Gee, couldn't you think of a more inflamatory metaphor?
Let's be serious for a moment. A breakup doesn't mean burning down the redmond campus, executing the manages and raping their wives and daughters. All it means is that the whole company is divided up into smaller companies, not destroyed. Why should the government do this? To protect the marketplace, which MS is abusing through its monopoly status. Legal institutions such as corporations, partnerships and trusts were invented to serve the people, not the other way around. If they're hurting us, bust 'em up.
Call me crazy, but I think this will catch on. Not with geeks, but with home users, small business, and PHBs.
The use of this technology is for large-area sneaker nets. These people want this much space, combined with the portability of disks. Other geeks have noted that you can easily get a 100+ GB hard for twice the price. Sure, geeks love an excuse to buy more HD space, or better yet -- put together a dedicated RAID fileserver! However, the SOHO/PHB user would like an easy way to fedex 35 GB to their business contact, without oppening up the computer.
Backup tapes? That's not what this is for. What about CD/DVDs? Sorry: they are too small (CD, 650-800MB, DVD 9GB, with compatability issues), the don't act like discs (burning interface breaks standard file browser interface), though they are transportable. Let's face it, people want really big disks that act like standard, rewritable, transportable 'floppy a:' disks, not CDs.
I contend that those are poorly designed GUIs. A similarly poorly designed CLI would suck too. But compare a well-dessigned GUI to a well-designed CLI, you will see that the CLI has built-in ambiguity that the GUI does not.
I argue that the a properly designed GUI is inherently more user-friendly that a CLI, even properly designed.
Take your example to 'copy a b'. Is a the object or the indirect object? In order to find out, you have to consciously learn a particular grammar. You could do English-like where 'copy a b' means 'copy a to b' or switch positions, where 'copy a b' means 'copy to a, b' . Some natural languages actually use that kind of syntax. My point here is that your ad-hoc syntax is ambiguous from the start, and requires explicit training as to what exactly the grammar is.
Contrast that, for example, a GUI where you have two different folders, anybody immediately understands an object's movement from one place to another. As a species, we're pretty good with language, but visual processing has been going on for millions of years longer.
"Natural language are also exactly that - natural. Our brains evolved to support them and our languages evolved over millenia to suit our brains."
"I agree, but not with your inference. You suppose that a computer language does not have this property, but as it is produced by the human brain without constraints upon it, surely it is an even purer reflection of the human brain's inherent language ability (however much it is inherent). There might have been constraints in the old days, but have you tried Python yet?;)"
I disagree. Everybody all around the world can parse and produce natural language. In fact, if you find someone who can't, we consider that to be a kind of mental retardation. By contrast, creating things such as computer languages doesn't really seem to occur spontaneously anywhere -- it only really develops when you have a long history of continuous education. It's difficult to do, and the only reason Slashdot geeks can do it is because 1. We have a mechanized agrarian, which means we don't have to spen 14 hours a day in the field, and can do other things, such as learn to read. 2. We have libraries of work on logic and the like, dating back thousands of years, that we use to cheat with -- instead of having to figure something out for ourselves, someone just gives us the answer, in a book. 3. We have a modern, free, public education system where we are given enough resources in order to learn such things.
In any case, I think that most people have an easier time with visual-parallel problems, and that it takes a certain kind of mind, which I will call the geek mind, to tackle serial problems like reading and math.
Giant nets all over the place. Actually, while we're at it, why not just set up hamster-like tubing connecting major cities? That way we don't have to deal with other allergens, cold weather, sunlight, wind, rain, etc.
Skinner: "Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend."
Lisa: "But isn't that a bit shortsited? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?"
Skinner: "No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards."
Lisa: "But aren't the snakes even worse?"
Skinner: "Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat."
Lisa: "But then we're stuck with gorillas!"
Skinner: "No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death."
A reporter can be a source, you know. They can witness events. In this scheme, we make every person their own journalist. If you see something, write about it, sign it, put it on the net. A reporters job is to then triangulate a collective story based on those signed accounts.
What we need is a system with PGP signatures. That way, a reporter can build a reputation over time. If a news article is signed by a source reporter that you trust, you can warrantedly more secure of its validity. Just ignore crap that is unsigned, be cautious with stuff from a newbie, and give as much credence as warranted from someone who hasn't steered you wrong in the past.
Actually, it's relatively easy to get real, actual viagra and resell it to those who can't get it otherwise (perhaps the ol' ticker can't handle the excitement and doc won't prescribe them any). It involves overseas marketing.
So what's Pfizer's incentive to stop the practice? They can legally push more pills than they would otherwise. If something bad happens because of illegal marketing and use of prescription drugs, all they have to do is come out with some statement saying "We strong discourage the improper use of prescription medication... please see your doctor to get a hard-on, etc..."
He is using metaphors, but they are certainly not mixed. They are apt! Apt, I say!
Basically Cringely is arguing that the court system, whose timetables are based on pre-industrial information flows (i.e. the time it takes a man on horse and buggy to get the handwritten documents from the lawyer's office to a court house), cannot keep up with the hijinks MS is pulling in the relatively fast-paced digital age. By the time this particular case goes through appeals, etc., the story will be ancient in computer terms. MS will have screwed consumers 50 ways from Sunday in the meantime.
As far as USPS, or European postal systems having to do with MS legal difficulties -- how do you think the documents were presented to the courts? Fax? Email?;) Now, reflect and understand why the courts can't keep up with MS-BS.
I have not confused anything. Morals are rules, laws. A law (in the legal, not scientific, sense) is a rule for a judgement of an action, whether it is good or bad. If it is bad, we punish the perpetrator, if it is good, then we let that person go.
You hold freedom as a value, and base your moral (meaning rule or law) judgements based on whether freedom has been violated. An action is bad if it has, good if it has not.
I'm sure Thomas Jefferson would say that regardless of what came before them. When the American Fathers founded their society, they set up their own moral code (freedom = good), just like every other group on earth has.
It's only very recently that anyone has tried to seperate ethics and virtue from law codes. I argue that they are basically the same thing.
All law codes are moral codes. Look at the Old Testament of the bible. Or more accurately, the Torah. It's a legal system, with rules for behavior and specific punishments for violations thereof. When a Jewish boy becomes a man and approaches the Torah, he becomes a legal adult, and enters into legal contract that the Jews have with God. He is saying, "I agree to comply by the terms of this contract". It's basically the same deal for Islam, Hinduism, any of the major world religions. When you look at religion before the era of modern states, they were basically law codes.
Your idea of "freedom" is just another in a long list of morals that people have held dear over the centuries, like loyalty, justice, compassions, etc.
Antibiotics are being over-used in home products (and also in factory farm livestock feed). The problem is that the antibiotics in, say, hand soap, really don't do anything to further protect you from germs. In fact, then tend to breed germs populations that become resistant from exposure. If this is kept up, we might face 'super germs' in the future that are resistant to all of our antibiotics.
Of course, I'm not blaming you personally. The industry needs to stop adding antibiotics to household soaps.
Faster, bigger brain cells do not mean a smarter baby. In fact, a few months after birth, certain brain cells start dying off, because they're not necessary. They're just raw material for the "final" brain. It's like the hand -- in the womb, the hand is just a blob. The cells in between the place where the fingers will be die off. That's how the finger form, and thus how the hand gets its basic shape.
So I think it's kind of premature to make any preditions about the intelligence of such a baby. But, as long as we're doing it, my prediction is that those extra cells will die off, and the brain will go the normal course of development.
Have you ever seen a photograph this well lit? The way you can tell that it's not a photograph is that it's way too perfect. Everything is shiny. Also notice that there are no lit translucent objects -- I've heard that we don't have the math for this yet.
Not sure about the math, but that's one of the reason that human skin looks so lifeless in CG. Skin is translucent (that's why your hand glows red when you hold a flashlight up to it). Currently CG skin is only a surface -- it doesn't show light reflecting from within the skin.
Fire from Prometheus, the lyre from Hermes, the structure of the benzene molecule from apparitions of coiled snakes emerging from a fire... without the gods we'd still be cold, without music, and ignorant of the structure of benzene!!
The problem I see with linux documentation (or any other documentation for complex stuff) is that it's usually not at the right level for me -- too high, too low, etc.
I would like to see documentation that's prolem oriented. It would start with "How do I...?". It would list the most basic, high level steps. Then, each of those steps is a link to its own "how do I...?". You could then drill down each step that's a problem to you, and find out how to do the step. That way you don't get stuck. Sure, it would take a long time to build, but then you have pretty complete, robust documentation.
The great thing about wiki is that it's very open. If you see redundant or meaningless data, delete it! Yes, you! It's very empowering.
But wait, hold on! Did someone write trollish nonsense all over a beatiful how-to? Just roll back the changes.
If this scares you (and it should, it's very powerful, very new), check out wikipedia.com. It's totally self-policing and very well-kempt. You will quickly move from scared to excited.
One thing I forgot to mention: I put together a quote for them for installing MS Project with 10 users. Even with the non-profit discount, it was still $4k. (They needed to upgrade from NT to 2k, purchase Project Server, licenses, etc.).
Slashdot Mirror
Let's be serious for a moment. A breakup doesn't mean burning down the redmond campus, executing the manages and raping their wives and daughters. All it means is that the whole company is divided up into smaller companies, not destroyed . Why should the government do this? To protect the marketplace, which MS is abusing through its monopoly status. Legal institutions such as corporations, partnerships and trusts were invented to serve the people, not the other way around. If they're hurting us, bust 'em up.
The use of this technology is for large-area sneaker nets. These people want this much space, combined with the portability of disks. Other geeks have noted that you can easily get a 100+ GB hard for twice the price. Sure, geeks love an excuse to buy more HD space, or better yet -- put together a dedicated RAID fileserver! However, the SOHO/PHB user would like an easy way to fedex 35 GB to their business contact, without oppening up the computer.
Backup tapes? That's not what this is for. What about CD/DVDs? Sorry: they are too small (CD, 650-800MB, DVD 9GB, with compatability issues), the don't act like discs (burning interface breaks standard file browser interface), though they are transportable. Let's face it, people want really big disks that act like standard, rewritable, transportable 'floppy a:' disks, not CDs.
I contend that those are poorly designed GUIs. A similarly poorly designed CLI would suck too. But compare a well-dessigned GUI to a well-designed CLI, you will see that the CLI has built-in ambiguity that the GUI does not.
Take your example to 'copy a b'. Is a the object or the indirect object? In order to find out, you have to consciously learn a particular grammar. You could do English-like where 'copy a b' means 'copy a to b' or switch positions, where 'copy a b' means 'copy to a, b' . Some natural languages actually use that kind of syntax. My point here is that your ad-hoc syntax is ambiguous from the start, and requires explicit training as to what exactly the grammar is.
Contrast that, for example, a GUI where you have two different folders, anybody immediately understands an object's movement from one place to another. As a species, we're pretty good with language, but visual processing has been going on for millions of years longer.
"I agree, but not with your inference. You suppose that a computer language does not have this property, but as it is produced by the human brain without constraints upon it, surely it is an even purer reflection of the human brain's inherent language ability (however much it is inherent). There might have been constraints in the old days, but have you tried Python yet? ;)"
I disagree. Everybody all around the world can parse and produce natural language. In fact, if you find someone who can't, we consider that to be a kind of mental retardation. By contrast, creating things such as computer languages doesn't really seem to occur spontaneously anywhere -- it only really develops when you have a long history of continuous education. It's difficult to do, and the only reason Slashdot geeks can do it is because
1. We have a mechanized agrarian, which means we don't have to spen 14 hours a day in the field, and can do other things, such as learn to read.
2. We have libraries of work on logic and the like, dating back thousands of years, that we use to cheat with -- instead of having to figure something out for ourselves, someone just gives us the answer, in a book.
3. We have a modern, free, public education system where we are given enough resources in order to learn such things.
In any case, I think that most people have an easier time with visual-parallel problems, and that it takes a certain kind of mind, which I will call the geek mind, to tackle serial problems like reading and math.
Skinner: "Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend."
Lisa: "But isn't that a bit shortsited? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?"
Skinner: "No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards."
Lisa: "But aren't the snakes even worse?"
Skinner: "Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat."
Lisa: "But then we're stuck with gorillas!"
Skinner: "No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death."
A reporter can be a source, you know. They can witness events. In this scheme, we make every person their own journalist. If you see something, write about it, sign it, put it on the net. A reporters job is to then triangulate a collective story based on those signed accounts.
As all true patriots are aware of, the purpose of the freenet is to promote piracy and computer hackery. Nothing but porn and warez.
What we need is a system with PGP signatures. That way, a reporter can build a reputation over time. If a news article is signed by a source reporter that you trust, you can warrantedly more secure of its validity. Just ignore crap that is unsigned, be cautious with stuff from a newbie, and give as much credence as warranted from someone who hasn't steered you wrong in the past.
So what's Pfizer's incentive to stop the practice? They can legally push more pills than they would otherwise. If something bad happens because of illegal marketing and use of prescription drugs, all they have to do is come out with some statement saying "We strong discourage the improper use of prescription medication... please see your doctor to get a hard-on, etc..."
AAAAHHHHHHH! Watch out for that giant freaking penguin that's about to eat the plane!!!!
Aw, hell. It's too late anyway.
Basically Cringely is arguing that the court system, whose timetables are based on pre-industrial information flows (i.e. the time it takes a man on horse and buggy to get the handwritten documents from the lawyer's office to a court house), cannot keep up with the hijinks MS is pulling in the relatively fast-paced digital age. By the time this particular case goes through appeals, etc., the story will be ancient in computer terms. MS will have screwed consumers 50 ways from Sunday in the meantime.
As far as USPS, or European postal systems having to do with MS legal difficulties -- how do you think the documents were presented to the courts? Fax? Email? ;) Now, reflect and understand why the courts can't keep up with MS-BS.
Socialist? You mean authoritarian police state.
You hold freedom as a value, and base your moral (meaning rule or law) judgements based on whether freedom has been violated. An action is bad if it has, good if it has not.
I'm sure Thomas Jefferson would say that regardless of what came before them. When the American Fathers founded their society, they set up their own moral code (freedom = good), just like every other group on earth has.
It's only very recently that anyone has tried to seperate ethics and virtue from law codes. I argue that they are basically the same thing.
Your idea of "freedom" is just another in a long list of morals that people have held dear over the centuries, like loyalty, justice, compassions, etc.
Antibiotics are being over-used in home products (and also in factory farm livestock feed). The problem is that the antibiotics in, say, hand soap, really don't do anything to further protect you from germs. In fact, then tend to breed germs populations that become resistant from exposure. If this is kept up, we might face 'super germs' in the future that are resistant to all of our antibiotics.
Of course, I'm not blaming you personally. The industry needs to stop adding antibiotics to household soaps.
So I think it's kind of premature to make any preditions about the intelligence of such a baby. But, as long as we're doing it, my prediction is that those extra cells will die off, and the brain will go the normal course of development.
Try running Adaware. It has an updatable database of spyware -- it should know about your particular offender.
Not sure about the math, but that's one of the reason that human skin looks so lifeless in CG. Skin is translucent (that's why your hand glows red when you hold a flashlight up to it). Currently CG skin is only a surface -- it doesn't show light reflecting from within the skin.
Fire from Prometheus, the lyre from Hermes, the structure of the benzene molecule from apparitions of coiled snakes emerging from a fire... without the gods we'd still be cold, without music, and ignorant of the structure of benzene!!
Down's syndrome is not mental illness. It is mental retardation.
No Fight Club jokes!
I would like to see documentation that's prolem oriented. It would start with "How do I ...?". It would list the most basic, high level steps. Then, each of those steps is a link to its own "how do I...?". You could then drill down each step that's a problem to you, and find out how to do the step. That way you don't get stuck. Sure, it would take a long time to build, but then you have pretty complete, robust documentation.
But wait, hold on! Did someone write trollish nonsense all over a beatiful how-to? Just roll back the changes.
If this scares you (and it should, it's very powerful, very new), check out wikipedia.com. It's totally self-policing and very well-kempt. You will quickly move from scared to excited.
One thing I forgot to mention: I put together a quote for them for installing MS Project with 10 users. Even with the non-profit discount, it was still $4k. (They needed to upgrade from NT to 2k, purchase Project Server, licenses, etc.).