Hardly surprising. The goal of companies are to sell products and services, not to be political correct. What I have trouble understanding is: Why on earth do people expect ethical actions from huge corporations/hierarchies based on money and power?
I suspect the answer is the same as in everything we have expectations for: To be disappointed and find answers elsewhere.
If you think about it, ten thousands lines of assembly code isn't that much (compared to 10.000 lines of C) or at all interesting. You may even cut it up nicely into proc's and struct's to make it more understandable. What is interesting is what kinds of optimization he has cranked out to get the algorithm faster than compiled-C. In that light, fewer lines is actually The Good Thing with modern processors. Of course, you can't get that info from an NYT article.
Just because you don't know why it's there, doesn't mean it doesn't have a purpose. Just because it doesn't have a purpose doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.
On what do you base your assumption that we are sapient beings, and the only one at that?
Personally I think you got it wrong. _I_ am the only sapient being in the universe. You're just a figment of my imagination not worth a second thought.
Chow some valium, pal. It'll do you a world of good.
If you can find contentment and fulfilment just 'knowing' that FFFish is there, then he don't actually have to be there: it's a Schrodinger's Cat situation.
Myself, I'll need to see 'im to believe 'im. I'd prefer to see him in his natural setting, and I'd very much prefer that setting to last millenia and enthrall millions of people.
If he's shut off from view, well, then, he might as well be destroyed. If I have to look at old pictures or otherwise imagine that I'm seeing him, then I can just as well imagine something even more grand. The existance or non-existance of the marvel becomes immaterial, if no one's allowed to see him.
I thought tar piped the file through gzip and unpacked the files, thus no shared library used at all, but I'm not really into the details so I can't say for 100% sure. Codebloat: No, you're on the spot there. Featurebloat: Maybe. An alias- or option system should be sufficient for those who don't want to pipe everything.
Btw, shared libraries has very little to do with the "UNIX-way" (IO and pipes). Small and compact binary utilities do.
What I think is flawed with the "UNIX-way" is the utter dependance of a non-standardized option-system. Fix that and a couple of outdated man-pages, and we may have a winner implementation.
Heh, I won one third of my games (3 games played;-). I bet it should be trivial to create a robot planning more ahead, but I'm all for AI-learning programs.
People create art. People enjoy art in their home and see the value of contributing to its development. They don't use program languages that much (except in Silicon Valley, which follows completely different rules altogether).
It's also a lot harder to convince programmers to work for free; the "incremental improvements to existing paradigm" model behind art development doesn't apply as much in code as in art.
Moria, Nethack, Rogue, those "Whatever his name is" Gate games are all nothing but ugly ascii cores to a tiny subset of Diablo II's interface. The interface is the ONLY thing. Yes, the core is NETHACK 0.1b, but a new version will come out soon, more enhanced and still more complex and detailed than any of the pretenders with seductive hackerish characters.
Diablo II is proof positive that proprietary workes for the game interface. Sadly, the same has yet to be proven true for gameplay and core concepts.....
Besides, you gotta love a game with instructions written by a professional who got paid for it.
Back in the good old days Dr. Evil had to build a huge rocket in a secret island with thousands of henchmen to administer, just to launch the latest man-killer virus into orbit. Nowadays, it just takes some $$$ and a few more sm$les to the politicians to do it. As long as people get their $$$, everybody is h$ppy. Yeehaw, why not just bring our garbage out into orbit so we don't have to live in our own filth?
I think if you read your post once more, you will perhaps notice that the difference in size does matter. Working for a big company, employees rarely bothers with the company profile. In fact, you are often discouraged from communicating directly. More buraucracy tend to lead to communication problems and consumers feel they are talking to a corporation instead of people. Usually those people you are speaking- or corresponding to are different each time and have no real power to fix the problem.
Wether it's evil depends on your subjective opinion. For instance, many people rationalize what they do simply because they need money to buy a home, food, clothes, entertainment and so on. However, big companies doesn't need to rationalize, they solely exist to earn money on anything that can be screwed without a backlash.
This puts alot of responsibility to the leaders we put our faith in. (If you don't put faith in your superiors, why do you then follow them?) They, as everyone else, should have more arguments for doing what they do than solely to earn money. If they don't, it's your own fault for giving them your power.
In my book, having money as your God/highest objective is evil (or blindly stupid). However, that's just one definition of many. 'Evil' just one word of many.
- Steeltoe
Re:Yes, but what about the goats?
on
Spidergoats
·
· Score: 1
Chicks ARE cold-blooded, so it doesn't matter what we do to them. I want a spider-chick now!
[Warning: Impair your imagination before reading on]
Or how about one with vaginas all over her body. Much less chance to hit the wrong hole!;-)
Sure it would. However, do you really want to be a second-rate netizen just like in the browser-wars? That's what you get for not creating and following fully open standards.
"Let's just switch our collective quantuum state over to a happy one!" eh?
What you're suggesting is a process which begins with _you_ and _me_. It requires you to be strong enough for everyone around you, so you don't take your "rightful" revenge. Or else, any little tiny negative event will bring down humanity to the current level and below again.
Thank God they were caught. Just think what could've happened if they had gained any popularity. The downfall of MTV, that's what I've been trying to tell for years. They were a real threat too, they managed to spell it correctly!
I think you've misunderstood me. I was not talking about Free Software, which is a concept with strict rules set down by RMS, or theft of IP, I was talking about truly free gifts. If I give away a gift I have no intention of claiming ownership of it later, nor should I. So there's no way I can cry foul or abuse about it. (What do you think the noise about CueCat was all about? You get a gift, it's yours.) The BSD license is one of the few licenses in this world so close to the border of public domain, it can almost be considered a 100% truly free gift. 99% for sure.;-)
I have to disagree with you that Free Software is keeping users free. But there again I think we disagree on definition of the word free. Receivers of GPLed code are not free to do Anything with it. However, the license is forcefully keeping the code _freely available_ to the Free Software Community (those who choose to play ball). There's a difference of free and freely available to a certain group here, and the appliance of force (copyright) and not (license says: do whatever you want with the code or public domain).
However, the GPL/LGPL is better than not licensing. Because the default is copyright, which is more non-free. Which is why GPL/LGPL is called copyleft, a sort of liberation of code under copyright but under strict distribution rules as to avoid "abuse". I happen to favour the GPL for this very reason, because I happen to not believe in proprietary programs and standards. However, if other people want to go down that road/trap, I'm happy to let them (after a hefty discussion). Because otherwise they'll never learn. You can't force the world to think your way, you have to make them realize that it is the way, or atleast partial truth in it.
With the GPL, an author forces all derivatives to be equally open: Everyone can read and modify the source, but to distribute any binary derivatives you must also distribute the full source with changes. Even to a completely new source statically linking to the original. There are no restrictions on use (execution).
With the BSD licence, everyone is free to make any changes and distribute them in any way they find convinient. There are no restrictions on use except for displaying a copyright notice of the original author.
Now what license is most free? Personally I believe BSD is more free, but when I code I want the benefits of the GPL/LGPL. However, I have no illusions about the fact that I am restricting others' freedom to my boundaries. Giving real freedom to others involves letting them get away with thievery, but that's not very convinient in practice. However, I have deepest respect for people who live in such ways that they don't restrict others.
People that bash other people for not living up to their expectations, are the same people who get disappointed when they give gifts. A real gift is one you don't expect anything in return for. Otherwise, it's just another transaction.
"... Instead of freaking out over every exploit that pops up and scrambling to get patches, I wonder why people don't use it as an opportunity to their own benefit for the greater good."
It's because it won't solve any problem. The spammers will switch to a more RFC-compliant email reader or turn off JS.
On another note, aggressive action has never fixed any problems in this world. You can shoot and imprison people, but it won't fix the root problem.
In fact chaotic systems often exhibit non-random behaviour in most unexpected ways. So even though turbulent environments may look pretty unorganized, sometimes the system _seemingly_ manages to organize itself through feedback. However, the organization is ALWAYS complex. Just look at mandelbrot. At a distance it seems so simple, yet....
All in all, what may look simple in nature, is usually much more rich in details. Yet we continue to search for simple clues to interpret and simplify the world around us, because that's how our logics works.
IMHO, I believe we put ourselves in danger when we _believe_ our simplified models..
Excellent point. This made me realize that people who believe in Intellectual Property, really lack respect for other people as free and thinking entities. It's a fallacy to believe that we can create anything just by ourselves, because we're a product of the world we live in. IP is all ego and fear.
"You think rape victims ought to take delight in watching the rape of others. If so, you are one sick bastard."
I statet that _making_ the art would be illegal, despite no real crime has been committed. If you've seen many forms of art, not all of it is perty and put in a nice frame. You may call these individual as sick as you like, but prohibiting free speech like this is never a good thing. Where are we, as human beings, going to get release of our problems if governments make free speech illegal?
"You think watching people suffer is therapeutic to those who have suffered themselves?"
Nobody is hurt in a painted picture or simulated photograph. Why shouldn't people who have suffered watch/deal with suffering if they like to? That is a normal psychological reaction and theurapeutic method. You seem to think they should just forget about their horrible experience and be done with it. Become "normal" again. I'm not saying this should be mindless. If you know what you do, you can watch anything. You don't have to watch the same suffering that you had yourself, it's enough to become aware what's happening in the world.
Why do you think there's lots of series and documentaries about rape, incest and murder these days? That if you watch those you're sick, or that you're trying to deal with trapped feelings/ideas and understand the negative aspects of our society?
And those who say erotic art of rape is fine, but pornographic pictures of virtual rape is not, are falling in the ancient old trap of censorship. So what if some people find the thought of rape/getting raped sexually attractive. For most of these, this is just a fantasy. Totally harmless, and psychologically rooted. Everyone has different ways to deal with their problems. But of course, those who aren't in the process of dealing with it, want to make others lives just as miserable too, by making it illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly you are right. However, that also means that patents have played their role in society as an incentive to promote innovation and production.
- Steeltoe
httpd.
- Steeltoe
Hardly surprising. The goal of companies are to sell products and services, not to be political correct. What I have trouble understanding is: Why on earth do people expect ethical actions from huge corporations/hierarchies based on money and power?
I suspect the answer is the same as in everything we have expectations for: To be disappointed and find answers elsewhere.
- Steeltoe
Actually, if this was patented you should be able to find the specifications at the patent office.
- Steeltoe
If you think about it, ten thousands lines of assembly code isn't that much (compared to 10.000 lines of C) or at all interesting. You may even cut it up nicely into proc's and struct's to make it more understandable. What is interesting is what kinds of optimization he has cranked out to get the algorithm faster than compiled-C. In that light, fewer lines is actually The Good Thing with modern processors. Of course, you can't get that info from an NYT article.
- Steeltoe
Just because you don't know why it's there, doesn't mean it doesn't have a purpose. Just because it doesn't have a purpose doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.
- Steeltoe
On what do you base your assumption that we are sapient beings, and the only one at that?
Personally I think you got it wrong. _I_ am the only sapient being in the universe. You're just a figment of my imagination not worth a second thought.
- Steeltoe
Chow some valium, pal. It'll do you a world of good.
If you can find contentment and fulfilment just 'knowing' that FFFish is there, then he don't actually have to be there: it's a Schrodinger's Cat situation.
Myself, I'll need to see 'im to believe 'im. I'd prefer to see him in his natural setting, and I'd very much prefer that setting to last millenia and enthrall millions of people.
If he's shut off from view, well, then, he might as well be destroyed. If I have to look at old pictures or otherwise imagine that I'm seeing him, then I can just as well imagine something even more grand. The existance or non-existance of the marvel becomes immaterial, if no one's allowed to see him.
- Steeltoe
Don't expect politicians to ever understand free software. After all, less money to the industry means less money in their pockets.
- Steeltoe
I thought tar piped the file through gzip and unpacked the files, thus no shared library used at all, but I'm not really into the details so I can't say for 100% sure. Codebloat: No, you're on the spot there. Featurebloat: Maybe. An alias- or option system should be sufficient for those who don't want to pipe everything.
Btw, shared libraries has very little to do with the "UNIX-way" (IO and pipes). Small and compact binary utilities do.
What I think is flawed with the "UNIX-way" is the utter dependance of a non-standardized option-system. Fix that and a couple of outdated man-pages, and we may have a winner implementation.
- Steeltoe
Heh, I won one third of my games (3 games played ;-). I bet it should be trivial to create a robot planning more ahead, but I'm all for AI-learning programs.
- Steeltoe
People create art. People enjoy art in their home and see the value of contributing to its development. They don't use program languages that much (except in Silicon Valley, which follows completely different rules altogether).
It's also a lot harder to convince programmers to work for free; the "incremental improvements to existing paradigm" model behind art development doesn't apply as much in code as in art.
- Steeltoe
Moria, Nethack, Rogue, those "Whatever his name is" Gate games are all nothing but ugly ascii cores to a tiny subset of Diablo II's interface. The interface is the ONLY thing. Yes, the core is NETHACK 0.1b, but a new version will come out soon, more enhanced and still more complex and detailed than any of the pretenders with seductive hackerish characters.
Diablo II is proof positive that proprietary workes for the game interface. Sadly, the same has yet to be proven true for gameplay and core concepts.....
Besides, you gotta love a game with instructions written by a professional who got paid for it.
- Steeltoe
Back in the good old days Dr. Evil had to build a huge rocket in a secret island with thousands of henchmen to administer, just to launch the latest man-killer virus into orbit. Nowadays, it just takes some $$$ and a few more sm$les to the politicians to do it. As long as people get their $$$, everybody is h$ppy. Yeehaw, why not just bring our garbage out into orbit so we don't have to live in our own filth?
- Steeltoe
I think if you read your post once more, you will perhaps notice that the difference in size does matter. Working for a big company, employees rarely bothers with the company profile. In fact, you are often discouraged from communicating directly. More buraucracy tend to lead to communication problems and consumers feel they are talking to a corporation instead of people. Usually those people you are speaking- or corresponding to are different each time and have no real power to fix the problem.
Wether it's evil depends on your subjective opinion. For instance, many people rationalize what they do simply because they need money to buy a home, food, clothes, entertainment and so on. However, big companies doesn't need to rationalize, they solely exist to earn money on anything that can be screwed without a backlash.
This puts alot of responsibility to the leaders we put our faith in. (If you don't put faith in your superiors, why do you then follow them?) They, as everyone else, should have more arguments for doing what they do than solely to earn money. If they don't, it's your own fault for giving them your power.
In my book, having money as your God/highest objective is evil (or blindly stupid). However, that's just one definition of many. 'Evil' just one word of many.
- Steeltoe
Chicks ARE cold-blooded, so it doesn't matter what we do to them. I want a spider-chick now!
;-)
[Warning: Impair your imagination before reading on]
Or how about one with vaginas all over her body. Much less chance to hit the wrong hole!
- Steeltoe
Sure it would. However, do you really want to be a second-rate netizen just like in the browser-wars? That's what you get for not creating and following fully open standards.
- Steeltoe
"Let's just switch our collective quantuum state over to a happy one!" eh?
What you're suggesting is a process which begins with _you_ and _me_. It requires you to be strong enough for everyone around you, so you don't take your "rightful" revenge. Or else, any little tiny negative event will bring down humanity to the current level and below again.
- Steeltoe
Look at the bottom of their page:
"{BfD} is an anti-MTV clan."
Thank God they were caught. Just think what could've happened if they had gained any popularity. The downfall of MTV, that's what I've been trying to tell for years. They were a real threat too, they managed to spell it correctly!
- Steeltoe
I think you've misunderstood me. I was not talking about Free Software, which is a concept with strict rules set down by RMS, or theft of IP, I was talking about truly free gifts. If I give away a gift I have no intention of claiming ownership of it later, nor should I. So there's no way I can cry foul or abuse about it. (What do you think the noise about CueCat was all about? You get a gift, it's yours.) The BSD license is one of the few licenses in this world so close to the border of public domain, it can almost be considered a 100% truly free gift. 99% for sure. ;-)
I have to disagree with you that Free Software is keeping users free. But there again I think we disagree on definition of the word free. Receivers of GPLed code are not free to do Anything with it. However, the license is forcefully keeping the code _freely available_ to the Free Software Community (those who choose to play ball). There's a difference of free and freely available to a certain group here, and the appliance of force (copyright) and not (license says: do whatever you want with the code or public domain).
However, the GPL/LGPL is better than not licensing. Because the default is copyright, which is more non-free. Which is why GPL/LGPL is called copyleft, a sort of liberation of code under copyright but under strict distribution rules as to avoid "abuse". I happen to favour the GPL for this very reason, because I happen to not believe in proprietary programs and standards. However, if other people want to go down that road/trap, I'm happy to let them (after a hefty discussion). Because otherwise they'll never learn. You can't force the world to think your way, you have to make them realize that it is the way, or atleast partial truth in it.
- Steeltoe
With the GPL, an author forces all derivatives to be equally open: Everyone can read and modify the source, but to distribute any binary derivatives you must also distribute the full source with changes. Even to a completely new source statically linking to the original. There are no restrictions on use (execution).
With the BSD licence, everyone is free to make any changes and distribute them in any way they find convinient. There are no restrictions on use except for displaying a copyright notice of the original author.
Now what license is most free? Personally I believe BSD is more free, but when I code I want the benefits of the GPL/LGPL. However, I have no illusions about the fact that I am restricting others' freedom to my boundaries. Giving real freedom to others involves letting them get away with thievery, but that's not very convinient in practice. However, I have deepest respect for people who live in such ways that they don't restrict others.
People that bash other people for not living up to their expectations, are the same people who get disappointed when they give gifts. A real gift is one you don't expect anything in return for. Otherwise, it's just another transaction.
- Steeltoe
"... Instead of freaking out over every exploit that pops up and scrambling to get patches, I wonder why people don't use it as an opportunity to their own benefit for the greater good."
It's because it won't solve any problem. The spammers will switch to a more RFC-compliant email reader or turn off JS.
On another note, aggressive action has never fixed any problems in this world. You can shoot and imprison people, but it won't fix the root problem.
- Steeltoe
Chaotic != Random
In fact chaotic systems often exhibit non-random behaviour in most unexpected ways. So even though turbulent environments may look pretty unorganized, sometimes the system _seemingly_ manages to organize itself through feedback. However, the organization is ALWAYS complex. Just look at mandelbrot. At a distance it seems so simple, yet....
All in all, what may look simple in nature, is usually much more rich in details. Yet we continue to search for simple clues to interpret and simplify the world around us, because that's how our logics works.
IMHO, I believe we put ourselves in danger when we _believe_ our simplified models..
- Steeltoe
Excellent point. This made me realize that people who believe in Intellectual Property, really lack respect for other people as free and thinking entities. It's a fallacy to believe that we can create anything just by ourselves, because we're a product of the world we live in. IP is all ego and fear.
Thanks!
- Steeltoe
"You think rape victims ought to take delight in watching the rape of others. If so, you are one sick bastard."
I statet that _making_ the art would be illegal, despite no real crime has been committed. If you've seen many forms of art, not all of it is perty and put in a nice frame. You may call these individual as sick as you like, but prohibiting free speech like this is never a good thing. Where are we, as human beings, going to get release of our problems if governments make free speech illegal?
"You think watching people suffer is therapeutic to those who have suffered themselves?"
Nobody is hurt in a painted picture or simulated photograph. Why shouldn't people who have suffered watch/deal with suffering if they like to? That is a normal psychological reaction and theurapeutic method. You seem to think they should just forget about their horrible experience and be done with it. Become "normal" again. I'm not saying this should be mindless. If you know what you do, you can watch anything. You don't have to watch the same suffering that you had yourself, it's enough to become aware what's happening in the world.
Why do you think there's lots of series and documentaries about rape, incest and murder these days? That if you watch those you're sick, or that you're trying to deal with trapped feelings/ideas and understand the negative aspects of our society?
And those who say erotic art of rape is fine, but pornographic pictures of virtual rape is not, are falling in the ancient old trap of censorship. So what if some people find the thought of rape/getting raped sexually attractive. For most of these, this is just a fantasy. Totally harmless, and psychologically rooted. Everyone has different ways to deal with their problems. But of course, those who aren't in the process of dealing with it, want to make others lives just as miserable too, by making it illegal.
- Steeltoe