I agree with your opinion. My first reaction when reading the summary of the story is was to think that mathematics was "discovered" was utter bullshit (and may only make sense if you think that you heavenly $Deitity created it and we mere mortals are just obtaining whatever $Deitity wants to give us).
But then, thinking a bit deeply, I agree that as you said, maths is both discovered and invented. There is no doubt that mathematical symbols were created by us humans. I just created some symbolisms while doing my thesis. However, those symbols are used to classify or "label" different patterns that *happen* in our universe and that we "perceive". It is then when we use such mathematical symbols to establish a classification of such patters (for example, we know that Weight = Mass Ã-- Gravity, because of experimentation, however we did not created such relationship or pattern. We just labeled it "\times" (or sometimes *).
There is a very nice logo port called StarLogo TNG from MIT which has a VERY graphical programming model (you make the programs attaching graphic blocks representing different instructions).
The idea is pretty neat and Logo was the first programming language I used (and in fact the first time I used a computer when I was 7 years old:) )
Haha, I agree with your amazement 100%. It is that sort of "techno-mechanical" technology that always has amazed me (after all, I like Asimov and the like).
That's why I found *really* cool the clocks and other "displays" in UK and some Europe train stations. The system is completely automatic and electronic, but the numbers in the clock and letters is mechanical. People look at me funny when I sometimes take the train and keep watching the time panels very closely just to see how it changes =oP.
FreeBSD is as Unix as Linux is Unix. Both are based in two different "variants" of Unix (BSD vs System V). The fact that they can not be called "Unix" is because they have not payed to the Open Group to get the Unix(R) Certification.
I realized spam was overkill when I received a letter (real, dead tree letter) from some USA company wanting to sell me penis enlargement products at my home address...... in a forsaken city in Mexico. Really, how much did it cost for them to send me such letters?
I have always said that using Open Source in government schools and other offices makes complete sense. Specially if they are not inside the USA.
My reasoning is that, as a tax payer in say, Brazil. I know that part of my taxes are going into buying whatever I.T. infrastructure is needed for the government (and there are countries and states where the government is *the* most important economy).
Therefore, as a tax payer, I prefer my contribution to go to Open Source projects (say, for example Open Office), which I would be able to use, instead of having to pay the proprietary software (Microsoft Office in this case) and giving that money to other countries (to the USA in such case).
Governments should mandate that all the software that is used in the government must be Open Source. The money with which the software is being bought is the money of all the contributors, and is in their best benefit to put that money in open standards, but most importantly in technology that *they* will be able to use.
Unfortunately, strong forces at the top of the governments impede such thing (at least in my own country) where big corporations push governments with "discrete" bribes in order to make them adopt whatever closed technology they sell.
It seems that the countries that will adopt Open Source as common initiative are the ones where socialism is not seen as such as scary term, akin to communism. And even the word communism does not equate to "Russian soviet slaves". Unlike USA and other countries that are *very* influenced by Capitalism.
The reason is that LOTR was "established" in a fantasy universe where all the creatures Tolkien could smoke would feel "at home".
Whereas Pan's Labyrinth was supposed to be in real life... (or in the girls mind if you think about it) and therefore you would not expect to see a guy with eyes on his hands...
It is something akin to the novels of Dan Brown. A lot of people where upset by all the "lies" he told in the Da Vinci code (BTW, the movie was atrocious). However they could not understand that the idea of the book was to get several facts, combine them with lots of fantasies and put a story which happened in a world very similar to ours.
Wow, mods let their zealotry go wild. Repeat with me, "Troll does not equal I disagree".
I think you are famous for trollish comments. But this one is interesting if not insightful.
I myself have asked that. I liked the movies, but just as that, Yet Another Fantasy Movie. Excepting the third one which in my opinion was one hour longer than it should have been (and those 3 endings yaaawn and i g2g to pee!!!!))
After all the fuzz about LOTR started (when the movie was produced) I actually got the book from a friend (lots of my friends were crazy at the time about LOTR).
Unfortunately I didn't really got it, in fact, I *hated* that they sang every four pages in the book. I decided I would wait to watch the movie and went back to reading my Asimovs.
Perhaps is the genere that I don't like (but then again, I love Final Fantasy, Neverwinter night and I loved role playing whole Sundays). But for me LOTR film was a nice film, which value (for me) the use of lots of special effects.
You raise a good point. Weeeeell, let me put it this way:
The GUI is a winner for desktop operating systems (that is for the average PC use of browse/write/play/and do other niceties with the computer [niceties for which, in Windows you have lots of shareware/freeware/crapware and even plenty of malware!)
the CLI is a winner for server and other specialized tasks (like for example processing several output data from a simulation for statistical analysis in R and then echoing such thing to format using awk/python to get it ready to use in Latex!).
I have done both of them. And each one of them is *really* useful in their own way. In this case, the story is about Unbuntu 8.04 which usually is supposed to be *the* most friendly Linux Desktop distribution. Therefore, the GUI would win in this discussion.
However, as I said before, there are some GUIs in Linux land which are worthless. Plenty of times I have seen a config GUI which is just a text box asking you to write the command line options... what is that GUI good for then? (the most fresh example I remember was a CD/DVD burning app... the fact that I can not name a recent/concrete example is a good thing:))
And I am sure it is a skewed statistic. Pretty much the majority of people that write in the internet that their pr0gramz skillz are VB, PHP and HTML (yeah... leet programming there) are the ones that do not have a clue.
Whereas the people that is busy programming in C/C++ for a life just return home, play with their kids and have sex with their wifes (and ocasionaly post as AC on slashdot)
Just to add to the "film video/audio" field. Banking people use quite a lot of C++. In fact, if you are looking for a quant. developer or something similar in banks you *MUST* C++, and some scripting language (python usually do).
And, then we go to games. The majority of games are done in C/C++. And I am not only talking about PC games, but Nintendo/PS/Microsoft console games.
Can anyone think of other industry aside of those three (movies, banking, games) big enough to make a dent by using another "major" language?
Apple is driving the market and has been doing so since introducing the iMac. Apple invests in technology years in advance while the Dells and HPs are running their businesses on a quarterly basis.
You do know that HP is waaaaaaaaaay more than PCs and Laptops don't you?
Over 10 years ago, Apple bought NeXT to save themselves. Some analysts couldn't understand why Apple with it's faltering personal computer product line would buy a Unix computer company whose product line wasn't very successful.
Didn't apple bought NeXT to recover Steve Jobs and some of the brilliant people that went with him?
I do not know about the others, but in the case of the Melinda an Gates foundations, it is well know which Very Rich Guy behind which Very Rich Company which is a Very Convicted Monopoly is providing the money to survive...
Lots of times, the companies behind those good causes do that only because they have studied very well the benefits that providing a bit of money (for PR reasons) will provide them.
Why else are companies "going green" now?
Re:I Want My First Personal Linux Machine
on
Ubuntu 8.04 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'll give you an example of why not:
Right now, in your Linux machine, open a terminal window and install that program to create music with music sheet and then play it. Something similar to GuitarPro.
So, what will you do? first, you have to know how do you *install* things (the command to install??? aptget? apt-get? apt_get? or aptitude or optitude?? mmm lets tray install? or was it depackg? or dpkag? or rpminstall? or yam? or yem?
After you find one of those commands who do not return "bash: auptda-get: command not found" you have to guess what is the sub-command (or parameter) that will actually install whatever you want to install... mmm lets try dpkg install... o shit no luck, dpkg get mmmm dpkg add??
Well, you know that there are some stuff called man pages which tell you some information. mmmm lets see "man..."
What manual page do you want?
Oh crap, what page number i should use for the installation of programs? and so on and so on...
until you know that apt-get install will install your program... but you have one problem "apt-get install guitar program" just tells you that there is no program called guitar program so, what is your program called?? how do you know your what is your program called...
aah well. That is only for installing a program. Imagin trying to do some more complex tasks.
The fact that you think it is very easy to use the command line is because you already know what to type. The probelm with the command line is that when you *do not* know what to type you have 256^n (number of keys ^ number of letters to type) different possibilities to try.
Whereas in a GUI you either have checkboxes or lists or whatever (unless you use one of those open source frontends that, when you go to the configuration screen, they just give you a blank text box asking you to input the parameters... shit, WHAT PARAMETERS?)
The problem with "giving away" whatever (drugs, music, software, etc etc) is that we live in a capitalist society. The foundations of capitalism is *for profit*. Thus, any entity (person, corporation, etc etc) who does not play in this our capitalist society by their rules will just fade away.
Not that I like capitalism as it is implemented now (in fact, I am against the very strong corporativism going now in the USA and other developed countries). However, this is the system we are using now and is one that has been more-or-less worked for some time.
You do not understand. With the GPL, you can not make money *as a programmer* developing standing on the shoulders of the other programs (like libraries).
Yeah, I am sure you may make money selling icecreams online using apache. But what he meant is that for those who are software developers, there is no value in doing any software.
For an example, just look at GetRight. How much woudl you pay for that? I would pay 0, why? because there are other open source programs that do the same... and they are free.
Just remember that not because something is cheaper -to you-, it means it is better (just see Wal*Mart vs the local shop owners).
Good god, I can't believe I am defending Bill Gates. But, that is why I did not pursue a software developer career. Programs have no value., or the value is getting constantly lower (similary to music and other "immaterial inventions").
Can I improve Windows? Unlikely. Not without getting a job there and spending several years moving up the ranks to be in a position where I can fix* things.
Thell that the people inside Microsoft. Because of all the marketing and other driving forces that really drive MS, a lot of good sofware engineers working for 5 years ending just creating the Vista abomination.
Not only that, but I also would love to have decent wireless support with wep and wpa configuration which is easy to use and *gasp* actually works.
And while we are at it, I would also love decent 3D graphics acceleration and ability to use more than one monitor (actually working, not like that stuff called something like xinareama ).
Oh, and decent audio, open source should really make up its mind and create a good/stable/usable audio stack. Between oss/alsa/pulse/artsd/esd.. you can not make one that works.
Now let me run, because being this slashdot, I see the hordes of nerds come with the torches and pitchforks =oP.
What I find annoying about grub and Fedora/Ubuntu (the two I have experience with) is that every time you update your kernel, a new item with the new kernel is added to the GRUB menu. Until you end having like 10 different linux kernels (each one with its corresponding "safe mode") in the start menu.
While I know you can remove them from the grub/menu.lst I think it is quite cumbersome. There should be an option (which can be configured in some screen, not some obscure file flag) that allows you to remove the previous kernel versions one your Ubuntu is updated... after all, we are completely certain that being Linux, the new version will Just Work (aren't we?)
NTFS read/write access has stable for a long time. No need for FAT32.
The problem with NTFS in 7.10 is that you can not access a NTFS drive if you turned of your windows marchine via "hibernation". Ubuntu wont mount such a partition.
A work around is to manually mounting it on read only mode (via the command line mount -r ). However that is a complete turn off from a usability POV (remember, we do not want to go to the console, no, not even once).
That is one of the main reasons why I save all my documents and info in a FAT32 partition. Windows and Linux happily interact via that. And I can have MyDocuments in the same place as/home/xtracto.
Judging from the CS girl friends in my department, I would say I am glad she is not my wife =oP. Unless she is from the Middle East (beautiful women go to Engineering and CS in Middle East countries)
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with your opinion. My first reaction when reading the summary of the story is was to think that mathematics was "discovered" was utter bullshit (and may only make sense if you think that you heavenly $Deitity created it and we mere mortals are just obtaining whatever $Deitity wants to give us).
But then, thinking a bit deeply, I agree that as you said, maths is both discovered and invented. There is no doubt that mathematical symbols were created by us humans. I just created some symbolisms while doing my thesis. However, those symbols are used to classify or "label" different patterns that *happen* in our universe and that we "perceive". It is then when we use such mathematical symbols to establish a classification of such patters (for example, we know that Weight = Mass Ã-- Gravity, because of experimentation, however we did not created such relationship or pattern. We just labeled it "\times" (or sometimes *).
There is a very nice logo port called StarLogo TNG from MIT which has a VERY graphical programming model (you make the programs attaching graphic blocks representing different instructions).
:) )
The idea is pretty neat and Logo was the first programming language I used (and in fact the first time I used a computer when I was 7 years old
Haha, I agree with your amazement 100%. It is that sort of "techno-mechanical" technology that always has amazed me (after all, I like Asimov and the like).
That's why I found *really* cool the clocks and other "displays" in UK and some Europe train stations. The system is completely automatic and electronic, but the numbers in the clock and letters is mechanical. People look at me funny when I sometimes take the train and keep watching the time panels very closely just to see how it changes =oP.
FreeBSD is as Unix as Linux is Unix. Both are based in two different "variants" of Unix (BSD vs System V). The fact that they can not be called "Unix" is because they have not payed to the Open Group to get the Unix(R) Certification.
I realized spam was overkill when I received a letter (real, dead tree letter) from some USA company wanting to sell me penis enlargement products at my home address... ... in a forsaken city in Mexico. Really, how much did it cost for them to send me such letters?
I have always said that using Open Source in government schools and other offices makes complete sense. Specially if they are not inside the USA.
My reasoning is that, as a tax payer in say, Brazil. I know that part of my taxes are going into buying whatever I.T. infrastructure is needed for the government (and there are countries and states where the government is *the* most important economy).
Therefore, as a tax payer, I prefer my contribution to go to Open Source projects (say, for example Open Office), which I would be able to use, instead of having to pay the proprietary software (Microsoft Office in this case) and giving that money to other countries (to the USA in such case).
Governments should mandate that all the software that is used in the government must be Open Source. The money with which the software is being bought is the money of all the contributors, and is in their best benefit to put that money in open standards, but most importantly in technology that *they* will be able to use.
Unfortunately, strong forces at the top of the governments impede such thing (at least in my own country) where big corporations push governments with "discrete" bribes in order to make them adopt whatever closed technology they sell.
It seems that the countries that will adopt Open Source as common initiative are the ones where socialism is not seen as such as scary term, akin to communism. And even the word communism does not equate to "Russian soviet slaves". Unlike USA and other countries that are *very* influenced by Capitalism.
Yeah, the version where Balrog shoot first,
That is because you do not know the history of Spain.
And because you try to see too much of a fantasy movie which tries to be located in an epoch.
But hey, the side of your tinfoil hat is hanging, better rearrange it.
Beowulf (he was often regarded as a leading expert on the latter.
Who would have thought! Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of Tolkien Rings!
The reason is that LOTR was "established" in a fantasy universe where all the creatures Tolkien could smoke would feel "at home".
Whereas Pan's Labyrinth was supposed to be in real life... (or in the girls mind if you think about it) and therefore you would not expect to see a guy with eyes on his hands...
It is something akin to the novels of Dan Brown. A lot of people where upset by all the "lies" he told in the Da Vinci code (BTW, the movie was atrocious). However they could not understand that the idea of the book was to get several facts, combine them with lots of fantasies and put a story which happened in a world very similar to ours.
Wow, mods let their zealotry go wild. Repeat with me, "Troll does not equal I disagree".
I think you are famous for trollish comments. But this one is interesting if not insightful.
I myself have asked that. I liked the movies, but just as that, Yet Another Fantasy Movie. Excepting the third one which in my opinion was one hour longer than it should have been (and those 3 endings yaaawn and i g2g to pee!!!!))
After all the fuzz about LOTR started (when the movie was produced) I actually got the book from a friend (lots of my friends were crazy at the time about LOTR).
Unfortunately I didn't really got it, in fact, I *hated* that they sang every four pages in the book. I decided I would wait to watch the movie and went back to reading my Asimovs.
Perhaps is the genere that I don't like (but then again, I love Final Fantasy, Neverwinter night and I loved role playing whole Sundays). But for me LOTR film was a nice film, which value (for me) the use of lots of special effects.
You raise a good point. Weeeeell, let me put it this way:
:))
The GUI is a winner for desktop operating systems (that is for the average PC use of browse/write/play/and do other niceties with the computer [niceties for which, in Windows you have lots of shareware/freeware/crapware and even plenty of malware!)
the CLI is a winner for server and other specialized tasks (like for example processing several output data from a simulation for statistical analysis in R and then echoing such thing to format using awk/python to get it ready to use in Latex!).
I have done both of them. And each one of them is *really* useful in their own way. In this case, the story is about Unbuntu 8.04 which usually is supposed to be *the* most friendly Linux Desktop distribution. Therefore, the GUI would win in this discussion.
However, as I said before, there are some GUIs in Linux land which are worthless. Plenty of times I have seen a config GUI which is just a text box asking you to write the command line options... what is that GUI good for then? (the most fresh example I remember was a CD/DVD burning app... the fact that I can not name a recent/concrete example is a good thing
And I am sure it is a skewed statistic. Pretty much the majority of people that write in the internet that their pr0gramz skillz are VB, PHP and HTML (yeah... leet programming there) are the ones that do not have a clue.
Whereas the people that is busy programming in C/C++ for a life just return home, play with their kids and have sex with their wifes (and ocasionaly post as AC on slashdot)
Just to add to the "film video/audio" field. Banking people use quite a lot of C++. In fact, if you are looking for a quant. developer or something similar in banks you *MUST* C++, and some scripting language (python usually do).
And, then we go to games. The majority of games are done in C/C++. And I am not only talking about PC games, but Nintendo/PS/Microsoft console games.
Can anyone think of other industry aside of those three (movies, banking, games) big enough to make a dent by using another "major" language?
Apple is driving the market and has been doing so since introducing the iMac. Apple invests in technology years in advance while the Dells and HPs are running their businesses on a quarterly basis.
You do know that HP is waaaaaaaaaay more than PCs and Laptops don't you?
Over 10 years ago, Apple bought NeXT to save themselves. Some analysts couldn't understand why Apple with it's faltering personal computer product line would buy a Unix computer company whose product line wasn't very successful.
Didn't apple bought NeXT to recover Steve Jobs and some of the brilliant people that went with him?
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
I do not know about the others, but in the case of the Melinda an Gates foundations, it is well know which Very Rich Guy behind which Very Rich Company which is a Very Convicted Monopoly is providing the money to survive...
Lots of times, the companies behind those good causes do that only because they have studied very well the benefits that providing a bit of money (for PR reasons) will provide them.
Why else are companies "going green" now?
I'll give you an example of why not:
Right now, in your Linux machine, open a terminal window and install that program to create music with music sheet and then play it. Something similar to GuitarPro.
So, what will you do? first, you have to know how do you *install* things (the command to install??? aptget? apt-get? apt_get? or aptitude or optitude?? mmm lets tray install? or was it depackg? or dpkag? or rpminstall? or yam? or yem?
After you find one of those commands who do not return "bash: auptda-get: command not found" you have to guess what is the sub-command (or parameter) that will actually install whatever you want to install... mmm lets try dpkg install... o shit no luck, dpkg get mmmm dpkg add??
Well, you know that there are some stuff called man pages which tell you some information. mmmm lets see "man..."
What manual page do you want?
Oh crap, what page number i should use for the installation of programs?
and so on and so on...
until you know that apt-get install will install your program... but you have one problem
"apt-get install guitar program" just tells you that there is no program called guitar program so, what is your program called?? how do you know your what is your program called...
aah well. That is only for installing a program. Imagin trying to do some more complex tasks.
The fact that you think it is very easy to use the command line is because you already know what to type. The probelm with the command line is that when you *do not* know what to type you have 256^n (number of keys ^ number of letters to type) different possibilities to try.
Whereas in a GUI you either have checkboxes or lists or whatever (unless you use one of those open source frontends that, when you go to the configuration screen, they just give you a blank text box asking you to input the parameters... shit, WHAT PARAMETERS?)
The problem with "giving away" whatever (drugs, music, software, etc etc) is that we live in a capitalist society. The foundations of capitalism is *for profit*. Thus, any entity (person, corporation, etc etc) who does not play in this our capitalist society by their rules will just fade away.
Not that I like capitalism as it is implemented now (in fact, I am against the very strong corporativism going now in the USA and other developed countries). However, this is the system we are using now and is one that has been more-or-less worked for some time.
You do not understand. With the GPL, you can not make money *as a programmer* developing standing on the shoulders of the other programs (like libraries).
Yeah, I am sure you may make money selling icecreams online using apache. But what he meant is that for those who are software developers, there is no value in doing any software.
For an example, just look at GetRight. How much woudl you pay for that? I would pay 0, why? because there are other open source programs that do the same... and they are free.
Just remember that not because something is cheaper -to you-, it means it is better (just see Wal*Mart vs the local shop owners).
Good god, I can't believe I am defending Bill Gates. But, that is why I did not pursue a software developer career. Programs have no value., or the value is getting constantly lower (similary to music and other "immaterial inventions").
Can I improve Windows? Unlikely. Not without getting a job there and spending several years moving up the ranks to be in a position where I can fix* things.
Thell that the people inside Microsoft. Because of all the marketing and other driving forces that really drive MS, a lot of good sofware engineers working for 5 years ending just creating the Vista abomination.
Not only that, but I also would love to have decent wireless support with wep and wpa configuration which is easy to use and *gasp* actually works.
.. you can not make one that works.
And while we are at it, I would also love decent 3D graphics acceleration and ability to use more than one monitor (actually working, not like that stuff called something like xinareama ).
Oh, and decent audio, open source should really make up its mind and create a good/stable/usable audio stack. Between oss/alsa/pulse/artsd/esd
Now let me run, because being this slashdot, I see the hordes of nerds come with the torches and pitchforks =oP.
What I find annoying about grub and Fedora/Ubuntu (the two I have experience with) is that every time you update your kernel, a new item with the new kernel is added to the GRUB menu. Until you end having like 10 different linux kernels (each one with its corresponding "safe mode") in the start menu.
While I know you can remove them from the grub/menu.lst I think it is quite cumbersome. There should be an option (which can be configured in some screen, not some obscure file flag) that allows you to remove the previous kernel versions one your Ubuntu is updated... after all, we are completely certain that being Linux, the new version will Just Work (aren't we?)
NTFS read/write access has stable for a long time. No need for FAT32.
/home/xtracto.
The problem with NTFS in 7.10 is that you can not access a NTFS drive if you turned of your windows marchine via "hibernation". Ubuntu wont mount such a partition.
A work around is to manually mounting it on read only mode (via the command line mount -r ). However that is a complete turn off from a usability POV (remember, we do not want to go to the console, no, not even once).
That is one of the main reasons why I save all my documents and info in a FAT32 partition. Windows and Linux happily interact via that. And I can have MyDocuments in the same place as
You forgot the: ...
My wife is also a CS major so
Judging from the CS girl friends in my department, I would say I am glad she is not my wife =oP. Unless she is from the Middle East (beautiful women go to Engineering and CS in Middle East countries)