Sorry, the guy is a brilliant computer game engine maker, but he wouldn't know a good game if it bit him where the sun doesn't shine.
They've never heard of the word "gameplay", never played Nethack or Angband, thus they do not know their roots and in general, they have no clue.
Like many others, I was astonished at how great the engine was, how smooth and pretty and how there was no load time, etc...but THE GAME??? What about the GAME? Where is the gameplay?
I'm not going to buy DS2 unless the reviews rave about *gameplay*.
I just wanted to post my thanks here to everyone who participated in this discussion. I feel like my mind has changed (I feel like I am becoming more jaded and more cynical) as a result of it. It is definitely food for thought. Thank you!
I'm not insulted at all. "Naive" is just another way of saying "lacks information". And I wouldn't be asking if I didn't lack information.:)
Thanks for setting me straight. So, it looks like there is very little idealism left at the U. It seems like a mercenery camp in a sense, or like a RnD arm of a corp, like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc.
This again goes back to what I was saying. We need to dump the U.s, meaning, let them become what they truly are. Let the U.s IPO and enter the free market the same way as corps do and let them be completely commercial and let's stop pretending that this is about Science. This way at least the charade will end. Because there are many (I think) young people who are deceived by all this. I'm not that young now, and even my view was skewed. I've had my suspicions, but reading some accounts here has made the hair on my neck stand up. Like the post here about biotech research, that's insane. It's downright spooky to me, like it's from some Sci. Fi. book or something.
The fact that my tax money sponsors this cr*p does not make me a happy camper.
Don't take this personally now, I blame this on pervasive human weaknesses like laziness, passivity (qualities which I humbly admit to myself), "It won't hurt any if I screw just this one little bit.", etc. The only people who stand up for their rights it seems are the one's with the money. They seem to value and treasure what they have. But the ones with ideals do not seem to value or treasure their ideals as much as those with the money treasure the money. So the financial interests end up controlling things, and the scientists basically let them.
Because to not let the financial interests control things, you'd need to make a sacrifice and to have some backbone and principles. I can't say I have these in abundance in myself, but at least, I think we should praise and value such things. In other words, I think those things, like say, Scientific ideals and ethos, are worth striving for.
Ok, please tell me, if you can, how does Philosophy of Science (and in particular, Ethics) deal with NDA's?
Isn't it a little screwy? Isn't the whole point of U. is to resist the political and monetary pressure so as to create a haven for research where thinkers are allowed and even encouraged to be free?
See, this goes back to recent posts I made. It looks to me like U.'s are going down the toylet. I'm always open for suggestions, information and other input (brick on the head, cluestick, etc.). So I am asking here in hopes of getting an answer that will make me think this way, "Aha, yes I see that NDA is a perfectly accetable practice for a scientific researcher, because of _____, and it does not indeed conflict with the ethos of Science." I'm looking for some Aha here, but all I get are vague answer that if anything, just make my current opinions stronger.
I understand that money is needed. The real question is this:
Is it better to do closed research for money or is it better to do no closed research at all? And when you answer, you might as well answer this, "Better for whom and how?"
Who is "THEY"? The U.? The sponsor? Is there some pressure on the U.? What is the source of the pressure? Why is the U. interested in NDA? What if they don't get an NDA, what do they lose?
For the uninformed ones like me, why exactly are you required to sign an NDA? Isn't science based on sharing information? What am I missing here? How can a researcher be told how to run their research? I don't understand where that power comes from.
I never thought of Medicine as a trade, and it was an interesting way to see it. Admittedly, it is one very complex and very risky trade.
I don't know what the ideal solution would be like. But anything that would make Universities more affordable (or free), and anything that would make take the rote boredom away from them, I'm all for it. When I was at a U. I wanted to participate in research and I asked about it. They told me I cannot, because I don't have a prerequisite class. Blah. I knew everything that the prerequisite class had to offer (heck, I helped people do homework for that class), and if not, then why not let me bump my own head on it, and let me quit on my own or let me learn it. I just hate artificial limits. Or homework. How much of it is just rote garbage? I mean, if you need to be skilled in applying integral transformations, you'll learn that skill as the need arises. What's the point of drilling ppl on doing these transformations quickly (as opposed to slowly) when you will forget them all anyway and never use them again in your field? Here I much prefer the Russian way to teach Mathematics. Russians focus on proofs and understanding and not on the speed and memory skills. There is a lot of rote exercise in Russian Math. too, but it shocked me that even at U. level no one learns proofs and no one learns how to construct their own proof! Shock! That's what Math is about. I guess grad students get to do it, but in Russia kids do it in 5th grade already.
Education can be so much fun if done right. But it's plagued by professors who don't care (or openly hostile) about students, students who cheat and get away with it all the time (which lowers morale for honest students), endless beurocracy, and military type discipline where learning is best encourages by gameplay-like mentality. I want an environment where cheating is irrelevant, or where learning is so fun that no one even thinks to cheat. We learn best when we play, but many U.'s regiment of homework is like a whipping stick, all boring, all work, 100% chore and no learning or play is involved, but usually all memorization and other kinds of rote.
I somewhat enjoyed my English and Philo homework in those rare cases where I had to think about something interesting. There is way too much garbage being studied in English. Who cares if it's considered 'classic' by some crusty old farts from 100 years ago? Is it interesting and relevant today? Why not let me discover it on my own and not shove it down my throat?
I think it could be so much better, but unfortunately, I don't think there are any U.s or Colleges like what I envision. I've been to more than one, and I've heard accounts from many friends of the others, and my opinion is that they all suck, more or less, or if they don't suck, I can't afford it, or I can't get in perhaps (gotten in everywhere I applied last time). Oh well.
I'm all for the environments. I think University is not much different from a Monastery. In Tibet, to get a certain Buddhist degree, you often have to spend 20-30 years of very, very rigorous study. Perhaps we can say it is a lot more rigorous than any study in any Western University. This is just one example. The thing is, when a person enters into a monastery, it is done as an act of renunciation and not as an act of self-aggrandizement with great potential for profit seeking. There is humbleness in the monastery, but only big fat egos in the University. It costs either nothing or relatively little to enter into a monastery, but it costs and arm and a leg to enter into a University.
So what I am saying is this.
Let the profit seekers seek profit. Let them flow in their own way. Let the learners seek learning. Let THEM flow in their own way. There will always be people dedicated to knowledge and wisdom. If we took a University system away, this would not stop being so.
University system is confused. On one hand, it's like a Monastery because it takes you away from lay life and it requires your full attention. On the other hand, it is full of profit seekers, who don't care a rats ass about learning, but just want to get the paper. There are some people in the middle who want to learn a thing or two, but really are thinking of how useful it will be to make money later.
The problem is that mixing all these various motivations in one place produces bad results. Pure learners are very pissed at profit seekers who do anything just to pass a class. Profit seeking professors who do half-assed work just to get by day to day also piss off the idealistic students who want to learn for learning's sake. Idealistic professors are put off by students who just take their class cause someone said so and who otherwise don't give a rat's behind about subject matter.
It's a bad mix. It's an unnatural tangle. Business wants to be assured that a person is qualified. I understand that. There is also another set of people who know what Science is about, and that Science is not about profit or ego-promotion and that's why Scientists are supposed to SHARE their information and not hoard it for themselves. Business promotes and rewards trade secrets. I believe that a free market can untangle this, under one condition, and create environments that are good for various purposes. The condition is that people must agree, basically, to what I am saying here.;) And that's why I post it. I hope to create this condition. Because you can't agree to something prior to thinking about it. So, I hope people do think about this.
We can all get what we want. We do not need to step on each others' toes. Business influence is corrupting and ruining the Universities. Universities are very confused about what it is they are and what their goals are. Is it profit? Is it science? Is it sports? You can't always have all of the above. In programming, we always praise modular systems where each module is small and does one task best, as opposed to doing a hundred tasks in a mediocre way. Why wouldn't we praise the same concept again? I don't think Universities are awake and aware enouh to get unconfused on their own.
To respond to your other claim, yes, I am a little bitter. I kept thinking that University is about learning, but no one gave a damn except me and a few rare individual professors. Finally I threw my hands up in disgust. I just couldn't take all the charade and pretense. From what I hear others say, that's how most of it is. I realize the evidence is anecdotal, but so is yours (unless you're too lazy to share a citation). I share my experience. People always tell me this, "it's the system, you just have to suck it up, tighten your belt and just do it, even though you may not like it, etc. you need that paper."
But while I admit to some bitterness, let me remark further. If we considered valid only the kind of critique where we had either positive or neutral feelings about the subject, then we would have no way to critique a significant portion of what we experience. That means we would be blind in regard to, roughly, half of our experience. For where there is joy, there is also suffering. If there is light, there must also be dark. If some people are tall, some must be short.
Feelings are what they are. Just because I feel bad about something does not mean I have switched off my critical thinking ability and that I am now spouting irrational nonsense.
I think Daniel made a very wise decision. Gentoo is his child, and it looks like the child is reaching maturity and it's time for Gentoo to move out of the parents' house.
I know that the rigor is lacking in most cert classes. And plus, most certs are tests, while I am thinking more of apprenticeship kind of ideas. I am thinking of rigorous learning that can produce Ph.D. level research. Certs do not do that and I doubt they can.
My guess is that it's a problem of cultural inertia. No one (more or less) sees the current University system as "broken". I just think that's too bad. I think it is broken and I post here in hopes that more people will come to see it the way I do.:)
Bullshit. You cannot get a degree without a minimum requisite of courses outside your focus. That's like saying that Nazi Germany ALLOWED Jews to enter into the concentration camps. Right, right, but Jews chose to live in Germany of their own free will, right. I hear ya. You get what you pay for.
Again, I applaud well-roundedness, but I sneer at how it is "accomplished" by the University system, or maybe I should say, non-accomplished, because it's a farce, and I have seen the farce first hand.
I beg to differ. I fully support environments where people do nothing but learn. For example, I fully support the idea of monasteries. But monasteries are created by demand. People volunteer to go to one because they feel that lay life is not rigorous enough for learning what they want to learn. And being a monk/nun is not a requirement anywhere. It's something that a person does to expand themselves and all the monasteries are different and unique and are not driven in a Communist-like way.
I know I took this discussion slightly to the "left" or "south" with my example, but I hope you see my point here. Let there be environments. Let there be whatever comes. Let's have faith that demand and people will do the right thing. Let's not FORCE them. Currently, the way our culture is set up, University degree is almost forced, but it's very expensive, and often produces an indentured servant. And I simply question the goodness of that. I've seen people who cannot even write a "hello world" C program that compiles and runs graduate brilliantly out of the University. Sad. Monolithic structure does not equal quality. In fact, I think it lowers quality, because people just don't care about education, because all the "well rounded" classes are foisted on them by the system, and they really don't want to be there, but they need the paper.
I respect learning and I think education is what every man needs to have. I just don't think University system is the way to go.
This is the "Jeff Bezos" approach to education. Invest, invest, invest, and through sheer overwhelming size, win. Where is the "Ben and Jerry's" approach? Where is the "it must be profitable from the start and grow naturally from there" approach? I find that this, to my mind, more valid and more sustainable approach, is completely missing from formal education.
Too bad. You can check my post history, I am no market fundamentalist by any means, but I think that our educational system is rampantly "pinko commie" in a bad way. I wish we could bring some Capitalist and some free market ideas into our education. Down with Universities. Down with monolothic "learn everything at once ahead of time , everything decreed by the State^H^H^H^H^HUniversity as 'good to know'". Forget that. Let learning come in bursts on demand. Let learning match the demand in a natural way. Isn't necessity the mother of invention? Let the necessity drive education in a more Capitalist way. Let people pay for tutors, for classes, and let them pay for what they really need to know.
This is kind of what certs are, but the problem is that most certs are dumb and so they have a very bad perception in the market. Why won't market come up with something credible, something equally or even more credible than a University, something that produces Ph.D. level research, something trustworthy and yet something that does not smack of Communism like our University system that hails from the stone age and that has not evolved much? In a way, our free market is saying that "centrally planned communism is ideal for education", but is it really? Of course I never believed that market was fully rational or efficient or driven by enlightened self-interest.
I have little pity on AC's that don't sign their posts. Especially it irks me when AC's post about courage and things like that while part of their assumed name is "coward". You know, you're not the only AC that does this. It seems to happen once in a while. I post as AC sometimes, but I never berate people while in AC mode and I don't exhort them to courage that way.
You don't need an account. You can sign your post even if you write it on the bathroom wall.
Generally I respect anonymous posters. I just don't think it's their place to call other people "pussies". So you broke your humility rule and you acted like a double hypocrite, first calling people "pussies" and second, doing it as AC without signing your post. Fooo-eeyy.
You are quite proud of yourself, aren't you? You sure sound that way. Well, pride doesn't impress everyone. Do you realize that not everyone defines success the same way as you? For some people, being a "formiddable professional" is precisely what failure is. Open your rusty, creaky mind. There is more to life than "success".
I've read your link and the algorithm is indeed succeptible to the man in the middle attach. The thing is, if Alice (sender) and Bob (receiver) communicate the right way, they can reduce the chance of the man in the middle attach succeeding. That doesn't mean that an attack is impossible. So in other words, this is very similar to current algorithms. They all reduce the chances but none of them are utterly bullet proof, except maybe one time pads or something insane like that.
Here, let me quote the bit that explain how the man in the middle attack can succeed:
This provides a way for Alice and Bob to arrive at a shared key without publicly announcing any of the bits. If an eavesdropper Eve tries to gain information about the key by intercepting the photons as they are transmitted from Alice to Bob, measuring their polarization, and then resending them so Bob does receive a message, then since Eve, like Bob, has no idea which basis Alice uses to transmit each photon, she too must choose bases at random for her measurements. If she chooses the correct basis, and then sends Bob a photon matching the one she measures, all is well. However, if she chooses the wrong basis, she will then see a photon in one of the two directions she is measuring, and send it to Bob. If Bob's basis matches Alice's (and thus is different from Eve's), he is equally likely to measure either direction for the photon. However, if Eve had not interfered, he would have been guaranteed the same measurement as Alice. In fact, in this intercept/resend scenario, Eve will corrupt 25 percent of the bits [7]. So if Alice and Bob publicly compare some of the bits in their key that should have been correctly measured and find no discrepancies, they can conclude that Eve has learned nothing about the remaining bits, which can be used as the secret key. Alternatively, Alice and Bob can agree publicly on a random subset of their bits, and compare the parities. The parities will differ in 50 percent of the cases if the bits have been intercepted. By doing 20 parity checks, Alice and Bob can reduce the probability of an eavesdropper remaining undetected to less than one in a million [8].
It is of course crucial that they do not discuss the orientation of the polarization filters until after the message has been sent, or Eve could use this to intercept and resend the photons correctly.
I think you make a great point. I just wanted to add my 2 cents.
It's not just about hoarding. Many rich people don't have all that much ready to spend cash (but still way, way more than I can dream about). It's all about control. A rich person has a lot of say on who does what, what goes where, what gets developed and what is canned, and so on. They get streets named after themselves or their properties. Some use their own name as a brand name in an ultimate display of vainglory. They have the ear of other rich people and they form a social network that's not very accessible to "regular" folks. So not only do they have control over their own "domain", but they greatly impact "domains" of other rich people via their decisions and social communication.
This kind of problem is a problem of culture in my opinion. It's only solvable via education and evolution. People have to see in their hearts the damage they do with their selfishness and unrestrained ambition. Because as we well know, when one set of people tries to control another set of people by political power, it doesn't work. That change has to come from the inside of each person.
When a company employs someone, they're buying a service from them. They're paying their own money. They should get to decide what they buy and who they buy it from.
This is a simplistic statement. Sorry. It doesn't work that way. We do not have absolute freedom to spend our money how we want. I'll give you a blatantly obvious example. I am not morally free to hire someone to kill you. Of course, this is an extreme. But between extremes there are always gray areas.
Just because you have earned some money does not mean you have earned the right to spend them however you wish. You can buy toys, but you cannot (ethically) invest in scams. You can spend it all on burgers and get fat, but you cannot spend it to block access to food to someone else.
We usually say that we are free to spend our money however we want, but this assumes "as long as it doesn't harm our society".
The alternative is that people are forced into arrangements against their will -- which is morally wrong, ethically wrong, and not a stable way to organize a society, regardless of how much "it's all connected".
Again, this is incorrect. You have a simplistic view of the supremacy of personal will. In reality, neither ethically nor practically is this the case. Just because someone wills something does not mean it comes to be. That's because there are limitations in the world. I cannot fly by flapping my hands just because I want to. Not in this world.
From the ethical standpoint, there will always be a difference of opinion among individuals. There will always be limited resources. Individuals will always share space. As long as all this is true, there will always be some kind of compromise. Your only choice is lawlessness and law. In a lawless society compromise is less free because there are fewer options. In a lawful society there are more options for compromise, but compromise is not strictly voluntary there either. The very meaning of compromise is sacrifice.
For example, there used to be no Copyright law. The public has compromised their freedom to copy things for a time in order to spur more book authors into publishing more books.
There will never be and can never be a single personal will that is free beyond all constraint. If there was, such will would be God's and not human.
Diamond Age sounds like a book I should read. I just might take your advice.
I still have to finish John C. Wright's trilogy. I'm reading The Golden Transcendence now. And John C. Wright was also a very slow starter for me. I almost stopped reading in the middle of the first book, but somehow he did manage to keep my attention and then things got much better. Phaethon is an awesome character, even though I don't want to be like him (he's too ambitious, imo, or not ambitious enough, depending on how I look at it). It's probably not hard core enough if you like Neal though, because the nanotech as depicted by John C. Wright will probably never happen. But I digress.
He makes digging a mine shaft fun and interesting.
I guess someone like me likes to mentally step back every page or two and ask myself, what is it am I reading here? If the answer is "really, this is about digging a mine shaft" then I am very much underwhelmed. If Neal can somehow manage to open a new facet of a human soul by describing such rote activity with equally rote prose, but nay....he cannot. It's just mindless self-absorbed rambling to me.
What I hear from you is that you find this book entertaining but not insightful. And you appear to be entertained by little trivial things. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, mind you. I can relate. I sometimes have great insight stearing at a pebble on the road. So, I suppose if your mind is open enough you can make any bad book into a good one by adding your own effort to it. Fair enough.
But I just say, why bother, when you can add your own effort to a more worthy book?
I really think most people are just drooling over Neal because he can (supposedly) use EMACS and because he knows what Perl is. But who cares? As a CS dork, I really don't care about these things when it comes to book authors. I can read a Perl manual if I want to be impressed by someone's knowledge of Perl. If I want to be impressed with Perl I go read Larry and Damian.
What I am going to say sounds very strange even to myself, but I wish geeks would not produce literary works. Really. It's fine to be a geek, but geeks have little insight into deep human issues. If you are a geek and you think of writing a non-computer-manual type book, please do everyone a favor and drop your silly geekiness and write as one human to another and not as one geek to another geek.
It's so typical for a geek to drown in detail and trivia and to miss the bigger picture. I think there is a spark of talent somewhere in Neal. After all, I think Snowcrash was very promising. But Neal's tilt and ego are killing him I think.
It's fun to rant isn't it?:) You know nothing about me bro. I'll clue you in. I was raised in Ukraine where we only had 3 TV channels and we pretty much didn't watch TV except once a week or so, unless you count parents watching news every day at 9pm. I want to insult you, but I won't.
Nice. I was looking for some reply like this. So, if I understand you correctly, people enjoy how Neal peppers his work with various historical accuracies.
That's basically it, right? So, if I think that historical accuracies are not all that interesting or insightful without a proper context, then I feel justified in not liking Neal's work.
For example, a great work that masterfully blends history and fiction is The Count of Monte Cristo. I have read a Russian translation of this masterpiece and I think there is not a finer book that entertains, teaches history, and gives such deep insight into people's souls, all at the same time. Not a single word is out of place, not a single description is irrelevant. It all fits and clicks together and pages just turn and turn themselves. The book practically reads itself. Neal has, in my opinion, a loooooonnggggg loonnggg way to go to reach this level of mastery. Heck, I shouldn't even try to compare him with Dumas, they don't play in the same leage.
It's not enough to just sprinkle various historically accurate tidbits in order to create a worthy work of art.
Why do we read? I suggest that few people read to gather trivia. We read mainly for two reasons: for entertainment and for insight (and by "insight" I mean deep things, things of the soul, and not trivial "insight" that is often tinkered with in Sci-Fi books, like "if we had 3 brains instead of one, we'd be like this", yuck). So, Snowcrash is entertaining and it is somewhat insightful. In particular, I think we can all relate to the political commentary it makes. But it does very little to expand human soul at the deepest levels. So it's mostly a fun book. I don't think I am a snob and I do read for fun. I don't care if the book is insightful if it's fun. But by G-D, if the book is not fun, it better be insightful and it better not spam me with trivia.
Ok, admittedly I am a CS dork, and so my opinion doesn't really count, but here it is anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, the guy is a brilliant computer game engine maker, but he wouldn't know a good game if it bit him where the sun doesn't shine.
They've never heard of the word "gameplay", never played Nethack or Angband, thus they do not know their roots and in general, they have no clue.
Like many others, I was astonished at how great the engine was, how smooth and pretty and how there was no load time, etc...but THE GAME??? What about the GAME? Where is the gameplay?
I'm not going to buy DS2 unless the reviews rave about *gameplay*.
I just wanted to post my thanks here to everyone who participated in this discussion. I feel like my mind has changed (I feel like I am becoming more jaded and more cynical) as a result of it. It is definitely food for thought. Thank you!
I'm not insulted at all. "Naive" is just another way of saying "lacks information". And I wouldn't be asking if I didn't lack information. :)
Thanks for setting me straight. So, it looks like there is very little idealism left at the U. It seems like a mercenery camp in a sense, or like a RnD arm of a corp, like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc.
This again goes back to what I was saying. We need to dump the U.s, meaning, let them become what they truly are. Let the U.s IPO and enter the free market the same way as corps do and let them be completely commercial and let's stop pretending that this is about Science. This way at least the charade will end. Because there are many (I think) young people who are deceived by all this. I'm not that young now, and even my view was skewed. I've had my suspicions, but reading some accounts here has made the hair on my neck stand up. Like the post here about biotech research, that's insane. It's downright spooky to me, like it's from some Sci. Fi. book or something.
The fact that my tax money sponsors this cr*p does not make me a happy camper.
Don't take this personally now, I blame this on pervasive human weaknesses like laziness, passivity (qualities which I humbly admit to myself), "It won't hurt any if I screw just this one little bit.", etc. The only people who stand up for their rights it seems are the one's with the money. They seem to value and treasure what they have. But the ones with ideals do not seem to value or treasure their ideals as much as those with the money treasure the money. So the financial interests end up controlling things, and the scientists basically let them.
Because to not let the financial interests control things, you'd need to make a sacrifice and to have some backbone and principles. I can't say I have these in abundance in myself, but at least, I think we should praise and value such things. In other words, I think those things, like say, Scientific ideals and ethos, are worth striving for.
Ok, please tell me, if you can, how does Philosophy of Science (and in particular, Ethics) deal with NDA's?
Isn't it a little screwy? Isn't the whole point of U. is to resist the political and monetary pressure so as to create a haven for research where thinkers are allowed and even encouraged to be free?
See, this goes back to recent posts I made. It looks to me like U.'s are going down the toylet. I'm always open for suggestions, information and other input (brick on the head, cluestick, etc.). So I am asking here in hopes of getting an answer that will make me think this way, "Aha, yes I see that NDA is a perfectly accetable practice for a scientific researcher, because of _____, and it does not indeed conflict with the ethos of Science." I'm looking for some Aha here, but all I get are vague answer that if anything, just make my current opinions stronger.
I understand that money is needed. The real question is this:
Is it better to do closed research for money or is it better to do no closed research at all? And when you answer, you might as well answer this, "Better for whom and how?"
Who is "THEY"? The U.? The sponsor? Is there some pressure on the U.? What is the source of the pressure? Why is the U. interested in NDA? What if they don't get an NDA, what do they lose?
Answer my question full heartedly please.
You failed to connect this to the NDA being a requirement.
For the uninformed ones like me, why exactly are you required to sign an NDA? Isn't science based on sharing information? What am I missing here? How can a researcher be told how to run their research? I don't understand where that power comes from.
Hardly anyone keeps their mod points that long. :)
I never thought of Medicine as a trade, and it was an interesting way to see it. Admittedly, it is one very complex and very risky trade.
I don't know what the ideal solution would be like. But anything that would make Universities more affordable (or free), and anything that would make take the rote boredom away from them, I'm all for it. When I was at a U. I wanted to participate in research and I asked about it. They told me I cannot, because I don't have a prerequisite class. Blah. I knew everything that the prerequisite class had to offer (heck, I helped people do homework for that class), and if not, then why not let me bump my own head on it, and let me quit on my own or let me learn it. I just hate artificial limits. Or homework. How much of it is just rote garbage? I mean, if you need to be skilled in applying integral transformations, you'll learn that skill as the need arises. What's the point of drilling ppl on doing these transformations quickly (as opposed to slowly) when you will forget them all anyway and never use them again in your field? Here I much prefer the Russian way to teach Mathematics. Russians focus on proofs and understanding and not on the speed and memory skills. There is a lot of rote exercise in Russian Math. too, but it shocked me that even at U. level no one learns proofs and no one learns how to construct their own proof! Shock! That's what Math is about. I guess grad students get to do it, but in Russia kids do it in 5th grade already.
Education can be so much fun if done right. But it's plagued by professors who don't care (or openly hostile) about students, students who cheat and get away with it all the time (which lowers morale for honest students), endless beurocracy, and military type discipline where learning is best encourages by gameplay-like mentality. I want an environment where cheating is irrelevant, or where learning is so fun that no one even thinks to cheat. We learn best when we play, but many U.'s regiment of homework is like a whipping stick, all boring, all work, 100% chore and no learning or play is involved, but usually all memorization and other kinds of rote.
I somewhat enjoyed my English and Philo homework in those rare cases where I had to think about something interesting. There is way too much garbage being studied in English. Who cares if it's considered 'classic' by some crusty old farts from 100 years ago? Is it interesting and relevant today? Why not let me discover it on my own and not shove it down my throat?
I think it could be so much better, but unfortunately, I don't think there are any U.s or Colleges like what I envision. I've been to more than one, and I've heard accounts from many friends of the others, and my opinion is that they all suck, more or less, or if they don't suck, I can't afford it, or I can't get in perhaps (gotten in everywhere I applied last time). Oh well.
I'm all for the environments. I think University is not much different from a Monastery. In Tibet, to get a certain Buddhist degree, you often have to spend 20-30 years of very, very rigorous study. Perhaps we can say it is a lot more rigorous than any study in any Western University. This is just one example. The thing is, when a person enters into a monastery, it is done as an act of renunciation and not as an act of self-aggrandizement with great potential for profit seeking. There is humbleness in the monastery, but only big fat egos in the University. It costs either nothing or relatively little to enter into a monastery, but it costs and arm and a leg to enter into a University.
;) And that's why I post it. I hope to create this condition. Because you can't agree to something prior to thinking about it. So, I hope people do think about this.
So what I am saying is this.
Let the profit seekers seek profit. Let them flow in their own way. Let the learners seek learning. Let THEM flow in their own way. There will always be people dedicated to knowledge and wisdom. If we took a University system away, this would not stop being so.
University system is confused. On one hand, it's like a Monastery because it takes you away from lay life and it requires your full attention. On the other hand, it is full of profit seekers, who don't care a rats ass about learning, but just want to get the paper. There are some people in the middle who want to learn a thing or two, but really are thinking of how useful it will be to make money later.
The problem is that mixing all these various motivations in one place produces bad results. Pure learners are very pissed at profit seekers who do anything just to pass a class. Profit seeking professors who do half-assed work just to get by day to day also piss off the idealistic students who want to learn for learning's sake. Idealistic professors are put off by students who just take their class cause someone said so and who otherwise don't give a rat's behind about subject matter.
It's a bad mix. It's an unnatural tangle. Business wants to be assured that a person is qualified. I understand that. There is also another set of people who know what Science is about, and that Science is not about profit or ego-promotion and that's why Scientists are supposed to SHARE their information and not hoard it for themselves. Business promotes and rewards trade secrets. I believe that a free market can untangle this, under one condition, and create environments that are good for various purposes. The condition is that people must agree, basically, to what I am saying here.
We can all get what we want. We do not need to step on each others' toes. Business influence is corrupting and ruining the Universities. Universities are very confused about what it is they are and what their goals are. Is it profit? Is it science? Is it sports? You can't always have all of the above. In programming, we always praise modular systems where each module is small and does one task best, as opposed to doing a hundred tasks in a mediocre way. Why wouldn't we praise the same concept again? I don't think Universities are awake and aware enouh to get unconfused on their own.
I would say your "on average" claim is false.
To respond to your other claim, yes, I am a little bitter. I kept thinking that University is about learning, but no one gave a damn except me and a few rare individual professors. Finally I threw my hands up in disgust. I just couldn't take all the charade and pretense. From what I hear others say, that's how most of it is. I realize the evidence is anecdotal, but so is yours (unless you're too lazy to share a citation). I share my experience. People always tell me this, "it's the system, you just have to suck it up, tighten your belt and just do it, even though you may not like it, etc. you need that paper."
But while I admit to some bitterness, let me remark further. If we considered valid only the kind of critique where we had either positive or neutral feelings about the subject, then we would have no way to critique a significant portion of what we experience. That means we would be blind in regard to, roughly, half of our experience. For where there is joy, there is also suffering. If there is light, there must also be dark. If some people are tall, some must be short.
Feelings are what they are. Just because I feel bad about something does not mean I have switched off my critical thinking ability and that I am now spouting irrational nonsense.
Be careful. I will be careful too.
I think Daniel made a very wise decision. Gentoo is his child, and it looks like the child is reaching maturity and it's time for Gentoo to move out of the parents' house.
I know that the rigor is lacking in most cert classes. And plus, most certs are tests, while I am thinking more of apprenticeship kind of ideas. I am thinking of rigorous learning that can produce Ph.D. level research. Certs do not do that and I doubt they can.
:)
My guess is that it's a problem of cultural inertia. No one (more or less) sees the current University system as "broken". I just think that's too bad. I think it is broken and I post here in hopes that more people will come to see it the way I do.
Selfish, I know.
Bullshit. You cannot get a degree without a minimum requisite of courses outside your focus. That's like saying that Nazi Germany ALLOWED Jews to enter into the concentration camps. Right, right, but Jews chose to live in Germany of their own free will, right. I hear ya. You get what you pay for.
Again, I applaud well-roundedness, but I sneer at how it is "accomplished" by the University system, or maybe I should say, non-accomplished, because it's a farce, and I have seen the farce first hand.
I beg to differ. I fully support environments where people do nothing but learn. For example, I fully support the idea of monasteries. But monasteries are created by demand. People volunteer to go to one because they feel that lay life is not rigorous enough for learning what they want to learn. And being a monk/nun is not a requirement anywhere. It's something that a person does to expand themselves and all the monasteries are different and unique and are not driven in a Communist-like way.
I know I took this discussion slightly to the "left" or "south" with my example, but I hope you see my point here. Let there be environments. Let there be whatever comes. Let's have faith that demand and people will do the right thing. Let's not FORCE them. Currently, the way our culture is set up, University degree is almost forced, but it's very expensive, and often produces an indentured servant. And I simply question the goodness of that. I've seen people who cannot even write a "hello world" C program that compiles and runs graduate brilliantly out of the University. Sad. Monolithic structure does not equal quality. In fact, I think it lowers quality, because people just don't care about education, because all the "well rounded" classes are foisted on them by the system, and they really don't want to be there, but they need the paper.
I respect learning and I think education is what every man needs to have. I just don't think University system is the way to go.
Why does it have to be narrow? Is the only way to be well rounded is to be FORCED to be well rounded by the formal University system?
This is the "Jeff Bezos" approach to education. Invest, invest, invest, and through sheer overwhelming size, win. Where is the "Ben and Jerry's" approach? Where is the "it must be profitable from the start and grow naturally from there" approach? I find that this, to my mind, more valid and more sustainable approach, is completely missing from formal education.
Too bad. You can check my post history, I am no market fundamentalist by any means, but I think that our educational system is rampantly "pinko commie" in a bad way. I wish we could bring some Capitalist and some free market ideas into our education. Down with Universities. Down with monolothic "learn everything at once ahead of time , everything decreed by the State^H^H^H^H^HUniversity as 'good to know'". Forget that. Let learning come in bursts on demand. Let learning match the demand in a natural way. Isn't necessity the mother of invention? Let the necessity drive education in a more Capitalist way. Let people pay for tutors, for classes, and let them pay for what they really need to know.
This is kind of what certs are, but the problem is that most certs are dumb and so they have a very bad perception in the market. Why won't market come up with something credible, something equally or even more credible than a University, something that produces Ph.D. level research, something trustworthy and yet something that does not smack of Communism like our University system that hails from the stone age and that has not evolved much? In a way, our free market is saying that "centrally planned communism is ideal for education", but is it really? Of course I never believed that market was fully rational or efficient or driven by enlightened self-interest.
Just a thought.
I have little pity on AC's that don't sign their posts. Especially it irks me when AC's post about courage and things like that while part of their assumed name is "coward". You know, you're not the only AC that does this. It seems to happen once in a while. I post as AC sometimes, but I never berate people while in AC mode and I don't exhort them to courage that way.
You don't need an account. You can sign your post even if you write it on the bathroom wall.
Generally I respect anonymous posters. I just don't think it's their place to call other people "pussies". So you broke your humility rule and you acted like a double hypocrite, first calling people "pussies" and second, doing it as AC without signing your post. Fooo-eeyy.
You are quite proud of yourself, aren't you? You sure sound that way. Well, pride doesn't impress everyone. Do you realize that not everyone defines success the same way as you? For some people, being a "formiddable professional" is precisely what failure is. Open your rusty, creaky mind. There is more to life than "success".
Here, let me quote the bit that explain how the man in the middle attack can succeed:
Ha ha ha ha hahahah!
If you're so brave why not put your name under this pile of steaming horse manure.
How far is your career, eh? I bet you're a CEO.
I think you make a great point. I just wanted to add my 2 cents.
It's not just about hoarding. Many rich people don't have all that much ready to spend cash (but still way, way more than I can dream about). It's all about control. A rich person has a lot of say on who does what, what goes where, what gets developed and what is canned, and so on. They get streets named after themselves or their properties. Some use their own name as a brand name in an ultimate display of vainglory. They have the ear of other rich people and they form a social network that's not very accessible to "regular" folks. So not only do they have control over their own "domain", but they greatly impact "domains" of other rich people via their decisions and social communication.
This kind of problem is a problem of culture in my opinion. It's only solvable via education and evolution. People have to see in their hearts the damage they do with their selfishness and unrestrained ambition. Because as we well know, when one set of people tries to control another set of people by political power, it doesn't work. That change has to come from the inside of each person.
This is a simplistic statement. Sorry. It doesn't work that way. We do not have absolute freedom to spend our money how we want. I'll give you a blatantly obvious example. I am not morally free to hire someone to kill you. Of course, this is an extreme. But between extremes there are always gray areas.
Just because you have earned some money does not mean you have earned the right to spend them however you wish. You can buy toys, but you cannot (ethically) invest in scams. You can spend it all on burgers and get fat, but you cannot spend it to block access to food to someone else.
We usually say that we are free to spend our money however we want, but this assumes "as long as it doesn't harm our society".
Again, this is incorrect. You have a simplistic view of the supremacy of personal will. In reality, neither ethically nor practically is this the case. Just because someone wills something does not mean it comes to be. That's because there are limitations in the world. I cannot fly by flapping my hands just because I want to. Not in this world.
From the ethical standpoint, there will always be a difference of opinion among individuals. There will always be limited resources. Individuals will always share space. As long as all this is true, there will always be some kind of compromise. Your only choice is lawlessness and law. In a lawless society compromise is less free because there are fewer options. In a lawful society there are more options for compromise, but compromise is not strictly voluntary there either. The very meaning of compromise is sacrifice.
For example, there used to be no Copyright law. The public has compromised their freedom to copy things for a time in order to spur more book authors into publishing more books.
There will never be and can never be a single personal will that is free beyond all constraint. If there was, such will would be God's and not human.
I hope this is short enough for you.
Diamond Age sounds like a book I should read. I just might take your advice.
I still have to finish John C. Wright's trilogy. I'm reading The Golden Transcendence now. And John C. Wright was also a very slow starter for me. I almost stopped reading in the middle of the first book, but somehow he did manage to keep my attention and then things got much better. Phaethon is an awesome character, even though I don't want to be like him (he's too ambitious, imo, or not ambitious enough, depending on how I look at it). It's probably not hard core enough if you like Neal though, because the nanotech as depicted by John C. Wright will probably never happen. But I digress.
He makes digging a mine shaft fun and interesting.
I guess someone like me likes to mentally step back every page or two and ask myself, what is it am I reading here? If the answer is "really, this is about digging a mine shaft" then I am very much underwhelmed. If Neal can somehow manage to open a new facet of a human soul by describing such rote activity with equally rote prose, but nay....he cannot. It's just mindless self-absorbed rambling to me.
What I hear from you is that you find this book entertaining but not insightful. And you appear to be entertained by little trivial things. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, mind you. I can relate. I sometimes have great insight stearing at a pebble on the road. So, I suppose if your mind is open enough you can make any bad book into a good one by adding your own effort to it. Fair enough.
But I just say, why bother, when you can add your own effort to a more worthy book?
I really think most people are just drooling over Neal because he can (supposedly) use EMACS and because he knows what Perl is. But who cares? As a CS dork, I really don't care about these things when it comes to book authors. I can read a Perl manual if I want to be impressed by someone's knowledge of Perl. If I want to be impressed with Perl I go read Larry and Damian.
What I am going to say sounds very strange even to myself, but I wish geeks would not produce literary works. Really. It's fine to be a geek, but geeks have little insight into deep human issues. If you are a geek and you think of writing a non-computer-manual type book, please do everyone a favor and drop your silly geekiness and write as one human to another and not as one geek to another geek.
It's so typical for a geek to drown in detail and trivia and to miss the bigger picture. I think there is a spark of talent somewhere in Neal. After all, I think Snowcrash was very promising. But Neal's tilt and ego are killing him I think.
It's fun to rant isn't it? :) You know nothing about me bro. I'll clue you in. I was raised in Ukraine where we only had 3 TV channels and we pretty much didn't watch TV except once a week or so, unless you count parents watching news every day at 9pm. I want to insult you, but I won't.
Nice. I was looking for some reply like this. So, if I understand you correctly, people enjoy how Neal peppers his work with various historical accuracies.
That's basically it, right? So, if I think that historical accuracies are not all that interesting or insightful without a proper context, then I feel justified in not liking Neal's work.
For example, a great work that masterfully blends history and fiction is The Count of Monte Cristo. I have read a Russian translation of this masterpiece and I think there is not a finer book that entertains, teaches history, and gives such deep insight into people's souls, all at the same time. Not a single word is out of place, not a single description is irrelevant. It all fits and clicks together and pages just turn and turn themselves. The book practically reads itself. Neal has, in my opinion, a loooooonnggggg loonnggg way to go to reach this level of mastery. Heck, I shouldn't even try to compare him with Dumas, they don't play in the same leage.
It's not enough to just sprinkle various historically accurate tidbits in order to create a worthy work of art.
Why do we read? I suggest that few people read to gather trivia. We read mainly for two reasons: for entertainment and for insight (and by "insight" I mean deep things, things of the soul, and not trivial "insight" that is often tinkered with in Sci-Fi books, like "if we had 3 brains instead of one, we'd be like this", yuck). So, Snowcrash is entertaining and it is somewhat insightful. In particular, I think we can all relate to the political commentary it makes. But it does very little to expand human soul at the deepest levels. So it's mostly a fun book. I don't think I am a snob and I do read for fun. I don't care if the book is insightful if it's fun. But by G-D, if the book is not fun, it better be insightful and it better not spam me with trivia.
Ok, admittedly I am a CS dork, and so my opinion doesn't really count, but here it is anyway.