You know, I have a feeling this isn't total vapor-nonsense. If I were a scientist who had discovered a storage technology with these kind of metrics (3,600 GB, 100Mbs!!), I'd be awfully worried about blathering these kinds of astronomical numbers unless I was fairly certain I could do it.
Curiously enough, I work at a company that develops medical imaging software. We have a product that is bundled by a large supplier of MRI machines with their machines. The connection being that the scientist in quesiton here also led the team that invented the MRI machine.
>Almost anything we do can be done quickly and haphazardly, or carefully and elegantly. What makes one elegant work art and another not? Functionality.
Not true. Ask any art teacher and s/he'll ask you what makes you think this. Art, I think, in it's simplest definition is best identified by asking the creator of said piece. ("Is it art?" "Yup", "It looks nice, is it art?" "Nope, but I did design it to look nice.") Only the creator truely has a handle on the original intent of the piece.
There no reason to believe a dead sheep in a tank is art unless it's creator says so. And even then, it sounds like bad art, unless the creator can justify it's existance. But art, as with music, dance, etc relies on a set of referances or 'school', and often employs certain tehniques and modes of thought. At it's simplest, it can be something that looks nice. As it becomes more complex, presumably, it has something to say about the world around us. Certainy art can be functional, but in this case said functionality is often a comment of the piece's surroundings all it's own. A bridge can be art too, but only if you design it as such. If you don't give a rats ass as to what it'll finally look like, and you design it just to work, it ain't art. I don't really consider anything art unless it has something to say about the world around us - after all, this was and I believe still is the primary intent of art. To act as a sort of societal 'mirror', to look into a frame and see how someone sees us back.
So now programming... how do we treat it? When you sit down at your computer to write some code, you have no intent to make social commentary; this I'll take on faith. You do employ skill, and often employ a 'style', and obviously there is an infinate set of possible blocks of code you could come up with to solve any given problem. But that's just it - you sit down to solve an initial problem, and design your code around how this problem might change in the future (extensibility of code). You're primary intent is to solve a given practical problem. I charge that this is not the case with the vast majority of what I've been referring to as art. I'm not saying art doesn't have to be functional, but I/am/ saying it should have something to say to the viewer. Taking your argument that coding is art could also be used to call carpentry an art, or cooking an art. In fact, often these types of skills/are/ called art, and I have no problem with that. But this is using the term losely, as the primary goal of both trades is to provide a solid, long lasting structure and tasty, interesting food. While they may both be done in such a fasion that the asthetics are pleasing to look at, and that the process employs originality and creativity, their primary goal is not to comment and critique the world we live in, nor 'just to look nice'. And thus I argue that they, along with coding, are not approrpiately referred to with the term 'fine arts'. Sure, just like we use the term "the art of war", there is also "the art of coding." I'll concede this.
So maybe I can sum it up: "Coding is an art, but code is not art." Does that make any sense?
Good one. A well thought out article, with a fair amount of factual backup. I've used the LDP more than a few times and am glad it's there. I'd hate to see it go.v
I agree with Matt on what seems to be his key concern - that being that beauracracy is often the torpedo to sink the ship. Especially with the LDP, there doesn't seem to be any compelling argument for any kind of authoritative structure to govern it. I've always been a fan of the "something is more than nothing" attitude, and even if 3 in 10 articles contributed are of dubious quality, at least the other 7 are there.
Incidentally, I think I remember some sort of disclaimer on the site saying something to the effect of "we try to make sure contributions are technically correct, but they may not be." This should be something a reader keeps in mind when we read/anything/ - documentation, a manual, the newspaper. It's too bad, all too often, we forget these things and take everything we read on faith.
I'll just throw in my experience with Ambrosia software: well, there isn't much of which to speak. I'm a huge fan of their games, and I can't remember any of them ever crashing on me.
But Linux is developed to be multi-platform. I mean, with respect to it's place in the universe, it's meant to have as little arch dependant code as possible. Ergo, building apps for Linux shouldn't be/too/ hard to do with a multi-arch goal in mind.
This was just my understanding, however. I'm not too in tune with the arch issues with respect to programming, but shouldn't we be trying to achieve this goal? I mean, theres no sense in supporting Linux as a Multi-arch OS if we don't develop apps with a multi-arch mindset anyhow. Right?
I think the multi-arch commercial app support will come when companies realize users don't want to be tied down to one arch. I find it difficult to believe 100$-500$-a-pop shrink-wrap software companies can't store their arch-dependant logic in seperate code from the main logic of the application, thus enabling them to do ports with a fair amount of ease?
Emagic (www.emagic.de) will be getting a lesson in this approach quite soon.. their Emagic Logic Audio (music sequencing software) product will soon support BeOS, on the heels of merging their Mac/Windows code about a year or so(?) ago. And that's different OSes, nevermind arches too.
No, it just opens more doors to less populated rooms. But at least you help move the crowd into unventured territory. The only reason vendors support x86 for the most part is because, for the most part, thats what people use! The PPC is a superior chip (lets not argue and just take it as a premise of this discussion), and so I'd like to support a movement to accelerate it's adoption into the computer community. I mean, if your argument is valid, why have so many people switched to Linux over the past few years? Less vendor support, but superior (again, presumably) platform! Venture forth and the vendors shall follow!
Re:Abstractions, the "dumbing down" of the end use
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> There's no REASON for them to learn everything.
Who are you to claim there's no reason for them to learn everything? This is the very attitude that makes certain OSes so frusterating. Don't decide for me. If I know where the hood is, I can decide myself. This is the typical technocrat's elitist attitude.
>That's why we pay mechanics/tech support
Not everyone has the money for this. Another elitist point.
Again though, you miss the point. The existance of low level access itself is useless unless there is a well defined "hood". I'm saying this "hood" is hidden from computer users.. most newbies wouldn't know where to go even if they wanted to. Why not teach them where the hood is, and make it clear in the system's interface?
For that matter, it can be argued that this is also why people unintentionally fry their file systems/OSes/etc... we don't teach them that this "hood" even exists, and consequently they don't even know when they are under it. I'm not bashing any particular OS/Education model... every OS is guilty of this problem in some fasion. Not to mention of course that a well defined hood on an OS is a simplification of the issue, and that there is no such thing as the "ideal" abstraction between interface and OS. (Note OS in this case is the Operating System, not the GUI.. with Windows of course, you're forced to use the factory shipped GUI that comes with the OS, so there's little hope in fixing this abstraction in Windows unless Microsoft drastically switches religions.)
Besides, when you take your car to a mechanic, do you say "it's broken"? No, you say "my brakes don't work" or "it doesn't accelerate properly". Computers are far more complex than cars in the number of problems/issues possible, but newbies are not taught what a computer actually does (only what comes up on the screen when you press such and such a button), so there is a far bigger communication gap between the newbie and the techie when it comes time to describe problems. Even more so when the techie doesn't have access to the computer in question.
I'm saying we should abandon this elitist "they don't need to know" attitude. Clearly they do. This is exactly the attitude responsible for at least some of the "funny stories" outlined in the link above.
I'm all over this one. Finally the power of the PPC chip without paying the price for the resource hogging of MacOS and Apple's hardware monopoly.
Maybe for my next upgrade... ? It would certainly be nice to have a price-for-price competitor for Intel and AMD. And it's RISC to boot. Maybe it's time I finally got a/seperate/ box for the Linux side of my computational-adventures.
Yipee!
Re:Abstractions, the "dumbing down" of the end use
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Computer Stupidities
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Newbie Windows 9X users are rarely encouraged to use the DOS command prompt and often not even taught that it's there. Nor is there any DOS documentation that comes with Windows. Nevermind that Microsoft has been trying to dissuade people that Windows is NOT DOS with a pretty front end. At any rate, you missed the main point. It's not that you *can't* but that the interface does not make it clear that DOS is where to get low level access in the first place.
The abstraction in Linux is nicer - first you have your Kernel, then your shell, then X server, then window manager. Having to configure/set/choose these things youself at least illutrates a clearer hierarchy of control, even if it still isn't perfect.
It's not so much the OSes themselves but rather the/interface/ and the education newbies are given in the first place that cripples their abilities to understand whats actually going on.
Abstractions, the "dumbing down" of the end user.
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Computer Stupidities
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Incidentally, I'll go the other way in terms of blaming why computers are so hard to use - it's the level abstraction set up between the user and whats really going on.
For example, I'll propose that the newbie Windows 95 user hasn't a clue what a "Shortcut" is with respect to the idea that its an actual file on the disk with a special file type. They're just told it's a "Shortcut" and how to work it. These types of abstractions only serve to convuse new users as when it comes to problems, they havn't the faintest idea what they're actually supposed to be fixing, nevermind how to. How are they supposed to know when a problem is because of the shortcut, or the actual file it points to? Similar abstractions (wizards, "dumbed down explainations") may serve to help the uninitiated get off the ground faster, but makes it all the more difficult for the user to make an emergency landing when it comes time.
Cars are complex things. Why do auto makers not lock the engine from the driver? Because if the driver/wants/ to look at it and know whats going on, s/he can. And yet, people who don't know anything about engines just don't touch theirs, and refer to experts when it comes time to fix it. But at least they can see it, and chose to learn about it and fiddle with it if they want to. If a proper interface was set up bewteen the low-level and the high-level in an OS, the user should recognize properly what not to touch, or conversly, what to touch when they want to fiddle and learn. Barring this low level from the user (such as in most Windows 9X componants' interfaces) makes them live on another plane of reality from whats really going on, and leaves them clueless when its time to fix things of describe whats going on to tech support.
I heard Fox was going to aire "Worlds Stupidest Computer Users" but there wasn't enough violence and sex to justify it.
Actually, I concurr with the idea that there's really no point in publishing these types of stories. We've heard them many times before, they get old quick, and they just help to furthur intimidate non-geeks. I don't think it's appropriate to mock people who are making a geniune attept to use complex devices most of us have been using for 10+ years. We take the intuitiveness of computers for granted - in reality, computers are still one of the most unintuitive, lingo-heavy subjects around. We know words like "folders" and "mount" are symbolic terms to represent various actions and information structures. You can't blame other people for mis interpreting a language we've been using for years.
In so far as this little blurb from www.dictionary.com, and I do assume here that everyone is trying to ask if coding is a "fine art" rather than the more general application meaning learned skill (ie academia).
I'd have a hard time being convinced programming is an 'art'. A builder can make a beautiful bridge, using ingenious methods, to form an athetically pleasing, safe way to cross a river, but we rarely refer to the process of designing it as 'art'. I'm not sure why coding would be any different. Granted, I accept the fact that one can find a piece of code 'beautiful', but more often than not, the primary purpose of coding is to implement functionality and practicality, where as in art, the asthetics are generally more important than the functionality of said art piece (although, as with everything, there are walways exceptions).
"Grow up" and use Oracle? More like "Make your wallet grow fat" and use Oracle.:)
I don't find the site performs that bad unless it's suffering under it's own/. effect. Which is more the web server's fault, not mySQLs. I'm pretty damn impressed that a site this busy is handled by mySQL, and the performance is more often than not on par with other sites like CNet and ZDNet.
> 3. Have you ever experienced any serious, adverse consequences because of your Internet use?
Yep. Everyone I know bugs me about fixing their computer or teaching them how to use it.
Seriously though, despite the negative responses I'm seeing here, I've had friends who've lost jobs because they were MUDding 14 hours a day. I used to be far more dependant on the 'net, but fortunately I got a little better at desciplining myself. But this kind of study, silly as it may seem, is valid. You might argue that it's not the net though, thats addictive, its the services available through the net. (ie gambling, MU*s, prOn... )
No, it's not a hard concept to grasp. I understand perfectly the intent of eMachines and FuturePower, but that doesn't mean Apple has to act fazed by their actions. Even so, clearly even the most uninformed PC consumer must understand that even though most PCs look strikingly similar (the off-white-box look), they are not created equal. Why doesn't this translate to the iMac then too? At any rate, Apple is still making a statement with their actions, and despite the fact that it's probably completely justified, it still doesn't say much to me about their confidence in their hardware and software: "Lots of people are buying our machines for the look." It scares me to think their research dollars are going into the design of the box, when it should be going into bringing the OS back into the position of most advanced as it once was (a long long time ago). As a long time Mac user and Apple fan, this is why I switched to PCs and havn't gone back. To me they seem to have no vision anymore. Although to be fair, maybe it's my vision that's changed, as I became more and more of a power user, not theirs.
My apologies, I do that alot. I publicly announce my stupidity and formally request foregiveness.:) Yes, I meant cracker. But it's symantics... it's obvious I meant cracker by context.
I dunno about this. Much of technology's costs are derived from their advantages and comparisons to current technology and it's going rate. Lots of easy-to-manufacture technologies have sold for nice'n'expensive prices, simply because people will fork over more money for them. (For instance, SCSI hardware.. I can't see how it would be inherently more expensive to make, but its far more expensive than IDE stuff. I could be wrong tho...:) It's not what it's worth to build, but what it's worth to people. Not that it's a technology, but did you know movie-theatre popcorn is 98% profit? Obviously, the pricing model there has nothing to do with how much it costs to make, but rather how much suckers are willing to pay for it.
> "HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN TALKING TO INTEL? I'M THINKING THAT INTEL PENTIUM CHIPS WOULD EITHER BE RUNNING SCARED OR THEY WOULD BE TRYING TO BUY UP YOUR IDEAS."
Is it my imagination or did the interviewer sound like a complete moron?:) I'd like to count how many times he repeated the question "so it's the size of molecules?"
You know, I gotta say, I'm scared s***less of the day computers go on our walls, our clothes, etc. I'm already suffering from sensory overload from my computer at work, my two computers at home. I know the Unabomber was a murder and never should have done what he did, but did anyone read his dissertation on technology and society? I'm beginning to think he may have had a very good idea about where all this is headed - surrogate happiness where we value the amount of calculative power we own as being more valuable than freindship and community. I don't know about any of you, but I don't/want/ a computer woven into my clothes. And I'm a Linux geek programmer type 21 year old too. I just think there's a limit to the amount of computers we should have managing our lives.
> "It's not in our interest to invest in infrastructure. It wouldn't be very smart for us to buy everything in the online world"
It's nice to see a huge-ass company actually discounting the possibility of owning the world. Too many companies try to deliver way too much - the technology and the content. It's my hope that content provision shifts more and more to outsourced creative companies - there is so much wasted bandwidth and exposure out there given to second rate content, when there are tons of creative masterminds waiting in the shadows for someone to give them the spot light.
While I tend to dismiss these types of issues as trivial, this one certainly is a little more prickly. I think I agree; Police should only be able to "break into your computer" if they have actually claimed the psysical box as evidence.. ie, they'd need a search warrent to come into my house to get it. I can certainly envision a future where every packet you send must first be routed through the Fed's computer system before it's sent off to it's destination. This is just the beginning of a long, passionate fight between "the people and the authorities". Perhaps they should amend the law such that they can only break into the computer(s) belonging to a subject under criminal investigation? I don't think I mind them breaking into a hacker's box (for he who uses anonymitity for the purpose of criminal activity is abusing his right to privacy), but I certainly think it should be set up so the police can't break into boxes of other innocent people. Ironically, if the police break into my box, believing I'm communicating with their prime target, and find other evidence of other hackers they hadn't known about.. well, I can just imagine soon they'd try to get some law going that allows them to use 'brute force methods' to try to track down illigal activities on the net.
Give Suck some credit. Just like that band you knew from your neighbourhood ignored you when they landed the million dollar record deal, Linux is also succeptable to the taste of green, despite what anyone says. As a community, we must do our best in keeping our heads out of the clouds ("oh, they finally love that OS I've loved for so long.. how dreamy is this?") and make sure we don't lose the handle on this thing. As a Linux user, INFORM your friends and neighbours! Tell them why Linux is such a great OS.. not just because it works, but because it's the communities! Tell them to support the grass-roots Linux community, not just the companies who shrink-wrap it.
But yes, lets not be idealistic. Linux may end up being the Windows of the 00's. Who knows. Anyone who discounts any possibility admits being ill prepared for every possibility.
Slashdot Mirror
There no corperations claiming to have cold fusion ready within 2 years. Or were there?
You know, I have a feeling this isn't total vapor-nonsense. If I were a scientist who had discovered a storage technology with these kind of metrics (3,600 GB, 100Mbs!!), I'd be awfully worried about blathering these kinds of astronomical numbers unless I was fairly certain I could do it.
Curiously enough, I work at a company that develops medical imaging software. We have a product that is bundled by a large supplier of MRI machines with their machines. The connection being that the scientist in quesiton here also led the team that invented the MRI machine.
>Almost anything we do can be done quickly and haphazardly, or carefully and elegantly. What makes one elegant work art and another not? Functionality.
... how do we treat it? When you sit down at your computer to write some code, you have no intent to make social commentary; this I'll take on faith. You do employ skill, and often employ a 'style', and obviously there is an infinate set of possible blocks of code you could come up with to solve any given problem. But that's just it - you sit down to solve an initial problem, and design your code around how this problem might change in the future (extensibility of code). You're primary intent is to solve a given practical problem. I charge that this is not the case with the vast majority of what I've been referring to as art. I'm not saying art doesn't have to be functional, but I /am/ saying it should have something to say to the viewer. Taking your argument that coding is art could also be used to call carpentry an art, or cooking an art. In fact, often these types of skills /are/ called art, and I have no problem with that. But this is using the term losely, as the primary goal of both trades is to provide a solid, long lasting structure and tasty, interesting food. While they may both be done in such a fasion that the asthetics are pleasing to look at, and that the process employs originality and creativity, their primary goal is not to comment and critique the world we live in, nor 'just to look nice'. And thus I argue that they, along with coding, are not approrpiately referred to with the term 'fine arts'. Sure, just like we use the term "the art of war", there is also "the art of coding." I'll concede this.
Not true. Ask any art teacher and s/he'll ask you what makes you think this. Art, I think, in it's simplest definition is best identified by asking the creator of said piece. ("Is it art?" "Yup", "It looks nice, is it art?" "Nope, but I did design it to look nice.") Only the creator truely has a handle on the original intent of the piece.
There no reason to believe a dead sheep in a tank is art unless it's creator says so. And even then, it sounds like bad art, unless the creator can justify it's existance. But art, as with music, dance, etc relies on a set of referances or 'school', and often employs certain tehniques and modes of thought. At it's simplest, it can be something that looks nice. As it becomes more complex, presumably, it has something to say about the world around us. Certainy art can be functional, but in this case said functionality is often a comment of the piece's surroundings all it's own. A bridge can be art too, but only if you design it as such. If you don't give a rats ass as to what it'll finally look like, and you design it just to work, it ain't art. I don't really consider anything art unless it has something to say about the world around us - after all, this was and I believe still is the primary intent of art. To act as a sort of societal 'mirror', to look into a frame and see how someone sees us back.
So now programming
So maybe I can sum it up: "Coding is an art, but code is not art." Does that make any sense?
Good one. A well thought out article, with a fair amount of factual backup. I've used the LDP more than a few times and am glad it's there. I'd hate to see it go.v
/anything/ - documentation, a manual, the newspaper. It's too bad, all too often, we forget these things and take everything we read on faith.
I agree with Matt on what seems to be his key concern - that being that beauracracy is often the torpedo to sink the ship. Especially with the LDP, there doesn't seem to be any compelling argument for any kind of authoritative structure to govern it. I've always been a fan of the "something is more than nothing" attitude, and even if 3 in 10 articles contributed are of dubious quality, at least the other 7 are there.
Incidentally, I think I remember some sort of disclaimer on the site saying something to the effect of "we try to make sure contributions are technically correct, but they may not be." This should be something a reader keeps in mind when we read
I'll just throw in my experience with Ambrosia software: well, there isn't much of which to speak. I'm a huge fan of their games, and I can't remember any of them ever crashing on me.
But Linux is developed to be multi-platform. I mean, with respect to it's place in the universe, it's meant to have as little arch dependant code as possible. Ergo, building apps for Linux shouldn't be /too/ hard to do with a multi-arch goal in mind.
.. their Emagic Logic Audio (music sequencing software) product will soon support BeOS, on the heels of merging their Mac/Windows code about a year or so(?) ago. And that's different OSes, nevermind arches too.
This was just my understanding, however. I'm not too in tune with the arch issues with respect to programming, but shouldn't we be trying to achieve this goal? I mean, theres no sense in supporting Linux as a Multi-arch OS if we don't develop apps with a multi-arch mindset anyhow. Right?
I think the multi-arch commercial app support will come when companies realize users don't want to be tied down to one arch. I find it difficult to believe 100$-500$-a-pop shrink-wrap software companies can't store their arch-dependant logic in seperate code from the main logic of the application, thus enabling them to do ports with a fair amount of ease?
Emagic (www.emagic.de) will be getting a lesson in this approach quite soon
Garret
No, it just opens more doors to less populated rooms. But at least you help move the crowd into unventured territory. The only reason vendors support x86 for the most part is because, for the most part, thats what people use! The PPC is a superior chip (lets not argue and just take it as a premise of this discussion), and so I'd like to support a movement to accelerate it's adoption into the computer community. I mean, if your argument is valid, why have so many people switched to Linux over the past few years? Less vendor support, but superior (again, presumably) platform! Venture forth and the vendors shall follow!
> There's no REASON for them to learn everything.
.. most newbies wouldn't know where to go even if they wanted to. Why not teach them where the hood is, and make it clear in the system's interface?
... we don't teach them that this "hood" even exists, and consequently they don't even know when they are under it. I'm not bashing any particular OS/Education model ... every OS is guilty of this problem in some fasion. Not to mention of course that a well defined hood on an OS is a simplification of the issue, and that there is no such thing as the "ideal" abstraction between interface and OS. (Note OS in this case is the Operating System, not the GUI .. with Windows of course, you're forced to use the factory shipped GUI that comes with the OS, so there's little hope in fixing this abstraction in Windows unless Microsoft drastically switches religions.)
Who are you to claim there's no reason for them to learn everything? This is the very attitude that makes certain OSes so frusterating. Don't decide for me. If I know where the hood is, I can decide myself. This is the typical technocrat's elitist attitude.
>That's why we pay mechanics/tech support
Not everyone has the money for this. Another elitist point.
Again though, you miss the point. The existance of low level access itself is useless unless there is a well defined "hood". I'm saying this "hood" is hidden from computer users
For that matter, it can be argued that this is also why people unintentionally fry their file systems/OSes/etc
Besides, when you take your car to a mechanic, do you say "it's broken"? No, you say "my brakes don't work" or "it doesn't accelerate properly". Computers are far more complex than cars in the number of problems/issues possible, but newbies are not taught what a computer actually does (only what comes up on the screen when you press such and such a button), so there is a far bigger communication gap between the newbie and the techie when it comes time to describe problems. Even more so when the techie doesn't have access to the computer in question.
I'm saying we should abandon this elitist "they don't need to know" attitude. Clearly they do. This is exactly the attitude responsible for at least some of the "funny stories" outlined in the link above.
I'm all over this one. Finally the power of the PPC chip without paying the price for the resource hogging of MacOS and Apple's hardware monopoly.
... ? It would certainly be nice to have a price-for-price competitor for Intel and AMD. And it's RISC to boot. Maybe it's time I finally got a /seperate/ box for the Linux side of my computational-adventures.
Maybe for my next upgrade
Yipee!
Newbie Windows 9X users are rarely encouraged to use the DOS command prompt and often not even taught that it's there. Nor is there any DOS documentation that comes with Windows. Nevermind that Microsoft has been trying to dissuade people that Windows is NOT DOS with a pretty front end.
/interface/ and the education newbies are given in the first place that cripples their abilities to understand whats actually going on.
At any rate, you missed the main point. It's not that you *can't* but that the interface does not make it clear that DOS is where to get low level access in the first place.
The abstraction in Linux is nicer - first you have your Kernel, then your shell, then X server, then window manager. Having to configure/set/choose these things youself at least illutrates a clearer hierarchy of control, even if it still isn't perfect.
It's not so much the OSes themselves but rather the
Incidentally, I'll go the other way in terms of blaming why computers are so hard to use - it's the level abstraction set up between the user and whats really going on.
/wants/ to look at it and know whats going on, s/he can. And yet, people who don't know anything about engines just don't touch theirs, and refer to experts when it comes time to fix it. But at least they can see it, and chose to learn about it and fiddle with it if they want to. If a proper interface was set up bewteen the low-level and the high-level in an OS, the user should recognize properly what not to touch, or conversly, what to touch when they want to fiddle and learn. Barring this low level from the user (such as in most Windows 9X componants' interfaces) makes them live on another plane of reality from whats really going on, and leaves them clueless when its time to fix things of describe whats going on to tech support.
For example, I'll propose that the newbie Windows 95 user hasn't a clue what a "Shortcut" is with respect to the idea that its an actual file on the disk with a special file type. They're just told it's a "Shortcut" and how to work it. These types of abstractions only serve to convuse new users as when it comes to problems, they havn't the faintest idea what they're actually supposed to be fixing, nevermind how to. How are they supposed to know when a problem is because of the shortcut, or the actual file it points to? Similar abstractions (wizards, "dumbed down explainations") may serve to help the uninitiated get off the ground faster, but makes it all the more difficult for the user to make an emergency landing when it comes time.
Cars are complex things. Why do auto makers not lock the engine from the driver? Because if the driver
I heard Fox was going to aire "Worlds Stupidest Computer Users" but there wasn't enough violence and sex to justify it.
Actually, I concurr with the idea that there's really no point in publishing these types of stories. We've heard them many times before, they get old quick, and they just help to furthur intimidate non-geeks. I don't think it's appropriate to mock people who are making a geniune attept to use complex devices most of us have been using for 10+ years. We take the intuitiveness of computers for granted - in reality, computers are still one of the most unintuitive, lingo-heavy subjects around. We know words like "folders" and "mount" are symbolic terms to represent various actions and information structures. You can't blame other people for mis interpreting a language we've been using for years.
"art \Art\ ([aum]rt), 4. The application of skill to the production of the beautiful by imitation or design, or an occupation in which skill is so employed, as in painting and sculpture; one of the fine arts; as, he prefers art to literature." .... "The fine arts are those which have primarily to do with imagination and taste, and are applied to the production of what is beautiful. They include poetry, music, painting, engraving, sculpture, and architecture; but the term is often confined to painting, sculpture, and architecture."
In so far as this little blurb from www.dictionary.com, and I do assume here that everyone is trying to ask if coding is a "fine art" rather than the more general application meaning learned skill (ie academia).
I'd have a hard time being convinced programming is an 'art'. A builder can make a beautiful bridge, using ingenious methods, to form an athetically pleasing, safe way to cross a river, but we rarely refer to the process of designing it as 'art'. I'm not sure why coding would be any different. Granted, I accept the fact that one can find a piece of code 'beautiful', but more often than not, the primary purpose of coding is to implement functionality and practicality, where as in art, the asthetics are generally more important than the functionality of said art piece (although, as with everything, there are walways exceptions).
"Grow up" and use Oracle? More like "Make your wallet grow fat" and use Oracle. :)
/. effect. Which is more the web server's fault, not mySQLs. I'm pretty damn impressed that a site this busy is handled by mySQL, and the performance is more often than not on par with other sites like CNet and ZDNet.
I don't find the site performs that bad unless it's suffering under it's own
> XXX In a Nutshell
/two/ favorite types of pubplications - technical referances and prOn! Woohoo!
Whoa, what? Now O'Rielly makes my
SirSlud
> 3. Have you ever experienced any serious, adverse consequences because of your Internet use?
... )
Yep. Everyone I know bugs me about fixing their computer or teaching them how to use it.
Seriously though, despite the negative responses I'm seeing here, I've had friends who've lost jobs because they were MUDding 14 hours a day. I used to be far more dependant on the 'net, but fortunately I got a little better at desciplining myself. But this kind of study, silly as it may seem, is valid. You might argue that it's not the net though, thats addictive, its the services available through the net. (ie gambling, MU*s, prOn
No, it's not a hard concept to grasp. I understand perfectly the intent of eMachines and FuturePower, but that doesn't mean Apple has to act fazed by their actions. Even so, clearly even the most uninformed PC consumer must understand that even though most PCs look strikingly similar (the off-white-box look), they are not created equal. Why doesn't this translate to the iMac then too? At any rate, Apple is still making a statement with their actions, and despite the fact that it's probably completely justified, it still doesn't say much to me about their confidence in their hardware and software: "Lots of people are buying our machines for the look." It scares me to think their research dollars are going into the design of the box, when it should be going into bringing the OS back into the position of most advanced as it once was (a long long time ago). As a long time Mac user and Apple fan, this is why I switched to PCs and havn't gone back. To me they seem to have no vision anymore. Although to be fair, maybe it's my vision that's changed, as I became more and more of a power user, not theirs.
My apologies, I do that alot. I publicly announce my stupidity and formally request foregiveness. :) Yes, I meant cracker. But it's symantics ... it's obvious I meant cracker by context.
I dunno about this. Much of technology's costs are derived from their advantages and comparisons to current technology and it's going rate. Lots of easy-to-manufacture technologies have sold for nice'n'expensive prices, simply because people will fork over more money for them. (For instance, SCSI hardware .. I can't see how it would be inherently more expensive to make, but its far more expensive than IDE stuff. I could be wrong tho ... :) It's not what it's worth to build, but what it's worth to people. Not that it's a technology, but did you know movie-theatre popcorn is 98% profit? Obviously, the pricing model there has nothing to do with how much it costs to make, but rather how much suckers are willing to pay for it.
> "HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN TALKING TO INTEL? I'M THINKING THAT INTEL PENTIUM CHIPS WOULD EITHER BE RUNNING SCARED OR THEY WOULD BE TRYING TO BUY UP YOUR IDEAS."
:) I'd like to count how many times he repeated the question "so it's the size of molecules?"
/want/ a computer woven into my clothes. And I'm a Linux geek programmer type 21 year old too. I just think there's a limit to the amount of computers we should have managing our lives.
Is it my imagination or did the interviewer sound like a complete moron?
You know, I gotta say, I'm scared s***less of the day computers go on our walls, our clothes, etc. I'm already suffering from sensory overload from my computer at work, my two computers at home. I know the Unabomber was a murder and never should have done what he did, but did anyone read his dissertation on technology and society? I'm beginning to think he may have had a very good idea about where all this is headed - surrogate happiness where we value the amount of calculative power we own as being more valuable than freindship and community. I don't know about any of you, but I don't
G
> "It's not in our interest to invest in infrastructure. It wouldn't be very smart for us to buy everything in the online world"
It's nice to see a huge-ass company actually discounting the possibility of owning the world. Too many companies try to deliver way too much - the technology and the content. It's my hope that content provision shifts more and more to outsourced creative companies - there is so much wasted bandwidth and exposure out there given to second rate content, when there are tons of creative masterminds waiting in the shadows for someone to give them the spot light.
While I tend to dismiss these types of issues as trivial, this one certainly is a little more prickly. I think I agree; Police should only be able to "break into your computer" if they have actually claimed the psysical box as evidence .. ie, they'd need a search warrent to come into my house to get it. I can certainly envision a future where every packet you send must first be routed through the Fed's computer system before it's sent off to it's destination. This is just the beginning of a long, passionate fight between "the people and the authorities". Perhaps they should amend the law such that they can only break into the computer(s) belonging to a subject under criminal investigation? I don't think I mind them breaking into a hacker's box (for he who uses anonymitity for the purpose of criminal activity is abusing his right to privacy), but I certainly think it should be set up so the police can't break into boxes of other innocent people. Ironically, if the police break into my box, believing I'm communicating with their prime target, and find other evidence of other hackers they hadn't known about .. well, I can just imagine soon they'd try to get some law going that allows them to use 'brute force methods' to try to track down illigal activities on the net.
Ok, Ok, I admit it, I was out of my skull that day.
Give Suck some credit. Just like that band you knew from your neighbourhood ignored you when they landed the million dollar record deal, Linux is also succeptable to the taste of green, despite what anyone says. As a community, we must do our best in keeping our heads out of the clouds ("oh, they finally love that OS I've loved for so long .. how dreamy is this?") and make sure we don't lose the handle on this thing. As a Linux user, INFORM your friends and neighbours! Tell them why Linux is such a great OS .. not just because it works, but because it's the communities! Tell them to support the grass-roots Linux community, not just the companies who shrink-wrap it.
But yes, lets not be idealistic. Linux may end up being the Windows of the 00's. Who knows. Anyone who discounts any possibility admits being ill prepared for every possibility.
I hate it when people say "happen to know". Are you an Enlightened One?