Your statement about the British view of war versus the American view of war reminded me why Americans kick butt and why the British are only so-so.
See, Americans go into war with one objective: to win. They bring bigger guns, better trained forces, and strategies that will ensure complete and total victory with a minimum of casualties. The interaction with the people is more of an afterthought. After all, if you can't win, it doesn't matter how well you interact with the local populace.
The British treat it like it is a damn dress-up game. I've even heard that they take off their helmets and put on those ridiculous berets when they enter a city. They say it is to show respect. I think it is to do the Americans a favor and draw out the snipers. Sure, they may interact better with the people, but dead people aren't as nice as live ones.
And the British can joke about the Americans all they want. They came all dressed up in uniforms and organized neatly not too long ago. A bunch of farmers kicked them out for good. I don't think those farmers knew the first thing about manners, but you know what, it was only their skill with the musket that mattered.
And your silly comment about war not being a video game just isn't true anymore. Most of the killing and destruction is done from miles away in the cockpit of a jet fighter, from the cabin of a tank, or on board a missile carrier. It sure seems like a video game from that range.
I just had my second yesterday. I am trying to remember what life was like before the first, and I can't remember all the ways I had to change to adapt.
This sounds pretty basic, but it is more important than you think. Take time to be with your wife. She is going to go through an emotional roller-coaster ride and she needs you around to support her. If you can, go to the doctor visits with you and try to be as familiar with what she is going through as you can.
Also, after the baby is born, you have to come home after work and let her rest. She will be working with the baby 24x7 and every moment where someone else is watching the baby is a break for her.
If you get along with your parents or her parents pretty good, consider inviting them over to live with you for the first few months if it isn't too much of a problem. Having an extra hand and the extra experience is invaluable for both of you. I can't imagine raising the first baby through the first few months without my mother-in-law to tell us what is normal and how to deal with it.
I don't understand how you can attain super-star-scientist status just for discovering a new chemical.
I understand that DNA is supposed to be the programming code of almost every known "life" form (where life is considerable larger set than what most people think).
However, discovering that there is such a thing, and discovering the actual chemicals that make up such a thing, is as important as discovering that wires tend to conduct electricrity well.
The person who is able to actually decode the DNA code, and create any life form, will be the true super-star scientist.
I also think people overestimate the meaning of DNA. To some, it proves evolution. But to others, it is yet another example of an intelligent design (hence, designed by an intelligent being) of the universe around us.
I mean, if you were God, wouldn't you write a code that could be used to program up any animal imaginable?
So to me, the existence of something like DNA just reinforces my belief in God and the creation.
The notion of AI existing is heretical
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AI in Sci-Fi
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The human soul -- the combination of spirit (or mind) and body -- is a very unique thing in the known universe. While we can manipulate physical matter to create a body, we cannot manipulate physical matter to create a mind.
To admit that the human mind resides in and is dictated by physical matter is to admit that eveything we do is predetermined by the makeup of that mind and the environment it is embedded in. This means that we are not really human -- just machines playing out a predetermined life in a predetermined world. This means your life is meaningless, and what you do has no meaning.
Unfortunately, while we can relate thought processes to chemical and electrical patterns in the human body, we cannot find the seat of the human mind. It seems to reside everywhere, and yet nowhere in particular.
We are trying to answer a question that has been answered already. The question is "What are we?" The answer is that "We are gods." The teaching of Christ, Buddha, and every prophet in every culture affirms this. We are part spirit, and part matter. We are neither one or the other. We are the combination of the two, which is what a god is.
This brings meaning to our lives. We live in a sort of conflict between physical desires and spiritual desires. We struggle to conquer the physical with the spiritual. Our success will mean salvation, ascension, or enlightenment. That is the goal of all humankind, whether they know it or not. To conquer the physical is to enjoy true peace and happiness. To surrender to the physical brings discord and unhappiness.
Of course, some scientists refuse to believe this. They try to explain our existence based on purely physical concepts, ignoring the capacities of humankind to behave like gods. By refusing to believe this, they have replaced a life of struggle between physical and spiritual with a meaningless life.
To create meaning for themselves, they often hold knowledge as their ultimate goal, to replace that void. But what is an achievement of all-knowledge if it is not equivalent to salvation, ascension, or enlightenment? Are they not also seeking to become like an all-knowing God? Are they not also trying to conquer the physical with the mind?
If we are ever able to create an AI, we will affirm that we are not gods. We will affirm that our lives our meaningless. And we will affirm that we are merely robots playing out a life of nothingness in a universe of nothingness.
So the quest for AI is really a quest for understanding who we really are. If we can create AI, we have proved that we are nothing. If we cannot, we can still hope that there is more to our existence than what we see before our eyes.
So I predict that the end of the human race will come shortly after the creation of a true AI. Why? We will lose all meaning and thus no longer be human, but animals. There will be no reason to behave like gods anymore. This will lead to a self-destruction far worse than the self-destruction of humanity witnessed in Nazi Germany of Soviet Russia.
Re:Not as far fetched as it would seem
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AI in Sci-Fi
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, but blacks didn't become intelligent. They were intelligent all along. Many (certainly not all) people simply believed that they weren't, which was incorrect.
No one considers a machine intelligent. The designer, the implementor, and the user all agree that it is not intelligent.
There is no way a machine that has to be programmed to do every task can ever be considered intelligent. This means that there is no program that can be written to make a machine be intelligent. While the programs may simulate intelligence, or feign intelligence, they will only be following a pre-determined path.
Mankind will never need intelligent machine slaves. We want full control over the processes that the machines use to do things. We will never surrender that.
And you are right. Intelligent beings make horrible slaves. If you want to "get the most" out of an intelligent being, it must be granted full rights and privileges and treated as an equal.
I think it has to do with comfort and laziness. I've been programming in C/C++ for over 15 years, so obviously, if I have a programming task to tackle, I will lean towards using those languages. I can do a minimal amount of vb, so if I need to slap together a ui, I can, but not anything that did anything interesting. If I have a task, how much time should I spend learning a new language if that language is better suited for the task than a language I know? Since I'm new to this language, how much worse is the code going to be than what I could have written in a less suitable language?
There are other platforms than Microsoft. Microsoft tries to make programming apps that do something useful next to impossible.
Give another platform a go. You'll be surprised to learn that learning Python, or perl is actually much easier than learning VB. My background in C and C++ allowed me to pick up perl in a few weeks and Python in a few less.
If an open channel of communication between the developers and the management doesn't exist, there is nothing you can do to fix it. It is up to them.
Management has a tendency to slip into their own circles and forget about the little guys, even though it is the little guy that makes their company move forward. You have to be honest with them and communicate what is happening and how you feel about the situation, and provide suggestions for improvements. You have to work to keep those channels open. The minute they close, they are closed forever.
If you feel that you cannot do this, or if you have tried and failed, you have two options.
First, you can do what it takes to secure your job. Take all the money from your paycheck you can and stick it in the bank for that rainy day that is inevitable. Put out your resume and start contacting recruiters, using your lunch break to go to interviews. When you find a job, make sure they give you a good raise before jumping ship, if you can stand waiting for another job to show up.
The second option is to quit and look for employment elsewhere. You don't have to quit to go on a job search, but it helps to have more freetime if you want to start your own entrepeneurial endeavor. Make sure you have plenty of cash (6mos+ of bare minimum living).
Now, the key here is to quit in style. You go up to the CEO, or the board, if you know them, and tell them working conditions are unacceptable, and if something isn't done fast, there will be terrible consequences. You name names of managers you really don't like, and ones you do. You tell him to fire the managers that suck, and give raises to the managers that are cool. Don't leave out the CTO/CIO and department heads! You tell him what policy changes need to be implemented, or else.
You will likely lose your job for being so bold, unless you are personal friends with the CEO or members of the board. However, they will be the ones letting you go, and they will never fire you for being direct, but always for "economic reasons" or something harmless.
*DON'T* take out your frustration on the code or the systems you manage. We IT people need to maintain our integrity. One bad egg who does this will ruin all of our reputations forever.
I would have to agree with several previous posters, that Bash is the best. The reason why? It is powerful, it is popular, and it is easily scriptable.
ksh and zsh have their followers, but they tend to be older unix wizards who didn't ahve bash to cut their teeth on. They only keep using zsh and ksh because it is comfortable.
In the future, I am sure there will be more innovation done on Bash, and perhaps a few forks as well. I hope that the shell paradigm will be rethought from the beginning to the end. I don't have a solution, but I have a gut instinct that there is something better out there.
This shows the true colors of these protesters. They are not only aiding and abetting the enemy, they are actively attacking American interests, purposefully interfering with American commerce and trade, and disrupting and defacing American cities. What more can the enemy wish for? The only thing they can do worse is blowing up buildings, murdering our citizens, and assassinating our leaders.
I hope Ashcroft persecutes them to the full extent of the law. This kind of behavior is unacceptable and intolerable.
We cannot stand idly by while these war protestors hijack our country and interfere with our lives. This goes beyond free speech and moves towards terrorism. It is intolerable.
Am I equating the protestors with Al Quaeda and Saddam Hussein? Yes. Am I questioning their patriotism? Yes. Am I justified? You decide.
I am pretty excited about this. With this in place, space will be accessible to all at a reasonable price. Travel will be so much safer as well. No more tying yourself to a stick of dynamite with a hole at one end and lighting the fuse.
I wonder what kind of industries will spring from this. People may be able to get on an elevator, climb to several miles in the sky, strap on a parachute and jump off. Others may try to see how high they can climb under their own strength. Of course, the higher you go, the easier it will be to climb!
The reason why textbooks written for college have only one, two, or rarely, three or more authors is because there are only one or two people in the world who can write that book and get it 95% correct. It takes a lot of work to gather information together and bring it to a level appropriate for physics majors and electrical engineers alike. And the other thing: it isn't worth all the work to write that book. It is almost always a labor of love, or something the professor does exclusively besides actual research.
The reason why we have committes writing grade school and high school books is because the knowledge is very standard. There are hundreds of thousands of people that can write those books and get it 99% correct. The committee is used to put together a book that is going to serve the needs of a wide variety of teachers and teachin environments.
If you get a chance, get a hold of a teacher's copy of a grade school text and compare it with the teacher's copy (if any) of a college book. It is much more obvious that the grade school book is targeted at a variety of teaching methods and being pedantic, while the college book jsut focuses on being pedantic.
Wrist Protectors used to be important several years ago because the hardware was pretty flaky and very sensitive to even small static discharges. Nowadays, the hardware is built much more reliably. The truth is that you never really needed them in the first place. They were mostly a gimmick that gave you peace of mind.
I am always careful to "ground out" before I work on the internals. This is simply a matter of touching the case. This is sufficient, and I haven't had a problem yet.
There is something deeply poetic about math. The theorems read like well-rhymed versus. To a guy who appreciates math, "The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the sides" stirs up a bit of emotion like a well-written poem.
To a beginner, who hasn't travelled through the wilderness of multi-variable calculus (IE, finding the volume of a hypersphere by taking the integral of it in several dimensions), and who hasn't even seen the simple and elegant Linear Algebra in its full glory, math is still mysterious, and is seemingly unknowable.
The beginner thinks of math as "2x7" and "4x = 3". They know only a few theorems that make any sense at all. The expert sees how all the theorems interrelate. He sees just how important the ones he learned in High School really were. He sees the grand scheme of things, and it looks like a giant, beautiful fractal, except it is much more complicated, and much more intelligent in design.
I applaud his efforts. He is taking a very abstract subject in math -- one which I find very enjoyable -- and exposing it to the rest of the world for its beauty.
I have always been more of an abstract thinker (which is weird being a programmer.) As such, I have never gotten along very well with the subject.
<sarcasm> Yes, somehow there is something concrete and real about programming, but math is just way out there and totally wierd, with no correlation at all with reality. </sarcasm>
Dude, math, programming, physics, and almost any form of engineering are all abstract arts. We deal with invisible quantities that do magical things that have no correlation with reality. Heck, even music can fall into this arena of abstract arts.
Abstract thinkers make grade A programmers, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, engineers, etc...
That's right. All of us Free Software supporters are really just leeches.
We don't produce any new software, and we don't help the developers of current software.
We don't help out each other.
We are ungrateful for what we have.
Oh, wait, I was really describing the average Windows user.
Us Free Software users help failing companies like Madrake and Blender. Us Free Software users provide valuable bug reports and feedback to the developers. Us Free Software users find new and innovative ways to use existing software. And most of all, us Free software users produce and repair the existing software.
In case you have forgotten, this isn't Linux vs. Windows. This isn't even Unix vs. Windows. This is Free Software vs. Proprietary Software. Bill Gates started it. We're going to finish it. Linus might not acknowledge that this is a holy war. He is really saying that Free Software just makes sense. This has been the point of the Free Software community. This talk of "taking over the world" is said half in gest, half in seriousness.
We know that Free Software is the right way to go for everybody. Software should be free, just like speech is free. We are going to make all software Free Software, not by force, but by persuasion and example. We are going to win by winning the right way, and that way is by getting everyone to use Free Software because they want to.
When Linux becomes the dominant OS, when everyone and their grandmother says "What kind of crazy person would 'sell' software?", when IBM, SUN, Red Hat, and thousands of other companies, put trillions of dollars a year into development of Free Software, then it will be over. Then we can take to the streets and sign and dance and have a giant world-wide party.
This has been and will always be about reclaiming the glory days of computing, when software was a science and not a business, when revolutionary ideas were actually revolutionary, and when no one thought it made any sense to "sell" software.
Everone in the world is admitting Linux is a huge success. When windows became successful, people said, "See! It really does make sense to 'sell' software!" Well, when Linux is successful, and more successful that Windows, they will say, "Sorry, we were mistaken. Free Software has always been and will always be the better way to go."
Note: Remember, no one sells software. They sell permission to use that software. Think of that CD you just bought from MS as a ticket to a one-time showing at the movie theatre. In the end, you really don't have any rights at all with it.
If you fear the Microsoft tax, don't buy pre-assembled machines. Don't let the store put the machine together. Make sure you ask them if they have to pay Microsoft anything when they sell you the hardware. And be sure to tell them that you are using it to install Linux, That way, it will increase the likelihood that they will start buying explicitly Linux-Compatible stuff.
You might even ask them if they have your favorite distro there, even if it is obvious they don't. If they do, be sure to buy a copy, even if you already have one at home. You do this to ensure they will have the newest version when it comes out, and to get whatever extra support that comes with buying a distro.
It's so easy to make your own from the local computer store. You don't even need to wear those wrist protectors anymore.
Most Linux people I know do this because it is cheaper, you get hardware that works with Linux (if you do your homework), and your computer never shows up as a Windows install.
As far as the masses doing this -- yes, they already do it because they know they get more bang for the buck. When they see Linux on the shelves at the hardware store, they are going to be that much more likely to try it. And they can't go wrong because when you buy it, you get the free support.
I know several people who use Linux exclusively at home. Of course, I find jobs that principally use Linux and Free Software, and associate with people who love all things Linux I also try to get out and meet new people who use Perl, Python, and Linux. This helps tremendously.
I know people who are switching to Linux not because they are programmers, but because they want to be cool like us.;-) Or, in truth, they want to do cool things with their home networks like we do. They want to suck all the power they can get out of their old hardware.
Moral of the story: If you like Linux, and want to use more of it, go find a job working with Linux. Contrary to popular belief, they are out there and there are a lot of them. Of course, you'll have to get those skills up, so make sure you spend some time hanging out with the local Linux/Perl/Python User's Group and running Linux at home.
And if you can't find a job with Linux, set up your own company that uses Linux. It can be a web company, a software house, a consulting firm, any number of things.
Sure. Here are some of the tools in my IDE. What comparable tools do you have?
bash, perl, python, gcc, gdb, make, sed, awk, grep, find, sort, head, tail, touch, '|', vim, cat, cvs, patch, diff, ctags, ptags, pytags, and many more that I can't remember, but are always a few key-clicks away.
Whenever you restrict yourself to a GUI, you always have to remove valuable options because if you don't, the dialog box will have seven tabs and be the size of your desktop. This neuters the tools so they are completely ineffectual.
And as of yet, no one has come up with a simple way to take the output of one program and pipe it to another using some sort of gui. To all the shell users out there, I am talking about something as easy yet powerful as typing '|'.
When you use a text interface, you get a number of options that you remember as words, so you can say "list (ls) all files (-a) with all the info (-l) in human-readable format (-h)" rather than "click-click-drag-click-click-drag".
It's based on this wierd idea that humans are just better at talking than pointing. It's kind of revolutionary, I know, but it seems to hold true.
And you know what? When you teach regular folks who aren't programmers the power of shell, they seem to like it and can't imagine using a GUI to do their day-to-day work. It really is like standing upright and learning to "talk" with your computer rather than point at it and whine all day like a toddler.
1) So you're saying if Microsoft offered some money to someone to use only Microsoft there would be a lawsuit over it? I don't think so... People are allowed to use what they want. And if someone pays them to choose one way over the other, so be it. The lawsuits arise from Microsoft having a monopoly in the industry, and using illegal methods to protect it.
2) MS necessary in the workplace? I don't think so. I have long forgotten how windows works (haha, that's an oxymoron!) and it has actually increased my productivity in the workplace. At my last job, all the developers used linux, and only a few had microsoft on the desktop just to read word documents or use IE to test web pages.
I think you'll find your boss is pretty accomodating when you say, "Look, I've used Linux for all of my last jobs. I can't be productive with Windows. If you want to force me to use windows, then I can't perform my job. But if you allow me to install Linux, then I can get the job done the same way I've done it before."
And as far as harming their education by hiding windows for them... that is plain silly. Microsoft runs around preaching that they are the only way to get things done, and they ignore all the great software and software development tools out there. You'll be cutting yourself off of the most active and open development community the world has ever seen if you use Windows exclusively. I congratulate my teachers for teaching me about Unix and ANSI C and how real C compilers work, instead of trying to get me to use Visual Studio.
The two light beams in the Michaelson-Morley experiment do not affect one another. It is the superposition of the two beams that causes the interference patterns. Thus, when you add the effect of one beam to the effect of the other beam, you are left with a mysterious pattern that is dark in some areas and brighter in others. This would not happen if they somehow magically affected each other.
There are some very commonplace phenomena, such as the colors on a soap bubble or oil slick, which are the manifestation of interference of light. There are more fundamental experiments that can be done with lasers or radio waves to demonstrate interference.
Actually, if you do the experiment, there is a specific pinhole size at which you get the best image. Make the pinhole any smaller and the image starts getting blurrier because of diffraction effects which, loosely speaking, are due to the photons interfering with each other.
You seem to have a poorer understanding of physics than Reed.
The reason why you get different colors of light coming from a prism or soap bubble is not due to the light interfering with itself. It is due to the structure of the prism or soap bubble. The same goes for the pinhole.
And Schrodinger's equations predict interference phenomena only because when you superposition two waves on top of each other, they add in some places and subtract in others. The two waves that you are superpositioning are unaffected.
You just proved that you are the charlatan here. You fail to understand basic wave mechanics, which in most universities is taught at the freshman level. Quantum mechanics doesn't replace wave mechanics. It builds on top of it. You can't understand anything about quantum mechanics until you understand wave mechanics.
In the same light I think several hundred million people's piles of trash being perpetually burned would have the Global Warming people throwing fits. We make it faster than the atmosphere can reasonably take it in. That's a heck of a lot of CO2. A volcanic eruption of extremely fine particulate matter that never ceases. El Nino Grande anyone? Don't mess with the weather.
Balogna. The result of burning garbage doesn't necessarily have to be CO2. Plasma burners yield H20 after they are finished processing the H2 and CO that come out. Is H20 harmful to our planet? If so, we are in deep trouble, because there is far more H2O than we know what to do with! Or maybe it is the sand byproduct you are worried about. After all, where can we possible put millions of tons of sterile sand?
The result of just burning garbage without controlling the temperature or what exactly you were burning would be chemicals far worse than CO2 (and far worse than CO!). That's why you don't burn pop bottles and styrofoam in a campfire.
I read through most of the site, and I found it pretty balanced and objective.
When you compare Linux to Windows XP, it seems that we are not too far from having all the features we need to be wildly successful.
But when you compare Linux to OS X, it is obvious that we are so far from the goal. Even Windows XP looks like a joke compared to the things that OS X does.
I'm glad he put together all the little tidbits of the user interface and user experience. I think the Gnome and KDE developers are paying a lot of attention as well.
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Your statement about the British view of war versus the American view of war reminded me why Americans kick butt and why the British are only so-so.
See, Americans go into war with one objective: to win. They bring bigger guns, better trained forces, and strategies that will ensure complete and total victory with a minimum of casualties. The interaction with the people is more of an afterthought. After all, if you can't win, it doesn't matter how well you interact with the local populace.
The British treat it like it is a damn dress-up game. I've even heard that they take off their helmets and put on those ridiculous berets when they enter a city. They say it is to show respect. I think it is to do the Americans a favor and draw out the snipers. Sure, they may interact better with the people, but dead people aren't as nice as live ones.
And the British can joke about the Americans all they want. They came all dressed up in uniforms and organized neatly not too long ago. A bunch of farmers kicked them out for good. I don't think those farmers knew the first thing about manners, but you know what, it was only their skill with the musket that mattered.
And your silly comment about war not being a video game just isn't true anymore. Most of the killing and destruction is done from miles away in the cockpit of a jet fighter, from the cabin of a tank, or on board a missile carrier. It sure seems like a video game from that range.
I just had my second yesterday. I am trying to remember what life was like before the first, and I can't remember all the ways I had to change to adapt.
This sounds pretty basic, but it is more important than you think. Take time to be with your wife. She is going to go through an emotional roller-coaster ride and she needs you around to support her. If you can, go to the doctor visits with you and try to be as familiar with what she is going through as you can.
Also, after the baby is born, you have to come home after work and let her rest. She will be working with the baby 24x7 and every moment where someone else is watching the baby is a break for her.
If you get along with your parents or her parents pretty good, consider inviting them over to live with you for the first few months if it isn't too much of a problem. Having an extra hand and the extra experience is invaluable for both of you. I can't imagine raising the first baby through the first few months without my mother-in-law to tell us what is normal and how to deal with it.
I don't understand how you can attain super-star-scientist status just for discovering a new chemical.
I understand that DNA is supposed to be the programming code of almost every known "life" form (where life is considerable larger set than what most people think).
However, discovering that there is such a thing, and discovering the actual chemicals that make up such a thing, is as important as discovering that wires tend to conduct electricrity well.
The person who is able to actually decode the DNA code, and create any life form, will be the true super-star scientist.
I also think people overestimate the meaning of DNA. To some, it proves evolution. But to others, it is yet another example of an intelligent design (hence, designed by an intelligent being) of the universe around us.
I mean, if you were God, wouldn't you write a code that could be used to program up any animal imaginable?
So to me, the existence of something like DNA just reinforces my belief in God and the creation.
The human soul -- the combination of spirit (or mind) and body -- is a very unique thing in the known universe. While we can manipulate physical matter to create a body, we cannot manipulate physical matter to create a mind.
To admit that the human mind resides in and is dictated by physical matter is to admit that eveything we do is predetermined by the makeup of that mind and the environment it is embedded in. This means that we are not really human -- just machines playing out a predetermined life in a predetermined world. This means your life is meaningless, and what you do has no meaning.
Unfortunately, while we can relate thought processes to chemical and electrical patterns in the human body, we cannot find the seat of the human mind. It seems to reside everywhere, and yet nowhere in particular.
We are trying to answer a question that has been answered already. The question is "What are we?" The answer is that "We are gods." The teaching of Christ, Buddha, and every prophet in every culture affirms this. We are part spirit, and part matter. We are neither one or the other. We are the combination of the two, which is what a god is.
This brings meaning to our lives. We live in a sort of conflict between physical desires and spiritual desires. We struggle to conquer the physical with the spiritual. Our success will mean salvation, ascension, or enlightenment. That is the goal of all humankind, whether they know it or not. To conquer the physical is to enjoy true peace and happiness. To surrender to the physical brings discord and unhappiness.
Of course, some scientists refuse to believe this. They try to explain our existence based on purely physical concepts, ignoring the capacities of humankind to behave like gods. By refusing to believe this, they have replaced a life of struggle between physical and spiritual with a meaningless life.
To create meaning for themselves, they often hold knowledge as their ultimate goal, to replace that void. But what is an achievement of all-knowledge if it is not equivalent to salvation, ascension, or enlightenment? Are they not also seeking to become like an all-knowing God? Are they not also trying to conquer the physical with the mind?
If we are ever able to create an AI, we will affirm that we are not gods. We will affirm that our lives our meaningless. And we will affirm that we are merely robots playing out a life of nothingness in a universe of nothingness.
So the quest for AI is really a quest for understanding who we really are. If we can create AI, we have proved that we are nothing. If we cannot, we can still hope that there is more to our existence than what we see before our eyes.
So I predict that the end of the human race will come shortly after the creation of a true AI. Why? We will lose all meaning and thus no longer be human, but animals. There will be no reason to behave like gods anymore. This will lead to a self-destruction far worse than the self-destruction of humanity witnessed in Nazi Germany of Soviet Russia.
Yes, but blacks didn't become intelligent. They were intelligent all along. Many (certainly not all) people simply believed that they weren't, which was incorrect.
No one considers a machine intelligent. The designer, the implementor, and the user all agree that it is not intelligent.
There is no way a machine that has to be programmed to do every task can ever be considered intelligent. This means that there is no program that can be written to make a machine be intelligent. While the programs may simulate intelligence, or feign intelligence, they will only be following a pre-determined path.
Mankind will never need intelligent machine slaves. We want full control over the processes that the machines use to do things. We will never surrender that.
And you are right. Intelligent beings make horrible slaves. If you want to "get the most" out of an intelligent being, it must be granted full rights and privileges and treated as an equal.
There are other platforms than Microsoft. Microsoft tries to make programming apps that do something useful next to impossible.
Give another platform a go. You'll be surprised to learn that learning Python, or perl is actually much easier than learning VB. My background in C and C++ allowed me to pick up perl in a few weeks and Python in a few less.
If an open channel of communication between the developers and the management doesn't exist, there is nothing you can do to fix it. It is up to them.
Management has a tendency to slip into their own circles and forget about the little guys, even though it is the little guy that makes their company move forward. You have to be honest with them and communicate what is happening and how you feel about the situation, and provide suggestions for improvements. You have to work to keep those channels open. The minute they close, they are closed forever.
If you feel that you cannot do this, or if you have tried and failed, you have two options.
First, you can do what it takes to secure your job. Take all the money from your paycheck you can and stick it in the bank for that rainy day that is inevitable. Put out your resume and start contacting recruiters, using your lunch break to go to interviews. When you find a job, make sure they give you a good raise before jumping ship, if you can stand waiting for another job to show up.
The second option is to quit and look for employment elsewhere. You don't have to quit to go on a job search, but it helps to have more freetime if you want to start your own entrepeneurial endeavor. Make sure you have plenty of cash (6mos+ of bare minimum living).
Now, the key here is to quit in style. You go up to the CEO, or the board, if you know them, and tell them working conditions are unacceptable, and if something isn't done fast, there will be terrible consequences. You name names of managers you really don't like, and ones you do. You tell him to fire the managers that suck, and give raises to the managers that are cool. Don't leave out the CTO/CIO and department heads! You tell him what policy changes need to be implemented, or else.
You will likely lose your job for being so bold, unless you are personal friends with the CEO or members of the board. However, they will be the ones letting you go, and they will never fire you for being direct, but always for "economic reasons" or something harmless.
*DON'T* take out your frustration on the code or the systems you manage. We IT people need to maintain our integrity. One bad egg who does this will ruin all of our reputations forever.
I would have to agree with several previous posters, that Bash is the best. The reason why? It is powerful, it is popular, and it is easily scriptable.
ksh and zsh have their followers, but they tend to be older unix wizards who didn't ahve bash to cut their teeth on. They only keep using zsh and ksh because it is comfortable.
In the future, I am sure there will be more innovation done on Bash, and perhaps a few forks as well. I hope that the shell paradigm will be rethought from the beginning to the end. I don't have a solution, but I have a gut instinct that there is something better out there.
This goes beyond making us angry.
This shows the true colors of these protesters. They are not only aiding and abetting the enemy, they are actively attacking American interests, purposefully interfering with American commerce and trade, and disrupting and defacing American cities. What more can the enemy wish for? The only thing they can do worse is blowing up buildings, murdering our citizens, and assassinating our leaders.
I hope Ashcroft persecutes them to the full extent of the law. This kind of behavior is unacceptable and intolerable.
We cannot stand idly by while these war protestors hijack our country and interfere with our lives. This goes beyond free speech and moves towards terrorism. It is intolerable.
Am I equating the protestors with Al Quaeda and Saddam Hussein? Yes. Am I questioning their patriotism? Yes. Am I justified? You decide.
I am pretty excited about this. With this in place, space will be accessible to all at a reasonable price. Travel will be so much safer as well. No more tying yourself to a stick of dynamite with a hole at one end and lighting the fuse.
I wonder what kind of industries will spring from this. People may be able to get on an elevator, climb to several miles in the sky, strap on a parachute and jump off. Others may try to see how high they can climb under their own strength. Of course, the higher you go, the easier it will be to climb!
I'll bite.
The reason why textbooks written for college have only one, two, or rarely, three or more authors is because there are only one or two people in the world who can write that book and get it 95% correct. It takes a lot of work to gather information together and bring it to a level appropriate for physics majors and electrical engineers alike. And the other thing: it isn't worth all the work to write that book. It is almost always a labor of love, or something the professor does exclusively besides actual research.
The reason why we have committes writing grade school and high school books is because the knowledge is very standard. There are hundreds of thousands of people that can write those books and get it 99% correct. The committee is used to put together a book that is going to serve the needs of a wide variety of teachers and teachin environments.
If you get a chance, get a hold of a teacher's copy of a grade school text and compare it with the teacher's copy (if any) of a college book. It is much more obvious that the grade school book is targeted at a variety of teaching methods and being pedantic, while the college book jsut focuses on being pedantic.
Wrist Protectors used to be important several years ago because the hardware was pretty flaky and very sensitive to even small static discharges. Nowadays, the hardware is built much more reliably. The truth is that you never really needed them in the first place. They were mostly a gimmick that gave you peace of mind.
I am always careful to "ground out" before I work on the internals. This is simply a matter of touching the case. This is sufficient, and I haven't had a problem yet.
There is something deeply poetic about math. The theorems read like well-rhymed versus. To a guy who appreciates math, "The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the sides" stirs up a bit of emotion like a well-written poem.
To a beginner, who hasn't travelled through the wilderness of multi-variable calculus (IE, finding the volume of a hypersphere by taking the integral of it in several dimensions), and who hasn't even seen the simple and elegant Linear Algebra in its full glory, math is still mysterious, and is seemingly unknowable.
The beginner thinks of math as "2x7" and "4x = 3". They know only a few theorems that make any sense at all. The expert sees how all the theorems interrelate. He sees just how important the ones he learned in High School really were. He sees the grand scheme of things, and it looks like a giant, beautiful fractal, except it is much more complicated, and much more intelligent in design.
I applaud his efforts. He is taking a very abstract subject in math -- one which I find very enjoyable -- and exposing it to the rest of the world for its beauty.
<sarcasm>
Yes, somehow there is something concrete and real about programming, but math is just way out there and totally wierd, with no correlation at all with reality.
</sarcasm>
Dude, math, programming, physics, and almost any form of engineering are all abstract arts. We deal with invisible quantities that do magical things that have no correlation with reality. Heck, even music can fall into this arena of abstract arts.
Abstract thinkers make grade A programmers, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, engineers, etc...
Dude, I read that as "my mom called me via television" and I missed the punchline several times.
I need to go home now.
That's right. All of us Free Software supporters are really just leeches.
We don't produce any new software, and we don't help the developers of current software.
We don't help out each other.
We are ungrateful for what we have.
Oh, wait, I was really describing the average Windows user.
Us Free Software users help failing companies like Madrake and Blender. Us Free Software users provide valuable bug reports and feedback to the developers. Us Free Software users find new and innovative ways to use existing software. And most of all, us Free software users produce and repair the existing software.
Yes, we do need to *win*, and win big.
In case you have forgotten, this isn't Linux vs. Windows. This isn't even Unix vs. Windows. This is Free Software vs. Proprietary Software. Bill Gates started it. We're going to finish it. Linus might not acknowledge that this is a holy war. He is really saying that Free Software just makes sense. This has been the point of the Free Software community. This talk of "taking over the world" is said half in gest, half in seriousness.
We know that Free Software is the right way to go for everybody. Software should be free, just like speech is free. We are going to make all software Free Software, not by force, but by persuasion and example. We are going to win by winning the right way, and that way is by getting everyone to use Free Software because they want to.
When Linux becomes the dominant OS, when everyone and their grandmother says "What kind of crazy person would 'sell' software?", when IBM, SUN, Red Hat, and thousands of other companies, put trillions of dollars a year into development of Free Software, then it will be over. Then we can take to the streets and sign and dance and have a giant world-wide party.
This has been and will always be about reclaiming the glory days of computing, when software was a science and not a business, when revolutionary ideas were actually revolutionary, and when no one thought it made any sense to "sell" software.
Everone in the world is admitting Linux is a huge success. When windows became successful, people said, "See! It really does make sense to 'sell' software!" Well, when Linux is successful, and more successful that Windows, they will say, "Sorry, we were mistaken. Free Software has always been and will always be the better way to go."
Note: Remember, no one sells software. They sell permission to use that software. Think of that CD you just bought from MS as a ticket to a one-time showing at the movie theatre. In the end, you really don't have any rights at all with it.
If you fear the Microsoft tax, don't buy pre-assembled machines. Don't let the store put the machine together. Make sure you ask them if they have to pay Microsoft anything when they sell you the hardware. And be sure to tell them that you are using it to install Linux, That way, it will increase the likelihood that they will start buying explicitly Linux-Compatible stuff.
You might even ask them if they have your favorite distro there, even if it is obvious they don't. If they do, be sure to buy a copy, even if you already have one at home. You do this to ensure they will have the newest version when it comes out, and to get whatever extra support that comes with buying a distro.
It's so easy to make your own from the local computer store. You don't even need to wear those wrist protectors anymore.
Most Linux people I know do this because it is cheaper, you get hardware that works with Linux (if you do your homework), and your computer never shows up as a Windows install.
As far as the masses doing this -- yes, they already do it because they know they get more bang for the buck. When they see Linux on the shelves at the hardware store, they are going to be that much more likely to try it. And they can't go wrong because when you buy it, you get the free support.
I know several people who use Linux exclusively at home. Of course, I find jobs that principally use Linux and Free Software, and associate with people who love all things Linux I also try to get out and meet new people who use Perl, Python, and Linux. This helps tremendously.
;-) Or, in truth, they want to do cool things with their home networks like we do. They want to suck all the power they can get out of their old hardware.
I know people who are switching to Linux not because they are programmers, but because they want to be cool like us.
Moral of the story: If you like Linux, and want to use more of it, go find a job working with Linux. Contrary to popular belief, they are out there and there are a lot of them. Of course, you'll have to get those skills up, so make sure you spend some time hanging out with the local Linux/Perl/Python User's Group and running Linux at home.
And if you can't find a job with Linux, set up your own company that uses Linux. It can be a web company, a software house, a consulting firm, any number of things.
Sure. Here are some of the tools in my IDE. What comparable tools do you have?
bash, perl, python, gcc, gdb, make, sed, awk, grep, find, sort, head, tail, touch, '|', vim, cat, cvs, patch, diff, ctags, ptags, pytags, and many more that I can't remember, but are always a few key-clicks away.
Whenever you restrict yourself to a GUI, you always have to remove valuable options because if you don't, the dialog box will have seven tabs and be the size of your desktop. This neuters the tools so they are completely ineffectual.
And as of yet, no one has come up with a simple way to take the output of one program and pipe it to another using some sort of gui. To all the shell users out there, I am talking about something as easy yet powerful as typing '|'.
When you use a text interface, you get a number of options that you remember as words, so you can say "list (ls) all files (-a) with all the info (-l) in human-readable format (-h)" rather than "click-click-drag-click-click-drag".
It's based on this wierd idea that humans are just better at talking than pointing. It's kind of revolutionary, I know, but it seems to hold true.
And you know what? When you teach regular folks who aren't programmers the power of shell, they seem to like it and can't imagine using a GUI to do their day-to-day work. It really is like standing upright and learning to "talk" with your computer rather than point at it and whine all day like a toddler.
1) So you're saying if Microsoft offered some money to someone to use only Microsoft there would be a lawsuit over it? I don't think so... People are allowed to use what they want. And if someone pays them to choose one way over the other, so be it. The lawsuits arise from Microsoft having a monopoly in the industry, and using illegal methods to protect it.
2) MS necessary in the workplace? I don't think so. I have long forgotten how windows works (haha, that's an oxymoron!) and it has actually increased my productivity in the workplace. At my last job, all the developers used linux, and only a few had microsoft on the desktop just to read word documents or use IE to test web pages.
I think you'll find your boss is pretty accomodating when you say, "Look, I've used Linux for all of my last jobs. I can't be productive with Windows. If you want to force me to use windows, then I can't perform my job. But if you allow me to install Linux, then I can get the job done the same way I've done it before."
And as far as harming their education by hiding windows for them... that is plain silly. Microsoft runs around preaching that they are the only way to get things done, and they ignore all the great software and software development tools out there. You'll be cutting yourself off of the most active and open development community the world has ever seen if you use Windows exclusively. I congratulate my teachers for teaching me about Unix and ANSI C and how real C compilers work, instead of trying to get me to use Visual Studio.
The two light beams in the Michaelson-Morley experiment do not affect one another. It is the superposition of the two beams that causes the interference patterns. Thus, when you add the effect of one beam to the effect of the other beam, you are left with a mysterious pattern that is dark in some areas and brighter in others. This would not happen if they somehow magically affected each other.
You seem to have a poorer understanding of physics than Reed.
The reason why you get different colors of light coming from a prism or soap bubble is not due to the light interfering with itself. It is due to the structure of the prism or soap bubble. The same goes for the pinhole.
And Schrodinger's equations predict interference phenomena only because when you superposition two waves on top of each other, they add in some places and subtract in others. The two waves that you are superpositioning are unaffected.
You just proved that you are the charlatan here. You fail to understand basic wave mechanics, which in most universities is taught at the freshman level. Quantum mechanics doesn't replace wave mechanics. It builds on top of it. You can't understand anything about quantum mechanics until you understand wave mechanics.
Balogna. The result of burning garbage doesn't necessarily have to be CO2. Plasma burners yield H20 after they are finished processing the H2 and CO that come out. Is H20 harmful to our planet? If so, we are in deep trouble, because there is far more H2O than we know what to do with! Or maybe it is the sand byproduct you are worried about. After all, where can we possible put millions of tons of sterile sand?
The result of just burning garbage without controlling the temperature or what exactly you were burning would be chemicals far worse than CO2 (and far worse than CO!). That's why you don't burn pop bottles and styrofoam in a campfire.
I read through most of the site, and I found it pretty balanced and objective.
When you compare Linux to Windows XP, it seems that we are not too far from having all the features we need to be wildly successful.
But when you compare Linux to OS X, it is obvious that we are so far from the goal. Even Windows XP looks like a joke compared to the things that OS X does.
I'm glad he put together all the little tidbits of the user interface and user experience. I think the Gnome and KDE developers are paying a lot of attention as well.