I use gaim regularly, but I still haven't weened myself off the official AOL Linux AIM client because gaim still crashes every time I try to send or receive a file. Never have I seen a feature for an OSS program be so seemingly painful and difficult to implement.
If a country is going to even have any sort of attempt at pretending it's a free country, its citizens have to be allowed to break the law.
Having freedom means that you can do whatever you want, with the one restriction that you're not allowed to muck up anybody else's freedom. If you do that, you get some or all of your freedom taken away. Now, let's look at the case of the modchips - people who steal games and then use modchips to play them on their PS2 are clearly mucking about with the freedoms of the game designers and publishers. But purchasing or selling the modchips themselves doesn't hurt anyone, and since they have very legitamite uses, then the purchaser is not guaranteed to commit a crime. There is a potential for a crime, but prosecuting something like that belongs to the division of Precrime.
Let's look at another example: gun control. Let's say that someone invents a gun that can read the mind of the user, and refuse to fire if malicious intent towards another human being is recognized. Then of course, it's illegal to deactivate this device.
Now, are there legitamite uses for deactivating the device? Of course - self-defense, and if you live in the US, the 2nd amendment.
Every time you remove the freedom to do something that could potentially be used to commit a crime, but could also be used to do something legal, you take away from the freedom of your citizens. And here's the rub: for almost everything, there is a legitamite use. Lockpicks can be used if you lock yourself out, modchips can be used by hobbyists.
And even though some things might seem like a no-brainer, we have to be careful, because the more steps of indirection we take, the more likely it is we're not allowing someone to do something they should be allowed to do.
I submitted an idea like this before I started reading the comments, and it's basically the opposite of this idea - parents could basically set up Firefox to filter out "junk" pages just like "junk" email. That way they could let little Johnny browse the web without accidentally seeing naked Suzy.
The truth is that of course, Bush having ties to the bin Laden family has nothing to do with Bush being tied to Osama. However, both Moore and Bush realize that if this fact is emphasized to the public, Bush's support rating will go down.
That's just how the public is.
Bush didn't want people to know, so he blacked out his National Guard buddy's name.
Moore wanted people to know, so he made a movie about it.
But I think that what Moore wanted to emphasize was that we didn't really question any of the bin Ladens (at least I assume we didn't), even though they do see Osama from time to time. Of course, it does add that touch of paranoia that can't hurt Moore's cause;)
In any case, the larger point Moore makes is that the Bush administration might have a conflict of interest in Saudi Arabia. They do greatly benefit from their relationships with the Saudis, whether that represents an actual conflict of interest is up to the viewer. Moore of course argues that it does.
Of course, what people are most upset about in this movie is that Moore makes a seemingly strong argument in his favor. Well, that's not what they are worried about, they are worried that most people who see the movie will unthinkingly agree with his opinion.
Of course, most people don't think. And the most frustrating thing in the world is to have a movie this big that is hard to rebutt because most people don't listen to Rush or pay attention to anything political (although I bet FOX News gets out to most of the public at large).
Well, technically, he thinks we should be chasing bin Laden and al Qaeda. But you are right that he does complain about the number of soldiers in Afghanistan. If you asked him, he would probably say that he's against blowing up innocent people but still sending a force to find al Qaeda.
Which pretty much shows the idyllic Utopia Moore thinks we can achieve. Moore, if anything, is not a realist.
--Stephen
Re:Sports writer says: ... most powerful movie ...
on
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
He never made a movie about it, but Moore was very critical of the Clinton presidency as well - there were stabs at him in Bowling for Columbine.
People say "Michael Moore wants you to believe..." but they ignore that that is what Michael Moore believes, too. I'm convinced he actually believes in the statements of every movie he makes.
Also, rich white politicians have been crying out against Rich White Men for several years now, and it's not always hypocrisy. Moore simply contends that the Bush administration has a conflict of interest, or at the very least, a good old boy's club.
Moore also offers several suggestions (well, usually other people's suggestions) for what should have been done in the film:
- Listened more to the FBI and CIA about terror threats inside the US (Clinton may have done poorly on this front; most likely Clinton AND Bush both did a bad job - can you handle THAT?) - Gone after al Qaeda sooner and with more strength - Not passed USA PATRIOT Act (or at least not so quickly and not with so many rights taken away) - Not attempt to manipulate the public with terror warning levels or vauge terror warnings - Not grasp at al Qaeda-Iraq link straws - Not invaded Iraq
The first two are positive recommendations of action, or suggestions of what should have been done. The last four are negative, but all except the critique of the USA PATRIOT Act are critiques of policies that he claims had no effect on terrorism.
In short, Moore offers plenty of suggestions of what he should have done. Also, remember that these are simply points the film makes; my point is that there are plenty of suggestions.
Moore is very clearly biased against Bush, but I think calling it "propoganada," while probably technically true, has, in everyday usage, implies a message from the government or other trusted source and is the only source of information given to the public, and also calls unneccessarily tries to tie it to World War II atrocities.
I'm not entirely sure what category this film would be in if not "Documentary." Roger Ebert himself says that there are always biases in documentaries, and even if they try to be unbiased, they always reflect the bias of the creator anyway.
It's a shame only Brits are allowed to compete - I'd take a picture of Chicago from Lake Shore Drive where Lake Shore goes over the Chicago River...it's the most beautiful urban spot in the world as far as I'm concerned.
I think what you call math is simply raw calculation - something "real" mathematicians don't like doing.
"Real" math is Thm-Pf Thm-Pf Thm-Pf. Wonder what your calculus profs do with their research? Solve proofs. Proofs have just as much to do with logic as they do math.
That's because Math is Logic, simple as that. In discrete, you probably learned about combinatorics and graph theory. Those are well-established mathematical fields. When you learned about algorithms, you looked at how to analyze an algorithm and how to prove it worked - that's math. When you learned computability theory, you were learning the basics of a very new field of mathematical study, started in the CS field by Turing and continued by Cook-Levin, etc. Those theoretical results are very much mathematical and very much useful.
What you got was "how to do partial fractions" and "how to do the chain rule" and "how to integrate stuff" and "how to use the integration table in the back of your book." That's boring stuff. What is interesting is how those techniques were invented and proven to work.
College Algebra Calculus I, II and III Linear Algebra Statistics I and II
Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck. Besides Linear Algebra, none of those things are Computer Science mathematics. Were those part of a liberal education core or part of the CS degree? Here's what I had to take (and this is at the U of C; a very theory-heavy CS program):
Calculus 161,162,163 (Calculus thru Spivak; lots of proofs. This was required by core, not by the CS dept.) Linear Algebra Discrete Mathematics Algorithms Computability & Complexity Theory
and that's it. But that can get to be heavy stuff (especially since Lazlo Babai was teaching Discrete and Algorithms). You use the stuff you learn in these classes way more than you would ever use calculus or stat. I do like that I took the calculus course because that course taught me how to prove things ("real" math).
Believe it or not, these courses are math, and they are useful. It sounds like what you took was more of a college "core" or some kind of curriculum all "science and math" majors took rather than something you need for CS.
I think you want a tech school or something. What a good CS curriculum will do is not teach you any one language or area of computer science. What it should do instead is teach you how to adapt quickly to any computer environment. Teaching you the mathematical concepts behind computer science does this.
Now, I'm not sure where you went, so I'm not sure what exactly you mean by a "mathematical rigor" - you could have gone to Purdue or MIT (or in my case U of C), both excellent schools, but for example, you'd get much more math at MIT than Purdue.
I certainly wouldn't expect most normal tech jobs to require more than 5% mathematical rigor, but the 5% of your time that you spend on that goes a long way. Without that 80% of your univerisity studies, you wouldn't be able to do all of that 5%. That 5% is important.
Sorry, but Computer Science started in the Math Department and should stay tied to the Math Department. It's always better to know why and how something works, rather than just know that it works. Computer Science is no exception. The study of algorithms in itself is a definite mathematical pursuit.
Computer scientists should be more than electricians.
Wow, now Linus will be within missile range of the MS Empire. Is he planning some sort of covert strike? Maybe hit Bill with a cream pie, or perhaps he is preparing some sort of panty raid?!
I'm sure that his every move will be posted in great detail on Slashdot! --Stephen
They aren't talking about the government-controlled, Justice Department-breaking-up kind of monopoly - he simply calls the ownership of a patent a monopoly; in fact he says "for want of a better term."
To get to your question, it is definitely possible to have a "monopoly" on a certain patent, yet remain in competition - you could have a patented technique for producing sprockets that you think is better, etc.
Sure he did! Wasn't that the show where he would be like "If anyone has a raw egg with them, I'll give them $50 for it!" and then he'd be like "If anyone here just won a date with a woman, I'll give you an Atari for it!" (remember this old TV so they had Ataris)
What? This was a Bachelorette style competition? Have we completely forgotten about original, non-reality television programming? This is a Dating Game style competition.
This is a bit off-topic, but a friend of mine had an account at a bank that would only allow you to access your information if you could answer a particular question. You could set the question and answer to whatever you wanted. His question was: "What are you wearing?"
Well I would hope that at least we would expect 4 years in a bachelor's degree to give you some sort of skill, enough that 3 years of experience is certainly less than Bachelor's degree + 3 years of experience. It really depends on the Bachelor's degree too - a Bachelor's from University of Phoenix Online isn't going to match up to the Carnegie-Mellon or MIT Bachelor's degree.
It's just sad that students aren't being taught these days.
You would have a point - but only if the directors were forced to release the movie with objectionable scenes removed from it. As it is, the movies are whole, in tact, and uncut.
As a viewer of said art, I should be allowed to do whatever the hell I want with it. I should be able to shut my eyes, plug my ears, place black paper over my TV screen, edit the movie so it is out of chronological order, remove the sound and replace it with Raffi's Greatest Hits, add a Pink Floyd album to the soundtrack of the movie, photoshop Jar Jar Binks into every scene, give the characters ultra-high voices, dub the movie into bad Japanese, splice that movie with another movie and make the ultimate Lord of the Rings/Star Wars crossover, add fart noises to the sound track, remove fart noises from the soundtrack, watch only my favorite scene over and over, watch the movie upside-down, watch the movie while inebriated, scratch the disk so that it skips on purpose, remove sex from the movie, add sex to the movie, and have sex with the movie.
It's my fucking DVD.
And no matter what vision the artist had, I am the audience and I am free to interpret that art in whatever way I see fit as long as I do not mess with the original piece of work. What RCA has done is give us a tool to easily remove boobies instead of going through the painstaking process of ripping it onto a computer, editing it, and then burning it onto a new DVD.
That's all.
Now if you'll excuse me, there's a movie I have to get back to...
Slashdot Mirror
I use gaim regularly, but I still haven't weened myself off the official AOL Linux AIM client because gaim still crashes every time I try to send or receive a file. Never have I seen a feature for an OSS program be so seemingly painful and difficult to implement.
--Stephen
"We are going to destroy Rockstar, you can count on that..."
Sounds like he's been playing a little too much Manhunt.
--Stephen
maybe he got reaaally frustrated at their game?
If a country is going to even have any sort of attempt at pretending it's a free country, its citizens have to be allowed to break the law.
Having freedom means that you can do whatever you want, with the one restriction that you're not allowed to muck up anybody else's freedom. If you do that, you get some or all of your freedom taken away.
Now, let's look at the case of the modchips - people who steal games and then use modchips to play them on their PS2 are clearly mucking about with the freedoms of the game designers and publishers. But purchasing or selling the modchips themselves doesn't hurt anyone, and since they have very legitamite uses, then the purchaser is not guaranteed to commit a crime. There is a potential for a crime, but prosecuting something like that belongs to the division of Precrime.
Let's look at another example: gun control. Let's say that someone invents a gun that can read the mind of the user, and refuse to fire if malicious intent towards another human being is recognized. Then of course, it's illegal to deactivate this device.
Now, are there legitamite uses for deactivating the device? Of course - self-defense, and if you live in the US, the 2nd amendment.
Every time you remove the freedom to do something that could potentially be used to commit a crime, but could also be used to do something legal, you take away from the freedom of your citizens. And here's the rub: for almost everything, there is a legitamite use. Lockpicks can be used if you lock yourself out, modchips can be used by hobbyists.
And even though some things might seem like a no-brainer, we have to be careful, because the more steps of indirection we take, the more likely it is we're not allowing someone to do something they should be allowed to do.
I submitted an idea like this before I started reading the comments, and it's basically the opposite of this idea - parents could basically set up Firefox to filter out "junk" pages just like "junk" email. That way they could let little Johnny browse the web without accidentally seeing naked Suzy.
--Stephen
AND he must be a Yankees or White Sox fan! Kill him!!!
The truth is that of course, Bush having ties to the bin Laden family has nothing to do with Bush being tied to Osama. However, both Moore and Bush realize that if this fact is emphasized to the public, Bush's support rating will go down.
;)
That's just how the public is.
Bush didn't want people to know, so he blacked out his National Guard buddy's name.
Moore wanted people to know, so he made a movie about it.
But I think that what Moore wanted to emphasize was that we didn't really question any of the bin Ladens (at least I assume we didn't), even though they do see Osama from time to time. Of course, it does add that touch of paranoia that can't hurt Moore's cause
In any case, the larger point Moore makes is that the Bush administration might have a conflict of interest in Saudi Arabia. They do greatly benefit from their relationships with the Saudis, whether that represents an actual conflict of interest is up to the viewer. Moore of course argues that it does.
Of course, what people are most upset about in this movie is that Moore makes a seemingly strong argument in his favor. Well, that's not what they are worried about, they are worried that most people who see the movie will unthinkingly agree with his opinion.
Of course, most people don't think. And the most frustrating thing in the world is to have a movie this big that is hard to rebutt because most people don't listen to Rush or pay attention to anything political (although I bet FOX News gets out to most of the public at large).
Well, technically, he thinks we should be chasing bin Laden and al Qaeda. But you are right that he does complain about the number of soldiers in Afghanistan. If you asked him, he would probably say that he's against blowing up innocent people but still sending a force to find al Qaeda.
Which pretty much shows the idyllic Utopia Moore thinks we can achieve. Moore, if anything, is not a realist.
--Stephen
He never made a movie about it, but Moore was very critical of the Clinton presidency as well - there were stabs at him in Bowling for Columbine.
People say "Michael Moore wants you to believe..." but they ignore that that is what Michael Moore believes, too. I'm convinced he actually believes in the statements of every movie he makes.
Also, rich white politicians have been crying out against Rich White Men for several years now, and it's not always hypocrisy. Moore simply contends that the Bush administration has a conflict of interest, or at the very least, a good old boy's club.
Moore also offers several suggestions (well, usually other people's suggestions) for what should have been done in the film:
- Listened more to the FBI and CIA about terror threats inside the US (Clinton may have done poorly on this front; most likely Clinton AND Bush both did a bad job - can you handle THAT?)
- Gone after al Qaeda sooner and with more strength
- Not passed USA PATRIOT Act (or at least not so quickly and not with so many rights taken away)
- Not attempt to manipulate the public with terror warning levels or vauge terror warnings
- Not grasp at al Qaeda-Iraq link straws
- Not invaded Iraq
The first two are positive recommendations of action, or suggestions of what should have been done. The last four are negative, but all except the critique of the USA PATRIOT Act are critiques of policies that he claims had no effect on terrorism.
In short, Moore offers plenty of suggestions of what he should have done. Also, remember that these are simply points the film makes; my point is that there are plenty of suggestions.
Moore is very clearly biased against Bush, but I think calling it "propoganada," while probably technically true, has, in everyday usage, implies a message from the government or other trusted source and is the only source of information given to the public, and also calls unneccessarily tries to tie it to World War II atrocities.
I'm not entirely sure what category this film would be in if not "Documentary." Roger Ebert himself says that there are always biases in documentaries, and even if they try to be unbiased, they always reflect the bias of the creator anyway.
--Stephen
It's a shame only Brits are allowed to compete - I'd take a picture of Chicago from Lake Shore Drive where Lake Shore goes over the Chicago River...it's the most beautiful urban spot in the world as far as I'm concerned.
--Stephen
Even Stephen? That doesn't rhyme nearly as well as "Even Steven."
--Stephen
I think what you call math is simply raw calculation - something "real" mathematicians don't like doing.
"Real" math is Thm-Pf Thm-Pf Thm-Pf. Wonder what your calculus profs do with their research? Solve proofs. Proofs have just as much to do with logic as they do math.
That's because Math is Logic, simple as that. In discrete, you probably learned about combinatorics and graph theory. Those are well-established mathematical fields. When you learned about algorithms, you looked at how to analyze an algorithm and how to prove it worked - that's math. When you learned computability theory, you were learning the basics of a very new field of mathematical study, started in the CS field by Turing and continued by Cook-Levin, etc. Those theoretical results are very much mathematical and very much useful.
What you got was "how to do partial fractions" and "how to do the chain rule" and "how to integrate stuff" and "how to use the integration table in the back of your book." That's boring stuff. What is interesting is how those techniques were invented and proven to work.
--Stephen
Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck. Besides Linear Algebra, none of those things are Computer Science mathematics. Were those part of a liberal education core or part of the CS degree? Here's what I had to take (and this is at the U of C; a very theory-heavy CS program):
Calculus 161,162,163 (Calculus thru Spivak; lots of proofs. This was required by core, not by the CS dept.)
Linear Algebra
Discrete Mathematics
Algorithms
Computability & Complexity Theory
and that's it. But that can get to be heavy stuff (especially since Lazlo Babai was teaching Discrete and Algorithms). You use the stuff you learn in these classes way more than you would ever use calculus or stat. I do like that I took the calculus course because that course taught me how to prove things ("real" math).
Believe it or not, these courses are math, and they are useful. It sounds like what you took was more of a college "core" or some kind of curriculum all "science and math" majors took rather than something you need for CS.
--Stephen
I think you want a tech school or something. What a good CS curriculum will do is not teach you any one language or area of computer science. What it should do instead is teach you how to adapt quickly to any computer environment. Teaching you the mathematical concepts behind computer science does this.
Now, I'm not sure where you went, so I'm not sure what exactly you mean by a "mathematical rigor" - you could have gone to Purdue or MIT (or in my case U of C), both excellent schools, but for example, you'd get much more math at MIT than Purdue.
I certainly wouldn't expect most normal tech jobs to require more than 5% mathematical rigor, but the 5% of your time that you spend on that goes a long way. Without that 80% of your univerisity studies, you wouldn't be able to do all of that 5%. That 5% is important.
--Stephen
Sorry, but Computer Science started in the Math Department and should stay tied to the Math Department. It's always better to know why and how something works, rather than just know that it works. Computer Science is no exception. The study of algorithms in itself is a definite mathematical pursuit.
Computer scientists should be more than electricians.
--Stephen
Wow, now Linus will be within missile range of the MS Empire. Is he planning some sort of covert strike? Maybe hit Bill with a cream pie, or perhaps he is preparing some sort of panty raid?!
I'm sure that his every move will be posted in great detail on Slashdot!
--Stephen
They aren't talking about the government-controlled, Justice Department-breaking-up kind of monopoly - he simply calls the ownership of a patent a monopoly; in fact he says "for want of a better term."
To get to your question, it is definitely possible to have a "monopoly" on a certain patent, yet remain in competition - you could have a patented technique for producing sprockets that you think is better, etc.
--Stephen
No, more like this:
"Oh no! The election has been stolen by Republican Ninjas!!! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president???"
--Stephen
Actually, he said that in his monologue that he gave when he presented his costume. Gave some funny story about being an "accounting program."
--Stephen
Sure he did! Wasn't that the show where he would be like "If anyone has a raw egg with them, I'll give them $50 for it!" and then he'd be like "If anyone here just won a date with a woman, I'll give you an Atari for it!" (remember this old TV so they had Ataris)
--Stephen
What? This was a Bachelorette style competition? Have we completely forgotten about original, non-reality television programming? This is a Dating Game style competition.
I hate television so much.
--Stephen
no TV, I didn't mean it, really! I'm sorry...
This was bound to happen:
"The operation timed out attempting to connect to www.uniras.gov.uk"
oh, the irony,
--Stephen
This is a bit off-topic, but a friend of mine had an account at a bank that would only allow you to access your information if you could answer a particular question. You could set the question and answer to whatever you wanted. His question was:
"What are you wearing?"
His response?
"I don't think that's an appropriate question."
--Stephen
Well I would hope that at least we would expect 4 years in a bachelor's degree to give you some sort of skill, enough that 3 years of experience is certainly less than Bachelor's degree + 3 years of experience. It really depends on the Bachelor's degree too - a Bachelor's from University of Phoenix Online isn't going to match up to the Carnegie-Mellon or MIT Bachelor's degree.
It's just sad that students aren't being taught these days.
"All examining positions require at least a bachelor's degree in computer science, physical science or engineering"
Apparently a bachelor's degree ain't what it used to be...
--Stephen
You would have a point - but only if the directors were forced to release the movie with objectionable scenes removed from it. As it is, the movies are whole, in tact, and uncut.
As a viewer of said art, I should be allowed to do whatever the hell I want with it. I should be able to shut my eyes, plug my ears, place black paper over my TV screen, edit the movie so it is out of chronological order, remove the sound and replace it with Raffi's Greatest Hits, add a Pink Floyd album to the soundtrack of the movie, photoshop Jar Jar Binks into every scene, give the characters ultra-high voices, dub the movie into bad Japanese, splice that movie with another movie and make the ultimate Lord of the Rings/Star Wars crossover, add fart noises to the sound track, remove fart noises from the soundtrack, watch only my favorite scene over and over, watch the movie upside-down, watch the movie while inebriated, scratch the disk so that it skips on purpose, remove sex from the movie, add sex to the movie, and have sex with the movie.
It's my fucking DVD.
And no matter what vision the artist had, I am the audience and I am free to interpret that art in whatever way I see fit as long as I do not mess with the original piece of work. What RCA has done is give us a tool to easily remove boobies instead of going through the painstaking process of ripping it onto a computer, editing it, and then burning it onto a new DVD.
That's all.
Now if you'll excuse me, there's a movie I have to get back to...
--Stephen