It's the things that the GIMP doesn't do that relegates it to toy status.
I smell the burning tinder of an approaching flame war, so let's get this straight.
GIMP does most things that Photoshop does, and does it fairly well. It does do a few things differently, and the cost of relearning is significant, so there is a high barrier to switching.
Having said that: There is one thing that GIMP really doesn't do that Photoshop does, and that is print. I don't mean "dump it to your colour postscript". I mean all of the stuff that you need to get your images faithfully reproduced on your offset printer as well as they are reproduced on your calibrated monitor. (Replace "offset printer" with whatever output device your printer/publisher is using.)
So in conclusion: The GIMP is not a toy. However, if you are working in print, then the GIMP isn't even close to being the right tool for your job.
Writing a compiler for a real language is a non-trivial task.
It depends on the language. Some "real" languages are fairly simple in practice, and pre-ANSI C is one such language.
But regardless, writing a cross-platform compiler for a real language is at least one order of magnitude harder. Or, at least, it is if your implementation language is C.
And, in fact, that's the usual Libertarian answer. It's up to states to work this crap out. And like all Libertarian answers, it's a non-answer.
Try this argument on for size: Smokers (regardless of what they're smoking) should be fined or jailed like any other polluter. After all, their right to smoke, regardless of what they're smoking, stops at my atmosphere.
On the surface, that sounds correct... but it's a subtlety at best, IMHO.
It's something that comes up a lot in computer science. Stuff that's "private" in a module/class/whatever is not for clients to access. But it's usually no "secret"; you wouldn't cryptographically protect it, for example.
I'm fairly sure that the practitioners of these female rites are just as eager to not have them seen as the men are to not see them, no?
Absolutely. Just like I'm pretty eager not to see most of my friends have sex, and I'm sure they feel the same way about me.
See, there are, at base, some things which any given existing culture likes to keep secret.
There's one important distinction here.
There is a huge difference between "secret" and "private". What you do when you're sitting on the toilet or between the sheets with your SO is no secret, but it is private.
But the other important distinction here is that the Aboriginal database is consensual, much like flagging "inappropriate content". It's to protect you from accidentally seeing something that you don't want to see, not to prevent you from seeing something that you're not allowed to. I have no problem with that at all.
Slashdotters tend to be libertarians. Scientists in general are often in favour of government funding for research projects [...]
Both slashdotters and scientists tend to be meritocrats. Some slashdotters dress this up in poorly-thought-out pseudo-libertarian verbiage. Some haven't yet outgrown their Ayn Rand phase. Some dress it up in liberal/progressive thought (give everyone a chance to earn merit, essentially). But really, we're pretty much all meritocrats when you get down to it.
IBM could claim ill-defined, vacuous and ultimately non-existent property rights, and try to extort money from Oracle's customers. ThThen they could sue Oracle and drag it on for years, pulling down IBM's share price, and hope to become enough of a bloody nuisance that Oracle buys them out.
After all, IBM knows all about this kind of profit-making venture.
Dude, if you're old enough to remember the slide rule, you're old enough to remember Martin Gardner's column in Scientific American. There are lots of games there where the slide rule comes in handy.
Apart from John Horton Conway's famous game, My Dad Has More Money Than Your Dad (scientific notation edition), you can use your slide rule to work out the winning strategy for Nim. I'm pretty sure that's the only slide rule game with decent AI, though.
That's great. Now solve the problem for other works than just music. Or do you expect me to make the video games (or film the movie) you just enjoyed live?
I'm not the OP, and nor am I an anti-copyright zealot. I do agree that copyright is (at worst) a necessary evil until such time as we can think of something better.
I also agree that "peform live" is not an answer. Some of the most innovative bands (including The Beatles in their later career) never toured, and the music was arguably better because of it. In addition, I live in Australia. How am I supposed to hear an unsigned US or UK band live?
Having said that, the important point for me is value for money. The new post-scarcity economy is such that you can't expect to make large wads of cash just for being a middle man any more. But give us something worth buying, and we'll happily buy it.
The central problem is that the economics of Big Entertainment are completely screwed up. Your example of movies is a case in point, partly because the myth of "star power" is still entrenched. Most big-budget movies are not worth what is spent on them, because "stars" are over-priced. A $20M-per-movie actor is simply not worth four times as much as a $5M-per-movie actor, by any measure that you care to name (e.g. raw talent, number of Academy Awards(R), box office takings, whatever).
Moreover, William Goldman identified no fewer than seven creative jobs that need to do everything right for a movie to "work". Acting is only one of them.
While I vehemently disagree with the the anti-copyright zealots, they have a point: It will probably take nothing less than a large external jolt to restore some semblance of sanity to Big Entertainment. I just happen to think that they've picked the wrong proposed jolt.
They can sound better if you have a good turntable with a good cartridge, a good preamp and amp, and good speakers that are capable of resolving the differences between digital and analog audio.
But just because a record has a groove, dont make it in the groove. But you can tell right away, at letter A, when the people start to move.
Many of these guys have a superstitious fear of "toxins," and no matter how low the level might be, they will be convinced that it is poisoning their kids.
I've already heard the claim that it's the thimerosal in your vaccinations that causes autism in your kids.
This isn't mere superstition we're taking about. This is a full-on conspiracy theory. In fact, full-on antivaxers really seem to think that "mercury poisoning" is some kind of demon posession, even to the point of staging elaborate and deadly exorcism rituals, known as "chelation".
Putting them together, I am what Christians would call a fundie and a cultist.
I never called you that. Go back and see. I said "some atheists", and never claimed that you personally are a fundie. Indeed, I assumed that you didn't really believe that, and were just adopting that stance for the sake of argument, because this is slashdot, and people do that sort of thing around here.
Having said that, I find it odd that an Atheist would tell a Christian what to believe, particularly if said Christian wants to believe almost exactly what you do (even if they also want to believe some things that you don't). Being brought up as a Liberal Christian, "attack" is not in my upbringing. Christianity has a history of bad experiences with it, and I was brought up not to do that.
You can probably tell that I no longer agree with everything that I was taught in growing up, but I still have a lot of respect for it.
This discussion started when you said And there are those who argue that talking "evolution" without "equal time" for "alternatives" is also "brainwashing".
And this was in response to:
Imposing her dogma that there is no conflict between religion and science is not 'fostering an intellectual discussion'. [...] Sounds closer to 'brainwashing' than 'fostering intellectual discussion' to me.
That there is no conflict between religion and science is the official position of most religions in the US, and also pretty much every scientific body. It is also the official position of every much scientific body that evolution is a fact. In addition, the official position of most religions in the US on the topic of evolution is one of two things: 1) evolution is a fact, or 2) they don't presume to have an opinion on the topic and defer you to the scientific establishment for answers to that sort of question.
You're right, I ignored most of your arguments to the contrary. So long as you realise that you're in the minority, even amongst Atheist scientists, then as far as I'm concerned, you can believe what you like.
I concur that it's probably not "fostering intellectual discussion". But like not discussing Intelligent Design (or whatever creationism is called this week), its purpose is to head off a time-wasting, useless discussion that already-overloaded high school science classes really do not need to get into. The fact that it's also the opinion of pretty much all of the scientific establishment and most religions is a bonus. And like avoiding all discussions of Intelligent Design (previous caveat also applies here), it's not "brainwashing" any more than not discussing "alternatives to evolution" is.
That is: It's the same argument, and it's a bad argument no matter who makes it.
You can have the last word if you like. Thanks for an interesting discussion.
That if god intervenes and changes the physical world, then science is wrong in its fundamental assumption that the physical world can be understood via purely naturalistic explanations, that every physical event that has a cause has a naturalistic cause.
If you still are unable to see the difference between these two positions, then it's not only your reading comprehension skills that are lacking but also your intellect and ability to reason.
Beautiful ad hominem, BTW! I'm going to assume that you weren't really trying for a logical fallacy, but just getting into the slashdot spirit, which is cool.
Wow, this is rich. I love that you call me a biblical fundamentalist because I say that I believe the minority of people who believe there is a conflict are correct and then give specific reasons for my assertion.
I didn't call you, specifically, a biblical fundamentalist. You said that the minority of Christians who have a problem with science are correct, while evidently not having a problem with science yourself.
I'm not sure what to think of that.
Taking the assumption that all valid conceptions of god are incompatible with science seems like a good thing to do for the sake of argument. There are people who really believe in that sort of deity, and they deserve to be smacked down for it. I'm cool with that.
But why would you assume that's what Christianity is?
Perhaps I should explain where I'm coming from. Regardless of what I personally believe, I was brought up in the third-largest Christian church in Australia, which also happens to be the most liberal. In fact, to give you some idea of where the church comes from, I was talking with my mother over Christmas, and she was commenting about how impressed she was by Rowan Wilson's recent BBC interview. Needless to say, the idea of a god compatible with science is not a foreign concept to me.
So, yes, there is a scientific test for whether murder is wrong, given a specific moral framework. It's a logical test as opposed to an experimental verification, but again, if you think math isn't science, then I don't know what to say.
I agree that maths is science, but I don't agree that moral philosophies are "self-contained logical systems" in the sense that you seem to mean it. Moral philosophers do indeed use logic, but it's usually not the kind of mathematical logic that I (with an extremely thorough academic grounding in formal logic and logic programming) am used to.
I agree with you about murder being wrong, BTW. It wasn't a great example, though it does push the problem back one step. If "murder is any killing of a human that is morally wrong", it does raise the question about what a "moral wrong" actually is.
Another example is "justice". What is that, exactly? And how would you test for it?
I agree logic and philosophy are obviously important, and part of that is theology. But in the example you describe, firstly the answers are still found by following logic and reasoning, and not by religious faith or accepting something written down in a book or said by a person, which is what I meant by "religion".
Obviously, I'm taking a broader and, I think, much more fair view. Religion is not all about accepting something written down in a book, And, to cap things off, it has made real, useful discoveries.
Secondly, the answers come from attacking the claim that God must exist.
No, this answer comes from attacking a specific, wrong claim. Which also, I might add, effectively refutes the claim that you hear sometimes that theology is not falsifiable.
It's not clear here that theological thought should be put under the religion camp anyway, since this discovery came from disproving the proof - arguably therefore it's more atheism than theism.
Sorry, you can't have it both ways. If you're allowed to claim that the best of religion isn't really religion, then religious people are allowed to claim that the worst of religion isn't really religion either. And if you're allowed to claim that the worst of religion is "real" religion, then religious people are allowed to claim that the worst of atheism (e.g. Stalin, Pol Pot) is "real" atheism.
Alternatively, we could all learn to get along. Just a suggestion.
Slashdot Mirror
Patents are evil, but they're a necessary evil. Some evil patents are less necessary than others. Some are completely unnecessary.
Once more, a coding-related site which lumps C and C++ together into one "C/C++" agglomeration. That's the point where I stopped looking.
I bet I know how you initialise a 10,000 element array, then.
Add compiler development to that list.
I smell the burning tinder of an approaching flame war, so let's get this straight.
GIMP does most things that Photoshop does, and does it fairly well. It does do a few things differently, and the cost of relearning is significant, so there is a high barrier to switching.
Having said that: There is one thing that GIMP really doesn't do that Photoshop does, and that is print. I don't mean "dump it to your colour postscript". I mean all of the stuff that you need to get your images faithfully reproduced on your offset printer as well as they are reproduced on your calibrated monitor. (Replace "offset printer" with whatever output device your printer/publisher is using.)
So in conclusion: The GIMP is not a toy. However, if you are working in print, then the GIMP isn't even close to being the right tool for your job.
It depends on the language. Some "real" languages are fairly simple in practice, and pre-ANSI C is one such language.
But regardless, writing a cross-platform compiler for a real language is at least one order of magnitude harder. Or, at least, it is if your implementation language is C.
And, in fact, that's the usual Libertarian answer. It's up to states to work this crap out. And like all Libertarian answers, it's a non-answer.
Try this argument on for size: Smokers (regardless of what they're smoking) should be fined or jailed like any other polluter. After all, their right to smoke, regardless of what they're smoking, stops at my atmosphere.
It's something that comes up a lot in computer science. Stuff that's "private" in a module/class/whatever is not for clients to access. But it's usually no "secret"; you wouldn't cryptographically protect it, for example.
Absolutely. Just like I'm pretty eager not to see most of my friends have sex, and I'm sure they feel the same way about me.
There's one important distinction here.
There is a huge difference between "secret" and "private". What you do when you're sitting on the toilet or between the sheets with your SO is no secret, but it is private.
But the other important distinction here is that the Aboriginal database is consensual, much like flagging "inappropriate content". It's to protect you from accidentally seeing something that you don't want to see, not to prevent you from seeing something that you're not allowed to. I have no problem with that at all.
Both slashdotters and scientists tend to be meritocrats. Some slashdotters dress this up in poorly-thought-out pseudo-libertarian verbiage. Some haven't yet outgrown their Ayn Rand phase. Some dress it up in liberal/progressive thought (give everyone a chance to earn merit, essentially). But really, we're pretty much all meritocrats when you get down to it.
Gerunds only act as verbs within the non-finite verb clause, not in the sentence as a whole.
He's David Kelley's bitch.
Damn straight. Survival of the fittest, I say!
I know!
IBM could claim ill-defined, vacuous and ultimately non-existent property rights, and try to extort money from Oracle's customers. ThThen they could sue Oracle and drag it on for years, pulling down IBM's share price, and hope to become enough of a bloody nuisance that Oracle buys them out.
After all, IBM knows all about this kind of profit-making venture.
Dude, if you're old enough to remember the slide rule, you're old enough to remember Martin Gardner's column in Scientific American. There are lots of games there where the slide rule comes in handy.
Apart from John Horton Conway's famous game, My Dad Has More Money Than Your Dad (scientific notation edition), you can use your slide rule to work out the winning strategy for Nim. I'm pretty sure that's the only slide rule game with decent AI, though.
Heretic! The Saviour of All Geeks shall be born on an even power of two.
Plenty of extant corporations will be around in 50 years.
I'm not the OP, and nor am I an anti-copyright zealot. I do agree that copyright is (at worst) a necessary evil until such time as we can think of something better.
I also agree that "peform live" is not an answer. Some of the most innovative bands (including The Beatles in their later career) never toured, and the music was arguably better because of it. In addition, I live in Australia. How am I supposed to hear an unsigned US or UK band live?
Having said that, the important point for me is value for money. The new post-scarcity economy is such that you can't expect to make large wads of cash just for being a middle man any more. But give us something worth buying, and we'll happily buy it.
The central problem is that the economics of Big Entertainment are completely screwed up. Your example of movies is a case in point, partly because the myth of "star power" is still entrenched. Most big-budget movies are not worth what is spent on them, because "stars" are over-priced. A $20M-per-movie actor is simply not worth four times as much as a $5M-per-movie actor, by any measure that you care to name (e.g. raw talent, number of Academy Awards(R), box office takings, whatever).
Moreover, William Goldman identified no fewer than seven creative jobs that need to do everything right for a movie to "work". Acting is only one of them.
While I vehemently disagree with the the anti-copyright zealots, they have a point: It will probably take nothing less than a large external jolt to restore some semblance of sanity to Big Entertainment. I just happen to think that they've picked the wrong proposed jolt.
But just because a record has a groove, dont make it in the groove. But you can tell right away, at letter A, when the people start to move.
I've already heard the claim that it's the thimerosal in your vaccinations that causes autism in your kids.
This isn't mere superstition we're taking about. This is a full-on conspiracy theory. In fact, full-on antivaxers really seem to think that "mercury poisoning" is some kind of demon posession, even to the point of staging elaborate and deadly exorcism rituals, known as "chelation".
Stop sniggering. You know it's now called Urectum.
I never called you that. Go back and see. I said "some atheists", and never claimed that you personally are a fundie. Indeed, I assumed that you didn't really believe that, and were just adopting that stance for the sake of argument, because this is slashdot, and people do that sort of thing around here.
Having said that, I find it odd that an Atheist would tell a Christian what to believe, particularly if said Christian wants to believe almost exactly what you do (even if they also want to believe some things that you don't). Being brought up as a Liberal Christian, "attack" is not in my upbringing. Christianity has a history of bad experiences with it, and I was brought up not to do that.
You can probably tell that I no longer agree with everything that I was taught in growing up, but I still have a lot of respect for it.
And this was in response to:
That there is no conflict between religion and science is the official position of most religions in the US, and also pretty much every scientific body. It is also the official position of every much scientific body that evolution is a fact. In addition, the official position of most religions in the US on the topic of evolution is one of two things: 1) evolution is a fact, or 2) they don't presume to have an opinion on the topic and defer you to the scientific establishment for answers to that sort of question.
You're right, I ignored most of your arguments to the contrary. So long as you realise that you're in the minority, even amongst Atheist scientists, then as far as I'm concerned, you can believe what you like.
I concur that it's probably not "fostering intellectual discussion". But like not discussing Intelligent Design (or whatever creationism is called this week), its purpose is to head off a time-wasting, useless discussion that already-overloaded high school science classes really do not need to get into. The fact that it's also the opinion of pretty much all of the scientific establishment and most religions is a bonus. And like avoiding all discussions of Intelligent Design (previous caveat also applies here), it's not "brainwashing" any more than not discussing "alternatives to evolution" is.
That is: It's the same argument, and it's a bad argument no matter who makes it.
You can have the last word if you like. Thanks for an interesting discussion.
Yeah, because evolution is also overkill.
Beautiful ad hominem, BTW! I'm going to assume that you weren't really trying for a logical fallacy, but just getting into the slashdot spirit, which is cool.
I didn't call you, specifically, a biblical fundamentalist. You said that the minority of Christians who have a problem with science are correct, while evidently not having a problem with science yourself.
I'm not sure what to think of that.
Taking the assumption that all valid conceptions of god are incompatible with science seems like a good thing to do for the sake of argument. There are people who really believe in that sort of deity, and they deserve to be smacked down for it. I'm cool with that.
But why would you assume that's what Christianity is?
Perhaps I should explain where I'm coming from. Regardless of what I personally believe, I was brought up in the third-largest Christian church in Australia, which also happens to be the most liberal. In fact, to give you some idea of where the church comes from, I was talking with my mother over Christmas, and she was commenting about how impressed she was by Rowan Wilson's recent BBC interview. Needless to say, the idea of a god compatible with science is not a foreign concept to me.
I agree that maths is science, but I don't agree that moral philosophies are "self-contained logical systems" in the sense that you seem to mean it. Moral philosophers do indeed use logic, but it's usually not the kind of mathematical logic that I (with an extremely thorough academic grounding in formal logic and logic programming) am used to.
I agree with you about murder being wrong, BTW. It wasn't a great example, though it does push the problem back one step. If "murder is any killing of a human that is morally wrong", it does raise the question about what a "moral wrong" actually is.
Another example is "justice". What is that, exactly? And how would you test for it?
Obviously, I'm taking a broader and, I think, much more fair view. Religion is not all about accepting something written down in a book, And, to cap things off, it has made real, useful discoveries.
No, this answer comes from attacking a specific, wrong claim. Which also, I might add, effectively refutes the claim that you hear sometimes that theology is not falsifiable.
Sorry, you can't have it both ways. If you're allowed to claim that the best of religion isn't really religion, then religious people are allowed to claim that the worst of religion isn't really religion either. And if you're allowed to claim that the worst of religion is "real" religion, then religious people are allowed to claim that the worst of atheism (e.g. Stalin, Pol Pot) is "real" atheism.
Alternatively, we could all learn to get along. Just a suggestion.