I think there is no denying the sumerians and their offshoots - the hindus,chinese,and especially the egyptians - understood the concept of PI, PHI and trig. It would be naive and pompous to think due to the amazing structures they built and the way they charted the heavens milinieum before us.
I do have a problem with his arguing that its not math or they didn't understand it because they produce no formula's or proof.
since ancient times up till the renaissance in europe. Much of maths and science knowledge was held and understood only by religious leaders. Some used that info to show their superiorirty and connection to the "gods".
Its not a stretch to think that these people were merely overseers when constructing monuments with the plans and ideas in their hands - the workers were merely artisans and slaves being told were to put blocks and construct it.
As a worker one doesn't need to know the golden ratio or the fifth postulate to drop a block of stone somewhere. As a more recent corrobaration it was the church that taught the europeans how to read and helped ushered in the renaissance - though i suspect it didn't go exactly how they planned.
The artisans understood basic things such as the composition and transporting of the blocks and such, but the individuals with the knowledge knew the mathematics behind it. Its also not a stretch as well to consider that wanting to keep a lot of knowledge from the public these works of maths and science were closely guarded and handed down only to a select few.
I too am a philospher and a lover of mathematics, however i'm quick to point out that the framework of mathematics we are used to may not even be the most efficient as evidence by euclidian geometry.
Of course in respect to the dissemenation of information its helpful to have proofs and such written down. But what if that wasn't the intention.
Mathematics can be a rigid diescipline, accepting only axioms that are deductive.Sometimes one has to suspend their disbelief and go with induction and analogy. After all how is a hypothesis or conjecture intiated.
Most patterns are discovered before the mathematics behind them is fully understood
maybe, but be careful you don't start giving the arabs their due. I won't troll on this aspect but consider this: The west got its mathematics from the europeans from the greeks via the arabs via the hindus.
When most of europe was still barberic and uncivilised, the muslims had already for sevreal hundered years been exposed to Greek mathemmatics. What was the Greeks forte? you guessed it geometry! The arabs had translated works from Aristotle, Euclid,Apollonius,Archimedes and Ptolemy into arabic.
Its far more likely the arabs understood and implemented the greek works than they didn't. from about 800 A.D. they had settled down and built a high level civililization and contributed to mathematcs a bit as well.
Europe was hardly mathematically or scientifically inclined till about 1100 A.D.
People need to stop being so provencial and accept the fact that lots of ideas were thought of before the 21st century.
i been away for awhile so i forget the kinda articles sometimes on/. OF course music is a relevant subject of interests. its one of the easiest ways to break the ice and see how compatible someone is with you. let me help the hapless/.ers who haven't been laid in awhile. don't get tongue tied when you talking to a chick. keep this accronym in mind. FORM. Family Occupation Recreation Music. thats my.02 cents any more info on how to get layed is gonna cost you. I open to bargaining i have this seg fault i can't figure out...
are you sure your american? those kinda statements can get you hanged as a traitor. yeah corona is weak. you need some of our molson canadian to do the trick. next time you up we'll pop a cold one on the house. just cause you such a smart guy!! serioulsy i'd mod you up if i wasn't commenting on this thread.
I find that deadlines I set for myself don't help - unless it's a real deadline with definite consequences beyond my own limitations
I couldn't agree more. I currenly own a business that allows me some free time. I've been planning a VOIP application for about a year now and only just now have even started to work on the audio capture module. For the amount of time i have in the day and what i could be doing i just don't find i'm productive enough, i keep putting coding off for something else. Why? because although i'd like to be in the game, i'm not going hungry. There is no fire under me.
you know i use to read/. for the interesting perspectives of the fellow geeks on here, but i've given up. I now read it for the comedians. wish i had my mod points.
But not everyone who's religious is like that. It's perfectly reasonable to think that G-d guided each step of evolution - evolution isn't incompatible with G-d at all. But I think this doesn't give your G-d enough credit...
maybe they aren't mutually exclusive, but a bible that starts off "let us make man in our own image..." and without adequate explanation of this trinity or however many 'god' there were and then through the rest of the penteuch doesn't give adequate explanations of this, doesn't encourage belief from me. How many are you?
Evolution does not logically require a god. But to me the wonderful elegance of evolution - and indeed of most science once humankind actually understands the topic fairly well - is closer to be proof OF G-d than a refutation of him/her.
expalain. IMHO opinion its more proof of the FSM.
My personal feeling is that if someone can't understand how I can have this position (even if they disagree), they need to take more math and science classes.
pleaseeeeee.... i'll give you that through the renaissance and a while after, due to the social times in those days and the rise and fight between the church and state many scientist were belivers in god. newton, c.s lewis etc. but in all probability if you ask most scientist today you would get more agnostics than believers. Because of the seemingly complicated and elegant structure of the universe it would be nice to think some higher entity put it all together, but the fact is the universe has had billions of years to get it right and is continuing its process of evolution. Even in Chaos there is order. don't try to put something there to make yourself feel better.
Computers are really built on just a couple SIMPLE elements - transitors. But millions of these SAME elements working together in a particular way gives us the computer I'm typing this on, Google, and Wikipedia. There is a wonderful elegance to this extreme complexity being built from the extreme simplicity of the evolutionary process
I understand what your trying to say so i won't be a pedant and attack the part that transistors are a technology we rarely if do use still. i'll agree that it is elegant in the design of the computer, but its not really that simple. sure its pushing bits around memory, but the manipulation of flip flops and gates can get a little complicated to have it do the desired results. the abstraction of simple base2 and utilising its twos compliments not to mention the protocols, the DOM and networking hierarchy - all of these and more compounded, make what looks easy in theory still a complicated process. I'm pretty sure you couldn't build a modern day computer in your basement - from scratch. whats that old saying? "everything works in theory....in practice...."
Alchemy was really hard. With chemistry we can do much more... and we realize that all things we're familiar with are made up only of protons, neutrons and electrons.
I always smile when i hear ppl say things like these. even as scientist we tend to think we've reached the pinnacle of understanding and can usally go no further in understanding and implementing certain things. However the operative words that should be used to preface your statement here are as far as we know... i wish i could be alive years from now when we laugh at ourselves for our limited understanding of certain concepts. There are way too many sub-atomic particles we have no clue about or whether they can be subsituted for similiar ones we used today or have ideas about. what if there is a sub atomic paricle more efficient that the electron?
(and those of quarks - and yes there are less-common particles and radiation)
at least you acknowledged it.
When you get down to basics, there's only a very few times numbers we need that aren't integers... All around, it's extre
I think this thread started by the op is absolutely correct. IMHO this is a reason why a language such as python is recommended (obviously if there wasn't the speed issue involved). C and C++ lends itself to all manner of abuse and abstractions only the original developer can usally figure out.
It doesn't even have to be a huge project. Take a look at some old C code you wrote maybe a year or even sevreal months ago - assuming its not a simple hello world app - and you'll realise that sometimes it takes you a while to figure out just what it is you did.
The objects you created, certain ADT and algorithms - it can be overwhelming and a mess. I'm not trolling, nor am i intiating a redundant language war - i'm a die hard C and python coder - just saying this is why a elegant syntax and structured language like python would be preferabale when working on a huge project such as firefox. its so easy to get up and running perusing other ppls python code. my.02
I'd have to concur with the OP. Regardless of what technology is at at our disposal if we don't have basic reasoning skills and deductive logic implementation, we might as well not have the technology.
A case in point is the Web. people seem to forget that the WWW was created for particle physicists to share information, as such there are lot of academia sites on there and knowledgable info - if you know how and where to look. The fact that doctors can google cases and find answers speaks alot about the dissemination of knowledge on the web. You just have to know how to get at it and simple critical skills come in handy there.
Someone i was having a discussion with the other day raised the question: considering all the information we have today are we becoming smarter or merely more informed. hmmmm... I'll leave that as an pondering exercise to the the/. reader.
contrary to all the ill effects conspiracy and communistic type reasons some of you are citing. The fact remains information wants to be free and people the world over want access to it, to better their lives and to be connected to the global community. even if there are govermental red herrings in those articles, in a population of 1billion ppl the design of the WWW is on the side of the latter and i believe this chinese wikipedia will let the peoples voice be heard in a resounding way the chinese goverment can't ignore. Its a new day and the chinese goverment reaslises that. capitalism and freedom [of speech] is slowly creeping in. The peoples voice will be heard, china can't ignore it anymore. this is just an example of that- the other for example is the allowance of a capitilistic style approach to some businesses.
I truly believe China wants to join the global community they just don't want to be assimilated by Western Culture and mindsets and to be honest i can't totally blame them. They will come to, if ever cautiously.
move along nothing to see here. Not desparaging the submitter of the article but don't we by now know what google has acomplished and hasn't this year. Hit us up with 2007 and i'll mod you up...going once..going twice...
Thats a very interesting statement. Anybody has the ability and the resources to do anything they put their mind to. It is the true patience, time and energy one spends perfecting their craft that transcends it from being just something one does to being a true art form. think about it.
To really use google code properly and pinpoint what your looking for, you'd need to put some regualr expressions in the query box it would seem. One reason to learn reg ex.
I could see arguments for both sides. microsoft's own patches can usally be automatically updated without going to another website, but at the same time these third party patches are usally quicker to be released and i have to wonder, is it not like open source in the sense that many people are working on the same problem?
These people obviously know what they doing and to be quite honest with you, I like to choose whether or not i update my system with the latest patch that may slow down my computer or install sh*t i don't need. However thats for computer savy inidividuals like myself. however i don't see this really happening with the mass. People will just turn on automatic updates and click on that irritating flashing icon in the system tray. Who cares what it is, its obviously from m$ so it must be needed - so the thinking goes.
I find it interesting that the article is tagged as pseudoscienc or crackpot. It shows that crowd or editors on slashdot aren't that scientifically inclined.
James clark Maxwell already showed that photons have a force when they hit an object. mind you its miniscule, but the point of the article is this scientist is merely trying to amplify it and see its outcome.
sad to think the/. crowd is the naysayers of emergining scientific technology thats grounded in sound science. nice defeatus attitude.
Re:In line conditionals, FINALLY
on
Python 2.5 Released
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I have to agree, i don't see why GVR couldn't have just fashioned it the same as the ternery operator in C. I love python not only for its RAD ability but the syntax: clear, terse and indented. Since they added decorators i've been getting more and more irritated with it. keep it clean, keep it concise. WHY BE DIFFERENT FOR THE SAKE OF BEING DIFFERENT!
Slashdot Mirror
I do have a problem with his arguing that its not math or they didn't understand it because they produce no formula's or proof.
since ancient times up till the renaissance in europe. Much of maths and science knowledge was held and understood only by religious leaders. Some used that info to show their superiorirty and connection to the "gods".
Its not a stretch to think that these people were merely overseers when constructing monuments with the plans and ideas in their hands - the workers were merely artisans and slaves being told were to put blocks and construct it.
As a worker one doesn't need to know the golden ratio or the fifth postulate to drop a block of stone somewhere. As a more recent corrobaration it was the church that taught the europeans how to read and helped ushered in the renaissance - though i suspect it didn't go exactly how they planned.
The artisans understood basic things such as the composition and transporting of the blocks and such, but the individuals with the knowledge knew the mathematics behind it. Its also not a stretch as well to consider that wanting to keep a lot of knowledge from the public these works of maths and science were closely guarded and handed down only to a select few.
I too am a philospher and a lover of mathematics, however i'm quick to point out that the framework of mathematics we are used to may not even be the most efficient as evidence by euclidian geometry.
Of course in respect to the dissemenation of information its helpful to have proofs and such written down. But what if that wasn't the intention.
Mathematics can be a rigid diescipline, accepting only axioms that are deductive.Sometimes one has to suspend their disbelief and go with induction and analogy. After all how is a hypothesis or conjecture intiated.
Most patterns are discovered before the mathematics behind them is fully understood
maybe, but be careful you don't start giving the arabs their due. I won't troll on this aspect but consider this: The west got its mathematics from the europeans from the greeks via the arabs via the hindus.When most of europe was still barberic and uncivilised, the muslims had already for sevreal hundered years been exposed to Greek mathemmatics. What was the Greeks forte? you guessed it geometry! The arabs had translated works from Aristotle, Euclid,Apollonius,Archimedes and Ptolemy into arabic.
Its far more likely the arabs understood and implemented the greek works than they didn't. from about 800 A.D. they had settled down and built a high level civililization and contributed to mathematcs a bit as well.
Europe was hardly mathematically or scientifically inclined till about 1100 A.D.
People need to stop being so provencial and accept the fact that lots of ideas were thought of before the 21st century.
does it run linux? .....oh...sorry...got ahead of myself.
i been away for awhile so i forget the kinda articles sometimes on /. OF course music is a relevant subject of interests. its one of the easiest ways to break the ice and see how compatible someone is with you. let me help the hapless /.ers who haven't been laid in awhile. don't get tongue tied when you talking to a chick. keep this accronym in mind. FORM. Family Occupation Recreation Music. thats my .02 cents any more info on how to get layed is gonna cost you. I open to bargaining i have this seg fault i can't figure out...
are you sure your american? those kinda statements can get you hanged as a traitor. yeah corona is weak. you need some of our molson canadian to do the trick. next time you up we'll pop a cold one on the house. just cause you such a smart guy!! serioulsy i'd mod you up if i wasn't commenting on this thread.
now we can say that and be proud its not just for our beer. whoot!!
you know i use to read /. for the interesting perspectives of the fellow geeks on here, but i've given up. I now read it for the comedians. wish i had my mod points.
maybe they aren't mutually exclusive, but a bible that starts off "let us make man in our own image..." and without adequate explanation of this trinity or however many 'god' there were and then through the rest of the penteuch doesn't give adequate explanations of this, doesn't encourage belief from me. How many are you?
expalain. IMHO opinion its more proof of the FSM.
pleaseeeeee.... i'll give you that through the renaissance and a while after, due to the social times in those days and the rise and fight between the church and state many scientist were belivers in god. newton, c.s lewis etc. but in all probability if you ask most scientist today you would get more agnostics than believers. Because of the seemingly complicated and elegant structure of the universe it would be nice to think some higher entity put it all together, but the fact is the universe has had billions of years to get it right and is continuing its process of evolution. Even in Chaos there is order. don't try to put something there to make yourself feel better.
I understand what your trying to say so i won't be a pedant and attack the part that transistors are a technology we rarely if do use still. i'll agree that it is elegant in the design of the computer, but its not really that simple. sure its pushing bits around memory, but the manipulation of flip flops and gates can get a little complicated to have it do the desired results. the abstraction of simple base2 and utilising its twos compliments not to mention the protocols, the DOM and networking hierarchy - all of these and more compounded, make what looks easy in theory still a complicated process. I'm pretty sure you couldn't build a modern day computer in your basement - from scratch. whats that old saying? "everything works in theory....in practice...."
I always smile when i hear ppl say things like these. even as scientist we tend to think we've reached the pinnacle of understanding and can usally go no further in understanding and implementing certain things. However the operative words that should be used to preface your statement here are as far as we know... i wish i could be alive years from now when we laugh at ourselves for our limited understanding of certain concepts. There are way too many sub-atomic particles we have no clue about or whether they can be subsituted for similiar ones we used today or have ideas about. what if there is a sub atomic paricle more efficient that the electron?
at least you acknowledged it.
It doesn't even have to be a huge project. Take a look at some old C code you wrote maybe a year or even sevreal months ago - assuming its not a simple hello world app - and you'll realise that sometimes it takes you a while to figure out just what it is you did.
The objects you created, certain ADT and algorithms - it can be overwhelming and a mess. I'm not trolling, nor am i intiating a redundant language war - i'm a die hard C and python coder - just saying this is why a elegant syntax and structured language like python would be preferabale when working on a huge project such as firefox. its so easy to get up and running perusing other ppls python code. my .02
yeah i know, i saw that after i'd press the submit button. ;)
A case in point is the Web. people seem to forget that the WWW was created for particle physicists to share information, as such there are lot of academia sites on there and knowledgable info - if you know how and where to look. The fact that doctors can google cases and find answers speaks alot about the dissemination of knowledge on the web. You just have to know how to get at it and simple critical skills come in handy there.
Someone i was having a discussion with the other day raised the question: considering all the information we have today are we becoming smarter or merely more informed. hmmmm... I'll leave that as an pondering exercise to the the /. reader.
contrary to all the ill effects conspiracy and communistic type reasons some of you are citing. The fact remains information wants to be free and people the world over want access to it, to better their lives and to be connected to the global community.
even if there are govermental red herrings in those articles, in a population of 1billion ppl the design of the WWW is on the side of the latter and i believe this chinese wikipedia will let the peoples voice be heard in a resounding way the chinese goverment can't ignore.
Its a new day and the chinese goverment reaslises that. capitalism and freedom [of speech] is slowly creeping in. The peoples voice will be heard, china can't ignore it anymore. this is just an example of that- the other for example is the allowance of a capitilistic style approach to some businesses.
I truly believe China wants to join the global community they just don't want to be assimilated by Western Culture and mindsets and to be honest i can't totally blame them. They will come to, if ever cautiously.
i didn't read the article, but i'm pretty sure the answer is cake!
move along nothing to see here. Not desparaging the submitter of the article but don't we by now know what google has acomplished and hasn't this year. Hit us up with 2007 and i'll mod you up...going once..going twice...
It could have been 27!
Thats a very interesting statement. Anybody has the ability and the resources to do anything they put their mind to. It is the true patience, time and energy one spends perfecting their craft that transcends it from being just something one does to being a true art form. think about it.
always interesting to see coders who reference slashdot in some way.
To really use google code properly and pinpoint what your looking for, you'd need to put some regualr expressions in the query box it would seem. One reason to learn reg ex.
These people obviously know what they doing and to be quite honest with you, I like to choose whether or not i update my system with the latest patch that may slow down my computer or install sh*t i don't need. However thats for computer savy inidividuals like myself. however i don't see this really happening with the mass. People will just turn on automatic updates and click on that irritating flashing icon in the system tray. Who cares what it is, its obviously from m$ so it must be needed - so the thinking goes.
I find it interesting that the article is tagged as pseudoscienc or crackpot. It shows that crowd or editors on slashdot aren't that scientifically inclined. James clark Maxwell already showed that photons have a force when they hit an object. mind you its miniscule, but the point of the article is this scientist is merely trying to amplify it and see its outcome. sad to think the /. crowd is the naysayers of emergining scientific technology thats grounded in sound science. nice defeatus attitude.
I have to agree, i don't see why GVR couldn't have just fashioned it the same as the ternery operator in C. I love python not only for its RAD ability but the syntax: clear, terse and indented. Since they added decorators i've been getting more and more irritated with it. keep it clean, keep it concise. WHY BE DIFFERENT FOR THE SAKE OF BEING DIFFERENT!