I very much agree, but I'm not talking about me personally. I'm homeschooled and therefore don't have to put up with those who are still acting like "kids", but most people and Nerds my age do. Making friends is an issue for most kids, because contrary to popular image Nerds aren't anti-social. We just like social environments that either have the "codes" of adulthood or no codes at all. Nerdy kids prefer to say what we mean, so we tend to make friends with the few others who also prefer this.
But there's also the large gray area of "pathologies" such as depression and bipolar disorder which have not merely gone unnoticed for most of human history until pscyhiatry showed up, they're known to go right along with other traits such as creative genius. Would you like to medicate away the next Van Gogh?
And then there's the very worrying case of someone who is sad much of the time and claims it's because everyone is trying to run his/her life rather than letting him/her be free. This person is usually diagnosed with clinical depression and medicated, thus adding to the problems that were making them depressed in the first place.
Even worse are those of us with a moral hatred of forced drugging. Just imagine: you've hated all drugs harder than alcohol and weed for most of your life, and one day somebody tells you that you're being put on an antidepressant for the rest of your life. Your sense of your own opinions will tell you it's time to jump out a window, but the dopamine levels won't let you.
So people and mice who are exposed to social defeat tend to become less social? Apparently someone had research money to blow.
OTOH, they found that mice became more social again when given antidepressants. This makes me very, very afraid that they are going to start trying to force-drug children who don't get picked immediately for four-square teams during recess.
I really have to wonder when some people are going to realize that the composition of a person's brain should be between that person and God. Oh, wait, some people are a bit too busy with their friends to think about stupid things like psychological morality.
Your children are in danger of falling into the same social death-spiral that many of us nerds have suffered. We all got to where we are now because:
* We received positive feedback as a result of some non-social activity.
* We received less positive or negative feed back as a result of social activity.
Parents don't make nerds. Kids make nerds. Kids decide that X over there is a teacher's pet/not cool/doesn't use the right slang and refuse to play with him. X pours energy into studies in order to please the people who he can get positive feedback from at all, parents and teachers. X's social skills underdevelop.
Or do they? I've noticed that most nerds in school are actually socially developed to an adult level. However, kids are kids and teens are teens, so when some nerd skips a phase or two of development and starts acting like an adult (this behavior is learned from the adults around him) he gets rejected and never experiences the things that come from going through a child or "adolescent" (adolescence is artificially created by denying teens real work or occupation, thereby extending their childhood. See John Taylor Gatto's work), like having lots of friends or getting laid.
This, understandably, caused us to spend more time with our strength and avoid our perceived weakness. Predictably, this lead to improvement in our non-social skill and continued or increased positive feedback from that. Similarly, we got worse at (or were left behind in) our social skills and received continued or increasing negative feedback from that. Unchecked, it doesn't take very long before this leads a kid that is better at drawing or science than being popular to expand that gap into one of social isolation and a defensive contempt for things in which s/he is weak.
Instead of allowing your children to follow us down this path, a more creative strategy would be to focus on helping them improve in the areas of their weakness. While it is good to continue to reward them for excelling in their strengths, spend more energy and focus on making time spent practicing in areas of weakness more rewarding so that they continue to have opportunities for growth there. There is some amount of trade-off a person has to make in the time spent, and you want them to continue to get better at their strengths. However, allowing them to inadvertently "min-max" their INT at the expense of their STR, DEX, or CHA would constitute a failed WIS check on your part.
Most parents feel that they would like their children to do better than they have done and not make the same mistakes they have made. Please take the advice of your children's teachers and spend more time focusing on enabling your children to improve on their weaknesses. Don't do it because the teachers are smarter than you; they're not. Instead, do it because you are big enough to admit that our worst flaws aren't that our strengths could be stronger, but that our weaknesses truly are weaknesses. By being secure enough in your strengths to admit that your flaws really are flaws, you'll be better able to help your children avoid the same issues.
This advice I have a large problem with, because it doesn't work. My parents have been encouraging social development in me (often beyond what I wanted) since day 1. I'm known to be quite a charmer when I'm nice to people. So why don't I have friends like a normal 16 year old? I don't know the "codes" to be "in". It's like not knowing the password to a very useful group server, but instead of a password to a server it's a complex set of social rituals which gain you access to the popular groups. Unfortunately, most groups don't want you if you don't know their passwords, and set up the passwords deliberately to keep people out who don't know them.
This is why a perfectly sociable person who's a Jock will never get accepted by the Nerds, and vice versa. And let me tell you, Jocks can be nice when they want to.
Come on people, this is funny AND it demonstrates (once again) just how fucked-up our patent system is! Give the guy some points (I don't have any. For some reason my karma's been Excellent for several months and I haven't gotten mod points once).
That Systrace thing is damned neat! And yes, I know that Linux supports POSIX Capabilities. It's just that, like you said, those aren't Teh True Capabilities and the user interface to a True Capability System is easier.
Recently, I got a job offer to move to a startup doing OS development and Systems and Network programming, however it would involve a paycut.
You can stay in touch with your old friends from this company, make new ones (hopefully) at your new job, take a reasonable pay cut that you could make back (if the startup succeeds) and get to do every hacker's dream work!
I meant more along the lines of "The claim is so old, what point is he trying to make by bringing it up now?" It being old news has no bearing on its truth.
The issue in this piece is that the Unix security model allows viruses and crackers who break into a user account access to that user's personal files, which the editorial presumes are what the user really cares about.
This is a very good point. Due to the cracker/virus having the same exact privileges as the user who was infected, it/they get access to that user's files via UID. Other than setting up a special account to browse the net with, there is no solution to this problem on a Unix system.
Or is there? Capability-based systems have never had this problem in the first place. On a capability-based system, you would run Thunderbird and Firefox under your own username, but only with the capabilities to a small whitelist of files and directories you want to allow access to and limited privileges to even those.
So let's open an email virus on Capability-Thunderbird...
Thunderbird caps: mail-spool file, read and write. User settings file, read and write. Open a virus... Virus inherits its capabilities from Thunderbird. Virus tries to open for writing: "Johnny's First Day of School.jpg"! Dialog box: Do you want to allow Thunderbird to open "Johnny's First Day of School.jpg" for writing? If so enter your password and press Yes, otherwise click No. User wonders why the heck Thunderbird is trying to open his innocuously named pr0n file... User thought he was just opening an email from his mother. User decides that he doesn't want his mother sending him a virus that will tell her about all his pr0n and clicks "No" in Dialog Box. Virus is unable to open the file it wants. It crashes and burns due to impotency.
And so the user is able to run things with a bit less fear.
The other reason Bush got re-elected was because he cheated again. You know, knock a few blacks off the rolls, call in favors from his friends at Diebold, that sort of thing.
So can I count that post as admitting that you take your "meat machine" position as a matter of faith? 'Cause you haven't offered up any proof for it.
You claim that just because you haven't been able to predict people's actions doesn't mean it isn't possible. If it is possible (meat machine hypothesis), then why hasn't anyone been able to do it? Nobody has ever reliably (to a scientific degree of accuracy and reliability) been able to predict all the actions of any number of people.
I can't prove that we're non-deterministic except by using my eyes and ears, but I've never seen anyone prove the counterpoint.
Please let this be a lesson to you: Don't demand that people disprove assertions you can't prove. I posited that I/you/everyone else are non-deterministic based on the evidence of my eyes and ears. You countered with your faith that we are all meat machines. Eyes and ears trump faith.
Problem with that: An optimistic failure could still perceive that the "hard" test they'd taken the second round was more difficult across the board than the one they were given in the first round.
That, and bugs have horribly small and simple brains. Evolving the right toxin isn't that hard when there are only 10/100/1000 receptors for it to bond to, right?
I, personally, don't give a damn about DNA on footballs. I want to see DNA being used in living things. I want to read about Microsoft, or Linux, or the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design holy war (if it isn't a holy war, why do Slashdotters eagerly bitch and argue over it every time it comes up?).
Or maybe I just want to read about politics or something.
Point is, somebody please let me vote this article down. After all, it's not like I had plans to counterfeit a Super Bowl football.
"[It] can be fought, and I'll be teaching you how, but it takes real strength of character, and not everyone's got it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" - Mad Eye Moody
Slashdot Mirror
I very much agree, but I'm not talking about me personally. I'm homeschooled and therefore don't have to put up with those who are still acting like "kids", but most people and Nerds my age do. Making friends is an issue for most kids, because contrary to popular image Nerds aren't anti-social. We just like social environments that either have the "codes" of adulthood or no codes at all. Nerdy kids prefer to say what we mean, so we tend to make friends with the few others who also prefer this.
Hence, clique formation.
But there's also the large gray area of "pathologies" such as depression and bipolar disorder which have not merely gone unnoticed for most of human history until pscyhiatry showed up, they're known to go right along with other traits such as creative genius. Would you like to medicate away the next Van Gogh?
And then there's the very worrying case of someone who is sad much of the time and claims it's because everyone is trying to run his/her life rather than letting him/her be free. This person is usually diagnosed with clinical depression and medicated, thus adding to the problems that were making them depressed in the first place.
Even worse are those of us with a moral hatred of forced drugging. Just imagine: you've hated all drugs harder than alcohol and weed for most of your life, and one day somebody tells you that you're being put on an antidepressant for the rest of your life. Your sense of your own opinions will tell you it's time to jump out a window, but the dopamine levels won't let you.
So people and mice who are exposed to social defeat tend to become less social? Apparently someone had research money to blow.
OTOH, they found that mice became more social again when given antidepressants. This makes me very, very afraid that they are going to start trying to force-drug children who don't get picked immediately for four-square teams during recess.
I really have to wonder when some people are going to realize that the composition of a person's brain should be between that person and God. Oh, wait, some people are a bit too busy with their friends to think about stupid things like psychological morality.
Your children are in danger of falling into the same social death-spiral that many of us nerds have suffered. We all got to where we are now because:
* We received positive feedback as a result of some non-social activity.
* We received less positive or negative feed back as a result of social activity.
Parents don't make nerds. Kids make nerds. Kids decide that X over there is a teacher's pet/not cool/doesn't use the right slang and refuse to play with him. X pours energy into studies in order to please the people who he can get positive feedback from at all, parents and teachers. X's social skills underdevelop.
Or do they? I've noticed that most nerds in school are actually socially developed to an adult level. However, kids are kids and teens are teens, so when some nerd skips a phase or two of development and starts acting like an adult (this behavior is learned from the adults around him) he gets rejected and never experiences the things that come from going through a child or "adolescent" (adolescence is artificially created by denying teens real work or occupation, thereby extending their childhood. See John Taylor Gatto's work), like having lots of friends or getting laid.
This, understandably, caused us to spend more time with our strength and avoid our perceived weakness. Predictably, this lead to improvement in our non-social skill and continued or increased positive feedback from that. Similarly, we got worse at (or were left behind in) our social skills and received continued or increasing negative feedback from that. Unchecked, it doesn't take very long before this leads a kid that is better at drawing or science than being popular to expand that gap into one of social isolation and a defensive contempt for things in which s/he is weak.
Instead of allowing your children to follow us down this path, a more creative strategy would be to focus on helping them improve in the areas of their weakness. While it is good to continue to reward them for excelling in their strengths, spend more energy and focus on making time spent practicing in areas of weakness more rewarding so that they continue to have opportunities for growth there. There is some amount of trade-off a person has to make in the time spent, and you want them to continue to get better at their strengths. However, allowing them to inadvertently "min-max" their INT at the expense of their STR, DEX, or CHA would constitute a failed WIS check on your part.
Most parents feel that they would like their children to do better than they have done and not make the same mistakes they have made. Please take the advice of your children's teachers and spend more time focusing on enabling your children to improve on their weaknesses. Don't do it because the teachers are smarter than you; they're not. Instead, do it because you are big enough to admit that our worst flaws aren't that our strengths could be stronger, but that our weaknesses truly are weaknesses. By being secure enough in your strengths to admit that your flaws really are flaws, you'll be better able to help your children avoid the same issues.
This advice I have a large problem with, because it doesn't work. My parents have been encouraging social development in me (often beyond what I wanted) since day 1. I'm known to be quite a charmer when I'm nice to people. So why don't I have friends like a normal 16 year old? I don't know the "codes" to be "in". It's like not knowing the password to a very useful group server, but instead of a password to a server it's a complex set of social rituals which gain you access to the popular groups. Unfortunately, most groups don't want you if you don't know their passwords, and set up the passwords deliberately to keep people out who don't know them.
This is why a perfectly sociable person who's a Jock will never get accepted by the Nerds, and vice versa. And let me tell you, Jocks can be nice when they want to.
Problem: YHVH is invisible. You can't make a cartoon of something invisible. Try Moshe.
Ssshhh... Do you want them to get you? Encrypt, man, encrypt!
Come on people, this is funny AND it demonstrates (once again) just how fucked-up our patent system is! Give the guy some points (I don't have any. For some reason my karma's been Excellent for several months and I haven't gotten mod points once).
That Systrace thing is damned neat! And yes, I know that Linux supports POSIX Capabilities. It's just that, like you said, those aren't Teh True Capabilities and the user interface to a True Capability System is easier.
Feh to the differences.
This article is just another little study most likely commissioned by someone who wanted to set an age restriction on something.
Read the sig.
Recently, I got a job offer to move to a startup doing OS development and Systems and Network programming, however it would involve a paycut.
You can stay in touch with your old friends from this company, make new ones (hopefully) at your new job, take a reasonable pay cut that you could make back (if the startup succeeds) and get to do every hacker's dream work!
4.Democratic voters were spineless and wouldn't vote their consciences for the Green Party or Nader.
Note that spoiler effects from Nader and the Greens didn't win Bush anything this time.
I meant more along the lines of "The claim is so old, what point is he trying to make by bringing it up now?" It being old news has no bearing on its truth.
Except of course, in those places that restrict selling condoms and birth-control pills to youth.
The issue in this piece is that the Unix security model allows viruses and crackers who break into a user account access to that user's personal files, which the editorial presumes are what the user really cares about.
This is a very good point. Due to the cracker/virus having the same exact privileges as the user who was infected, it/they get access to that user's files via UID. Other than setting up a special account to browse the net with, there is no solution to this problem on a Unix system.
Or is there? Capability-based systems have never had this problem in the first place. On a capability-based system, you would run Thunderbird and Firefox under your own username, but only with the capabilities to a small whitelist of files and directories you want to allow access to and limited privileges to even those.
So let's open an email virus on Capability-Thunderbird...
Thunderbird caps: mail-spool file, read and write. User settings file, read and write.
Open a virus... Virus inherits its capabilities from Thunderbird.
Virus tries to open for writing: "Johnny's First Day of School.jpg"!
Dialog box: Do you want to allow Thunderbird to open "Johnny's First Day of School.jpg" for writing? If so enter your password and press Yes, otherwise click No.
User wonders why the heck Thunderbird is trying to open his innocuously named pr0n file...
User thought he was just opening an email from his mother.
User decides that he doesn't want his mother sending him a virus that will tell her about all his pr0n and clicks "No" in Dialog Box.
Virus is unable to open the file it wants. It crashes and burns due to impotency.
And so the user is able to run things with a bit less fear.
By "we all" I meant Slashdot.
The other reason Bush got re-elected was because he cheated again. You know, knock a few blacks off the rolls, call in favors from his friends at Diebold, that sort of thing.
So can I count that post as admitting that you take your "meat machine" position as a matter of faith? 'Cause you haven't offered up any proof for it.
You claim that just because you haven't been able to predict people's actions doesn't mean it isn't possible. If it is possible (meat machine hypothesis), then why hasn't anyone been able to do it? Nobody has ever reliably (to a scientific degree of accuracy and reliability) been able to predict all the actions of any number of people.
I can't prove that we're non-deterministic except by using my eyes and ears, but I've never seen anyone prove the counterpoint.
Please let this be a lesson to you: Don't demand that people disprove assertions you can't prove. I posited that I/you/everyone else are non-deterministic based on the evidence of my eyes and ears. You countered with your faith that we are all meat machines. Eyes and ears trump faith.
We all know the case for war was bullshit! That's why we voted!
So what, is this guy running for something? Gearing up to run for something? Why reiterate such an old claim now?
Problem with that: An optimistic failure could still perceive that the "hard" test they'd taken the second round was more difficult across the board than the one they were given in the first round.
What, are there that few of us?
Would you expect a layman to be able to understand the nuances of your chosen proffesion?
I would be curteous to a layman who asks about my profession rather than looking down upon his Puny Mortal Self.
That, and bugs have horribly small and simple brains. Evolving the right toxin isn't that hard when there are only 10/100/1000 receptors for it to bond to, right?
I, personally, don't give a damn about DNA on footballs. I want to see DNA being used in living things. I want to read about Microsoft, or Linux, or the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design holy war (if it isn't a holy war, why do Slashdotters eagerly bitch and argue over it every time it comes up?).
Or maybe I just want to read about politics or something.
Point is, somebody please let me vote this article down. After all, it's not like I had plans to counterfeit a Super Bowl football.
"[It] can be fought, and I'll be teaching you how, but it takes real strength of character, and not everyone's got it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" - Mad Eye Moody
Wi-fi is too short range, too slow, and there aren't enough wide area mesh networks to counteract the loss of backbones.