Yesterday, I installed Windows XP pro in place of the wretched "ME" (used OEM install disk, none of that upgrade crap), had Linux sitting on a second harddisk on the same machine so had to make sure I could still boot into Linux after XP wiped off lilo from my boot partition.. and what do I go in search of to put lilo on?
I think science and religion look at the same phenomenon through different perspectives. One is the mechanical and the other abstract.
The document you see on your screen (abstract) is actually composed of millions of bits and bytes (mechanical). The bits and bytes are as important as the document - one would not exist without the other.
Your ultimate goal is looking at the document and understanding what its trying to tell you. But you could never achieve that without someone understanding how to construct the bits and bytes in a fashion that would render that document the way you see it. So the scientist/engineer is a very important person in that regard.
Im not a very religious person but Im trying to continuously find what my religious counterparts find so intruguing about it and why they see life the way they do. I tend to look at it from the mechanical aspect and that is the end for me. To them it goes a little beyond that. Im trying the read the document that they seem to have already read (or atleast partially read).
>Sounds like the best way to not have to drive to the office these days is to get your job in India
Yea, cos in India workers magically teleport themselves to their offices.
Bangalore/Delhi/Hyderabad/Chennai - all major IT cities involve a commute of atleast 45 mins in peak traffic. Add to it lots and lots of pollution (major issue if you ride a bike to work), rule-defying motorists, mixed automobiles (three wheeler auto-rickshaws, cyclists (tons of them), state transport buses jam-packed with people in them - all sharing the road with you) and it becomes even more fun.
Lanes? Whats that?
You are lucky if your company provides you with a company bus or some such. And even if you want to telecommute to work - sorry, the infrastructure just isnt there to support average homes to hook up to high speed networks (broadbad/dsl etc) as of now.
"Ladies and gentleman, if you look on your left side you'll notice that the left engine is on fire. If you look to your right, you will notice that the right engine is also on fire. If you look down below you will see a small raft floating in the waters, and thats where I'm talking to you from. Dont worry, the computers will ensure you have a safe landing.
Thanks for flying Fireball Airlines. See you again soon. Your captain. Over and out'.
Voyager crash lands on this deep and remote planet..as each of its systems start to shutdown in turn, its external microphones pick up the voice of Charleston Heston, screaming in the distance "Take your paws off me you damn dirty ape!"....
[muffled horse hooves pounding on the ground]
Voyager 1 signing off. Goodbye earth...
;-)
springboard a session of research or further experience without the further help of the televison
That is why I opened my comment with the following sentence:
"think of the TV as a supplement to your daily information diet rather than a substitute".
There are limitations to every form of media. Sometimes the TV is not enough, you need to flip a page or two of a book to complete the learning process. Sometimes a book is not enough, you need to hear a lecture from a professor to better understand a concept or an idea. Sometimes a prof's lecture is not enough, studying something in a group with accompanying group-discussions fills that gap. And so on and so forth.
. In other words, you are not actually doing your learning with the TV, you are using it as a nearly random topic generator
I disagree. That is a generalization again. When Carl Sagan condensed several chapters from his boook "Cosmos" into a single episode of Cosmos, the TV programme, you bet it had a lot of "content" in it. In fact, to this day, I can hear his voice inside my brain saying "Humans merely appeared in the last 1 hour of a 365 day calendar if you condense the history of the Earth into a single Earth year" to give a sense of how new we are on this planet. I dont remember reading that line in the book (I know its definitely in there somewhere), but the gist of what he said on TV still sticks in my mind to this day - and this show came some 15-18 years back (or more?).
So TV can be content-worthy too, it depends on what is being produced and how it is being presented. Also realize that the bandwidth of TV is much higher than say a book. I agree, sometimes it is information over-load. With a book, you can read a few sentences, pause, look out the window, ponder about what you just read, build up something imaginative (as you said) then when you reach a logical break point in your thought, get back to reading from where you left off. With TV its "content-push" and that can be over-whelming at times especially when you need to pause and think about something for a minute before you can catch up. But we all do selective processing when assimilating information. No one can grasp everything all at once. Certain aspects of the information presented on TV will stick to your sub-conscious without your conscious effort. It all depends on how receptive you are when watching it.
For eg. if you try and watch the same Cosmos at the end of the long tiring day when you are pooped out you may not retain much. Same goes for reading a book. The "receiver" in your brain has to be in tune and ready.
I did enjoy your explanation of the "healthy learning" part however. That was an interesting angle.
I fail to understand what that means. Information is information - whether someone narrates it to you aloud, or you read it out of a book. And I fail to understand why "format" should be such a great deal especially if you view it in the way I view it. Sometimes a "well presented format" triggers passion for further discovery. And the TV is extra-ordinary in that realm since it has the power of the visual medium *if* you use it wisely.
Again, balance: think of the TV as a supplement to your daily information diet rather than a substitute. Again I use my own experience:
Watching the Geraman Kamakazi pilots of the second world war on History channel made me ravenous to suddenly learn more about the lesser known aspects of the war itself (also throwing light on the fact that not just the Japanese had them). I was merely channel surfing and happened upon the programme. After watching it, I looked up more on the subject in the local library and devoured several books on WWII, in the process learning much more about the war than I had hoped to.
I watched "44" minutes on Fox sometime back, and dug out more info about the North Hollywood bank shooting immediately afterwards on the Internet and learnt about how a down and depressed LAPD became heroes on that day. Fascinating. For those interested, look here
Watching Jurassic Park made me dig out Michael Crichton's books from the library - I have finished nearly every book of his since I saw that movie. Yes *books*.
I learnt more about the politics/politicians in California watching "Armstrong and Getty's" radio show (yes, on TV since we dont get it on radio in our area) each morning as I prepare to go to work, something I might never be inclined to learn about reading a newspaper - in this case, think of the TV as being my "audio/visual book".
We are trained to think that everything that appears on TV is crap, has zero-information value and you'd be better off "reading a book" instead. Thats painting with a broad brush.
I say, use it as a tool and it can work in your favour.
Anything done in extreme is bad.
Too much eating is bad.
Too much sleeping is bad.
Too much TV is bad.
Too much internet is bad.
Balance is the key..
There is good, stimulating content on TV - Discovery channel, National geographic and History channel. I've learnt quite a lot about many things I did not have any idea at all, by watching these three channels for example.
BTW, I also read books. I would never completely replace either of them with any of them. Each has its own place. Choose wisely.
The internet is a better source of entertainment? How exactly? You have porn-on-demand the moment you are online. You have dirty spam clogging your emails. It is less well regulated than TV broadcasting.
Again, balance is the key. Choose wisely.
---
Friends? Foes? What is this place? Kindergarten?
...with these phone-pdas: If I want to refer to something in the PDA while I'm on the phone its a pain. Oh yea, I know I can connect a headset/mic to it but thats kind of very limiting.
Personally Id prefer the PDA and cellphone to evolve independently, unconstrained by each others limitations, then have Bluetooth do the trick of integrating them both. Best of both worlds.
My wife and I tried buying something on the web on this one particular site. It asked me to register since I was buying stuff for the first time there. Filled up everything on the "new account" page and hit "register me". The page came back in error saying the id I was trying to register was already taken so I had to try another one. Not so bad. What was bad though was THE PAGE RE-LOADED WITH ALL THE FIELDS IN IT PRE-FILLED WITH THAT ALREADY-EXISTING USER ID's DETAILS! Address, phone number, first/last names everything on there for the taking.
Scaaary. We politely backed out of the site and decided to buy elsewhere.
It's a complicated issue, the freedom of choice......choice is also scaring potential users away
Well said.
Not just GUIs, when it comes to a *nix __anything__ there is choice (and thus pain, sometimes). Take the plain old shell for example. A dozen of them? A simple "export blah=foo" works on sh and bash. But try it on tcsh and it does'nt. When I have to write scripts that I know might be run in a dozen different environments I have to make sure I write it using the least common denominator command-set. This simple example is good proof that "choice" is like those little cute snuggly "gremlins" (the creatures in that movie) which are cute and all fun till you forget that you should'nt feed them after midnight - if you do they turn in to killing monsters.
Coming to GUIs... wow, a billion people out there who use computer GUIs are just average joes. If the above shell choice is enough to drive u - a more-than-average-joe - nuts, imagine what it will do to them when all they want is a quick way in-and-out of their computers to do their everyday tasks (browse, check email.. u get the idea..) and they are presented with 10 different ways of doing it.
Somewhere else in this discussion someone said there will not be _A_ Linux default that will rival Microsoft's. Rather it will be "Redhat vs Microsoft" or "Suse vs Microsoft" or "Mandrake vs Microsoft". That is a very good observation and sadly it is only going to confuse "joe user" even more.
I was reading all the emotional posts up until this one came up and I would have silently ignored this immature comment too had it not been for the fact that it had also been MODDED UP by the retarded ones with mod points for suggesting an instrument of destruction for the selfish interests of one half of the hemisphere.
War? So 60k people get killed on either side so u may get back your 60k salary and living the way you used to?
You just gotta love these people...sheesh...
At the risk of sounding offtopic..
on
Head First Java
·
· Score: 1
I think of this many times and I laugh...
I moved into Silicon Valley in 2001, the time when the dot-coms were beginning to go bust...
I started working on Java in my own spare time to get to know the language better (I had worked on C++ for several years in the past and used to suffer the same "hmph, Java? So what's new in there that isnt in C++? bah, I dont need to learn another OO language.." syndrome) - again this was in 2001 - the year the dot coms were beginning to go bust...
I landed a job in Silicon Valley during the time most programmers were making their exit out of Silicon Valley, in 2001, during the time the dot-coms were beginning to go bust...
And surprisingly enough (not?) the job I got involved programming in Java for a good two years, and still continuing, and the funny part is (drum roll....) the company Im working for has nothing to do with dot com...
Id like to be able point-click at the poster and instantly buy tickets to the show at the nearest theatre to where I am, or give me the option of choosing which theatre I would like to view it at if I choose to do so.
I hope you are not overlooking the fact that India has the most CMM level 5 software companies - perhaps thats *also* got to do something with attracting foreign companies apart from "cheap" ? hmm?
Just wanted y'all to keep that in perspective when discussing this, thats all...
Sorry, not true.
The moment you land in the US on a H1-B you can technically start processing your green card papers. Its called "employment based immigration". You under go a Labour certification, file a petition to immigrate, then "adjust your status" to become a permanent resident. It takes about 2 years in total now from start to finish (used to take more than 4 years way back when..). So yes, technically, you could go from H1-B to GC in 2 to 2.5 years.
Re:I believe he has had only one really good book
on
Prey
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Read "Airframe" - I would rate that as his best thriller after Jurassic Park. Also this book prooves what an author of verstality he is when you consider his ability to switch easily (and so thoroughly) beteween such a wide spectrum of disconnected themes as: Airframe, Rising Sun, Disclosure, Timeline (going back and forth between the present and the medieval era of Knights), The Great Train Robbery.
Surely, more than just one book of his deverves applause..
Of course, the best sci-fi thriller I've read, that is set against the backdrop of medicine was "Coma" by Robin Cook. Enjoyed that one..
Gautam
They should have just distributed a few fixed number CDs under GPL - the redistribution channels would taken over from there onwards and the cds would have spread not just all over the USA but even to the rest of the world..
What the...
Why the hell was this post modded to "offtopic"? I'd really like to know...
I've read Alan Cooper's "Essentials of User Interface Design" partly based on his earlier "About Face" and I think it is a fantastic piece of work for those who want to seriously write a good graphical user interface..
Dont bother the government with what software they should use - let them use the best, period.
Dont over-emphasize transparency or a government can never function effectively...
Cassanova
Slashdot Mirror
A floppy my friend, a floppy...
Now onto step two, strap the mother-in-law to it and set it on cruise control and lots of fuel..
This is how I see it.
I think science and religion look at the same phenomenon through different perspectives. One is the mechanical and the other abstract.
The document you see on your screen (abstract) is actually composed of millions of bits and bytes (mechanical). The bits and bytes are as important as the document - one would not exist without the other.
Your ultimate goal is looking at the document and understanding what its trying to tell you. But you could never achieve that without someone understanding how to construct the bits and bytes in a fashion that would render that document the way you see it. So the scientist/engineer is a very important person in that regard.
Im not a very religious person but Im trying to continuously find what my religious counterparts find so intruguing about it and why they see life the way they do. I tend to look at it from the mechanical aspect and that is the end for me. To them it goes a little beyond that. Im trying the read the document that they seem to have already read (or atleast partially read).
A music player I cannot afford on a car that I cannot afford. Thanks for making the party complete.
>Sounds like the best way to not have to drive to the office these days is to get your job in India
Yea, cos in India workers magically teleport themselves to their offices.
Bangalore/Delhi/Hyderabad/Chennai - all major IT cities involve a commute of atleast 45 mins in peak traffic. Add to it lots and lots of pollution (major issue if you ride a bike to work), rule-defying motorists, mixed automobiles (three wheeler auto-rickshaws, cyclists (tons of them), state transport buses jam-packed with people in them - all sharing the road with you) and it becomes even more fun.
Lanes? Whats that?
You are lucky if your company provides you with a company bus or some such. And even if you want to telecommute to work - sorry, the infrastructure just isnt there to support average homes to hook up to high speed networks (broadbad/dsl etc) as of now.
"Ladies and gentleman, if you look on your left side you'll notice that the left engine is on fire. If you look to your right, you will notice that the right engine is also on fire. If you look down below you will see a small raft floating in the waters, and thats where I'm talking to you from. Dont worry, the computers will ensure you have a safe landing.
;-)
Thanks for flying Fireball Airlines. See you again soon. Your captain. Over and out'.
Voyager crash lands on this deep and remote planet..as each of its systems start to shutdown in turn, its external microphones pick up the voice of Charleston Heston, screaming in the distance "Take your paws off me you damn dirty ape!"....
;-)
[muffled horse hooves pounding on the ground]
Voyager 1 signing off. Goodbye earth...
There are limitations to every form of media. Sometimes the TV is not enough, you need to flip a page or two of a book to complete the learning process. Sometimes a book is not enough, you need to hear a lecture from a professor to better understand a concept or an idea. Sometimes a prof's lecture is not enough, studying something in a group with accompanying group-discussions fills that gap. And so on and so forth.
I disagree. That is a generalization again. When Carl Sagan condensed several chapters from his boook "Cosmos" into a single episode of Cosmos, the TV programme, you bet it had a lot of "content" in it. In fact, to this day, I can hear his voice inside my brain saying "Humans merely appeared in the last 1 hour of a 365 day calendar if you condense the history of the Earth into a single Earth year" to give a sense of how new we are on this planet. I dont remember reading that line in the book (I know its definitely in there somewhere), but the gist of what he said on TV still sticks in my mind to this day - and this show came some 15-18 years back (or more?).So TV can be content-worthy too, it depends on what is being produced and how it is being presented. Also realize that the bandwidth of TV is much higher than say a book. I agree, sometimes it is information over-load. With a book, you can read a few sentences, pause, look out the window, ponder about what you just read, build up something imaginative (as you said) then when you reach a logical break point in your thought, get back to reading from where you left off. With TV its "content-push" and that can be over-whelming at times especially when you need to pause and think about something for a minute before you can catch up. But we all do selective processing when assimilating information. No one can grasp everything all at once. Certain aspects of the information presented on TV will stick to your sub-conscious without your conscious effort. It all depends on how receptive you are when watching it.
For eg. if you try and watch the same Cosmos at the end of the long tiring day when you are pooped out you may not retain much. Same goes for reading a book. The "receiver" in your brain has to be in tune and ready.
I did enjoy your explanation of the "healthy learning" part however. That was an interesting angle.
I fail to understand what that means. Information is information - whether someone narrates it to you aloud, or you read it out of a book. And I fail to understand why "format" should be such a great deal especially if you view it in the way I view it. Sometimes a "well presented format" triggers passion for further discovery. And the TV is extra-ordinary in that realm since it has the power of the visual medium *if* you use it wisely.
Again, balance: think of the TV as a supplement to your daily information diet rather than a substitute. Again I use my own experience:
Watching the Geraman Kamakazi pilots of the second world war on History channel made me ravenous to suddenly learn more about the lesser known aspects of the war itself (also throwing light on the fact that not just the Japanese had them). I was merely channel surfing and happened upon the programme. After watching it, I looked up more on the subject in the local library and devoured several books on WWII, in the process learning much more about the war than I had hoped to.
I watched "44" minutes on Fox sometime back, and dug out more info about the North Hollywood bank shooting immediately afterwards on the Internet and learnt about how a down and depressed LAPD became heroes on that day. Fascinating. For those interested, look here
Watching Jurassic Park made me dig out Michael Crichton's books from the library - I have finished nearly every book of his since I saw that movie. Yes *books*.
I learnt more about the politics/politicians in California watching "Armstrong and Getty's" radio show (yes, on TV since we dont get it on radio in our area) each morning as I prepare to go to work, something I might never be inclined to learn about reading a newspaper - in this case, think of the TV as being my "audio/visual book".
We are trained to think that everything that appears on TV is crap, has zero-information value and you'd be better off "reading a book" instead. Thats painting with a broad brush.
I say, use it as a tool and it can work in your favour.
Too much eating is bad.
Too much sleeping is bad.
Too much TV is bad.
Too much internet is bad.
Balance is the key..
There is good, stimulating content on TV - Discovery channel, National geographic and History channel. I've learnt quite a lot about many things I did not have any idea at all, by watching these three channels for example.
BTW, I also read books. I would never completely replace either of them with any of them. Each has its own place. Choose wisely.
The internet is a better source of entertainment? How exactly? You have porn-on-demand the moment you are online. You have dirty spam clogging your emails. It is less well regulated than TV broadcasting.
Again, balance is the key. Choose wisely.
---
Friends? Foes? What is this place? Kindergarten?
...with these phone-pdas: If I want to refer to something in the PDA while I'm on the phone its a pain. Oh yea, I know I can connect a headset/mic to it but thats kind of very limiting.
Personally Id prefer the PDA and cellphone to evolve independently, unconstrained by each others limitations, then have Bluetooth do the trick of integrating them both. Best of both worlds.
I refer here to an earlier post of mine to a slashdot poll that debated what the worst sin in the world was and why!
--
Friends? Foes? What is this place? Kindergarten?
My wife and I tried buying something on the web on this one particular site. It asked me to register since I was buying stuff for the first time there. Filled up everything on the "new account" page and hit "register me". The page came back in error saying the id I was trying to register was already taken so I had to try another one. Not so bad. What was bad though was THE PAGE RE-LOADED WITH ALL THE FIELDS IN IT PRE-FILLED WITH THAT ALREADY-EXISTING USER ID's DETAILS! Address, phone number, first/last names everything on there for the taking.
Scaaary. We politely backed out of the site and decided to buy elsewhere.
Well said.
Not just GUIs, when it comes to a *nix __anything__ there is choice (and thus pain, sometimes). Take the plain old shell for example. A dozen of them? A simple "export blah=foo" works on sh and bash. But try it on tcsh and it does'nt. When I have to write scripts that I know might be run in a dozen different environments I have to make sure I write it using the least common denominator command-set. This simple example is good proof that "choice" is like those little cute snuggly "gremlins" (the creatures in that movie) which are cute and all fun till you forget that you should'nt feed them after midnight - if you do they turn in to killing monsters.
Coming to GUIs... wow, a billion people out there who use computer GUIs are just average joes. If the above shell choice is enough to drive u - a more-than-average-joe - nuts, imagine what it will do to them when all they want is a quick way in-and-out of their computers to do their everyday tasks (browse, check email.. u get the idea..) and they are presented with 10 different ways of doing it.
Somewhere else in this discussion someone said there will not be _A_ Linux default that will rival Microsoft's. Rather it will be "Redhat vs Microsoft" or "Suse vs Microsoft" or "Mandrake vs Microsoft". That is a very good observation and sadly it is only going to confuse "joe user" even more.
-- Metamoderators: Police to Police the Police.
LOL..yes yes, EVing is a sign of backwardness since it is very very error prone.. LMFAO, sorry, I usually dont laugh this hard very often..
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/509/in1.htm
ROTFLMAO...
I was reading all the emotional posts up until this one came up and I would have silently ignored this immature comment too had it not been for the fact that it had also been MODDED UP by the retarded ones with mod points for suggesting an instrument of destruction for the selfish interests of one half of the hemisphere.
War? So 60k people get killed on either side so u may get back your 60k salary and living the way you used to?
You just gotta love these people...sheesh...
I think of this many times and I laugh...
I moved into Silicon Valley in 2001, the time when the dot-coms were beginning to go bust...
I started working on Java in my own spare time to get to know the language better (I had worked on C++ for several years in the past and used to suffer the same "hmph, Java? So what's new in there that isnt in C++? bah, I dont need to learn another OO language.." syndrome) - again this was in 2001 - the year the dot coms were beginning to go bust...
I landed a job in Silicon Valley during the time most programmers were making their exit out of Silicon Valley, in 2001, during the time the dot-coms were beginning to go bust...
And surprisingly enough (not?) the job I got involved programming in Java for a good two years, and still continuing, and the funny part is (drum roll....) the company Im working for has nothing to do with dot com...
Java only = Dot com? nah, I dont think so.
Id like to be able point-click at the poster and instantly buy tickets to the show at the nearest theatre to where I am, or give me the option of choosing which theatre I would like to view it at if I choose to do so.
I hope you are not overlooking the fact that India has the most CMM level 5 software companies - perhaps thats *also* got to do something with attracting foreign companies apart from "cheap" ? hmm? Just wanted y'all to keep that in perspective when discussing this, thats all...
Sorry, not true. The moment you land in the US on a H1-B you can technically start processing your green card papers. Its called "employment based immigration". You under go a Labour certification, file a petition to immigrate, then "adjust your status" to become a permanent resident. It takes about 2 years in total now from start to finish (used to take more than 4 years way back when..). So yes, technically, you could go from H1-B to GC in 2 to 2.5 years.
Read "Airframe" - I would rate that as his best thriller after Jurassic Park. Also this book prooves what an author of verstality he is when you consider his ability to switch easily (and so thoroughly) beteween such a wide spectrum of disconnected themes as: Airframe, Rising Sun, Disclosure, Timeline (going back and forth between the present and the medieval era of Knights), The Great Train Robbery. Surely, more than just one book of his deverves applause.. Of course, the best sci-fi thriller I've read, that is set against the backdrop of medicine was "Coma" by Robin Cook. Enjoyed that one.. Gautam
FYI...And "Soujanyam" roughly means "sponsorship", which in this context does not need any further explanation..
They should have just distributed a few fixed number CDs under GPL - the redistribution channels would taken over from there onwards and the cds would have spread not just all over the USA but even to the rest of the world..
What the... Why the hell was this post modded to "offtopic"? I'd really like to know... I've read Alan Cooper's "Essentials of User Interface Design" partly based on his earlier "About Face" and I think it is a fantastic piece of work for those who want to seriously write a good graphical user interface..
Dont bother the government with what software they should use - let them use the best, period. Dont over-emphasize transparency or a government can never function effectively... Cassanova