he does uses analogies of course but that is just normal i suppose even for a scientifically educated person...
i am aware that he himself and his theory is debated a lot and dont know much creationists either;) pls do point me to some cases/articles/whatever where he is explicitly discredited.
what about some reaction to the real point here? you used this spaceship analogy in your comment. i just added (referencing Lovelock) that looking on the problem like this would mean that humans take the responsibility of maintaining a very complex system which (at least used to) maintains itself. that would be perhaps a mistake (again). however doing something clever to win time to find good permanent solutions which help the system to balance itself again is perhaps a better idea.
now that is interesting. James Lovelock states in one of his book that this is exactly the real risk in geoengineering. namely if we take the responsibility to maintain the very complex balance what is living earth (see James Lovelock's Gaia theory for details) from the earth (gaia) itself (eg your point of view: earth as spaceship) we end up with a very complex task which we never be able to stop doing. doing some clever hack with earth to win some time to reduce co2 and *methane* emissions, that sounds definitely interesting btw.
the letter is missing the point. free software is free as freedom, not as a free beer. therefore no point in arguing that it worths something, of course it does.
and also, what is software? it is not telling a computer how to do something, but telling a person how they would instruct a computer to do something. free software is accepting the truth in this statement. that is why the problem is free software is closely related to the freedom of speech.
therefore programmers should be paid for their know-how either in the form of paying for their support or for their actual work and so on...
i warmly welcome any guess from whom i quoted all along;)
i mean that is really bad. it is already annoying having cell phones packed with not wanted, disturbing, useless functions and features when almost nothing useful like calendars, proper os which can run downloaded or even selfwritten scripts/programs and so on is implemented.
yet an other useful tool made by modern technology turned into bussiness driven marchandise crap...
do you people recall those many sci-fi movies and books made during the cold war which feature teams coined of american and russian heroes usually working together on a spacecraft or such...?
How MS is responsible for that, I can't figure out...
MS is responsible, because it is an enormous international firm, like a dinosaour which just can not take heed of such posibilites as using its product against human rights. but it is not like it is not responsible because it does not know what it is doing, just think of the movie Devil's advocat and you will see what i mean...
just imagine the uproar stallman would organize if e.g. emacs would be used against the people of china...;) that is the difference
kindda funny... i mean in Hungary which is _not_ a third-world country at all there are villages in plenty where one can not get a place such as one you write about in india...
and more fustrating, people dont know what they lack there in the sense of cheap and direct communication... it is just like you wrote they think internet is luxury...
so we can say that the ability of sending and receiving email became one of the things which essentially needed for human life just like proper medicine for example...
or at least the benefactors think so...
i agree but we are talking about two different things. u are obviously right saying that "true sf... tell a story about people": i mean all true fiction does! but in sf the story and the persons are set in a context which built of quasi scientific elements at a certain degree.
the whole story (mainly the actions of the persons) then organizes itself (and the context) and forms a certain view. in this view one can sees new sides of the scientific details (this is true about all the other elements as well, but of those we are not concerned now), if the piece is "true" as you put it.
therefore of course Enders Game is mainly about Ender Wiggin, but on the other hand we got an insight about the effect of the immediate communication on human society as well (this is of course an example).
that is what i actually meant.
i assume imagination is the most important thing via sf (ie. some kind of fiction) is able to give new ideas to sience. by imagination i dont mean to invent new things out of the blue but to make people look at things on a new and motivating way. this is always the hardest thing: to change your point of view concerning already known facts, models and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
he does uses analogies of course but that is just normal i suppose even for a scientifically educated person...
i am aware that he himself and his theory is debated a lot and dont know much creationists either ;) pls do point me to some cases/articles/whatever where he is explicitly discredited.
what about some reaction to the real point here? you used this spaceship analogy in your comment. i just added (referencing Lovelock) that looking on the problem like this would mean that humans take the responsibility of maintaining a very complex system which (at least used to) maintains itself. that would be perhaps a mistake (again). however doing something clever to win time to find good permanent solutions which help the system to balance itself again is perhaps a better idea.
now that is interesting. James Lovelock states in one of his book that this is exactly the real risk in geoengineering. namely if we take the responsibility to maintain the very complex balance what is living earth (see James Lovelock's Gaia theory for details) from the earth (gaia) itself (eg your point of view: earth as spaceship) we end up with a very complex task which we never be able to stop doing. doing some clever hack with earth to win some time to reduce co2 and *methane* emissions, that sounds definitely interesting btw.
some will understand my sig
programming is not telling a computer how to do something, but telling a person how they would instruct a computer to do something. -- J. Bartlett
if one accepts this definition he/she should definitly think that programming is highly ethical activity.
the letter is missing the point. free software is free as freedom, not as a free beer. therefore no point in arguing that it worths something, of course it does.
;)
and also, what is software? it is not telling a computer how to do something, but telling a person how they would instruct a computer to do something. free software is accepting the truth in this statement. that is why the problem is free software is closely related to the freedom of speech.
therefore programmers should be paid for their know-how either in the form of paying for their support or for their actual work and so on...
i warmly welcome any guess from whom i quoted all along
i have been dreaming writting such a bug myself. quite an achievement to blackout quarter of a continent with some crappy code...
if i only had the slashdot moderating tool on my phone, i would give u some extra funny modifier.
i mean that is really bad. it is already annoying having cell phones packed with not wanted, disturbing, useless functions and features when almost nothing useful like calendars, proper os which can run downloaded or even selfwritten scripts/programs and so on is implemented.
yet an other useful tool made by modern technology turned into bussiness driven marchandise crap...
do you people recall those many sci-fi movies and books made during the cold war which feature teams coined of american and russian heroes usually working together on a spacecraft or such...?
obviously, it is not that easy.
u obviously got the point. that is why i wrote: patch it up to be mozilla
i shall add: keep calling it IE if u want...
hm... they should patch IE up to be mozilla for example... that could be called a patch...
How MS is responsible for that, I can't figure out...
;) that is the difference
MS is responsible, because it is an enormous international firm, like a dinosaour which just can not take heed of such posibilites as using its product against human rights. but it is not like it is not responsible because it does not know what it is doing, just think of the movie Devil's advocat and you will see what i mean...
just imagine the uproar stallman would organize if e.g. emacs would be used against the people of china...
kindda funny... i mean in Hungary which is _not_ a third-world country at all there are villages in plenty where one can not get a place such as one you write about in india... and more fustrating, people dont know what they lack there in the sense of cheap and direct communication... it is just like you wrote they think internet is luxury...
so we can say that the ability of sending and receiving email became one of the things which essentially needed for human life just like proper medicine for example... or at least the benefactors think so...
I dont get the point. I thought every single javacoder uses emacs+JDE... Are you not?
goes: to identify the problem is [not] to solve it. ;)
i agree but we are talking about two different things. u are obviously right saying that "true sf ... tell a story about people": i mean all true fiction does! but in sf the story and the persons are set in a context which built of quasi scientific elements at a certain degree.
the whole story (mainly the actions of the persons) then organizes itself (and the context) and forms a certain view. in this view one can sees new sides of the scientific details (this is true about all the other elements as well, but of those we are not concerned now), if the piece is "true" as you put it.
therefore of course Enders Game is mainly about Ender Wiggin, but on the other hand we got an insight about the effect of the immediate communication on human society as well (this is of course an example).
that is what i actually meant.
i assume imagination is the most important thing via sf (ie. some kind of fiction) is able to give new ideas to sience. by imagination i dont mean to invent new things out of the blue but to make people look at things on a new and motivating way. this is always the hardest thing: to change your point of view concerning already known facts, models and so on.
Everthing was already true when that book was written. It is only getting more and more apparent and obvious nowadays.