Like civilized countries, unions are democracies and leaders must follow the wishes of their members or they will be replaced by others.
I really don't understand why Akira isn't "understandable" -- what exactly is confusing? It deals in cosmic themes, yes, but so does "2001" and "Solaris". Then again, some people claim not to understand the connection between the Monolith and directed evolution in "2001" -- go figure.
it says something important that most people dont know about statistics: ie cause and effect relations _CANNOT_ be determined from correllary data. this is pretty basic and one of the first things you learn in a statistics class.
That old chestnut is only true in a theoretical sense. In practice, cause and effect relationships are determined all the time by correlations, because.common sense can also be applied in addition to mindless equations. Consider -- what would be the alternative to cell phone use causing cancer? Cancer causing cell phone use? While mathematically possible that explaination is just silly,
The article claims that a program "claiming to be a Gameboy emulator for PalmOS" is really a virus. This isn't true. The program (Liberty) in question is quite real, although shareware. The "virus" (really just a trojan) is a different program which claims to convert the shareware version to the registered version. Read about it here
That would explain the total absense of a dam on the MIT campus, yes. But I loved "the Lurking Horror" and its "beyond the state of the art PC". Wow -- it has a hard drive AND a network connection -- what will they think of next? :-)
Sometimes slashdot seems like a cesspit full "intellectualism" (I spit the term like a curse). Its like this place people gather to revel in a shared sense of superiority
Perhaps. However it is worth remembering that anti-intellectualism is also often worn as a badge of honor, as you appear to be doing.
I bet your life is this really deep "poem" that nobody quite understands.
A metaphor. Oh dear. That borders on your hated intellectualism, you know, even if is intended to be mocking.
A message to you and half the people here on slashdot: get off your f***ing high horse!
Just as soon as you get off your populist nag. My grandfather was a proletarian so I probably have a greater right to it than you anyway.
Well, for starters, it is genuine literature rather than genre fiction, which is both good and bad -- literature is heavy and the very words themselves are to be savored, but that takes work, and not everyone wants to put that amount of work in. I have to admit that sometimes I simply like to veg out with a cheap paperback SF novel as well.
Secondly, the amount of detail in the LoTR is simply astounding. Entire cultures with histories and linguistically plausible languages are created. The background material is so immense that Tolkien's son makes a good living simply editing and publishing his father's notes that didn't make it into the books. Other authors simply don't do this. Scratch the paper-thin facade of the "Dune" novels, for example, and you'll find nothing behind it -- for example "Bene Gesserit" is just a cool sounding name Herbert thought up -- it doesn't *mean* anything.
Well, as a postdoctoral fellow, I've met hundreds of scientists (some of them quite famous), so I think I can make a pretty good generalization. What I mean about not being charasmatic is not that they are in general jerks (although there are certainly some of those) but that they don't go out of their way to be polite or liked, and they generally say exactly what they are thinking, whether it is tactful or not.
Personally I enjoy the company of such people more than that of people with more "social skills" (such skills really are mostly just knowing when it would be more polite to lie when asked a question)
Oh, quite a few scientists I know are *funny* and pleasant to talk to -- most intelligent people are. What I mean is that essentially none of them go for the back-slapping but insincere "Hiya Bob, how's it going? How are the wife and kids? Gee that's great/terrible!" approach that passes for social skills among society at large.