Denying God because you understand the tools he uses is like denying Michaelangelo because you once saw a chisel.
Understand? did I say that? Want to understand yes, but understand the reason for the existence of the universe? hah, as if I could. The best I can do is study and research using the scientific method.
What I do though is not put myself into a cushioned frame of mind that requires no conclusions beyond 'god did it'.
IMHO, the reason why this is so difficult is because of the awe and wonder (and fear!) we feel when we see the magnificent complexity and interconnectedness in the nature around us
Apart from the fear thing, I have exactly that reason to explain why I have always believed in evolution (since reading about it myself in a book at 7). Even then I was struck by the vastness of the universe, and the idea that some god person had made it all seemed a bit too simple. Even then I was utterly fascinated by astronomy, and looking at the night sky, especially in Australia, where we actually had a visible star scape, was an experience that filled me not with religious conviction, but with a determination to find explanations for what I saw. 'God did it' was never an option.
Having grown up now I realise why so many people need to believe in the biblical creation myth. Believe that and everything becomes easy, simple enough that you don't have to worry about it. Reject it and boy have you got a lot of work to do. For one thing you actually have to understand things, not pass it of as 'the work of god'.
I find it amusing that creationists/ID'ers seem to want a stupid god, incapable of anything but focusing on one planet in the vast universe, as interested in the fall of birds (why is it always bad stuff?) then the formation of galaxies. I prefer the idea that if god exists, he was smart enough to set things in motion at some point (at the start of this universe? a previous one, no idea), and it all works without intervention. Of course this implies that there is no god, since a system that does not require a god to run doesn't need one to exist at all.
I'm not really concerned that this player doesn't allow you to download the content. After all, the content expires on windows after a while anyway. Current bcc streaming options include the option (on those I use) of resuming where you left off listening/watching beforehand. That's more than adequate for my needs.
In fact I prefer the idea of a flash based web player. The problem with an installed player is that it only works if installed (obviously), so I can't just watch anywhere when I want.
My son tried logo, because his school had it and thought it would be instructive for the more able students. He was utterly bored, and is now learning python in his own time.
Logo was good, but the language landscape is so vast now there are better languages for almost every task to which logo can be put.
her suit was almost frivolous, in that she was in no way innocent, she did what she was accused of, and she knew it. Had she got away with it, it would have been a bad thing for the courts.
The problem is the RIAA wanted her to pay their fine originally, a 'legal' fine imposed without recourse to legal help for the victim. That was also wrong. So she put herself in a position where she was at risk from an unsuitable scale of punishments, because the RIAA have avoided having file sharing properly tested in court, so the punishment scale is way too high.
In a reasonable world, file sharing would attract a parking ticket type fine, and too many would mean your ISP would cut you off for a month or so, or for good if your stupid and don't pay your fines.
I'm puzzled by the funny. After all, I'd have though saying I actually didn't foam at the mouth when coming within ten feet of windows would have me tagged troll instantly.
I am aware of the in built ssh things in Konquerer and such. Indeed I use them. What I find for my work is that winscp is superior.
And I did not say that these stopped me from using Linux, rarely a day goes by that I am not actively logged into a linux box and working. What they do is stop me from dumping windows, that's an entirely different thing. Plus they are open source, which is ok.
I get lots of visits from Mac users on my site, but I have no way of compiling an OSX version of my software, let alone maintaining it with updates. If I did things might get interesting.
Hell, I've been coding for 7 years, and although I rely exclusively on my linux boxen for any large scale modeling or EA work, I wouldn't like to go without my windows machine. I like a lot of windows software. Winscp (http://winscp.net) alone is one of the greatest open source applications I have ever encountered, and it's windows only. I'm also a fan of putty, ssh session saving is great, and putty and winscp integrate nicely. I find it extremely easy to inspect progress of experiments on all machines using these two programs together, transferring files between machines is so easy its silly. This alone would encourage me to keep a copy of windows on one machine.
Anyway, in spite of my initial lack of interest in windows versions of my software, the mob has spoken, downloads of my software for windows (though still still tiny) outnumber those for Linux. So I couldn't drop windows if I wanted to
Not perhaps the most impressive list of reasons, but I suspect I'm not alone.
Not to forget there's also games, but everyone say that one.
Re:Take your Blog and Shove It !
on
Blog Action Day
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I'm reminded of Deep Thoughts Comment to Vroomfondle and Majikthise - "And Who Will That Inconvenience?"
If KDE 4 works on windows I'll never use the windows interface again. The useability contrast between my linux/kde box and the vista machine we have in the house is so great its just not funny.
Two days of having to admin this machine and already I hate it, and I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, I even hoped I might like it, boy was I wrong. A KDE interface I could replace the vista one with would be awesome.
In an ideal world I wouldn't have windows, but I need linux and windows together for the time being. That time being years to come most like. At least I have five times the number of linux boxes than windows ones.
I can guarantee if you go to a professional writer and ask:
Which would you rather have? A) An outline view where you can instantly re-order your work, including notes and references? B) A slightly more open document format?
There isn't a single one who's going to answer B.
You win a cookie.
Actually I know a few professional writers. Some use office, some use openoffice. Some use emacs and tex. My own major work, my thesis, is in MS Word because I have no choice in the matter. Plus its far far easier to take a word formatted thesis to a printer at the moment.
I know there are printers that use tex. I'm talking about the less expensive thesis printing services I can get to by train.
Jesus. How about they compete with Word first, eh? Calling Thunderbird an "Outlook Replacement" just shows they have no idea what people use Outlook for. Outlook Express replacement, sure.
To most people there is no difference, unless they work for big companies.
The great thing about Office is all the damn pieces work together. Excel is friendly with Access, Access is friendly with Word, Everything is friendly with Outlook. To beat Office, you have to have an Office suite that works like that. Not just all the pieces in one package.
I was rather under the impression that the integration of office components with each other and tightly with windows, while nice in theory, actually made it a horrible security threat. Applications that co-operated but existed wholly apart from the OS, other than running on it would be a good thing.
There is not one single thing in OO that doesn't have an OSS equivalent stand-alone application that is at least as good. Bundling a mail client with the rest of your apps doesn't suddenly make you competitive, especially when your whole user base could have already installed that mail client if they wanted it.
potentially a good point, but in fact it is not assured that people would know about alternative mail clients from OSS> Better it is offered as an installable component with the OO suite.
There are OSS projects that are actually making a push toward doing the things that Outlook does (like Kontact). But Thunderbird is still lagging behind Evolution imho, and neither of them play all that great with any of the groupware servers out there, open or closed.
Kontact is Linux only. While I wish many KDE apps would make it to the windows platform, most aren't, so kontact probably isn't a good comparison. kolab perhaps, as it is based on kontact, but I don';t think that's exactly ready to uproot outlook any time soon.
I used to try and push OO on people, but I've completely lost faith in it. I keep thinking, maybe they'll get their crap together, but then they do stuff like this.
If you've given up on it, then your not really a good source for an opinion on its usefulness. I use it and MS Office together, I have to for now, until all my templates are ported to my satisfaction. Openoffice is very nice MS Office has the edge on maturity, but I don't like the locked in nature of the document formats.
I released my first OSS project as a horrifically badly organised mess of dissertation code. I got feedback from some domain specialists and better coders, and the codebase got better.
Now its a mature project with a very specialised user base, but its provided me with more fun then I ever imagined.
Code is never finished though.
Incidentally, I'd have replied to the main article, but for me there was no reply button, don't know why.
They can control it all they want, but the pool of people who are willing to be subjected to that control is going to get smaller over time.
They might even have a few years of success with such a model, but as soon as the first groups of consumers who quit starting complaining about not having their music any more, support will wane, and their grand scheme will flop.
I use it as a rolling backup of important documents. One to the working folder, one to a backup drive on another machine, and one to Gmail. With the integration of gmail with google docs, thats actually incredibly handy. I have several utility spreadsheets sat in google docs that I use quite often.
I've been doing this for two years, and I'm up to 66Mb. I delete obsolete backups after six months.
I don't have a large set of old mail either, with few exceptions I delete it.
I think Al Gore did well. He was screwed on the election, and thus avoided being the president overseeing one of the worst periods in US history, and instead has been recognized in his efforts to raise awareness on an issue which goes far beyond the presidency. After all, what does the presidency matter if the world is fucked over by global warming?
His stance goes in stark contrast to Bush's idea that carbon emission reductions should be pretty much be defined by the economic desire of the US, rather than long term requirements.
actionable? Nope. Not unless you've got a handy billion for a court case they would drag on for years, whilst they were trying everything they could to discredit you. That much money can buy a lot of witnesses against you too.
I prefer to consider that his actions are making microsoft look less and less professional compared to the Linux vendors.
Anyway, I just tried Vista on a machine my mum has bought. I was willing to give it the benefit of doubt, but after three days I've realised it really is a heap of crap. The interface alone is just plain badly designed, and that's the least of the problems I had. I've got no chance of getting my mum to revert to Vista, but boy would I like that.
Microsoft just lost my future custom outright, there is no way I will ever use Vista myself.
No way, we don't want an Iraqi Ishiro Honda Creating more Godzilla, and an endless stream of city destruction analogue cartoons that all seem to require the technical expertise of schoolgirls.
'Ah yes, we need the schoolgirls because their purdah wearing panty flashing abilities, um, well, we just need them, ok?'
Checking all possible moves is unwise. What you do is design a nice directed heuristic, say, a multi objective algorithm, and train this to compute a reasonable set of possible moves from the current state. There is no need to describe an idea end state, just a decent ongoing performance requirement.
Multi objective algorithms are fearsomely hard creatures to get right, but when working they can do great things. Use one to train a neural network with temporal properties (bases current decisions on past inputs at all positrons simultaneously), and you have a means to achieve a decent setup. It would take a long time to get right though.
Go is too complex for a total understanding, if ever there were an NP complete problem, this is it. thats why we have evolutionary algorithms. best solution? don't care about them, best possible in reasonable time? That'll do nicely.
My spectrum was awesome, and by dint of the fact that I couldn't afford a C64 (or even a Vic 20), I opted for the '48k ZX spectrum beats your computer any day' line of reasoning, and affected temporary blindness when anyone started showing off sprites.
Ah yes, the hours of tapping away on a rubber keyboard. Hungry Horace, oh how many evenings you ate.
I took it out of storage and showed my son last year. He looked at it in a puzzled fashion and asked where the dvd drive was.
Crying is not manly, so I just mumbled and put it away again..
probability states that it would be worthwhile putting one of a thousand guns to your head, where only one was loaded, and pulling the trigger if the reward was a million dollers upon survival. Basing some decisions on the probability of bad things happening isn't always a good plan if the penalty for failure is extreme.
Downloading or uploading, they're pissed, and looking for ways to punish people they catch. The only reason they don't go after downloaders is thats impossible, there are too many, but each file has a single original uploader. The number is smaller, but not by much imo. The only real advantage is its easier to demonstrate in court.
If they could chase downloaders too they would. Bittorrent users are screwed in any case if caught, they do both. You could be connected to an invesitgator for the duration of a thousand file torrent. Not wise, especially in light of this ruling.
I expect a bittorrent user to be hauled over the coals in the near future.
Slashdot Mirror
Denying God because you understand the tools he uses is like denying Michaelangelo because you once saw a chisel.
Understand? did I say that? Want to understand yes, but understand the reason for the existence of the universe? hah, as if I could. The best I can do is study and research using the scientific method.
What I do though is not put myself into a cushioned frame of mind that requires no conclusions beyond 'god did it'.
IMHO, the reason why this is so difficult is because of the awe and wonder (and fear!) we feel when we see the magnificent complexity and interconnectedness in the nature around us
Apart from the fear thing, I have exactly that reason to explain why I have always believed in evolution (since reading about it myself in a book at 7). Even then I was struck by the vastness of the universe, and the idea that some god person had made it all seemed a bit too simple. Even then I was utterly fascinated by astronomy, and looking at the night sky, especially in Australia, where we actually had a visible star scape, was an experience that filled me not with religious conviction, but with a determination to find explanations for what I saw. 'God did it' was never an option.
Having grown up now I realise why so many people need to believe in the biblical creation myth. Believe that and everything becomes easy, simple enough that you don't have to worry about it. Reject it and boy have you got a lot of work to do. For one thing you actually have to understand things, not pass it of as 'the work of god'.
I find it amusing that creationists/ID'ers seem to want a stupid god, incapable of anything but focusing on one planet in the vast universe, as interested in the fall of birds (why is it always bad stuff?) then the formation of galaxies. I prefer the idea that if god exists, he was smart enough to set things in motion at some point (at the start of this universe? a previous one, no idea), and it all works without intervention. Of course this implies that there is no god, since a system that does not require a god to run doesn't need one to exist at all.
I'm not really concerned that this player doesn't allow you to download the content. After all, the content expires on windows after a while anyway. Current bcc streaming options include the option (on those I use) of resuming where you left off listening/watching beforehand. That's more than adequate for my needs.
In fact I prefer the idea of a flash based web player. The problem with an installed player is that it only works if installed (obviously), so I can't just watch anywhere when I want.
read the article, they aren't after usenet, they're after usenet.com, the latter offers access to the former, but is not otherwise affiliated.
But for learning the principles that precede programming, I can't think of a finer tool.
An Abacus?
My son tried logo, because his school had it and thought it would be instructive for the more able students. He was utterly bored, and is now learning python in his own time.
Logo was good, but the language landscape is so vast now there are better languages for almost every task to which logo can be put.
it's a pity that anyone wishing to build their own Mac has to opt for the "Bittorrent Edition" as well... :(
Why would anyone want to build a Mac?
her suit was almost frivolous, in that she was in no way innocent, she did what she was accused of, and she knew it. Had she got away with it, it would have been a bad thing for the courts.
The problem is the RIAA wanted her to pay their fine originally, a 'legal' fine imposed without recourse to legal help for the victim. That was also wrong. So she put herself in a position where she was at risk from an unsuitable scale of punishments, because the RIAA have avoided having file sharing properly tested in court, so the punishment scale is way too high.
In a reasonable world, file sharing would attract a parking ticket type fine, and too many would mean your ISP would cut you off for a month or so, or for good if your stupid and don't pay your fines.
I'm puzzled by the funny. After all, I'd have though saying I actually didn't foam at the mouth when coming within ten feet of windows would have me tagged troll instantly.
session saving. That's the biggie for me. I have lots of machines, not all of them local. Having a menu to choose from is nice and easy.
I am aware of the in built ssh things in Konquerer and such. Indeed I use them. What I find for my work is that winscp is superior.
And I did not say that these stopped me from using Linux, rarely a day goes by that I am not actively logged into a linux box and working. What they do is stop me from dumping windows, that's an entirely different thing. Plus they are open source, which is ok.
I get lots of visits from Mac users on my site, but I have no way of compiling an OSX version of my software, let alone maintaining it with updates. If I did things might get interesting.
People can easily switch to Linux, right? Right?
Nope.
Hell, I've been coding for 7 years, and although I rely exclusively on my linux boxen for any large scale modeling or EA work, I wouldn't like to go without my windows machine. I like a lot of windows software. Winscp (http://winscp.net) alone is one of the greatest open source applications I have ever encountered, and it's windows only. I'm also a fan of putty, ssh session saving is great, and putty and winscp integrate nicely. I find it extremely easy to inspect progress of experiments on all machines using these two programs together, transferring files between machines is so easy its silly. This alone would encourage me to keep a copy of windows on one machine.
Anyway, in spite of my initial lack of interest in windows versions of my software, the mob has spoken, downloads of my software for windows (though still still tiny) outnumber those for Linux. So I couldn't drop windows if I wanted to
Not perhaps the most impressive list of reasons, but I suspect I'm not alone.
Not to forget there's also games, but everyone say that one.
I'm reminded of Deep Thoughts Comment to Vroomfondle and Majikthise - "And Who Will That Inconvenience?"
If KDE 4 works on windows I'll never use the windows interface again. The useability contrast between my linux/kde box and the vista machine we have in the house is so great its just not funny.
Two days of having to admin this machine and already I hate it, and I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, I even hoped I might like it, boy was I wrong. A KDE interface I could replace the vista one with would be awesome.
In an ideal world I wouldn't have windows, but I need linux and windows together for the time being. That time being years to come most like. At least I have five times the number of linux boxes than windows ones.
I can guarantee if you go to a professional writer and ask:
Which would you rather have?
A) An outline view where you can instantly re-order your work, including notes and references?
B) A slightly more open document format?
There isn't a single one who's going to answer B.
You win a cookie.
Actually I know a few professional writers. Some use office, some use openoffice. Some use emacs and tex. My own major work, my thesis, is in MS Word because I have no choice in the matter. Plus its far far easier to take a word formatted thesis to a printer at the moment.
I know there are printers that use tex. I'm talking about the less expensive thesis printing services I can get to by train.
Jesus. How about they compete with Word first, eh? Calling Thunderbird an "Outlook Replacement" just shows they have no idea what people use Outlook for. Outlook Express replacement, sure.
To most people there is no difference, unless they work for big companies.
The great thing about Office is all the damn pieces work together. Excel is friendly with Access, Access is friendly with Word, Everything is friendly with Outlook. To beat Office, you have to have an Office suite that works like that. Not just all the pieces in one package.
I was rather under the impression that the integration of office components with each other and tightly with windows, while nice in theory, actually made it a horrible security threat. Applications that co-operated but existed wholly apart from the OS, other than running on it would be a good thing.
There is not one single thing in OO that doesn't have an OSS equivalent stand-alone application that is at least as good. Bundling a mail client with the rest of your apps doesn't suddenly make you competitive, especially when your whole user base could have already installed that mail client if they wanted it.
potentially a good point, but in fact it is not assured that people would know about alternative mail clients from OSS> Better it is offered as an installable component with the OO suite.
There are OSS projects that are actually making a push toward doing the things that Outlook does (like Kontact). But Thunderbird is still lagging behind Evolution imho, and neither of them play all that great with any of the groupware servers out there, open or closed.
Kontact is Linux only. While I wish many KDE apps would make it to the windows platform, most aren't, so kontact probably isn't a good comparison. kolab perhaps, as it is based on kontact, but I don';t think that's exactly ready to uproot outlook any time soon.
I used to try and push OO on people, but I've completely lost faith in it. I keep thinking, maybe they'll get their crap together, but then they do stuff like this.
If you've given up on it, then your not really a good source for an opinion on its usefulness. I use it and MS Office together, I have to for now, until all my templates are ported to my satisfaction. Openoffice is very nice MS Office has the edge on maturity, but I don't like the locked in nature of the document formats.
I released my first OSS project as a horrifically badly organised mess of dissertation code. I got feedback from some domain specialists and better coders, and the codebase got better.
Now its a mature project with a very specialised user base, but its provided me with more fun then I ever imagined.
Code is never finished though.
Incidentally, I'd have replied to the main article, but for me there was no reply button, don't know why.
They can control it all they want, but the pool of people who are willing to be subjected to that control is going to get smaller over time.
They might even have a few years of success with such a model, but as soon as the first groups of consumers who quit starting complaining about not having their music any more, support will wane, and their grand scheme will flop.
I use it as a rolling backup of important documents. One to the working folder, one to a backup drive on another machine, and one to Gmail. With the integration of gmail with google docs, thats actually incredibly handy. I have several utility spreadsheets sat in google docs that I use quite often.
I've been doing this for two years, and I'm up to 66Mb. I delete obsolete backups after six months.
I don't have a large set of old mail either, with few exceptions I delete it.
I think Al Gore did well. He was screwed on the election, and thus avoided being the president overseeing one of the worst periods in US history, and instead has been recognized in his efforts to raise awareness on an issue which goes far beyond the presidency. After all, what does the presidency matter if the world is fucked over by global warming?
His stance goes in stark contrast to Bush's idea that carbon emission reductions should be pretty much be defined by the economic desire of the US, rather than long term requirements.
actionable? Nope. Not unless you've got a handy billion for a court case they would drag on for years, whilst they were trying everything they could to discredit you. That much money can buy a lot of witnesses against you too.
I prefer to consider that his actions are making microsoft look less and less professional compared to the Linux vendors.
Anyway, I just tried Vista on a machine my mum has bought. I was willing to give it the benefit of doubt, but after three days I've realised it really is a heap of crap. The interface alone is just plain badly designed, and that's the least of the problems I had. I've got no chance of getting my mum to revert to Vista, but boy would I like that.
Microsoft just lost my future custom outright, there is no way I will ever use Vista myself.
Maybe we should drop nukes on Iraq as well?
No way, we don't want an Iraqi Ishiro Honda Creating more Godzilla, and an endless stream of city destruction analogue cartoons that all seem to require the technical expertise of schoolgirls.
'Ah yes, we need the schoolgirls because their purdah wearing panty flashing abilities, um, well, we just need them, ok?'
Checking all possible moves is unwise. What you do is design a nice directed heuristic, say, a multi objective algorithm, and train this to compute a reasonable set of possible moves from the current state. There is no need to describe an idea end state, just a decent ongoing performance requirement.
Multi objective algorithms are fearsomely hard creatures to get right, but when working they can do great things. Use one to train a neural network with temporal properties (bases current decisions on past inputs at all positrons simultaneously), and you have a means to achieve a decent setup. It would take a long time to get right though.
Go is too complex for a total understanding, if ever there were an NP complete problem, this is it. thats why we have evolutionary algorithms. best solution? don't care about them, best possible in reasonable time? That'll do nicely.
All you C64 people, grr.
My spectrum was awesome, and by dint of the fact that I couldn't afford a C64 (or even a Vic 20), I opted for the '48k ZX spectrum beats your computer any day' line of reasoning, and affected temporary blindness when anyone started showing off sprites.
Ah yes, the hours of tapping away on a rubber keyboard. Hungry Horace, oh how many evenings you ate.
I took it out of storage and showed my son last year. He looked at it in a puzzled fashion and asked where the dvd drive was.
Crying is not manly, so I just mumbled and put it away again..
probability states that it would be worthwhile putting one of a thousand guns to your head, where only one was loaded, and pulling the trigger if the reward was a million dollers upon survival. Basing some decisions on the probability of bad things happening isn't always a good plan if the penalty for failure is extreme.
Downloading or uploading, they're pissed, and looking for ways to punish people they catch. The only reason they don't go after downloaders is thats impossible, there are too many, but each file has a single original uploader. The number is smaller, but not by much imo. The only real advantage is its easier to demonstrate in court.
If they could chase downloaders too they would. Bittorrent users are screwed in any case if caught, they do both. You could be connected to an invesitgator for the duration of a thousand file torrent. Not wise, especially in light of this ruling.
I expect a bittorrent user to be hauled over the coals in the near future.