Him: You basically have to read the entire alert to even know what's being asked...
You: Pardon me for being dense, but what the fsck is wrong with that? Let me guess, the next Apple interface won't even have text, and dialog messages will consist of pantomime quicktime movies...
The problem is that very few people read dialog boxes. This is a human attribute that is not going to change easily, so people who design things that people use should take it into account. Design of worker environments on shop floors take into account that it requires more effort to reach outside a semicircle with a radius of half your armslength. They don't say: the guy is lazy and should just reach for the button/nailgun/whatever. In the same way, the average joe doesn't read very fast -- even avid readers like me dont want to read the full text of every dialog box. A dialog box with more than a few lines of text will probably not get read.
You have probably skimmed over parts of this post!
Making dialogs give you the least amount of information that allows you to make a choice is just like commenting your code. It's not for when you are one with your code and know exactly what's going on, it's for crunch time 3 AM when it's not all that clear whether pressing yes or no will delete the info on your hard drive.
It should be no surprise that a LOT of people out there aren't too tolerant of shoving bit of metal in yourself, poking holes in your skin, and dying various parts of yours bodies, and then trusting that you'll be professional and reliable.
Yup, because "everyone knows" that dying various parts of your bodies is like a flag saying "I am not reliable". Guess those stealing Jews have to have something to do with this...
Ummm... out of the box thinking? Tattoos and piercings are considered trendy now. Is Lindsey Lohan "out of the box" for having "la Bella Vita" tattood on her back? Or is she just another girl that's following a trend? I'd hazard a guess and say that the vast majority of those that have tattoos now are just following one trend or another. And following trends is most definitely not out of the box.
Brilliant! I see that you understand that having a tattoo is just as conformist as having an unblemished skin and a crew cut (if you're a guy, of course -- crew cuts on women are just too far out). So why do we have a problem with tattoos?
"I find what you have written to be discriminatory." Absolutely. But it's a fact that if someone has visible tats or visible piercings (aside from say, an earring), they run the risk of not being hired. Not saying it's right, but that's the way it is.
So, change the discrimination a bit and we have:
But it's a fact that if someone is visibly black/jewish/not christian, they run the risk of not being hired. Not saying it's right, but that's the way it is.
Granted, one cannot choose to be black or white, but some people would see religion as a 'reversible choice' as much as piercings are. I don't see how one can defend using any metric not related to work performance in hiring.
There will never be a 'real proof' for evolution that will satisfy creationsists, simply because God could have created the whole universe yesterday, including the state information needed for us to think that the universe was billions of years old.
Remember when they came out with Palladium and digital screens so that there's end-to-end hostile encryption with no analog hole?
Of course -- they wire the device straight to your brain! If I still need to see it with my eyes and hear it with my ears I can record what I see and hear. Sometimes with surprisingly good quality (depending on my setup, which could be quite advanced as its in my home).
One of the biggest problems with "Intellectual property" is that there are so many different protections for the different things all thrown into the same bundle by careless nomenclature. Copyright is different from patent protection which is different from tratemark protection, etc.
Unfortunately you have hit upon one of the more pervasive conceptual problems with IP. Because there is no physical property to steal, there can be no theft of IP in a legal sense. In most cases there is perfectly good nomenclature for the specific infringement. Are you quoting a source without a reference and passing it off as your own work? Then you are committing fraud. Are you copying copyrighted works? then you are committing copyright infringement. Are you making something which is patented? then you are infringing on someones patent. Different concepts, different laws, different crimes.
Everything that is illegal is not some form of theft, even if it involves financial benefit or 'taking of things', unless there is something physical to steal.
You are wrong about Matlab's support for OSX (note the order there), Checkit
In fact, it even runs under Linux (after the most difficult install procedure I have ever had).
What user needs to receive.SCR files via email? Seriously. How about.CPL files? How about.exe files? or.com files? Or.bat? or.vbs?
Now, I understand about the.scr files, but how about software development or work-friendly scripting? What if I have written a program/script (as I am wont to do) that saves my coworker lots of time by automatically converting 10000 gif files to png or something like that. Now I have to walk to the other side of the building with a floppy or a thumbdrive. What a retrograde step.
In addition, I use LaTeX, and my projects tipically comprise many files. But now I can't just zip up the files and send the zip to my collegue, I have to rename the file to zi_ and uuencode it to hide it from our clever e-mail scanner.
The real problem is that I can't go on a training course and get the restrictions lifted. Oh, and people who assume the only 'work related' files are.doc,.xls and.ppt (perhaps add.pdf for good measure).
See, that's where I would advise people not to use LaTeX (when lots of frames and stuff are involved). TeX (and LaTeX) where explicitly designed for linear, information-dense documents. The formatting is actually an important aid in reading these documents. I have to read many articles a day, and I am very happy that the major scientific journals still use TeX to typeset their documents -- they all look good and are easy to read.
When you start talking about graphical design and frames and whatnot, you are not really in the space that LaTeX was designed for (even though these guys used it for their magazine). I would likewise discourage people from using low-level PostScript code to do CAD drawings. Hammers for nails and screwdrivers for screws, ya know...
I have to say, as a LaTeX user for about three years, and having done my Masters and soon my PhD using LaTeX, that I cringe each time I am forced to use Word (or any word processor for that matter).
It is true that LaTeX has a steep learning curve, but I wouldn't call \section an unintuitive way of inserting a section heading. You say (La)TeX output is ugly? I assume you have never seen the excessive spacing Word frequenly add s between words (and sometimes even between letters!). I assume you have never had to wrestle a figure into place only to have it wrap around to the next page (if you used paragraph or character anchors) or stuck on a page it shouldn't be (if you used page anchors). Those figures cause ugly half-open pages. By the way -- if you hate the default font, just change it! Use Times New Roman (or even some sans-serif monstrosity, if you feel daring) and everything will look a bit more familiar.
I wouldn't advocate the use of (La)TeX for casual users who 'just want to type and select pretty fonts', but for anything more than a few pages, Word falls on its face.
in what way does a coder differ from a graphics artist? according to stallman's views, should a graphics artist not be able to freely obtain the art of a game so he could modify it, without having to pay for it? after all, that is what he demands of software. it has to be free so a coder is free to change it without having to pay for it. does he have double standards?
I think Stalman's case is that music and writing are already available to be examined as long as no-one stops you from listening to it or reading it. Programs (when compiled) can not easily be analysed. Art, music and writing can be analysed in the sense that what you see/hear/read is what you get. All the techniques are right there.
I concede that these days, 'free' music would probably contain seperate tracks and all the mixer settings so you could see how someone got some cool effect, but in general Stalman's gripe is with not being given the freedom to do with the program as he pleases. Compilation 'takes away' the code in a way that cutting a CD of your song just doesn't.
Also remember that Stalman doesn't want the code for free, he wants it to be Free. In other words, he would pay to get access to a program, but would expect the source code to come with it, and to be able to re-sell the software just like you would expect to be able to re-sell a car. There is nothing in Stalman's philosophy that stops you from charging for your work[1].
[1] except maybe that other people might release the same stuff cheaper. But that's a whole other story.
Art fraud is one of the places where the definition of value becomes very interesting. It makes it very clear that the value in a painting lies in more than its utility as a picture (even a very beautiful or skillfully made one).
I think the problem here is that the end users are already used to a spreadsheet-like interface. Many powerful and popular statistical packages use a command-driven interface which is much better suited to formulating abstract questions.
If you already have all your stuff in a spreadsheet, or are used to seeing it in a spreadsheet-like format, something like a pivot-table becomes the 'obvious' way to cross-function data. If, like me, all your data lives in abstract data sources and you are used to manipulating said data using language, the SQL or some other language-based option would be the obvious choice. One is not universally superior to the other.
Is when the lead character says (about a guy falling off a building): "Terminal velocity is 9.8 m/s^2", and all the other guys are nodding their heads. I teach engineering, and if one of my students had said something like that, I would have had severe doubts about the effectiveness of our course.
The last two breakdowns were based upon the fact that the number 60 has more even combinations than any number less than it (1,60;2,30;3,20;4,15;5,12;6,10).
In fact, you should ask yourself 'why 12 and 30' rather than 'why 60'. 12 and 30 come up directly from the lunar cycle -- roughly 12 lunations in a year, roughly 30 days in a lunation. It was natural to divide the days into 12 again (hours), and to divide these into 30. This is what the Babylonians did. 60 is the least common multiple of 12 and 30, which is probably why it was chosen as the division for minutes and seconds.
For more fascinating information on the calendar and time in general, check out Mapping time.
Anyway, I don't see, how bribery should concern anyone other than the bribe-taker's employer and -- in an enlightened society -- the bribe-giver's employer too.
Because most people have an innate feel that there is more to right and wrong than might and weakness. You would have felt bad if a big kid beat you up and took your new skateboard. You would have called on some authority to stop this unfair behaviour.
Modern society recognises that money is power today, and that someone has to stop the big companies from bullying the small ones. Hence, "unfair dealing" is usually illegal. Its part of why people have governments in the first place.
I think you are confusing effectively random choices (arbitrary choices) with ambiguity (having multiple interpretations/meanings).
Sorry about that double nagative. Perhaps that should have been: if you don't believe in force [1], it would also be wrong to stop me from using information that has already been released in ways I see fit.
[1] I assume that coersion of any kind is also wrong
In reality, there is nothing more unambiguous than the difference between voluntary association and association by force.
But ambiguous != arbitrary. A line in the sand is unambiguous...
If your moral line is drawn on voluntary association (which I believe to be an arbitrary line with many bends), shouldn't exchange of information not be repressed by force?
BTW: I think we seem to agree on more than I thought.:-)
How hungry, and how much bread? (To anyone who actually believes that stealing is NOT always immoral, I challenge you to provide an answer which is not completely arbitrary.)
Good thing we don't have computers as judges quite yet. The main reason we have people judging our actions in courts is that it's all about what the 'reasonable man' would do. Your question is bogus, because even the most educated lawyer or judge would not be able to put a value on how hungry you have to be to justify taking bread from someone.
Of course, your wording (immoral instead of illegal) makes the question even more ambiguous. Morals are so arbitrary themselves that the question becomes almost senseless. Many great minds have argued that ownership is not even a proper universal right. So on a moral level, you need to ask when it becomes wrong to eat something that eases your hunger, not when it becomes right.
Slashdot Mirror
Him: You basically have to read the entire alert to even know what's being asked...
You: Pardon me for being dense, but what the fsck is wrong with that? Let me guess, the next Apple interface won't even have text, and dialog messages will consist of pantomime quicktime movies...
The problem is that very few people read dialog boxes. This is a human attribute that is not going to change easily, so people who design things that people use should take it into account. Design of worker environments on shop floors take into account that it requires more effort to reach outside a semicircle with a radius of half your armslength. They don't say: the guy is lazy and should just reach for the button/nailgun/whatever. In the same way, the average joe doesn't read very fast -- even avid readers like me dont want to read the full text of every dialog box. A dialog box with more than a few lines of text will probably not get read.
You have probably skimmed over parts of this post!
Making dialogs give you the least amount of information that allows you to make a choice is just like commenting your code. It's not for when you are one with your code and know exactly what's going on, it's for crunch time 3 AM when it's not all that clear whether pressing yes or no will delete the info on your hard drive.
at least no one can patent certain sounds
Even music is not infinite.
It should be no surprise that a LOT of people out there aren't too tolerant of shoving bit of metal in yourself, poking holes in your skin, and dying various parts of yours bodies, and then trusting that you'll be professional and reliable.
Yup, because "everyone knows" that dying various parts of your bodies is like a flag saying "I am not reliable". Guess those stealing Jews have to have something to do with this...
Ummm... out of the box thinking? Tattoos and piercings are considered trendy now. Is Lindsey Lohan "out of the box" for having "la Bella Vita" tattood on her back? Or is she just another girl that's following a trend? I'd hazard a guess and say that the vast majority of those that have tattoos now are just following one trend or another. And following trends is most definitely not out of the box.
Brilliant! I see that you understand that having a tattoo is just as conformist as having an unblemished skin and a crew cut (if you're a guy, of course -- crew cuts on women are just too far out). So why do we have a problem with tattoos?
"I find what you have written to be discriminatory." Absolutely. But it's a fact that if someone has visible tats or visible piercings (aside from say, an earring), they run the risk of not being hired. Not saying it's right, but that's the way it is.
So, change the discrimination a bit and we have:
But it's a fact that if someone is visibly black/jewish/not christian, they run the risk of not being hired. Not saying it's right, but that's the way it is.
Granted, one cannot choose to be black or white, but some people would see religion as a 'reversible choice' as much as piercings are. I don't see how one can defend using any metric not related to work performance in hiring.
There will never be a 'real proof' for evolution that will satisfy creationsists, simply because God could have created the whole universe yesterday, including the state information needed for us to think that the universe was billions of years old.
Omnipotence -- strong stuff.
Remember when they came out with Palladium and digital screens so that there's end-to-end hostile encryption with no analog hole?
Of course -- they wire the device straight to your brain! If I still need to see it with my eyes and hear it with my ears I can record what I see and hear. Sometimes with surprisingly good quality (depending on my setup, which could be quite advanced as its in my home).
They lose again.
One of the biggest problems with "Intellectual property" is that there are so many different protections for the different things all thrown into the same bundle by careless nomenclature. Copyright is different from patent protection which is different from tratemark protection, etc.
Unfortunately you have hit upon one of the more pervasive conceptual problems with IP. Because there is no physical property to steal, there can be no theft of IP in a legal sense. In most cases there is perfectly good nomenclature for the specific infringement. Are you quoting a source without a reference and passing it off as your own work? Then you are committing fraud. Are you copying copyrighted works? then you are committing copyright infringement. Are you making something which is patented? then you are infringing on someones patent. Different concepts, different laws, different crimes.
Everything that is illegal is not some form of theft, even if it involves financial benefit or 'taking of things', unless there is something physical to steal.
You are wrong about Matlab's support for OSX (note the order there), Checkit In fact, it even runs under Linux (after the most difficult install procedure I have ever had).
What user needs to receive .SCR files via email? Seriously. How about .CPL files? How about .exe files? or .com files? Or .bat? or .vbs?
.scr files, but how about software development or work-friendly scripting? What if I have written a program/script (as I am wont to do) that saves my coworker lots of time by automatically converting 10000 gif files to png or something like that. Now I have to walk to the other side of the building with a floppy or a thumbdrive. What a retrograde step.
.doc, .xls and .ppt (perhaps add .pdf for good measure).
Now, I understand about the
In addition, I use LaTeX, and my projects tipically comprise many files. But now I can't just zip up the files and send the zip to my collegue, I have to rename the file to zi_ and uuencode it to hide it from our clever e-mail scanner.
The real problem is that I can't go on a training course and get the restrictions lifted. Oh, and people who assume the only 'work related' files are
Since when is HTML a programming language?
Actually, it is a non-touring complete declarative language. Not all languages need imperative style execution of the code from start to finish.
See, that's where I would advise people not to use LaTeX (when lots of frames and stuff are involved). TeX (and LaTeX) where explicitly designed for linear, information-dense documents. The formatting is actually an important aid in reading these documents. I have to read many articles a day, and I am very happy that the major scientific journals still use TeX to typeset their documents -- they all look good and are easy to read.
When you start talking about graphical design and frames and whatnot, you are not really in the space that LaTeX was designed for (even though these guys used it for their magazine). I would likewise discourage people from using low-level PostScript code to do CAD drawings. Hammers for nails and screwdrivers for screws, ya know...
I have to say, as a LaTeX user for about three years, and having done my Masters and soon my PhD using LaTeX, that I cringe each time I am forced to use Word (or any word processor for that matter).
It is true that LaTeX has a steep learning curve, but I wouldn't call \section an unintuitive way of inserting a section heading. You say (La)TeX output is ugly? I assume you have never seen the excessive spacing Word frequenly add s between words (and sometimes even between letters!). I assume you have never had to wrestle a figure into place only to have it wrap around to the next page (if you used paragraph or character anchors) or stuck on a page it shouldn't be (if you used page anchors). Those figures cause ugly half-open pages. By the way -- if you hate the default font, just change it! Use Times New Roman (or even some sans-serif monstrosity, if you feel daring) and everything will look a bit more familiar.
I wouldn't advocate the use of (La)TeX for casual users who 'just want to type and select pretty fonts', but for anything more than a few pages, Word falls on its face.
Maybe you want imgSeek. works great for what you suggest, as well as being able to "draw your own".
in what way does a coder differ from a graphics artist? according to stallman's views, should a graphics artist not be able to freely obtain the art of a game so he could modify it, without having to pay for it? after all, that is what he demands of software. it has to be free so a coder is free to change it without having to pay for it. does he have double standards? I think Stalman's case is that music and writing are already available to be examined as long as no-one stops you from listening to it or reading it. Programs (when compiled) can not easily be analysed. Art, music and writing can be analysed in the sense that what you see/hear/read is what you get. All the techniques are right there.
I concede that these days, 'free' music would probably contain seperate tracks and all the mixer settings so you could see how someone got some cool effect, but in general Stalman's gripe is with not being given the freedom to do with the program as he pleases. Compilation 'takes away' the code in a way that cutting a CD of your song just doesn't.
Also remember that Stalman doesn't want the code for free, he wants it to be Free. In other words, he would pay to get access to a program, but would expect the source code to come with it, and to be able to re-sell the software just like you would expect to be able to re-sell a car. There is nothing in Stalman's philosophy that stops you from charging for your work[1].
[1] except maybe that other people might release the same stuff cheaper. But that's a whole other story.
I know those guys are really into garbage collection, but this is ridiculous!
Or it may be wholly unrelated -- and more related to the vi/emacs holy wars.
Anyway, emacs has a vi mode.
Art fraud is one of the places where the definition of value becomes very interesting. It makes it very clear that the value in a painting lies in more than its utility as a picture (even a very beautiful or skillfully made one).
...this is one case where the GUI beats CLI.
I think the problem here is that the end users are already used to a spreadsheet-like interface. Many powerful and popular statistical packages use a command-driven interface which is much better suited to formulating abstract questions.
If you already have all your stuff in a spreadsheet, or are used to seeing it in a spreadsheet-like format, something like a pivot-table becomes the 'obvious' way to cross-function data. If, like me, all your data lives in abstract data sources and you are used to manipulating said data using language, the SQL or some other language-based option would be the obvious choice. One is not universally superior to the other.
Is when the lead character says (about a guy falling off a building): "Terminal velocity is 9.8 m/s^2", and all the other guys are nodding their heads. I teach engineering, and if one of my students had said something like that, I would have had severe doubts about the effectiveness of our course.
The last two breakdowns were based upon the fact that the number 60 has more even combinations than any number less than it (1,60;2,30;3,20;4,15;5,12;6,10).
In fact, you should ask yourself 'why 12 and 30' rather than 'why 60'. 12 and 30 come up directly from the lunar cycle -- roughly 12 lunations in a year, roughly 30 days in a lunation. It was natural to divide the days into 12 again (hours), and to divide these into 30. This is what the Babylonians did. 60 is the least common multiple of 12 and 30, which is probably why it was chosen as the division for minutes and seconds.
For more fascinating information on the calendar and time in general, check out Mapping time.
Anyway, I don't see, how bribery should concern anyone other than the bribe-taker's employer and -- in an enlightened society -- the bribe-giver's employer too.
Because most people have an innate feel that there is more to right and wrong than might and weakness. You would have felt bad if a big kid beat you up and took your new skateboard. You would have called on some authority to stop this unfair behaviour.
Modern society recognises that money is power today, and that someone has to stop the big companies from bullying the small ones. Hence, "unfair dealing" is usually illegal. Its part of why people have governments in the first place.
I think the problem here is arbitrary vs ambiguous
I think you are confusing effectively random choices (arbitrary choices) with ambiguity (having multiple interpretations/meanings).
Sorry about that double nagative. Perhaps that should have been: if you don't believe in force [1], it would also be wrong to stop me from using information that has already been released in ways I see fit. [1] I assume that coersion of any kind is also wrong
In reality, there is nothing more unambiguous than the difference between voluntary association and association by force.
:-)
But ambiguous != arbitrary. A line in the sand is unambiguous...
If your moral line is drawn on voluntary association (which I believe to be an arbitrary line with many bends), shouldn't exchange of information not be repressed by force?
BTW: I think we seem to agree on more than I thought.
How hungry, and how much bread? (To anyone who actually believes that stealing is NOT always immoral, I challenge you to provide an answer which is not completely arbitrary.)
Good thing we don't have computers as judges quite yet. The main reason we have people judging our actions in courts is that it's all about what the 'reasonable man' would do. Your question is bogus, because even the most educated lawyer or judge would not be able to put a value on how hungry you have to be to justify taking bread from someone.
Of course, your wording (immoral instead of illegal) makes the question even more ambiguous. Morals are so arbitrary themselves that the question becomes almost senseless. Many great minds have argued that ownership is not even a proper universal right. So on a moral level, you need to ask when it becomes wrong to eat something that eases your hunger, not when it becomes right.