Am I dependant on my employer for my basic needs? No, if I wanted to, I could start a business, I could steal, or I could just be taken care of by the system.
Having the stuff is nice though. If I'm bored, I can play KOTOR on my XBox. I can read slashdot. I can take vitamins. I can drive my car to go pick up my Pepcid AC.
I don't spend my days in backbreaking manual labor. I will most likely live almost twice as long. I will be able to walk under my own power at 65. I have a good chance of living through pneumonia. If something is stolen from me I can go to the police. I can send my children to college. I can get grossly fat, or incredibly muscular, my choice.
I'm very sorry that things haven't gone well for you. I was a pretty bitter person too at one point, but try looking on the bright side for a little while, it gets easier, and eventually takes no effort at all.
Well, then it looks like I've managed to do the impossible. Just a short while ago, I wrote a quick program to automatically craft items for me in SWG. It did this by scanning the colors until it found the patterns matching an OK, next, crit fail, etc buttons.
Granted, it was a quick and dirty little program that couldn't do anything else other than craft items given a few ingredient slots, which schematic to select, and the amount of experimentation I wanted to put into it, but then again it only took me a couple days to write.
Extending this to be able to work with every widget of a given GUI would not be very difficult, and the only difference between that and a themed GUI is instead of hardcoding the patterns, you just load them.
How is it that a sequence of bits representing pixels is any different than a sequence of bits representing letters and words? I'm not sure how much programming you've done, but you need to do more before you can authoratively say that something can't be done, especially when I can come along and say that I have done it.
GUIs are NOT inherently ambiguous, unless of course your theme makes heavy use of the random number generator. The goal of any well designed GUI is to make them understandable.
You should spend a few days in a programmer's shoes, and then you would realize that we have to deal with the same things you have to deal with.
If only I could design a CPU that would deal with variable length strings natively, I could write incredible text parsing programs for you in minutes. Those a-hole CPU designers need to make tools that make it easy for me to design CPUs.
If only someone would make a conductor that wouldn't leak or generate heat, the people who design CPUs could make incredible processors that handle variable length strings natively. Those a-hole matierals engineers need to make tools that make it easy to create miracle metals.
If only someone would make a device that could construct elements subatomic particle by subatomic particle, matierals engineers could make an incredible tool that would make it easy to create miracle metals. God needs to get right on that.
Hey, I found the solution to the problem. If you can convince the omniscient and omnipotent creator of the universe that he screwed you royally when he made atoms hard to make and he needs to correct the situation immedately, your problem will be solved.
We understand numbers in base 10 because we were taught base 10, not because we have 10 fingers. Base 10 MAY have been invented because we have 10 fingers, but neither is more intuitive than the other.
By the way, you should spend some time teaching yourself the valuable social skill of understanding when someone is being facetious.
I'd hold off on that. The thing the article ignores is that computers are a new technology. In 50 years, an article like this would get the same reception that a present day article claiming we all need to know how to rebuild an engine to survive would get now.
Writing a program to understand a given GUI would be fairly trivial with decent OCR and graphics libraries. Writing a program to understand a themable GUI with access to the themes and knowledge of what theme is being used would be harder, but not impossible. Writing a program to understand any GUI understandable by humans would be... well impossible if you're talking about skinned MP3 players and stuff, but even a marginally consistent GUI wouldn't be impossible, just VERY difficult.
Computers do not have a preference for text. We could write a command shell that only accepted numbers, or only accepted certain tones played into a microphone, or frequencies of light, or weights, or densities, or whatever we could imagine.
If computers have a preference for anything, it's opened and closed circuts, and that's only if you say that computers must be a digital device.
Well sure, but there's a finite limit to how much one person can learn. I'd rather my doctor be able to deal with a blood clot speeding toward my brain than be able to build a car, calculate the orbits of galaxies, write a MUA and decipher an ancient language.
In fact, if a doctor spends the time he should have spent learning how to destroy a blood clot writing a script to make his computer send a message to his cellphone when he gets an e-mail, he's nothing more than a nurse and a power-user. He's not a programmer and he's not a doctor. Either specialty is more valuable than having both novice skills.
P.S.
I don't mean to insult nurses. I know they're very skilled people, and comparing them to a power-user is not fair, I just can't think of a good word to describe someone who knows a little bit of first-aid.
For instance, when I want to find something on the Internet, I use Google. I trust that if I type in two words, Google will find me Web pages that contain those two words. I have no idea how they do this, because they keep it secret.
This is the dangerous thing. The Merovingian (watch Matrix II Reloaded!) would love it: I type in words and I get links and I click them, with no idea of why I got them!
Nowadays, that's reasonable (although Google is already starting to remove links that are extremely unpopular or expose them to lawsuits). But in the future, Google's mediation of my interface to the Web could really hamper me.
Google has not managed to capture all web searching yet. If it ever consistently failed to return useful results, or was discovered to be misleading you, it would be replaced by a better competitor.
People who are completely unable to trust end up in mental hospitals.
No, he's not making a good point. His point is not that people should know how to copy those 300+ files with multiple selection, his point is that they should know how to write the file manager.
Here's his article in an automobile support call:
Support Rep - How may I help you?
Customer - My car's engine doesn't turn over when I turn the ignition.
Support Rep - Well, you need a new starter, just build one?
Customer - How do I do that?
Support Rep - You need to make a DC motor. Just get a couple of strong magnets and a few hundred feet of wire. Make sure you use wire that's a proper guage to handle the amperage you'll be putting through it, and be sure to wrap it in the proper direction for the current and magnetic poles. Use the right hand rule if you get confused.
Customer - Can't I just take the car to a garage?
Support Rep - Well yeah, but you'll be dooming yourself to a life of hardship and servitude.
Just because you can write the same amount of LOC/hour as you could when you started doesn't mean that they have the same quality. In fact, if they DO have the same quality, either your are a savant, or you're still programming at a 1 year programmer level after being in the industry for 5+ years.
Although, if you feel that way, I've got a friend who just started programming last year that could use a job. Have any compilers that need writing?
Yup, that's exactly what it is. The article completely ignores, well, EVERY other human invention's history. It's a prediction that seems plausable if you just read an accept it without thinking about what he's saying. The motivation for writing was to make the author look smart, flatter the geek readers, and make anyone else that reads it feel inadequate. The plan is to create a food chain, put the author on top with loyal followers, and make a self-subjugated lower class. The problem is that the only people who would fall for such a transparent ploy are already useless to anyone. It's just an overactive survival instinct that would blow up in the author's face if anyone actually cared about what he was saying. Luckily for him, I and 95% of the people who read his article won't remember his name 10 minutes from now.
It's a very good analogy, and was a valid prediction at the time, it was just wrong. Let's follow that analogy a little further.
A car enhances your muscles. You cannot drive a car without muscles.
A computer enhances your mind. You cannot use a computer without a mind.
When cars first came out, you needed a fair amount of muscle to use them. The starter crank was hard to turn, the steering wheel was hard to turn, even the pedals were hard to push. Now, people that need a walker to move drive cars.
As computers mature, they will amplify your mind more and more, and the entry level will become lower and lower. Now you say that there will never be a computer competent enough to do what you mean, but you're wrong there unless the human race ceases to exist in the next few centuries. A computer trained in language processing and psychology could understand what the speaker means better than the speaker himself, and since that's what we the human race wants, we will get it, eventually.
A "thinking" computer is not a violation of any natural law, and therefore it is achievable. Given the fact that we are an extremely survivable race (yes, I'm willing to debate that if you want to) and that we have increased our knowledge since our race began with only minor setbacks, it's basically inevitable that we will eventually get just about anything we want that doesn't violate natural laws given enough time.
Understanding what goes on behind the icons is not necessary. In fact, I don't believe that computers are a liberal art at all. The original seven cover the computer very well already. Logic, arithmetic and grammar is all that is required to truly understand a computer. If you understand logic, then you understand "if I click on the OE icon, then OE will open unless something is broken.
Computers and cars make excellent metaphors for each other. I can't imagine a case where you would say that it's necessary to understand that long polymer chains have a lot of easily releasable energy in order to drive a car. The only people who need to know that are the people who make the fuel. Because we have reached a degree of reliability with autos that allows us to implicitly trust that a gas station will carry fuel that will propel our car down the road, we no longer need to know that.
The problem is, and the reason that it's possible for this (relatively) short period of time to believe that truly understanding the nitty-gritty of computers is necessary, is that we have not reached that level of reliability yet, but they have become essential to our lives before they became reliable. In 50 years, or however long it takes to reach that, you won't hear this discussion any more, and most likely even people in the industry will be more ignorant as to how the low-level stuff works than they are now unless desigining a processor or writing a compiler is what they do.
Computers are a tool, just like everything else people have ever made. The person that puts the head on a hammer most likely doesn't know much about metallurgy or forest conservation, but that doesn't stop them from being able to make a hammer any more than a person not knowing how to run a hammer factory stops them from being able to pound a nail. When getting your e-mail is as intuitive and reliable as swinging a hammer, why know how to repair a corrupt mailbox? In the rare cases where it happens, just get a new mail client, or have it repaired by a professional. The amount of time someone would need to invest in order to be able to do it themselves would deprive a person of that time to do something like installing a new fuel pump in the repair tech's car, and since we're assuming that said person's specialty is repairing cars, would also deprive many other people of getting their cars fixed.
Ah, you did read the book, right? He could "see" because he had a vision of the future about everything that happened from his blinding until his children were born. The explanation is actuall one of the major plots of the book. Did they make a movie about it or something?
smite ( P ) Pronunciation Key (smt) v. smote, (smt) smit·ten, (smtn) or smote smit·ing, smites v. tr.
1. 1. To inflict a heavy blow on, with or as if with the hand, a tool, or a weapon. 2. To drive or strike (a weapon, for example) forcefully onto or into something else. 2. To attack, damage, or destroy by or as if by blows. 3. 1. To afflict: The population was smitten by the plague. 2. To afflict retributively; chasten or chastise. 4. To affect sharply with great feeling: He was smitten by deep remorse.
v. intr.
To deal a blow with or as if with the hand or a hand-held weapon.
So, you're not wrong that smitten is a form of the verb smite, but you are wrong when you say that the grandparent is wrong. In fact, since smitten is also a synonym for "in love", the grandparent is actually more right than you.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I dependant on my employer for my basic needs? No, if I wanted to, I could start a business, I could steal, or I could just be taken care of by the system.
Having the stuff is nice though. If I'm bored, I can play KOTOR on my XBox. I can read slashdot. I can take vitamins. I can drive my car to go pick up my Pepcid AC.
I don't spend my days in backbreaking manual labor. I will most likely live almost twice as long. I will be able to walk under my own power at 65. I have a good chance of living through pneumonia. If something is stolen from me I can go to the police. I can send my children to college. I can get grossly fat, or incredibly muscular, my choice.
I'm very sorry that things haven't gone well for you. I was a pretty bitter person too at one point, but try looking on the bright side for a little while, it gets easier, and eventually takes no effort at all.
God you're an idiot.
Well, then it looks like I've managed to do the impossible. Just a short while ago, I wrote a quick program to automatically craft items for me in SWG. It did this by scanning the colors until it found the patterns matching an OK, next, crit fail, etc buttons.
Granted, it was a quick and dirty little program that couldn't do anything else other than craft items given a few ingredient slots, which schematic to select, and the amount of experimentation I wanted to put into it, but then again it only took me a couple days to write.
Extending this to be able to work with every widget of a given GUI would not be very difficult, and the only difference between that and a themed GUI is instead of hardcoding the patterns, you just load them.
How is it that a sequence of bits representing pixels is any different than a sequence of bits representing letters and words? I'm not sure how much programming you've done, but you need to do more before you can authoratively say that something can't be done, especially when I can come along and say that I have done it.
GUIs are NOT inherently ambiguous, unless of course your theme makes heavy use of the random number generator. The goal of any well designed GUI is to make them understandable.
nVidia supports cloning to two VGA adapters, at least my ti 4600 does.
Looks like I owe you an apology. I did look over his post history, and yeah, he's a lunatic. Sorry for my tone there.
I've been reading Slashdot for something like two years, and I'm still amazed by some of the people here.
You should spend a few days in a programmer's shoes, and then you would realize that we have to deal with the same things you have to deal with.
If only I could design a CPU that would deal with variable length strings natively, I could write incredible text parsing programs for you in minutes. Those a-hole CPU designers need to make tools that make it easy for me to design CPUs.
If only someone would make a conductor that wouldn't leak or generate heat, the people who design CPUs could make incredible processors that handle variable length strings natively. Those a-hole matierals engineers need to make tools that make it easy to create miracle metals.
If only someone would make a device that could construct elements subatomic particle by subatomic particle, matierals engineers could make an incredible tool that would make it easy to create miracle metals. God needs to get right on that.
Hey, I found the solution to the problem. If you can convince the omniscient and omnipotent creator of the universe that he screwed you royally when he made atoms hard to make and he needs to correct the situation immedately, your problem will be solved.
We understand numbers in base 10 because we were taught base 10, not because we have 10 fingers. Base 10 MAY have been invented because we have 10 fingers, but neither is more intuitive than the other.
By the way, you should spend some time teaching yourself the valuable social skill of understanding when someone is being facetious.
Don't worry, we're working on it.
Points:
^ W V A X Z } { > <
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!
I'd hold off on that. The thing the article ignores is that computers are a new technology. In 50 years, an article like this would get the same reception that a present day article claiming we all need to know how to rebuild an engine to survive would get now.
Writing a program to understand a given GUI would be fairly trivial with decent OCR and graphics libraries. Writing a program to understand a themable GUI with access to the themes and knowledge of what theme is being used would be harder, but not impossible. Writing a program to understand any GUI understandable by humans would be ... well impossible if you're talking about skinned MP3 players and stuff, but even a marginally consistent GUI wouldn't be impossible, just VERY difficult.
Computers do not have a preference for text. We could write a command shell that only accepted numbers, or only accepted certain tones played into a microphone, or frequencies of light, or weights, or densities, or whatever we could imagine.
If computers have a preference for anything, it's opened and closed circuts, and that's only if you say that computers must be a digital device.
Heh, I knew I had you on my friends list for a good reason :) That explains a lot.
Well sure, but there's a finite limit to how much one person can learn. I'd rather my doctor be able to deal with a blood clot speeding toward my brain than be able to build a car, calculate the orbits of galaxies, write a MUA and decipher an ancient language.
In fact, if a doctor spends the time he should have spent learning how to destroy a blood clot writing a script to make his computer send a message to his cellphone when he gets an e-mail, he's nothing more than a nurse and a power-user. He's not a programmer and he's not a doctor. Either specialty is more valuable than having both novice skills.
P.S.
I don't mean to insult nurses. I know they're very skilled people, and comparing them to a power-user is not fair, I just can't think of a good word to describe someone who knows a little bit of first-aid.
For instance, when I want to find something on the Internet, I use Google. I trust that if I type in two words, Google will find me Web pages that contain those two words. I have no idea how they do this, because they keep it secret.
This is the dangerous thing. The Merovingian (watch Matrix II Reloaded!) would love it: I type in words and I get links and I click them, with no idea of why I got them!
Nowadays, that's reasonable (although Google is already starting to remove links that are extremely unpopular or expose them to lawsuits). But in the future, Google's mediation of my interface to the Web could really hamper me.
Google has not managed to capture all web searching yet. If it ever consistently failed to return useful results, or was discovered to be misleading you, it would be replaced by a better competitor.
People who are completely unable to trust end up in mental hospitals.
No, he's not making a good point. His point is not that people should know how to copy those 300+ files with multiple selection, his point is that they should know how to write the file manager.
Here's his article in an automobile support call:
Support Rep - How may I help you?
Customer - My car's engine doesn't turn over when I turn the ignition.
Support Rep - Well, you need a new starter, just build one?
Customer - How do I do that?
Support Rep - You need to make a DC motor. Just get a couple of strong magnets and a few hundred feet of wire. Make sure you use wire that's a proper guage to handle the amperage you'll be putting through it, and be sure to wrap it in the proper direction for the current and magnetic poles. Use the right hand rule if you get confused.
Customer - Can't I just take the car to a garage?
Support Rep - Well yeah, but you'll be dooming yourself to a life of hardship and servitude.
You're confusing productivity with experience.
Just because you can write the same amount of LOC/hour as you could when you started doesn't mean that they have the same quality. In fact, if they DO have the same quality, either your are a savant, or you're still programming at a 1 year programmer level after being in the industry for 5+ years.
Although, if you feel that way, I've got a friend who just started programming last year that could use a job. Have any compilers that need writing?
Yup, that's exactly what it is. The article completely ignores, well, EVERY other human invention's history. It's a prediction that seems plausable if you just read an accept it without thinking about what he's saying. The motivation for writing was to make the author look smart, flatter the geek readers, and make anyone else that reads it feel inadequate. The plan is to create a food chain, put the author on top with loyal followers, and make a self-subjugated lower class. The problem is that the only people who would fall for such a transparent ploy are already useless to anyone. It's just an overactive survival instinct that would blow up in the author's face if anyone actually cared about what he was saying. Luckily for him, I and 95% of the people who read his article won't remember his name 10 minutes from now.
It's a very good analogy, and was a valid prediction at the time, it was just wrong. Let's follow that analogy a little further.
A car enhances your muscles. You cannot drive a car without muscles.
A computer enhances your mind. You cannot use a computer without a mind.
When cars first came out, you needed a fair amount of muscle to use them. The starter crank was hard to turn, the steering wheel was hard to turn, even the pedals were hard to push. Now, people that need a walker to move drive cars.
As computers mature, they will amplify your mind more and more, and the entry level will become lower and lower. Now you say that there will never be a computer competent enough to do what you mean, but you're wrong there unless the human race ceases to exist in the next few centuries. A computer trained in language processing and psychology could understand what the speaker means better than the speaker himself, and since that's what we the human race wants, we will get it, eventually.
A "thinking" computer is not a violation of any natural law, and therefore it is achievable. Given the fact that we are an extremely survivable race (yes, I'm willing to debate that if you want to) and that we have increased our knowledge since our race began with only minor setbacks, it's basically inevitable that we will eventually get just about anything we want that doesn't violate natural laws given enough time.
Understanding what goes on behind the icons is not necessary. In fact, I don't believe that computers are a liberal art at all. The original seven cover the computer very well already. Logic, arithmetic and grammar is all that is required to truly understand a computer. If you understand logic, then you understand "if I click on the OE icon, then OE will open unless something is broken.
Computers and cars make excellent metaphors for each other. I can't imagine a case where you would say that it's necessary to understand that long polymer chains have a lot of easily releasable energy in order to drive a car. The only people who need to know that are the people who make the fuel. Because we have reached a degree of reliability with autos that allows us to implicitly trust that a gas station will carry fuel that will propel our car down the road, we no longer need to know that.
The problem is, and the reason that it's possible for this (relatively) short period of time to believe that truly understanding the nitty-gritty of computers is necessary, is that we have not reached that level of reliability yet, but they have become essential to our lives before they became reliable. In 50 years, or however long it takes to reach that, you won't hear this discussion any more, and most likely even people in the industry will be more ignorant as to how the low-level stuff works than they are now unless desigining a processor or writing a compiler is what they do.
Computers are a tool, just like everything else people have ever made. The person that puts the head on a hammer most likely doesn't know much about metallurgy or forest conservation, but that doesn't stop them from being able to make a hammer any more than a person not knowing how to run a hammer factory stops them from being able to pound a nail. When getting your e-mail is as intuitive and reliable as swinging a hammer, why know how to repair a corrupt mailbox? In the rare cases where it happens, just get a new mail client, or have it repaired by a professional. The amount of time someone would need to invest in order to be able to do it themselves would deprive a person of that time to do something like installing a new fuel pump in the repair tech's car, and since we're assuming that said person's specialty is repairing cars, would also deprive many other people of getting their cars fixed.
Ah, I see... I thought you didn't know about the whole vision thing.
Ah, you did read the book, right? He could "see" because he had a vision of the future about everything that happened from his blinding until his children were born. The explanation is actuall one of the major plots of the book. Did they make a movie about it or something?
You've got a bad CD writer / CD-ROM drive / media. I still use stuff I burned 4 years ago every 3-4 months.
gnu.org, duh.
So, you're not wrong that smitten is a form of the verb smite, but you are wrong when you say that the grandparent is wrong. In fact, since smitten is also a synonym for "in love", the grandparent is actually more right than you.
*thumbs nose*
I understand what a koan is, but I think you just made a mistake when you first quoted that and refuse to admit it.
If you really want your sig to be a koan, why don't you make one up?
Nothing is not wrong.