I'm sure this wasn't intentional, but lambasting the use of the word "Stallmanism" seems to me like mild hypocrisy from an FSF supporter. The FSF bases its stance on a strange and counterintuitive redefinition of the word "freedom". It's usually used to signify important ideals like free speech and freedom from political expression, but the FSF somehow extends its meaning to include the modification and distribution of computer software (!?).
Now, I am not in complete disagreement with RMS's stance. But IMHO, this trivializes the word "freedom" and misrepresents what the FSF stands for, by making it seem much more grandiose than it really is. Lightheartedly calling the free-software people "Stallmanists" is a far less extreme statement than the term "free software" itself.
if it ever becomes "better", as opposed to "equivalent" - I think we've pretty much hit the peak of web browser development
I'm still waiting, though, for a browser that easily allows me to browse through the HTTP logs (like most FTP clients do) and with support for writing simple scripts (e.g. download all links containing ".zip" from this page).
I know this doesn't matter to most users, it's just something that I want. I'm annoyed that there doesn't seem to be a "power user" browser or plugin out there. I expected this from Mozilla (since it's OSS) but it looks like it's just trying to be IE-equivalent in functionality. Or does such a thing exist and I just haven't heard of it?
Actually, you are using a recent revolutionary storage breakthrough, the GMR effect, discovered around 1990. AFAIK, all drives with capacity >15gb use it.
It usually takes a decade for a radical new technology like this to develop enough to make it onto the consumer market. Similarly, I expect much of the new science we hear about today to have come to commercial fruition around 2010.
I'm not a physicist, but my understanding is that the Earth's gravity exerts a constant force --- but not a wave, which is a cyclic variation of force.
As an analogy, consider sound waves, which are variations of air pressure. As you know, on Earth there is a constant air pressure of (IIRC) ~100 kPa. One might expect, by your logic, that we would hear a permanent blast of noise even in an empty room. We don't: the point is that sound consists of changes in air pressure, not the pressure itself. Analogously, according to this theory, only fluctuations in gravity (i.e. waves) would cause microwaves to be emitted. The unchanging force of Earth's gravity would do nothing.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Re:I still have dreams about the Octopus card.
on
Hong Kong's Octopus
·
· Score: 1
The criticisms have nothing to do with wanting anonymity from "strangers", but rather from a potential oppressive government. We'll see if you still think there are no privacy implications to this when you are picked up by a cop that uses your smart card to find out exactly where you've been the past few months.
And even if you let your movements be tracked by the government, that will do nothing to bring us towards the pie-in-the-sky "traditional" society you seem to want.
A great technical achievement? I don't think so. Virus writing does not strike me as being all that hard. IMHO, if a highly skilled programmer with a lot of time gave it a shot, it would be possible to create a virus orders of magnitude more destructive than what we have seen so far. Imagine a monster hybrid virus that combined a Code Red-style buffer overflow exploit with an e-mail attack, and that moreover trashed the victim's hard disk shortly after infection.
Fortunately, this probably will never happen. Not because it's technically impossible, but because all the programmers with that kind of skill are mature and ethical. If you look at the biggest viruses we've had, almost all of them are dysfunctional and poorly written, and obviously the product of an immature kiddie.
Now, my point: IMHO, there's only one thing protecting Windows from highly destructive viruses, and the Unices from any viruses at all. It has nothing to do with the technical merits of the system, or the tech-savviness of its users, neither of which can stop a well-written virus (there will always be a hole somewhere). The key factor is the honor of the programmers.
Different communities aggregate to different OSes, and warez kiddies and hax0rs seem to me to exist almost entirely in the Windows world. The reason Linux doesn't have any viruses is because nobody is trying to write any. Until this changes, I don't expect anti-virus software for Linux to become necessary anytime soon.
Re:Meaning of blog is fine, dammit
on
Blogging for Dummies?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Who cares what a dictionary says? If Merriam-Webster put out the entry "vertelswoop" in their next edition, would that make it an English word? The right definition is the one that most people use. Dictionaries can only describe definitions, not impose them.
This is a bit of a sore point for me, because the dictionary makers in my native language, French, constantly try to impose ridiculous rules on the language. For instance, "chat" has taken hold as the French word for Internet chatting. But the Academie Francaise, in its infinite wisdm, declared the artificial word "clavardage" (a hideous mutant splice of the French words for "keyboard" and "small talk") to be the Pure French Word to replace it. The worst part is that some people have begun to use it. We shouldn't ascribe that kind of power to the so-called "authorities".
This is IN SPITE OF the fact that Microsoft is currently losing over $100 for every XBOX they sell. So what was that about using their monopoly powers to sell a product at a loss?
To be fair, selling the hardware at a loss and recouping your investment on games is standard practice in the console industry. MS is not doing anything that Sony, Nintendo et al. have also done.
It's likely that I can't tell Chinese from Japanese (or even Korean for some people)
Ha. There's a restaurant in my city that proclaims "Japanese restaurant", but the signs are filled with Korean characters. Apparently so few people can tell the difference that these people are basing their business on pretending to be Japanese:).
I agree, I took a computer architecture course using the book last semester and found it verbose (in a bad way) and vague. I don't think graduate students would like it either; the book is simply poor. Fortunately I managed to get by without buying it, so it's not wasting any space on my shelf.
I disagree completely. I found your first example *much* clearer. "initializerName != null" conveys more information at a glance than "isNotNull", which could mean anything. Abstracting it away is counterproductive.
Again, when I see "if( aClassName != null && ! aClassName.equals( "" ) )" I know exactly what's going on, whereas "if( definedForThisUi )" tells me little and forces me to decipher and remember what's above it.
I don't think putting them in prison would be appropriate, anyway. It's not like you need to lock them up to stop them from building more shoddy structures: destruction of their reputation does the trick. Nor would it have any deterrent effect on other engineers. IMHO, this is okay: prisons are crowded enough as it is.
The "zealots" and the "community" get a lot of blame, but they aren't really slowing the progress of Linux. Whining on slashdot or newsgroups has no influence whatever over the direction of Linux development. Personally, when I programmed some open-source software, I didn't give a hoot about what anybody said: I programmed what I wanted to.
Ultimately it is the developers who decide what gets done. With no monetary incentive, it's only natural that, like most fiction writers do, they'll code what they themselves like, instead of trying to cater to a market like Microsoft. And since they're doing it all for free anyway, I don't think it's reasonable to ask them to do things any different.
Highly radioactive materials are dangerous to every life form that exists or has ever existed on this planet. Having a high-energy particle ram into you is not good for any type of cell, and this isn't going to change anytime soon. I can't conceive of any change in our genetic makeup that would cause them to be non-toxic.
Besides, 10,000 years is not as long as you make it out to be. It is not enough for any natural evolution to take place, and although drastic eugenics might occur, we will still remain eukaryotic, DNA-based organisms, just like every other animal, and as such vulnerable to radiation.
Ah yes, the Fundamental Theorem of Megaman: the villain is always Dr. Wiley.
Yeah, I think I heard about this Dr. Wiley in connection with the antrax scare a few months ago, and I got a good laugh out of it then too.
Re:Why he got away with it for so long.
on
The Magic Box Hoax
·
· Score: 2
I read an interesting article touching on this recently. I think, as the article says, a large part of it is anticipated regret: how bad you would feel if you didn't invest any money and it did pay off.
Although they're claiming it will have a story, I have serious doubts that the ID software team is capable of writing a decent storyline. Consider all their previous games, and Carmack's admission that (IIRC) he enjoys watching action movies and not much else. Not that I really care, since I rarely play games for the story, but if that's what you're expecting you probably shouldn't get your hopes up.
Wrong. Your argument could just as well apply to ordinary radio waves. If a noisy religious group doesn't want to be exposed to radio waves for some nonsense reason, should we shut down all radio transmitters for their sake? The risk posed by cellphones is the point.
What's much scarier to me is that you're seriously suggesting the right to vote should be restricted to some elite. A few points:
Democracy is highly correlated with prosperity. You say you wouldn't mind living in a country with a "functioning capitalist economy," but without democracy. Can you name such a country? The fact is that with the exception of Saudi Arabia (which is a fluke owing to their oil riches), the world's richest countries are all democracies. Furthermore, they only became rich after they became democracies. And the world's fastest-growing developing economies have recently become democratic or are veering in that direction. In view of all this, we can convincingly say that democracy causes prosperity. Democracy has many side effects such as political stability, rule of law, etc. which strongly encourage business.
And how can you claim that things have gone downhill for the US? You are the world's richest, most powerful and most scientifically prolific country. I claim that this would not have happened without your democracy. (again, if you think otherwise, try and find a counterexample)
Undemocratic countries do worse than merely be poor. The Soviet Union was run by an elite, the idea being that they knew better than the "bunch of drooling fucknozzles" how the country should be run. The head honcho was Stalin, a man widely acclaimed in the state-controlled media as a supreme genius. He murdered millions of people and turned the country into a dump.
Again, the evidence shows that what inevitably happens when you let a certain segment of the population have all the power is that they oppress the underclass. Believing that you can remove democracy without causing repression is just wishful thinking, and not supported by the facts.
Democracy is not perfect, but it is way, way better than the alternatives. Believing you can do away with it is, IMHO, dangerous and uninformed.
Those are strong arguments for showing that professional psychics are all charlatans, but they won't convince someone who only believes that, say, 5 people on the planet are psychics. In the end, the bottom-line fact is that ESP et al is physically impossible, and you need to use scientific evidence to prove that.
Re:"Quantum Rose" is a really cheesy title
on
Nebula Award Winners
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
If you had seen the ghastly cover you would've liked it even less.
And egads! That excerpt!
Unease prickled Kamoj. She treaded water, her hair floating in swirls around her body, wrapping her slender waist and then letting go. Her reflection showed a young woman with black curls framing a heart-shaped face. She had dark eyes, as did most people in Argali, though hers were larger than usual, with long lashes that at the moment sparkled with drops of water.
Ugh! Augh! This stuff won an award? It's so bad it makes me wince.
I couldn't have done worse if I had made a special effort to be cliche. Describing someone with a reflection? "Heart-shaped face?" And that "at the moment," as though intentionally placed to break rhythm. I hadn't realized the Nebula people were so tasteless.
After having a bunch of similar experiences myself, I eventually learned how to deal with first-tier tech support. The problem is that they're not really there to help you: they just want to follow their procedure.
I presume you're tech-savvy: if you're calling them, it's because there's a problem on their end, right? Your goal is to convince them to fix it. But their goal is to pester you and do nothing to help, mistakenly assuming the problem is on your end. They are your enemy. If their questions are irrelevant, don't be afraid to lie to them. Give them the "standard" answer they want to hear.
Remember: no matter what your network really looks like, you are running Windows 98 on a single PC. You do *not* run Unix. You have never run Unix. In fact you have never ever heard of it. Don't be afraid to feed them as much BS as necessary, if it will persuade them to move their asses and fix the problem with their network.
Funding for what exactly? The FastTrack network (of which Kazaa is a client), being self-organized, costs very little to run. All they need to set up is a few login servers.
Furthermore, the company that developed the FT tech has, AFAIK, disbanded, and development is over. These guys were pretty bright: in order to avoid a Napster-type fiasco, they decided to just develop the software and make others take the risk of running the servers. Kazaa just licensed the software and is now attempting to milk it for cash.
Frankly, Kazaa is run by a bunch of sleazebags and I wouldn't want to give them money in any case. They've done amazingly unethical things. They're like the anti-Google. There's the obvious: installing of spyware, trying to run a distributed network behind people's backs, and basing their business model on running a piracy network (though this last point is not considered unethical by some).
But the worst is what happened to Morpheus. You may have heard of it: it was a FT client identical to Kazaa in every way (being the same licensed software). Although they tried to keep this under wraps, here is what seems to have happened: Kazaa, wanting to grab ad revenues from Morpheus, released an "upgrade" to Morpheus which had the effect of destroying it. Their trick worked, too.
This is $$$MAKE MONEY FAST$$$ level sleaziness here:). I hope Kazaa dies, and good riddance.
You seem to be limiting your definition of altruistic actions to conscious actions. I don't think this point of view is very useful, because it makes altruism impossible even hypothetically. It renders the word meaningless.
But the fact that our brain has a "warm fuzzy feeling" reward system wired into it is itself altruism, of a subconscious kind. Remember that the mechanism that creates the warm fuzzy feeling is also a part of you. Hence, although your conscious mind may be acting selfishly, on a deeper level, your human nature is being altruistic in giving you a warm fuzzy feeling for no other reason except to help the EFF (or whatever).
Rowling is a fine author, but IMHO overrated. Again IMHO, there are two major "technical" flaws in the Harry Potter book I read (the first one):
Flat characters. Each character has a one or two powerful traits which 100% defines them. Harry is the good guy who will always do the good thing. Hermione is the bossy nerd. Etc. They seemed like caricatures.
Cliche. Wizards, dragons, magic brooms: every fantasy element Rowling uses was blatantly recycled from some other source. Her plotline follows tried-and-true dramatic conventions to the letter. I'm baffled as to why I've heard her praised as "imaginative."
Just because it's a "children's book" is no excuse: it's certainly possible to write one and avoid these mistakes (take Lemony Snicket's, for instance).
That said, in the balance it's a good, gripping novel. But Rowling's genius seems to me a derivative one, of weaving together well-worn elements into an exciting narrative with a vivid, feature-film feel. In my view, the above flaws stop it far short of being the be-all and end-all of children's literature.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, I am not in complete disagreement with RMS's stance. But IMHO, this trivializes the word "freedom" and misrepresents what the FSF stands for, by making it seem much more grandiose than it really is. Lightheartedly calling the free-software people "Stallmanists" is a far less extreme statement than the term "free software" itself.
I'm still waiting, though, for a browser that easily allows me to browse through the HTTP logs (like most FTP clients do) and with support for writing simple scripts (e.g. download all links containing ".zip" from this page).
I know this doesn't matter to most users, it's just something that I want. I'm annoyed that there doesn't seem to be a "power user" browser or plugin out there. I expected this from Mozilla (since it's OSS) but it looks like it's just trying to be IE-equivalent in functionality. Or does such a thing exist and I just haven't heard of it?
It usually takes a decade for a radical new technology like this to develop enough to make it onto the consumer market. Similarly, I expect much of the new science we hear about today to have come to commercial fruition around 2010.
As an analogy, consider sound waves, which are variations of air pressure. As you know, on Earth there is a constant air pressure of (IIRC) ~100 kPa. One might expect, by your logic, that we would hear a permanent blast of noise even in an empty room. We don't: the point is that sound consists of changes in air pressure, not the pressure itself. Analogously, according to this theory, only fluctuations in gravity (i.e. waves) would cause microwaves to be emitted. The unchanging force of Earth's gravity would do nothing.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
And even if you let your movements be tracked by the government, that will do nothing to bring us towards the pie-in-the-sky "traditional" society you seem to want.
Fortunately, this probably will never happen. Not because it's technically impossible, but because all the programmers with that kind of skill are mature and ethical. If you look at the biggest viruses we've had, almost all of them are dysfunctional and poorly written, and obviously the product of an immature kiddie.
Now, my point: IMHO, there's only one thing protecting Windows from highly destructive viruses, and the Unices from any viruses at all. It has nothing to do with the technical merits of the system, or the tech-savviness of its users, neither of which can stop a well-written virus (there will always be a hole somewhere). The key factor is the honor of the programmers.
Different communities aggregate to different OSes, and warez kiddies and hax0rs seem to me to exist almost entirely in the Windows world. The reason Linux doesn't have any viruses is because nobody is trying to write any. Until this changes, I don't expect anti-virus software for Linux to become necessary anytime soon.
This is a bit of a sore point for me, because the dictionary makers in my native language, French, constantly try to impose ridiculous rules on the language. For instance, "chat" has taken hold as the French word for Internet chatting. But the Academie Francaise, in its infinite wisdm, declared the artificial word "clavardage" (a hideous mutant splice of the French words for "keyboard" and "small talk") to be the Pure French Word to replace it. The worst part is that some people have begun to use it. We shouldn't ascribe that kind of power to the so-called "authorities".
To be fair, selling the hardware at a loss and recouping your investment on games is standard practice in the console industry. MS is not doing anything that Sony, Nintendo et al. have also done.
Ha. There's a restaurant in my city that proclaims "Japanese restaurant", but the signs are filled with Korean characters. Apparently so few people can tell the difference that these people are basing their business on pretending to be Japanese :).
I agree, I took a computer architecture course using the book last semester and found it verbose (in a bad way) and vague. I don't think graduate students would like it either; the book is simply poor. Fortunately I managed to get by without buying it, so it's not wasting any space on my shelf.
Again, when I see "if( aClassName != null && ! aClassName.equals( "" ) )" I know exactly what's going on, whereas "if( definedForThisUi )" tells me little and forces me to decipher and remember what's above it.
I don't think putting them in prison would be appropriate, anyway. It's not like you need to lock them up to stop them from building more shoddy structures: destruction of their reputation does the trick. Nor would it have any deterrent effect on other engineers. IMHO, this is okay: prisons are crowded enough as it is.
Ultimately it is the developers who decide what gets done. With no monetary incentive, it's only natural that, like most fiction writers do, they'll code what they themselves like, instead of trying to cater to a market like Microsoft. And since they're doing it all for free anyway, I don't think it's reasonable to ask them to do things any different.
I can't conceive of any change in our genetic makeup that would cause them to be non-toxic.
Besides, 10,000 years is not as long as you make it out to be. It is not enough for any natural evolution to take place, and although drastic eugenics might occur, we will still remain eukaryotic, DNA-based organisms, just like every other animal, and as such vulnerable to radiation.
Yeah, I think I heard about this Dr. Wiley in connection with the antrax scare a few months ago, and I got a good laugh out of it then too.
I read an interesting article touching on this recently. I think, as the article says, a large part of it is anticipated regret: how bad you would feel if you didn't invest any money and it did pay off.
Although they're claiming it will have a story, I have serious doubts that the ID software team is capable of writing a decent storyline. Consider all their previous games, and Carmack's admission that (IIRC) he enjoys watching action movies and not much else. Not that I really care, since I rarely play games for the story, but if that's what you're expecting you probably shouldn't get your hopes up.
Wrong. Your argument could just as well apply to ordinary radio waves. If a noisy religious group doesn't want to be exposed to radio waves for some nonsense reason, should we shut down all radio transmitters for their sake? The risk posed by cellphones is the point.
And how can you claim that things have gone downhill for the US? You are the world's richest, most powerful and most scientifically prolific country. I claim that this would not have happened without your democracy. (again, if you think otherwise, try and find a counterexample)
Again, the evidence shows that what inevitably happens when you let a certain segment of the population have all the power is that they oppress the underclass. Believing that you can remove democracy without causing repression is just wishful thinking, and not supported by the facts.
Democracy is not perfect, but it is way, way better than the alternatives. Believing you can do away with it is, IMHO, dangerous and uninformed.
Those are strong arguments for showing that professional psychics are all charlatans, but they won't convince someone who only believes that, say, 5 people on the planet are psychics. In the end, the bottom-line fact is that ESP et al is physically impossible, and you need to use scientific evidence to prove that.
And egads! That excerpt!
Ugh! Augh! This stuff won an award? It's so bad it makes me wince.
I couldn't have done worse if I had made a special effort to be cliche. Describing someone with a reflection? "Heart-shaped face?" And that "at the moment," as though intentionally placed to break rhythm. I hadn't realized the Nebula people were so tasteless.
I presume you're tech-savvy: if you're calling them, it's because there's a problem on their end, right? Your goal is to convince them to fix it. But their goal is to pester you and do nothing to help, mistakenly assuming the problem is on your end. They are your enemy. If their questions are irrelevant, don't be afraid to lie to them. Give them the "standard" answer they want to hear.
Remember: no matter what your network really looks like, you are running Windows 98 on a single PC. You do *not* run Unix. You have never run Unix. In fact you have never ever heard of it. Don't be afraid to feed them as much BS as necessary, if it will persuade them to move their asses and fix the problem with their network.
Furthermore, the company that developed the FT tech has, AFAIK, disbanded, and development is over. These guys were pretty bright: in order to avoid a Napster-type fiasco, they decided to just develop the software and make others take the risk of running the servers. Kazaa just licensed the software and is now attempting to milk it for cash.
Frankly, Kazaa is run by a bunch of sleazebags and I wouldn't want to give them money in any case. They've done amazingly unethical things. They're like the anti-Google. There's the obvious: installing of spyware, trying to run a distributed network behind people's backs, and basing their business model on running a piracy network (though this last point is not considered unethical by some).
But the worst is what happened to Morpheus. You may have heard of it: it was a FT client identical to Kazaa in every way (being the same licensed software). Although they tried to keep this under wraps, here is what seems to have happened: Kazaa, wanting to grab ad revenues from Morpheus, released an "upgrade" to Morpheus which had the effect of destroying it. Their trick worked, too.
This is $$$MAKE MONEY FAST$$$ level sleaziness here :). I hope Kazaa dies, and good riddance.
You seem to be limiting your definition of altruistic actions to conscious actions. I don't think this point of view is very useful, because it makes altruism impossible even hypothetically. It renders the word meaningless.
But the fact that our brain has a "warm fuzzy feeling" reward system wired into it is itself altruism, of a subconscious kind. Remember that the mechanism that creates the warm fuzzy feeling is also a part of you. Hence, although your conscious mind may be acting selfishly, on a deeper level, your human nature is being altruistic in giving you a warm fuzzy feeling for no other reason except to help the EFF (or whatever).
Just because it's a "children's book" is no excuse: it's certainly possible to write one and avoid these mistakes (take Lemony Snicket's, for instance).
That said, in the balance it's a good, gripping novel. But Rowling's genius seems to me a derivative one, of weaving together well-worn elements into an exciting narrative with a vivid, feature-film feel. In my view, the above flaws stop it far short of being the be-all and end-all of children's literature.