To anyone who thinks that speech cannot be restricted on the Internet(s), please, go back and re-read all the slashdot articles on the Great Firewall of China. You didn't think Newt was begin original here, did you?
I believe I explained precisely why there is a reason to believe that this particular class of people is "the most important to society". If were to address the arguments I presented directly that would be one thing. But to say that you "don't see any reason to believe" after you've been presented with a reason is to ignore reason in favor of your own opinion. I am sorry, at this point I don't see any way to continue this argument without making it personal. So I will stop. If choose to respond, so be it. I will not.
I don't believe I made an argument that the people you mentioned are unnecessary. That's a discussion for a different topic. I simply said that the most important contribution to the society is made by those who create society's technology. If you remove those people, the civilization will be gone for a long, long time. Lack of them is what made the Dark Ages dark. If you remove any of the other classes, they will be re-made within a generation. Your words resound too loud in America. You are coming dangerously close to provoking John Galt's strike. In your fight against techocracy the worst thing that can happen to you is that you might win. On a more felicitous note, Dilbert does not exhibit any ego. This contradiction is one of the reasons why the character is humourous.
It is my understanding that Babbage never had a working model. He also never developed theoretical underpinning. Electrical computers didn't really exist until WWII and I will not insult the intelligence of a slashdot reader by lecturing them on Turing.
Well, Peretz is the first Israeli defense minister with no real army experience. He was never even an officer. He is army's worst boss. Think of an MBA boss without the MBA but with complete backing of his boss. A boss that says the kind of nonsense like "I don't know what engineers, but I know they can do it better and faster". And this is your picture of Peretz. He used to a union leader. He only got a defense minister position as a political power share. It doesn't mean that the actual Israeli researches are trying this nonsense. It just means that they roll their eyes and sigh whenever he opens his mouth.
All major pushes in technology came out of warfare. "Research" almost never yields as much as necessity (I know, I know... there are exceptions... not statement is 100 absolute excluding this one). World War II gave us neuclear energy, radars, computers, jet engines, etc. This bionic weapons will most likely lead to advances in both communications and medicine. And on a gaussian distribution of normal to fucked up you'll always end up with fucked up individuals in a society. Being able to fight them efficiently is a Good Thing (tm). Cheer up. Life is beautiful.
I don't want to be petty, but the question was what should the undergrads see to set them on their way to becoming proficient so that they can learn more later on. We are very quickly gravitating towards answering a different question. Namely, what should a computer scientist know to be on a level with his peers. These are very different questions. When first learning about a subject (assuming no prior familiarity) it helps to see it from different points of view. It doesn't help (most people) to be overwhelmed with information that is too far off field of what the topic at hand is. What is too far off field is subjective. I would argue that the post that you refer me to is interesting, but it does not "explain" anything. It only rephrases the description in a different terminology. I didn't gain any incite by reading it. All I learned is how to call the same things by different names. I disagree with the elephant analogy. Actually, I generally disagree with the whole story. It is not a story about how a man who can see sees men who cannot -- it is not a story about how men who cannot see perceive. We just don't work that way. He phrased everything in terms more comfortable to you and all of a sudden you think that's an explanation. To someone not familiar with either etymology the description that reveals the least details and provides the most information would be the most helpful to set them on their way to understanding.
Now when it comes to trying to come up with the right abstraction, I have to say that to decided which details are pertinent you have to look at which details will be engaged in your model. But even after that you may want to split your category (or your class) into subparts to take advantage of duplicate metainformation among categories or (or classes). I read your paper. I don't think there is a need to argue. We are essentially saying the same thing when it comes to understanding what is an abstraction. This "conflict" is mostly due to personal attachment to a particular etymology. I view oop as more revealing. You view Category Theory as more revealing. You praised a person who wants to view OOP through the abstractions available in the Category Theory. And I want to do it the other way. Perhaps Category Theory when done properly is more all-encompassing, but on a level of a person just viewing the subject for the first time they are similar enough to be considered two different views on the same abstraction. To re-iterate, multiple views on the same subject is a good thing and concentrating on details that don't touch the subject matter directly under discussion while in the initial stages of introducing the subject is a bad thing.
I agree that it was reductionist. I myself am not an expert in the fine points of Category Theory. I view it as most working mathematicians probably do -- a language to describe the diagram chasing that we so often find outself doing. In that sense, computer scientist (or a software developer) could learn from it and adapt to thinking about problem-domain objects (vs. the mathematical objects). What you call "reductionist" I would call "abstracting". Do you not agree that to come up with an abstraction is to reduce an idea (or set of ideas) to just the pertinent details? I am guessing that you are intimately familiar with the Category Theory and what you are really objecting to is the word "just" as being too dismissive. It wasn't. Catagegory Theory, I am sure has its proper place in solving a certain class of problems (I can't think of any off hand, but again -- not an expert). But to a professional programmer the most useful part of the Category Theory is that it trains one to think about abstracting objects into abstractions relevant to the problem domain.
I live to learn. Do tell what differences they have. I am sure if you try to write them out coherently, you will find that the differences are in details. By as an abstraction (something the removes the details to look ideas pertenant to a subject matter discussed) they are similar in that they deal with study of relations (in plain english rather than math sense of the word) between objects. Therefore, to think about either cat theory or obj oriented programming one may adapt a very similar method of thinking. I was not comparing them feature-to-feature. I was saying that thinking about concrete categories may be a useful training for thinking about classes. Thinking about categories ("at large", so to speak) may be a useful training for thinking about abstract classes.
I mentioned calculus of two variables for a very specific reason. You cannot understand the
gaussian curve without it. "Discreet math" was covered under combinatorics which I said should be covered in probability. Graph theory (from combinatorial rather than topological point of view) would be part of an extensive linear algebra course (or series of courses). I should have made it clear that I think that rather than having the usual Calc 1,2,3 there should be Calc 1,2 and Linear Algebra 1,2,3. What I am on the fence about is whether or not abstract algebra would be too far off field. Certainly it would help to understand linear algebra on a much deeper level... but it might be too deep for anyone who wants to concretly compute network-traversal times to care.
probability (heavily skewed towards combinatorics), number theory, geometry (the plain euclidean one because this is really the best way to train a human brain for logic that's been found in the past few thousand years), calculus (of 1 and 2 variables... the rest is a waste of time unless you are specifically training programmers whose skills will be heavily computational in nature), linear algebra, and formal logic. Category theory (which is really just object-oriented math) could be familiarized with, but showing its applications would be more useful than going rigourously through proofs.
You could have a background music with your post... Brazil, Brazil....
How is this enforceable? Any site that is access over a secure connection cannot be monitored. Unless they have guilty-until-proven innocent system of justice, of course.
Well, a contract has to be (by definition) an agreement of 2 parties. There has to be some way to show that you know what you agreed to before you agreed to it. How about a short quiz on details of the contract before you are convince the provider of services that you actually understand the contract. Before anyone screams that is too difficult, DMV does it. They have a test you have to pass to prove a basic understanding of the laws governing behavior on public roads. Anyone asking you to sign a click-thorough contract (if they were diligent to make sure there a meeting of the minds) could device a multiple-choice test that you'd have to pass that would test your understanding of the contract.
The thing is they are not suing the kids (in this analogy) they are asking them for licensing fees. And since it seems like Universal has tacitly granted them this license, Universal is committing fraud here. But the fraud on part of Universal cannot be remedied by the fraud on the part of the kids. This is not a school yard. We have courts for this. The fan sites should sue Universal for fraud instead of trying to bill them for work which they clearly volunterly did without any prior promise of compensation.
You are not entitled to anything that noone promised you. This is the fundamental premise of a free society. The only reason the government owes you anything is because you have a social contract with the government. Whatever you do for anyone does not entitle you to anything. You are free to do whatever you want as are they. If you agree to something, then both you and the other parties are obliged to follow through on the agreement. Otherwise, "to each according to his efforts" is a fundamental premise of a socialist society (please, don't confuse with communist). Again, in a free society, everyone is entitled to do whatever they wish (as long as they don't harm others in whatever ways the society defines what harm is) as long as they don't enter into an agreement to do otherwise. The moment that freedom goes away, you no longer live in a free society. If you want to be paid for what you love to do, you have to get someone to agree to pay you before you start doing it.
Actually, if it can be shown that Universal did encourage people to make these promotions, I believe that their demand for retroactive licensing fees does constitute fraud. The fact that fraud is as wide-spread as you claim it is doesn't change the fact that it is fraud.
Now that I thought about it a bit more, I will re-iterate that sending such an invoice would constitute a fraud. An invoice is a statement that the money is owed. The money is not owed unless the other party agreed to pay or a court has made a judgement stating that the money is owed. Absense of these two, sending and invoice is making a false statement about level of debt. A false statement about such a large amount has got to be fraud. Quantum merit (if you accept that it applies here) allows the fans to sue for compensation or to request a compensation. But requesting that someone agree to compensate is not the same as demanding that someone fork over the money because it is owed (which is what an invoice does).
Well, I would say that the lawn mowing analogy is incomplete rather than incorrect. It is like putting up a sign on your lawn saying, "please, maw my lawn". And then when being presented with a bill claiming that there was no prior agreement to exchange of compensation for services. In light of this, I will take exception to your sentence, "If the studio really did encourage these people to promote, and now is suing them for it, quantum meruit (being an equitable principle built around fairness) may very well allow them to recover compensation from the studios based on the studios promise and subsequent bad faith actions." The fact that the studio encouraged these people to promote the movie does not constitute a promise to compensate. After all they encourage people to do all kinds of things (for instance, to see movies), but that does not mean that they agree to compensate the said people for these actions or in any way imply that such a promise exists. By explicitly encouraging fans to promote the movie they recognize these people as having a priori self-interest in promoting this product and therefore tacitly reject any potential claim of promise of exchange of future compensation for the work done. To put it blantly, asking someone to do something for you does not constitute any promise. I read the wikipedia article. I don't buy it. It doesn't seem fair to be forced to pay a bill that you never agreed to pay.
They will be guilty of fraud. Doing something for someone does not entitle you to compensation unless you have a prior agreement that these actions will be compensated for. This is equivalent to me showing up on your lawn, mawing it and sending you a bill that I deem is fair. You didn't agree to pay for before hand, so you don't owe the money. Billing someone for the money they don't owe you is fraud.
I am sorry, to disappoint you, but Ayn Rand is far from anything I idealize. Ayn Rand wrote in abstract. To compare liking her as a person to liking what she had to say is absurd. I just think that when it comes to defining how to treat others fairly, she's got it right on the dot. All the examples I was giving of what you are gonna have to cope with if you don't leave people alone with your morals garbage were taken from the real life. They are already happening and will only increase.
Then don't complain about lack of healthcare because the doctors don't want to work in a system where they have to learn as much about law as they do about medicine. Don't complain about loss of manufacturing jobs to the countries where the manufacturers get to negotiate with workers what their wages are worth instead of the union bosses. Don't complain about not having enough teachers because anyone with an iota of a talent does not want to stay in the system where they have to worry about the abitrary rules of behavior set for them by the people who have no understanding of their subject. In general, if you think the system works, you don't get to complain when someone picks and goes somewhere else after telling you the hell with your rules. The only rule you get to have in exchanging goods and services with other people is that you owe each other what you agree to owe each other. As soon as someone is forced to comply with your demands, you set yourself on a way to become alone in your world where only get to obey your rules. And you deserve to get to that world as soon as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
To anyone who thinks that speech cannot be restricted on the Internet(s), please, go back and re-read all the slashdot articles on the Great Firewall of China. You didn't think Newt was begin original here, did you?
Does anyone else need convincing that comments might not be a waste of time?
I believe I explained precisely why there is a reason to believe that this particular class of people is "the most important to society". If were to address the arguments I presented directly that would be one thing. But to say that you "don't see any reason to believe" after you've been presented with a reason is to ignore reason in favor of your own opinion. I am sorry, at this point I don't see any way to continue this argument without making it personal. So I will stop. If choose to respond, so be it. I will not.
I don't believe I made an argument that the people you mentioned are unnecessary. That's a discussion for a different topic. I simply said that the most important contribution to the society is made by those who create society's technology. If you remove those people, the civilization will be gone for a long, long time. Lack of them is what made the Dark Ages dark. If you remove any of the other classes, they will be re-made within a generation. Your words resound too loud in America. You are coming dangerously close to provoking John Galt's strike. In your fight against techocracy the worst thing that can happen to you is that you might win. On a more felicitous note, Dilbert does not exhibit any ego. This contradiction is one of the reasons why the character is humourous.
Would you not agree that creation of technology is an act of creation? What in your opinion is a higher merit than an act of creation?
Could you kindly point out the difference between technocracy and meritocracy without reverting to personal attacks?
Isn't "technocracy" just a disparaging term for "meritocracy"?
It is my understanding that Babbage never had a working model. He also never developed theoretical underpinning. Electrical computers didn't really exist until WWII and I will not insult the intelligence of a slashdot reader by lecturing them on Turing.
Well, Peretz is the first Israeli defense minister with no real army experience. He was never even an officer. He is army's worst boss. Think of an MBA boss without the MBA but with complete backing of his boss. A boss that says the kind of nonsense like "I don't know what engineers, but I know they can do it better and faster". And this is your picture of Peretz. He used to a union leader. He only got a defense minister position as a political power share. It doesn't mean that the actual Israeli researches are trying this nonsense. It just means that they roll their eyes and sigh whenever he opens his mouth.
All major pushes in technology came out of warfare. "Research" almost never yields as much as necessity (I know, I know... there are exceptions... not statement is 100 absolute excluding this one). World War II gave us neuclear energy, radars, computers, jet engines, etc. This bionic weapons will most likely lead to advances in both communications and medicine. And on a gaussian distribution of normal to fucked up you'll always end up with fucked up individuals in a society. Being able to fight them efficiently is a Good Thing (tm). Cheer up. Life is beautiful.
I don't want to be petty, but the question was what should the undergrads see to set them on their way to becoming proficient so that they can learn more later on. We are very quickly gravitating towards answering a different question. Namely, what should a computer scientist know to be on a level with his peers. These are very different questions. When first learning about a subject (assuming no prior familiarity) it helps to see it from different points of view. It doesn't help (most people) to be overwhelmed with information that is too far off field of what the topic at hand is. What is too far off field is subjective. I would argue that the post that you refer me to is interesting, but it does not "explain" anything. It only rephrases the description in a different terminology. I didn't gain any incite by reading it. All I learned is how to call the same things by different names. I disagree with the elephant analogy. Actually, I generally disagree with the whole story. It is not a story about how a man who can see sees men who cannot -- it is not a story about how men who cannot see perceive. We just don't work that way. He phrased everything in terms more comfortable to you and all of a sudden you think that's an explanation. To someone not familiar with either etymology the description that reveals the least details and provides the most information would be the most helpful to set them on their way to understanding.
Now when it comes to trying to come up with the right abstraction, I have to say that to decided which details are pertinent you have to look at which details will be engaged in your model. But even after that you may want to split your category (or your class) into subparts to take advantage of duplicate metainformation among categories or (or classes). I read your paper. I don't think there is a need to argue. We are essentially saying the same thing when it comes to understanding what is an abstraction. This "conflict" is mostly due to personal attachment to a particular etymology. I view oop as more revealing. You view Category Theory as more revealing. You praised a person who wants to view OOP through the abstractions available in the Category Theory. And I want to do it the other way. Perhaps Category Theory when done properly is more all-encompassing, but on a level of a person just viewing the subject for the first time they are similar enough to be considered two different views on the same abstraction. To re-iterate, multiple views on the same subject is a good thing and concentrating on details that don't touch the subject matter directly under discussion while in the initial stages of introducing the subject is a bad thing.
I agree that it was reductionist. I myself am not an expert in the fine points of Category Theory. I view it as most working mathematicians probably do -- a language to describe the diagram chasing that we so often find outself doing. In that sense, computer scientist (or a software developer) could learn from it and adapt to thinking about problem-domain objects (vs. the mathematical objects). What you call "reductionist" I would call "abstracting". Do you not agree that to come up with an abstraction is to reduce an idea (or set of ideas) to just the pertinent details? I am guessing that you are intimately familiar with the Category Theory and what you are really objecting to is the word "just" as being too dismissive. It wasn't. Catagegory Theory, I am sure has its proper place in solving a certain class of problems (I can't think of any off hand, but again -- not an expert). But to a professional programmer the most useful part of the Category Theory is that it trains one to think about abstracting objects into abstractions relevant to the problem domain.
I live to learn. Do tell what differences they have. I am sure if you try to write them out coherently, you will find that the differences are in details. By as an abstraction (something the removes the details to look ideas pertenant to a subject matter discussed) they are similar in that they deal with study of relations (in plain english rather than math sense of the word) between objects. Therefore, to think about either cat theory or obj oriented programming one may adapt a very similar method of thinking. I was not comparing them feature-to-feature. I was saying that thinking about concrete categories may be a useful training for thinking about classes. Thinking about categories ("at large", so to speak) may be a useful training for thinking about abstract classes.
I mentioned calculus of two variables for a very specific reason. You cannot understand the gaussian curve without it. "Discreet math" was covered under combinatorics which I said should be covered in probability. Graph theory (from combinatorial rather than topological point of view) would be part of an extensive linear algebra course (or series of courses). I should have made it clear that I think that rather than having the usual Calc 1,2,3 there should be Calc 1,2 and Linear Algebra 1,2,3. What I am on the fence about is whether or not abstract algebra would be too far off field. Certainly it would help to understand linear algebra on a much deeper level... but it might be too deep for anyone who wants to concretly compute network-traversal times to care.
probability (heavily skewed towards combinatorics), number theory, geometry (the plain euclidean one because this is really the best way to train a human brain for logic that's been found in the past few thousand years), calculus (of 1 and 2 variables... the rest is a waste of time unless you are specifically training programmers whose skills will be heavily computational in nature), linear algebra, and formal logic. Category theory (which is really just object-oriented math) could be familiarized with, but showing its applications would be more useful than going rigourously through proofs.
You could have a background music with your post... Brazil, Brazil....
How is this enforceable? Any site that is access over a secure connection cannot be monitored. Unless they have guilty-until-proven innocent system of justice, of course.
Well, a contract has to be (by definition) an agreement of 2 parties. There has to be some way to show that you know what you agreed to before you agreed to it. How about a short quiz on details of the contract before you are convince the provider of services that you actually understand the contract. Before anyone screams that is too difficult, DMV does it. They have a test you have to pass to prove a basic understanding of the laws governing behavior on public roads. Anyone asking you to sign a click-thorough contract (if they were diligent to make sure there a meeting of the minds) could device a multiple-choice test that you'd have to pass that would test your understanding of the contract.
The thing is they are not suing the kids (in this analogy) they are asking them for licensing fees. And since it seems like Universal has tacitly granted them this license, Universal is committing fraud here. But the fraud on part of Universal cannot be remedied by the fraud on the part of the kids. This is not a school yard. We have courts for this. The fan sites should sue Universal for fraud instead of trying to bill them for work which they clearly volunterly did without any prior promise of compensation.
You are not entitled to anything that noone promised you. This is the fundamental premise of a free society. The only reason the government owes you anything is because you have a social contract with the government. Whatever you do for anyone does not entitle you to anything. You are free to do whatever you want as are they. If you agree to something, then both you and the other parties are obliged to follow through on the agreement. Otherwise, "to each according to his efforts" is a fundamental premise of a socialist society (please, don't confuse with communist). Again, in a free society, everyone is entitled to do whatever they wish (as long as they don't harm others in whatever ways the society defines what harm is) as long as they don't enter into an agreement to do otherwise. The moment that freedom goes away, you no longer live in a free society. If you want to be paid for what you love to do, you have to get someone to agree to pay you before you start doing it.
Actually, if it can be shown that Universal did encourage people to make these promotions, I believe that their demand for retroactive licensing fees does constitute fraud. The fact that fraud is as wide-spread as you claim it is doesn't change the fact that it is fraud.
Now that I thought about it a bit more, I will re-iterate that sending such an invoice would constitute a fraud. An invoice is a statement that the money is owed. The money is not owed unless the other party agreed to pay or a court has made a judgement stating that the money is owed. Absense of these two, sending and invoice is making a false statement about level of debt. A false statement about such a large amount has got to be fraud. Quantum merit (if you accept that it applies here) allows the fans to sue for compensation or to request a compensation. But requesting that someone agree to compensate is not the same as demanding that someone fork over the money because it is owed (which is what an invoice does).
Well, I would say that the lawn mowing analogy is incomplete rather than incorrect. It is like putting up a sign on your lawn saying, "please, maw my lawn". And then when being presented with a bill claiming that there was no prior agreement to exchange of compensation for services. In light of this, I will take exception to your sentence, "If the studio really did encourage these people to promote, and now is suing them for it, quantum meruit (being an equitable principle built around fairness) may very well allow them to recover compensation from the studios based on the studios promise and subsequent bad faith actions." The fact that the studio encouraged these people to promote the movie does not constitute a promise to compensate. After all they encourage people to do all kinds of things (for instance, to see movies), but that does not mean that they agree to compensate the said people for these actions or in any way imply that such a promise exists. By explicitly encouraging fans to promote the movie they recognize these people as having a priori self-interest in promoting this product and therefore tacitly reject any potential claim of promise of exchange of future compensation for the work done. To put it blantly, asking someone to do something for you does not constitute any promise. I read the wikipedia article. I don't buy it. It doesn't seem fair to be forced to pay a bill that you never agreed to pay.
They will be guilty of fraud. Doing something for someone does not entitle you to compensation unless you have a prior agreement that these actions will be compensated for. This is equivalent to me showing up on your lawn, mawing it and sending you a bill that I deem is fair. You didn't agree to pay for before hand, so you don't owe the money. Billing someone for the money they don't owe you is fraud.
I am sorry, to disappoint you, but Ayn Rand is far from anything I idealize. Ayn Rand wrote in abstract. To compare liking her as a person to liking what she had to say is absurd. I just think that when it comes to defining how to treat others fairly, she's got it right on the dot. All the examples I was giving of what you are gonna have to cope with if you don't leave people alone with your morals garbage were taken from the real life. They are already happening and will only increase.
Then don't complain about lack of healthcare because the doctors don't want to work in a system where they have to learn as much about law as they do about medicine. Don't complain about loss of manufacturing jobs to the countries where the manufacturers get to negotiate with workers what their wages are worth instead of the union bosses. Don't complain about not having enough teachers because anyone with an iota of a talent does not want to stay in the system where they have to worry about the abitrary rules of behavior set for them by the people who have no understanding of their subject. In general, if you think the system works, you don't get to complain when someone picks and goes somewhere else after telling you the hell with your rules. The only rule you get to have in exchanging goods and services with other people is that you owe each other what you agree to owe each other. As soon as someone is forced to comply with your demands, you set yourself on a way to become alone in your world where only get to obey your rules. And you deserve to get to that world as soon as possible.