*surprise* another person whose doesn't really understand capitalism. Some people are born with financial capital and some are not. Most people are born with ownership of their own person. Using this, they find ways to serve others - often this is by working for someone, sometimes people invent things, write music, etc.
Thanks for explaining that to me. I had no idea people could do "work" to make "money." Except that I did. And correctly noted that many people do not earn enough from their work to build wealth. Making just enough money to live is not much different from slavery. The French peasantry were little more than slaves.
Second, the French Revolution was more about equality of results (forced equality) than social darwinism the way you describe it.
I don't wish to discuss the history leading to the French Revolution. Social darwinism was the doctrine through which the aristocracy legitimized oppressing the peasantry. But make no mistake -- that doctrine was held by the peasantry as well. When the peasantry realized that there was to rise in a society that afforded them no opportunity, they rebelled. It was a blood thirsty form of social darwinism.
Finally, drop the "American" when talking about slavery. Slavery was (still is in some parts of the world; Saudi Arabia) a serious problem; limiting it to one country is usually done by people who just like to piss on things other people like -- a trait that is not very attractive.
Indeed, slavery is still common. But American slavery was chosen for this example because of the strong analogies to Medieval feudalism with respect to capitalism. For one thing, as I said, 1800-1860 was probably the most laissez-faire period in American history. If just "trying" were enough, government intervention would not have been needed to bring an end to slavery. I am aware of plenty of other historical examples (Haiti fits the paradigm, for instance), but chose to use one the audience would be familiar with.
But of course, your little jab, and the rest of your post just show that you missed the point.
There is no limit on how many times you can try again.
I was under the impression that most people are mortal.
Those who are on the bottom are those who constantly fail and hardly ever succeed or those who don't even try to begin with.
And with that, you completely discredit yourself.
To be a successful capitalist, you need *surprise* capital to start with. Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouths. A lot of people work very hard and barely earn enough to feed and clothes their families. They certainly don't have enough to save for investment purposes.
What you're describing is called social darwinism. That has existed since well before capitalism. Perhaps you have heard of the French Revolution? It happened because *surprise* the French peasantry wanted to exercise their belief in social darwinism but were unable to, specifically because the Aristocracy held all the capital.
There wasn't a magic point in time when being a capitalist became legal or legitimate. It always has been, even in the Medieval period. Money talks, and everybody will listen. The French peasants simply had no opportunity to gain money, and thus comforts, without resorting to force.
For yet another example, consider American slavery. Indeed, it occurred during what's probably the most unregulated period of capitalism in America. Could the slaves try and try to be successful? Sure, but the social inequalities present during the period made such feats nearly impossible. But you had better believe that any rich black people in America were treated with respect for their money. Again, force had to be used to relieve the inequities.
So what is my point? First, you're obviously lucky. I don't mean to diminish your accomplishments, but it is clear (precisely because you accomplished them) that you were in a position to do so. Second, not everybody is as lucky as you.
When was the last time you saw an animal create art? Or music? Or contemplate quantum physics? Or do something out of moral duty? Or exhibit any signs of any sort of religion at all?
I see this all the time. People are animals, full stop.
You would be wrong. I worked in tech support while at school. I watched them try to open their 25MB office documents. They would either open and crash after a minute, or just hang while opening, depending on the specs of the machine.
Tech support wasn't in any position to excuse their late theses. They wanted our help opening these documents.
Of course, my sample size was probably much larger than yours. How many O(100) papers have you written in Word? Assuming that the distribution of bad documents is uniform, about 2% of O(100) page documents fail. Not the worst odds, but they could definitely be better.
A gambit requires a material sacrifice. Otherwise it's just a move or a ploy. Really.
It's originally a chess term, for an early material sacrifice that gains (usually) positional advantage. In particular, the loss of a pawn isn't a big deal if it causes the opponent's pawn structure to restrict their movement. Most gambits are pawn sacrifices, though ballsy players might got for a bishop or knight gambit. From the Italian 'gambetta', a wrestling term meaning 'to trip up by the heels'.
To be fair, I'll note the "usage note" at answers.com:
Critics familiar with the nature of chess gambits have sometimes maintained that the word should not be used in an extended sense except to refer to maneuvers that involve a tactical sacrifice or loss for some advantage. But gambit is well established in the general sense of "maneuver" and in the related sense of "a remark intended to open a conversation," which usually carries no implication of sacrifice.
I'm obviously one of the critics, though the only times I've seen the word 'gambit' in literary uses, it has corresponded to the material loss sense.
As a citizen of the US, I have to say that US violations are more important[1] to me. We are in a position to do something about them. We can't do much about what's going on in Iran, as much as I -- and apparently you -- wish otherwise.
[1]Not really the right word. But I hope the context reveals my meaning.
Oh, to be fair, I wanted to note that TeX can have similar issues since the maximum stack size is limited by a configuration directive. But you can easily change it if it ever becomes a problem.
They did have backups. But the bugs seemed to manifest themselves when the document reached a certain level of complexity -- using page, figure, and table numbers seemed to be a big problem. After that point, Word would just crash on opening the document. A backup won't help you much then.
Sure, they (mostly) didn't have to start over, but it was still a huge pain in the ass for them.
A gambit is more than just a trick or move to gain advantage. It requires a material sacrifice. And yes, you can run a gambit. That phrase just doesn't mean what the author thinks it does.
It's mostly computer/math/physics people, but a lot of other academics are trying it out after running into Word bugs. A fresh round of horror stories comes around at my alma mater every year. Every year, a fatal bug hits at least five students, killing their O(100) page theses with a week before its due.
This must sounds silly, but does your uncle have an email address? If so, could you email it to sollaa@vfemail.net? I would really like to ask him some questions. In particular, I would like more information about this, and intend to contact a Canadian lawyer regarding the legitimacy of such claims. If all this works out, I want to move to Canada.
I could make a mint on my name, especially in a long, drawn out trial.:-)
I realize this is probably a troll, but I'm responding in case it isn't.
It isn't too late. But you have a tough choice to make. You can either choose to make your life better, or choose to let life push you around. Changing is not easy.
Read Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche.
Pull your ethernet cable, unplug your wireless router. Take some time off of the/b/ scene. Get out of town for a while if you can.
Think about your goals -- both the failed and incomplete. Ask yourself why the failed ones failed. Resolve to fix the problems that caused them to fail. Evaluate your incomplete goals. Make plans to finish them. Commit to your plans.
Exercise is good for you. I don't mean to make fun of your belly. But you obviously need to become stronger to become the man you want to be.
Don't sweat being bald.
You've wasted a lot of time, but you're still young. There's no point wasting any more.
I would add the caveat that money is in some cases an acceptable answer, especially if it is in support of an admirable goal. So, if the candidate says "I'm trying to save up money to continue my education," don't necessarily dismiss them. It's a frank answer to a possibly difficult question, especially since he's admitting that a career in your company isn't his real goal. His drive is certainly a good thing, but his goals might be in conflict with your needs. Take them both for what they're worth.
Are they too serious, or are they friendly in their interview? Are they able to create a rapport with you during your conversation?
These two questions obviously get at the same issue. But I would suggest that the first of these questions isn't particularly useful for job interviews. Unless someone has quite a bit of experience in the job market, they're probably going to be very formal in an attempt to make a good first impression.
The second of these questions is far more important. If they can be appropriately formal (or even a little too formal) but still create rapport, they will certainly be able to in less formal situations.
Big deal. To continue your roach analogy, one of the other roaches (IBM, Redhat, whatever) will pick up the slack. P2P-like decentralization is one of open source's biggest strengths.
It's a common reaction to buyer's remorse. You see, a lot of people who really didn't need computers bought them in the 90s. They just thought computers were "the wave to the future," and bought them just to get on board. Of course, this was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Then they realized that they couldn't really do much with a computer. Unless they learned to program, they were dependent on the software makers to come up with all the neat applications their initial, uninformed zeal promised. So they ended up with buyer's remorse.
Worse yet, they heard stories about people who were doing neat things with computers. PC's, Macs, whatever. Still ignorant, and at some level jealous of all these people, they started telling themselves that they made the right choice when they got a PC, instead of a Mac (though considering their needs, they would have been best off with a typewriter.) This is classic identification, in the Freudian sense.
They aren't quite so ignorant now. But they're emotionally and fiscally invested in their OS of choice.
I'm not trying to be pretentious here, though it might come across that way. I went through the same shit until I got to college. My PC broke, and I was computer free for a few years. I realized I really didn't need it. Sure, I'd go into the computer labs to write papers and do other miscellaneous tasks. And I tried out those "gay looking" iMacs. And kind of liked them.
So when I actually needed a computer, I got a Mac. I'm definitely not a fanboy. In some ways, fanboism is like first love. Once you've had a taste of another OS, you realize there are plenty of fish in the sea. I currently, at home and professionally, my old PowerBook running Tiger; an old iMac a friend gave me, now running Debian; a Dell workstation running Ubuntu; an old Dell Xeon server running Debian; and two fast custom built boxes running Gentoo. I was considering running NetBSD on the old iMac, but its cd drive is broken, and NetBSD's network install was far more complicated than Debian's.
I would like a citation regarding "laser" and "lase". It is my understanding that laser derives from the acroynom "LASER". And though I haven't checked the OED, the only definition of "lase" I've found is an intransitive verb meaning "to be shown upon by a laser."
But perls flexability is its downfall. The difference between what you can do and what you should do is huge. Perl has a very bad reputation for unreadable code (executable line noise) and while experianced perl coders trying to make obfuscated code can come up with real gems, programmers that picked up perl as their first langauge and never learn the difference between can and should really illustrate why learnign a stricker formal language first works much better in the long run.
This is exactly why best practices ought to be taught in addition to the language. I agree that writing unreadable code is relatively easy in Perl. But unreadable code tends to abuse the syntax in ways that beginners won't know about. And, with good pedagogy (like the "Learning Perl" sequence), won't learn about until they're mature enough to know when it's appropriate.
its time to let them learn about how a computer works (remember, thats the point in learning about programming)
That's a bald assertion. In fact, that's what is being debated in this thread. There are many valid reasons to want to learn about programming. For instance, as a mathematician, I program to perform computations that I couldn't otherwise due simply to time constraints. I don't really care about what's going on under the hood, and if I did I would have chosen to become an EE.
I would suggest that the Ask Slashdotter ask his students what they expect from the course. Perhaps your suggestion would spark their interest more than mine. But that's really up to them.
And as a general purpose sort of plan, I would suggest that the Ask Slashdotter teach a minimal, computationally capable fragment of a high level language like Perl or Ruby -- stressing best practices, as others have suggested. If you go the Perl route, you can use "Learning Perl" by Randal Schwartz et al. I would even suggest that you pick up a copy regardless of the language you choose -- it has many excellent exercises for a beginner.
Some might ask why I would suggest Perl, of all things. There are a few reasons. The syntax is very clear. (This isn't a troll. I agree that writing unreadable Perl is relatively easy. But unreadable Perl tends to abuse the syntax in ways high schoolers aren't going to know about and are only going to find in "Programming Perl" or usenet). Perl also offers room to grow. You can probably get through "Learning Perl" in 6 weeks if you work at a fairly quick pace and don't cover Regular Expressions and some minutia. But the language is flexible enough to let you and your students figure out what to learn next. OO concepts? Yeah, they're in there, though it'll take about a week of talking about references. Data structures? Sure, though references are necessary. Algorithms? Definitely. Specific problem domains? Certainly, especially if you use the cpan.
Slashdot Mirror
*surprise* another person whose doesn't really understand capitalism. Some people are born with financial capital and some are not. Most people are born with ownership of their own person. Using this, they find ways to serve others - often this is by working for someone, sometimes people invent things, write music, etc.
Thanks for explaining that to me. I had no idea people could do "work" to make "money." Except that I did. And correctly noted that many people do not earn enough from their work to build wealth. Making just enough money to live is not much different from slavery. The French peasantry were little more than slaves.
Second, the French Revolution was more about equality of results (forced equality) than social darwinism the way you describe it.
I don't wish to discuss the history leading to the French Revolution. Social darwinism was the doctrine through which the aristocracy legitimized oppressing the peasantry. But make no mistake -- that doctrine was held by the peasantry as well. When the peasantry realized that there was to rise in a society that afforded them no opportunity, they rebelled. It was a blood thirsty form of social darwinism.
Finally, drop the "American" when talking about slavery. Slavery was (still is in some parts of the world; Saudi Arabia) a serious problem; limiting it to one country is usually done by people who just like to piss on things other people like -- a trait that is not very attractive.
Indeed, slavery is still common. But American slavery was chosen for this example because of the strong analogies to Medieval feudalism with respect to capitalism. For one thing, as I said, 1800-1860 was probably the most laissez-faire period in American history. If just "trying" were enough, government intervention would not have been needed to bring an end to slavery. I am aware of plenty of other historical examples (Haiti fits the paradigm, for instance), but chose to use one the audience would be familiar with.
But of course, your little jab, and the rest of your post just show that you missed the point.
There is no limit on how many times you can try again.
I was under the impression that most people are mortal.
Those who are on the bottom are those who constantly fail and hardly ever succeed or those who don't even try to begin with.
And with that, you completely discredit yourself.
To be a successful capitalist, you need *surprise* capital to start with. Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouths. A lot of people work very hard and barely earn enough to feed and clothes their families. They certainly don't have enough to save for investment purposes.
What you're describing is called social darwinism. That has existed since well before capitalism. Perhaps you have heard of the French Revolution? It happened because *surprise* the French peasantry wanted to exercise their belief in social darwinism but were unable to, specifically because the Aristocracy held all the capital.
There wasn't a magic point in time when being a capitalist became legal or legitimate. It always has been, even in the Medieval period. Money talks, and everybody will listen. The French peasants simply had no opportunity to gain money, and thus comforts, without resorting to force.
For yet another example, consider American slavery. Indeed, it occurred during what's probably the most unregulated period of capitalism in America. Could the slaves try and try to be successful? Sure, but the social inequalities present during the period made such feats nearly impossible. But you had better believe that any rich black people in America were treated with respect for their money. Again, force had to be used to relieve the inequities.
So what is my point? First, you're obviously lucky. I don't mean to diminish your accomplishments, but it is clear (precisely because you accomplished them) that you were in a position to do so. Second, not everybody is as lucky as you.
Yes it is. It refers to the "WikiWikiWeb" at c2.com. This was the first wiki ever made, by the way.
How, exactly, do you turn the Flash plugin off?
When was the last time you saw an animal create art? Or music? Or contemplate quantum physics? Or do something out of moral duty? Or exhibit any signs of any sort of religion at all?
I see this all the time. People are animals, full stop.
I think it's the usual "Dog ate my homework".
You would be wrong. I worked in tech support while at school. I watched them try to open their 25MB office documents. They would either open and crash after a minute, or just hang while opening, depending on the specs of the machine.
Tech support wasn't in any position to excuse their late theses. They wanted our help opening these documents.
Of course, my sample size was probably much larger than yours. How many O(100) papers have you written in Word? Assuming that the distribution of bad documents is uniform, about 2% of O(100) page documents fail. Not the worst odds, but they could definitely be better.
Her name is Ariana Richards. I don't really think she's hot.
t s/0494-var/richards.ari.html?path=pgallery&path_ke y=Richards,%20Ariana
http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/0494-var/Even
It's originally a chess term, for an early material sacrifice that gains (usually) positional advantage. In particular, the loss of a pawn isn't a big deal if it causes the opponent's pawn structure to restrict their movement. Most gambits are pawn sacrifices, though ballsy players might got for a bishop or knight gambit. From the Italian 'gambetta', a wrestling term meaning 'to trip up by the heels'.
To be fair, I'll note the "usage note" at answers.com:
I'm obviously one of the critics, though the only times I've seen the word 'gambit' in literary uses, it has corresponded to the material loss sense.
Sure, but my point was that a tex file alone wouldn't be enough (in some cases) to typeset a document unless the tex engine could be recofigured.
As a citizen of the US, I have to say that US violations are more important[1] to me. We are in a position to do something about them. We can't do much about what's going on in Iran, as much as I -- and apparently you -- wish otherwise.
[1]Not really the right word. But I hope the context reveals my meaning.
Oh, to be fair, I wanted to note that TeX can have similar issues since the maximum stack size is limited by a configuration directive. But you can easily change it if it ever becomes a problem.
They did have backups. But the bugs seemed to manifest themselves when the document reached a certain level of complexity -- using page, figure, and table numbers seemed to be a big problem. After that point, Word would just crash on opening the document. A backup won't help you much then.
Sure, they (mostly) didn't have to start over, but it was still a huge pain in the ass for them.
A gambit is more than just a trick or move to gain advantage. It requires a material sacrifice. And yes, you can run a gambit. That phrase just doesn't mean what the author thinks it does.
It's mostly computer/math/physics people, but a lot of other academics are trying it out after running into Word bugs. A fresh round of horror stories comes around at my alma mater every year. Every year, a fatal bug hits at least five students, killing their O(100) page theses with a week before its due.
Those kids learn LaTeX really quick.
Hi.
:-)
This must sounds silly, but does your uncle have an email address? If so, could you email it to sollaa@vfemail.net? I would really like to ask him some questions. In particular, I would like more information about this, and intend to contact a Canadian lawyer regarding the legitimacy of such claims. If all this works out, I want to move to Canada.
I could make a mint on my name, especially in a long, drawn out trial.
I realize this is probably a troll, but I'm responding in case it isn't.
/b/ scene. Get out of town for a while if you can.
It isn't too late. But you have a tough choice to make. You can either choose to make your life better, or choose to let life push you around. Changing is not easy.
Read Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche.
Pull your ethernet cable, unplug your wireless router. Take some time off of the
Think about your goals -- both the failed and incomplete. Ask yourself why the failed ones failed. Resolve to fix the problems that caused them to fail. Evaluate your incomplete goals. Make plans to finish them. Commit to your plans.
Exercise is good for you. I don't mean to make fun of your belly. But you obviously need to become stronger to become the man you want to be.
Don't sweat being bald.
You've wasted a lot of time, but you're still young. There's no point wasting any more.
Oh my god please shut the fuck up.
I would add the caveat that money is in some cases an acceptable answer, especially if it is in support of an admirable goal. So, if the candidate says "I'm trying to save up money to continue my education," don't necessarily dismiss them. It's a frank answer to a possibly difficult question, especially since he's admitting that a career in your company isn't his real goal. His drive is certainly a good thing, but his goals might be in conflict with your needs. Take them both for what they're worth.
Are they too serious, or are they friendly in their interview? Are they able to create a rapport with you during your conversation?
These two questions obviously get at the same issue. But I would suggest that the first of these questions isn't particularly useful for job interviews. Unless someone has quite a bit of experience in the job market, they're probably going to be very formal in an attempt to make a good first impression.
The second of these questions is far more important. If they can be appropriately formal (or even a little too formal) but still create rapport, they will certainly be able to in less formal situations.
Big deal. To continue your roach analogy, one of the other roaches (IBM, Redhat, whatever) will pick up the slack. P2P-like decentralization is one of open source's biggest strengths.
It's a common reaction to buyer's remorse. You see, a lot of people who really didn't need computers bought them in the 90s. They just thought computers were "the wave to the future," and bought them just to get on board. Of course, this was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Then they realized that they couldn't really do much with a computer. Unless they learned to program, they were dependent on the software makers to come up with all the neat applications their initial, uninformed zeal promised. So they ended up with buyer's remorse.
Worse yet, they heard stories about people who were doing neat things with computers. PC's, Macs, whatever. Still ignorant, and at some level jealous of all these people, they started telling themselves that they made the right choice when they got a PC, instead of a Mac (though considering their needs, they would have been best off with a typewriter.) This is classic identification, in the Freudian sense.
They aren't quite so ignorant now. But they're emotionally and fiscally invested in their OS of choice.
I'm not trying to be pretentious here, though it might come across that way. I went through the same shit until I got to college. My PC broke, and I was computer free for a few years. I realized I really didn't need it. Sure, I'd go into the computer labs to write papers and do other miscellaneous tasks. And I tried out those "gay looking" iMacs. And kind of liked them.
So when I actually needed a computer, I got a Mac. I'm definitely not a fanboy. In some ways, fanboism is like first love. Once you've had a taste of another OS, you realize there are plenty of fish in the sea. I currently, at home and professionally, my old PowerBook running Tiger; an old iMac a friend gave me, now running Debian; a Dell workstation running Ubuntu; an old Dell Xeon server running Debian; and two fast custom built boxes running Gentoo. I was considering running NetBSD on the old iMac, but its cd drive is broken, and NetBSD's network install was far more complicated than Debian's.
I would like a citation regarding "laser" and "lase". It is my understanding that laser derives from the acroynom "LASER". And though I haven't checked the OED, the only definition of "lase" I've found is an intransitive verb meaning "to be shown upon by a laser."
But perls flexability is its downfall. The difference between what you can do and what you should do is huge. Perl has a very bad reputation for unreadable code (executable line noise) and while experianced perl coders trying to make obfuscated code can come up with real gems, programmers that picked up perl as their first langauge and never learn the difference between can and should really illustrate why learnign a stricker formal language first works much better in the long run.
This is exactly why best practices ought to be taught in addition to the language. I agree that writing unreadable code is relatively easy in Perl. But unreadable code tends to abuse the syntax in ways that beginners won't know about. And, with good pedagogy (like the "Learning Perl" sequence), won't learn about until they're mature enough to know when it's appropriate.
its time to let them learn about how a computer works (remember, thats the point in learning about programming)
That's a bald assertion. In fact, that's what is being debated in this thread. There are many valid reasons to want to learn about programming. For instance, as a mathematician, I program to perform computations that I couldn't otherwise due simply to time constraints. I don't really care about what's going on under the hood, and if I did I would have chosen to become an EE.
I would suggest that the Ask Slashdotter ask his students what they expect from the course. Perhaps your suggestion would spark their interest more than mine. But that's really up to them.
And as a general purpose sort of plan, I would suggest that the Ask Slashdotter teach a minimal, computationally capable fragment of a high level language like Perl or Ruby -- stressing best practices, as others have suggested. If you go the Perl route, you can use "Learning Perl" by Randal Schwartz et al. I would even suggest that you pick up a copy regardless of the language you choose -- it has many excellent exercises for a beginner.
Some might ask why I would suggest Perl, of all things. There are a few reasons. The syntax is very clear. (This isn't a troll. I agree that writing unreadable Perl is relatively easy. But unreadable Perl tends to abuse the syntax in ways high schoolers aren't going to know about and are only going to find in "Programming Perl" or usenet). Perl also offers room to grow. You can probably get through "Learning Perl" in 6 weeks if you work at a fairly quick pace and don't cover Regular Expressions and some minutia. But the language is flexible enough to let you and your students figure out what to learn next. OO concepts? Yeah, they're in there, though it'll take about a week of talking about references. Data structures? Sure, though references are necessary. Algorithms? Definitely. Specific problem domains? Certainly, especially if you use the cpan.
Yeah, and guess what Lisp is...