Slashdot was huge influence on my life. I first heard about it as a freshman at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 1997, when one of the core GIMP hackers told us about it. Thanks for all the education CmdrTaco.
For me, the koan evokes the realization that just as when I close my eyes the room does not become empty, when I randomly wire a neural network it does not become free of preconceptions: it just has random preconceptions.
That is, it is impossible to free a system of preconceptions. By making parameters random rather than hand-picked, I am simply trading one set of preconceptions for another.
Of course, if it is a true koan, it will probably evoke as many different thought-paths as it has readers. Hope the above helped, though.
I am a bit curious: why do you prefer to give your CPU cycles to Distributed.net's RC5-64 project? I looked at the project page, and it appears that what they are trying to accomplish is simply to break one preselected message. While this effort, if it takes a long time, does demonstrate that RC5-64 messages can be hard to crack, does it do anything else? Maybe I am missing something.
Re:Blech. Most of them are pretty bad.
on
Java IDEs?
·
· Score: 1
Do you have some pointers for writing fast Java Swing UIs? While server-side Java is almost always fast enough, I am not sure that writing a responsive UI in Swing is possible.
Thank you for the interesting post. I have a question, though.
While I find Lisp to be an elegant programming language, I have a hard time conceptualizing how to use it to interchange data. For example, how would you go about defining a structured format for a word processing document in Lisp?
> Please keep in mind no one has the right to call someone else's opinion 'stupid' or 'wrong'.
Are you serious when you say this? Perhaps I should not assume that you live in America, but if you do, everyone has the right to call someone else's opinion 'stupid', 'wrong' or anything else they like.
I can't seem to find the relevant logical definendum and differentia in the Jargon File or elsewhere. What exactly is the difference between a flamebait and a troll?
A programmer using software licensed under the GPL also must publish new software based on it free of charge, with the source code available for anyone to use and modify.
Is this correct? As I understand the terms of the GPL, the programmer of concern is not obligated to publish software based upon GPL'ed code free of charge, but only to provide the source code free of charge to anyone who does buy his derived work.
Re:It's the Users, Stupid--no, wait, reverse that.
on
Death To Virus Writers
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· Score: 1
The witticism of concern would be more accurate, though perhaps less funny, if it read:
"You know how dumb the median person is? Well, by definition, half the entire population is even dumber than that!"
If the following were a distribution of IQs:
200 200 200 5
the average is: 151.25
and only 1/4, rather than 1/2, of the persons are dumber than the average.
Thank you for explaining that the phrase of concern should have been interpreted as being uttered by the crypto-rascist of which you were speaking.
Perhaps I do have a bit of a literacy problem, but I suspect that your post confused even those among the Slashdot readership who do not. The use of the word 'nigger' indicated that someone did not like Reginald. Because of your clauses: 'the crypto-racist doesn't hate black people' and 'he doesn't have a problem with black people', it was not clear whether you, personally, disliked Reginald for `going white`, or your crypto-rascist disliked him for being black.
I thought that your original post was interesting, and do sincerely apologize for anything my query might have ruined.
By the way, from whence comes the term 'crypto-rascist'?
Well, there is the question of: who decides what is 'plain English'? And even if there exists a consensus regarding such a subset of English, is it not both esthetically pleasing and rhetorically valuable to (sparingly) use somewhat uncommon (and therefore precise) words and phrases?
I am sure that you have had this discussion before, so I'll leave off with asking: what does 'ad mortem bibendum' mean? To drink oneself to death?
Did you perhaps mean: 'ab initio'? The latter is most often used as an adverb, and means something like 'from the beginning', or 'at the start'. These seem to make sense in the context of your comment.
While I have to admit that I have never actually acted in a Shakespearean
play, the sheer concept of such a production appalls me. Such works are
designed to lure impressionable young people who are seeking companionship
into joining the Cult of Theatre. A first time actor is given the
opportunity to join an imaginary community lead by the "director." Children
who are starved for companionship and human interaction are the most
susceptible targets for these types of cult tactics.
Once an actor (read: "impressionable mind") is recruited, the "director"
(read: "cult leader") attempts to subvert the new player's grasp of reality
to an even lower point by immersing a player in a fantasy world where the
player has total control over his or her chosen role, personality, and means
of expression. This kind of "free will" is not only unhealthy for children
to be subjected to, but in a few cases, is outright dangerous. Due to the
wide selection of possible Shakespearean plays, the Director (read: Cult
Leader) can incorporate such immoral activities as stealing, mutilation,
human sacrifice, murder, rape, etc., into the theatrical production. As
these acts of violence and perversion have no real-world consequences, a
young actor can easily be lead to believe that these blasphemous acts will
go unpunished in the actor's real life, as well.
The effects of a Shakespearean play addiction can range from almost
unnoticeable to fatal. (Parents: Please listen closely, as your child may
be at risk.) Some of the first signs may be a withdrawl from family and
friends; and a lack of interest in well-paying, off-Broadway jobs. As the
theatrical production progresses and the play's delusions become more
ingrained into the mind of the actor, certain
more apparent signs of a Shakespearean play addiction may manifest
themselves. These can include harassment by hecklers and failure to
maintain proper, strictly-Modern-English vocabulary. If you notice that
your child is apathetic about his or her sworn duty to conform to society's
fashion norms; fails to obey a strict, unyielding, obsessive-compulsive
daily routine; suddenly demonstrates the normal, physical signs of
adolescence; or begins to dress in togas, he or she may be falling victim to
Shakespearean plays. Such children are often labeled as 'drama geeks' among
their peers. Several more extreme cases have been documented in which
Shakespearean plays are linked to nudity, drug use, and suicide, all
occurring at the suggestion of the director (read: David Koresh), or in the
last case, as a direct result of the actions of the Casting Agent (read:
Adolf Hitler). In most of these cases, the victims were so totally engulfed
in their fantasy world that they could not grasp the consequences of their
actions.
Shakespearean plays also teach otherwise God-fearing Christian youth values
that are atheistic or "monotheistic" (read: polytheistic) -- that is, values
presenting a belief in many gods rather than one God. As the Shakespearean
play, Julius Ceasar, asserts, the world is ruled by Jove and other
Olympians; and these beings meddle in the affairs of Man for their own
amusement. This contrasts with the biblical teaching that there is only one
true God and that this God is moral, not amoral. Most Shakespearean plays
also have unbiblical views on God; and totally
super-duper-double-dodeca-abiblical views on the existence of fairies,
witches, and ghosts.
Shakespearean plays are wholly evil, demonic, and dangerous works that
corrupt the minds of our nation's youth.
--This satire brought to you by the twisted mind of Rico.
I am interested in your statement that 'arguing through analogies is logically flawed'. Would you please post some more information about this matter? Why specifically is the use of an anology flawed?
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot was huge influence on my life. I first heard about it as a freshman at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 1997, when one of the core GIMP hackers told us about it. Thanks for all the education CmdrTaco.
For me, the koan evokes the realization that just as when I close my eyes the room does not become empty, when I randomly wire a neural network it does not become free of preconceptions: it just has random preconceptions.
That is, it is impossible to free a system of preconceptions. By making parameters random rather than hand-picked, I am simply trading one set of preconceptions for another.
Of course, if it is a true koan, it will probably evoke as many different thought-paths as it has readers. Hope the above helped, though.
Which aspects of the geography and history of "The Hobbit" are inconsistent with his other works?
Have a Mustang GT?
... if you know of any, please post :-)
I have been trying to find the shop manuals online for a long time
I am a bit curious: why do you prefer to give your CPU cycles to Distributed.net's RC5-64 project? I looked at the project page, and it appears that what they are trying to accomplish is simply to break one preselected message. While this effort, if it takes a long time, does demonstrate that RC5-64 messages can be hard to crack, does it do anything else? Maybe I am missing something.
Do you have some pointers for writing fast Java Swing UIs? While server-side Java is almost always fast enough, I am not sure that writing a responsive UI in Swing is possible.
Thank you for the explanation.
Thank you for the interesting post. I have a question, though.
While I find Lisp to be an elegant programming language, I have a hard time conceptualizing how to use it to interchange data. For example, how would you go about defining a structured format for a word processing document in Lisp?
What does the word 'convexity' mean when applied to a search space?
You might be interested in klyx. It seems to be the lyx core with QT widgets -- very nice.
Thank you for the interesting post.
>Property is a human invention meant to support other, deeper and more meaningful, values.
Could you explain this? What deeper values are you talking about?
> Please keep in mind no one has the right to call someone else's opinion 'stupid' or 'wrong'.
Are you serious when you say this? Perhaps I should not assume that you live in America, but if you do, everyone has the right to call someone else's opinion 'stupid', 'wrong' or anything else they like.
The word 'paradoxon' has a nice ring to it, and looks as though its root word is 'paradox'. What exactly does it mean?
I can't seem to find the relevant logical definendum and differentia in the Jargon File or elsewhere. What exactly is the difference between a flamebait and a troll?
In this article, Dan Gillmor says:
A programmer using software licensed under the GPL also must publish new software based on it free of charge, with the source code available for anyone to use and modify.Is this correct? As I understand the terms of the GPL, the programmer of concern is not obligated to publish software based upon GPL'ed code free of charge, but only to provide the source code free of charge to anyone who does buy his derived work.
The witticism of concern would be more accurate, though perhaps less funny, if it read:
"You know how dumb the median person is? Well, by definition, half the entire population is even dumber than that!"
If the following were a distribution of IQs:
200 200 200 5
the average is: 151.25
and only 1/4, rather than 1/2, of the persons are dumber than the average.
Chill out dude.
Thank you for explaining that the phrase of concern should have been interpreted as being uttered by the crypto-rascist of which you were speaking.
Perhaps I do have a bit of a literacy problem, but I suspect that your post confused even those among the Slashdot readership who do not. The use of the word 'nigger' indicated that someone did not like Reginald. Because of your clauses: 'the crypto-racist doesn't hate black people' and 'he doesn't have a problem with black people', it was not clear whether you, personally, disliked Reginald for `going white`, or your crypto-rascist disliked him for being black.
I thought that your original post was interesting, and do sincerely apologize for anything my query might have ruined.
By the way, from whence comes the term 'crypto-rascist'?
Why do you call a black man who:
1. Speaks proper English
2. Dresses well
a 'real proper house nigger'?
You make a very interesting point. Thanks for the food for thought.
Well, there is the question of: who decides what is 'plain English'? And even if there exists a consensus regarding such a subset of English, is it not both esthetically pleasing and rhetorically valuable to (sparingly) use somewhat uncommon (and therefore precise) words and phrases?
I am sure that you have had this discussion before, so I'll leave off with asking: what does 'ad mortem bibendum' mean? To drink oneself to death?
I am not familiar with 'ab inicio'.
Did you perhaps mean: 'ab initio'? The latter is most often used as an adverb, and means something like 'from the beginning', or 'at the start'. These seem to make sense in the context of your comment.
While I have to admit that I have never actually acted in a Shakespearean
play, the sheer concept of such a production appalls me. Such works are
designed to lure impressionable young people who are seeking companionship
into joining the Cult of Theatre. A first time actor is given the
opportunity to join an imaginary community lead by the "director." Children
who are starved for companionship and human interaction are the most
susceptible targets for these types of cult tactics.
Once an actor (read: "impressionable mind") is recruited, the "director"
(read: "cult leader") attempts to subvert the new player's grasp of reality
to an even lower point by immersing a player in a fantasy world where the
player has total control over his or her chosen role, personality, and means
of expression. This kind of "free will" is not only unhealthy for children
to be subjected to, but in a few cases, is outright dangerous. Due to the
wide selection of possible Shakespearean plays, the Director (read: Cult
Leader) can incorporate such immoral activities as stealing, mutilation,
human sacrifice, murder, rape, etc., into the theatrical production. As
these acts of violence and perversion have no real-world consequences, a
young actor can easily be lead to believe that these blasphemous acts will
go unpunished in the actor's real life, as well.
The effects of a Shakespearean play addiction can range from almost
unnoticeable to fatal. (Parents: Please listen closely, as your child may
be at risk.) Some of the first signs may be a withdrawl from family and
friends; and a lack of interest in well-paying, off-Broadway jobs. As the
theatrical production progresses and the play's delusions become more
ingrained into the mind of the actor, certain
more apparent signs of a Shakespearean play addiction may manifest
themselves. These can include harassment by hecklers and failure to
maintain proper, strictly-Modern-English vocabulary. If you notice that
your child is apathetic about his or her sworn duty to conform to society's
fashion norms; fails to obey a strict, unyielding, obsessive-compulsive
daily routine; suddenly demonstrates the normal, physical signs of
adolescence; or begins to dress in togas, he or she may be falling victim to
Shakespearean plays. Such children are often labeled as 'drama geeks' among
their peers. Several more extreme cases have been documented in which
Shakespearean plays are linked to nudity, drug use, and suicide, all
occurring at the suggestion of the director (read: David Koresh), or in the
last case, as a direct result of the actions of the Casting Agent (read:
Adolf Hitler). In most of these cases, the victims were so totally engulfed
in their fantasy world that they could not grasp the consequences of their
actions.
Shakespearean plays also teach otherwise God-fearing Christian youth values
that are atheistic or "monotheistic" (read: polytheistic) -- that is, values
presenting a belief in many gods rather than one God. As the Shakespearean
play, Julius Ceasar, asserts, the world is ruled by Jove and other
Olympians; and these beings meddle in the affairs of Man for their own
amusement. This contrasts with the biblical teaching that there is only one
true God and that this God is moral, not amoral. Most Shakespearean plays
also have unbiblical views on God; and totally
super-duper-double-dodeca-abiblical views on the existence of fairies,
witches, and ghosts.
Shakespearean plays are wholly evil, demonic, and dangerous works that
corrupt the minds of our nation's youth.
--This satire brought to you by the twisted mind of Rico.
Thank you! The analogy of concern is indeed fundamentally flawed.
I am interested in your statement that 'arguing through analogies is logically flawed'. Would you please post some more information about this matter? Why specifically is the use of an anology flawed?