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Moshe Bar on Programming, Society, and Religion
from the evolving-in-many-ways dept.
1) As a device-driver writer...
by Marx_Mrvelous
It seems like such a chore to write drivers that work on all distros since they all use different kernels. It seems to me that businesses only develop for windows because they are guaranteed that their drivers will work on all windows machines for X (4,5,6) years without any more work. Having experience writing Linux device drivers, do you think that a cross-distribution effort to standardize on kernel versions and guarantee major hardware manufacturers this compatibility would promote driver development in Linux?
Moshe:
I don't think a standardized kernel version across distributions is a) feasible business-wise b) necessary c) going to make driver writing any easier. Not that it is that difficult now. I also don't think that the various kernel versions among distributions is to be blamed for bigger (if really so) number of driver developers under Windows. Most drivers do not really create problems across the different kernel versions of the distributions, in most cases a simple recompile of the kernel module with the modified kernel headers is different.
On top of that, I really suspect that writing drivers across the many Windoze versions is far more difficult because each different Windows type (95, 98, ME, 2000, XP and what have you not) is really a different OS.
2) I have only one question:
by Baldric Dominus
Does Moshe have a son/daughter named "foo"?
Moshe:
Moshe does not have children yet. We do plan to fork() some children eventually, but have not yet made plans about their names. :-)
3) Different social groups
by CAIMLAS
As someone involved in many different activities, do you have cohesive social groups? That is, do the people from, say, your motorcycle-riding friends develop/use linux as well? I'm interested in knowing what your social ties are, being as it seems you are a fairly active individual.
Moshe:
The social groups of which I am a member of vary wildly, in part due to the fact that me and Ms. Bar have effectively two homes, one in Israel and one in Europe. Since Europe and the Middle East (ie Asia) differ quite substantially culturally and ethnically, I find the biggest differences lie therein. As to what concerns the various other groups (motorbikers, lawyers, business people, etc.) they do differ somewhat if on the same continent, but the diversity is actually something that attracts and intrigues me. A very typical motor-biker is not going to be a very typical kernel hacker, mostly. A very typical lawyer is not going to be a very typical Talmud student (although both study essentially just law and its practice), usually. However, I am not a typical member of any of these stereotypes (not sure if anyone really is). What unites them all is that they all do whatever they do with passion if they are good at it.
4) BitKeeper
by AirLace
Despite staunch opposition from certain developers, Linus has recently started to maintain the kernel using the non-free BitKeeper SCM product, which is not only proprietary but also uses undocumented file formats, making interoperability difficult or impossible. Do you think it's fair to encourage developers who would otherwise keep to Free Software to turn to a proprietary solution and what is in effect, shareware?
Moshe:
Nobody has to use bk to create patches or to send them to Linus. It is true that Linus is more likely to include them if they come through bk, but by far not all have adopted bk (Alan Cox being one famous such exception). I personally have switched to bk for my personal stuff, but I still don't much like the bk business model. The question is: would Larry lose money in any way if he was to open up bk completely? I don't think so. The other question is: would it be so difficult to produce a bk-compatible openBK? Don't think so either. If the community continues to adopt bk at this rate, sooner or alter, someone will come out with an openBK for sure. Welcome to the wonderful world of OpenSource!
5) As a device driver writer...
by dalutong
do you think that the Linux kernel should follow the same route as the Mozilla project. That being that when Mozilla reaches 1.0 the API will freeze and any plugins, applications that use gecko, etc. will be compatible until version 1.2 is out. Should the Linux kernel make some sort of standardized API for drivers so a driver that works with 2.4.0 will work for 2.4.20?
Moshe:
No, I dont' think so. The Mozilla API model is based on an old and mean-while superseded assumption: that writing software is expensive. In the OpenSource world having to modify a driver because something changed in the kernel, is an advantage not a disadvange, both economically and techically. Proprietary software goes at the tariff of US$ 50-200 per line of debugged code. No such price applies to OpenSource software. Additionlly, if the API changes it is for a good reason. Then why not letting your driver benefit from it?
6) Database Clusters
by emil
As a cluster guru, I am curious about your take on database server clustering in both the commercial and the open-source space.
First, it appears that IBM DB2 has been wiping the floor with Oracle on the TPC benchmarks lately, and Oracle "RAC" has been a flop. However, IBM is not using any hardware from its proprietary server lines, but instead relies on clusters of "federated" databases running on 32 standard PCs running either Linux or Windows. It does appear that Oracle still generally beats IBM in raw performance on a single system (as IBM refuses to post any non-clustered benchmarks AFAIK).
Do you think that any of the hype over either of these vendors cluster packages is worth attention? Do you agree with Sun's claim that TPC(-C) no longer has any practical relevance? It all seems to be getting rather silly.
Second, is there any push to make any of the ACID-leaning open databases (Postgres, SAP-DB, etc.) fault-tolerant, perhaps using Mosix? I assume this would require modifications to Postgres enabling it to access raw partitions. Have you had any talks with the Red Hat Database people about cluster modifications to Postgres, just out of curiousity?
Moshe:
There have been talks with the DB2, Postgres, SAP DB and various other DB technologies. All their proprietary clustering technologies (in particular DB2's and Oracle RAC's) are bound to show very poor scalability and TOC. In the openMosix model, you install *one* DB2 or *one* Oracle 9i on one machine and - assuming we have finished implementing Distributed Shared Memory, something which we plan to do - then the processes making up an instance can migrate away to other nodes and make more room for a larger DB block caching area. All that happens transparently to the RDBMS under openMosix because we implement the clustering layer within the kernel and therefore all applications, whatever they might be, benefit from it.
Under Oracle RAC, for example, you need to install the RDMBS on everynode being part of the RAC cluster. If you need to apply a patch and that process takes, say, 2 hours, then the whole patching downtime to the DB will be 2 hours x n nodes. Also, in openMosix we are soon goin to implement Dolphin support, allowing us to copy a full 4KB page from node to node within 14.4 microseconds. Something like Oracle will immediately benefit from the cluster-wide ultra-low latency. If not in kernel space, then every application vendor would have to write his own driver, possibly conflicting with other applications trying to do the same on the same machine. In short, doing clustering at the DB application level is essentially flawed.
openMosix does not handle High Availability, so I am not answering that part of the question.
7) Not about Linux at all...
by Dimwit
...but the article said pick anything. Since there are quite a few philosophers on Slashdot (and since I'm Jewish and this question gets a lot of thought from me, and when will I ever be able to ask again?) here's my question:
Do you see any reconciliation between science and the G-d of the Torah? What about between Science and any sort of Creationism at all? Do you see the possibility that science, as it approaches the moment of Creation itself, becomes more in tune with religion? I guess a big part of what I'm asking - do you see a place for (or proof of) G-d in science?
Moshe:
No, as much as I am firm believer in our G-d, I do not believe the two things can ever go together in harmony. We know the world created itself a few billion years ago and not 5762 years ago (according to the Jewish counting). We know that evolution is the culprit for that inexplicably destructive and increasingly contradictory thing called the human, the human was not made directly by G-d. Yet, the religious teachings really do make for a more peaceful and quality living if followed the same way by all people. In my view, religious belief and science do not negate one another on the philosophic level, but on the at-face-value level. The more you try to negate G-d the more you end up having to believe in something in its stead. Kierkegaard for all his trying to disprove G-d always came back to G-d. Camus' attempt to show that there is no G-d only shows how divine the emptiness is that is left behind once you eliminate G-d. Staunch atheism is ultimately only an active attempt at ignoring the question what is the divine if it is not G-d, not at answering it.
8) What area of law are you studying?
by gosand
According to the FAQ on your website, you are currently studying for your first law degree. With such a heavy technical background, especially in CS, I am curious as to what area of the law you are planning on going into. Is it a technology-related area? It would be nice to have some more technically-capable people in the law profession, especially those who are Linux friendly. Or is going into law just your way of making money for that early retirement?
Moshe:
I am studying law because at my age I already see how much faster younger programmers are than me. Back when I was in my early twenties nobody could beat me at programming. Nowadays, when I sit next to people like Andrea Arcangeli, I realize that programming, too, (even considering the advantage of experience) is for the young. Perhapes extreme programming, ie good quality, high speed programming, should be considered a sport and not an art or science or a skill. Since, I do not see myself being a programmer at 60 years (which is more than years from now), I deduced that I have to find a new job between then and now. Law is something that really goes well with progressing age. My area of law will be mergers/aquisitions, something that mainly bases on a wide-spread social network rather than talent or very intimate knowledge of the law. I do not actually intend to be a very good lawyer, just to be one.
9) Single Memory Space for openMosix
by Bytenik
Right now, as you've mentioned in the documentation, programs that access databases or shared memory do not derive any particular benefit from using openMosix.
Is there any work planned to enhance openMosix to support a single memory space among all nodes or to otherwise allow implicit sharing of memory? Is this what the "network RAM" research is attempting?
Implementing something along these lines in an efficient manner would hugely expand the range of problems that openMosix could be used to tackle.
Imagine being able to split a database transaction into hundreds of parts and run it in parallel on hundreds of openMosix nodes with a terabyte or more of combined RAM. The processes that share data would automatically migrate to the same node. Mmmmm good!
Moshe:
Network RAM is simply allowing mallocs or swap-outs to be done to the RAM of neighboring cluster node rather than to physical swap space on disk. In order to run databases under openMosix we will need to implement distributed shared memory. Due to the exceptional complexity of this project, I do not assume to have a valid implementation before the end of 2004.
10) IBM and Hercules?
by Jay Maynard
(I'm the maintainer of Hercules, an open source emulator for IBM mainframes that runs on Linux and Windows.)
You've mentioned Hercules in your column a couple of times, both quite favorably. Thanks!
One industry analyst from Germany has claimed repeatedly that IBM is getting ready to slap down Hercules with its lawyers, on the basis of some unspecified violations of their intellectual property rights. He's said that it's not just patent infringement, but refuses to go into exactly what else.
What effect would you think that taking such an action would have on IBM once the open source community finds out?
Moshe:
Hi Jay, long time no hear! I have heard similar rumours. If IBM is reading this: going against Hercules would be an extremely stupid move (not unlike the one by the asinine Adobe legal counsels against Sklyarov). Hercules only helps to sell more mainframes because as people familiarize with the Linux on the S/390 architecture, they will ultimately end up buying a mainframe to run their production workload. If you - as a vendor - want a particular computing platform to succeed, then you do everything possible to spread the gospel according to that platform. You don't go and destroy evangelists doing that for you. I use Hercules very often, and actually have an instance of Hercules running under Linux, with VM/ESA inside running Linux S/390 under it for about 3 months now. openMosix nicely balances the load across my 5 nodes cluster at home and I get very decent speed.
If IBM truly embraces Linux as just one of the members of the OpenSource family (rather than just Linux alone because it saves them billions in proprietary OS development) than it will not go against Hercules. If it does, then we all know that IBM is not serious about OpenSource and only taking advantage of it without really behaving like a good OpenSource citizen.
Moshe is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Moshe is... (Score:3, Funny)
remember, there IS no spoon!.
hence the fork.
Re:Moshe is... (Score:3, Funny)
The real question is do you plan to use OpenMosix to fork across mutiple hosts in order to reduce the normal runtime. By using 9 hosts you can reduce the runtime to 1 month.
Of course trying to admin 9 hosts simultaniously might be difficult.
About atheism (Score:5, Informative)
I believe that your comments were referring to what is called "strong atheism" which is an active disbelief in any god whatsoever, something distinct from agnosticism.
But, I think you're incorrect that atheists of any stripe ignore the question of what is divine, and fail to answer it. A strong atheist says that NOTHING is divine, and an agnostic atheist like myself says that nobody can show that anything is divine, so there's no reason to hypothesize it. That's a pretty direct answer to the question.
Re:About atheism (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess that I should point out that I have a skeptical side as well. I do not agree to the second statement, for a couple of reasons. First, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. If a god is claimed, I have no obligation to believe anything without support. Second, I do not think that it's necessary for an open mind. An open mind will conform to A), but I think that a skeptic with an open mind will not conform to B)
Parent
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
I claim I have a martian in my cellar. prove I don't!
you can't? so I must have one then.
sheesh!
Re:About atheism (Score:4, Insightful)
1) we are mortal. We want to know that we'll be OK when we croak.
2) rulers like to co-opt religion for 'devine authority', because it reinforces their powerful position within society. Spiritual/ethical rule is much cheaper than physical rule. Bin Laden does explicitly. George Bush does implicitly. Technically, communist countries are not religious, but communism is not just an economic theory of production--in some ways it has to be so pervasive because it has to provide many of the same ethical underpinnings of religion.
3) provides a foundation for ethical behaviour, justice. Not all evil deeds/events are punishable, such as children getting cancer--this is a social escape valve because bad deeds are either 'God's plan' or bad dooers will be punished in an 'afterlife'. There are many 'injustices' in life but riots do not ensue b/c of people's belief in ethical/religious 'levelling' effects.
4) provide emotional support, because 'God cares about each and every one of you!!'
Religion performs such an important function in every society, it is not suprising that so many diverse societies have so many religious beliefs. Is there some indiginous society that doesn't have a set of religious beliefs? I don't think so. Religions are often diverse, but they all perform the same role.
Incidently, why do you keep that poor martian in your cellar?
Cheers,
-b
Parent
Re:About atheism (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, at this point you're just playing word games. The point the earlier poster made about the psychology of religion seems pretty straight-forward:
I'm an average person. I look at the world, I see how things work. I don't have perfect knowledge, but through observation of the world around me I am able to continually correct mistakes in my understanding of the world. In short, I'm coming to understand, more or less, how things generally work.
But there's this problem. A lot of other folks believe in these other-worldly characters, some of whom (they say) have sentenced me to an eternity of torment because I don't believe in them. That's a pretty nasty claim, probably worth looking into.
After looking into it a bit, it appears to me (you have to make up your own minds) that these beliefs are most likely just a matter of wishful thinking and cultural influences. In short, the notion of a widespread need to believe in things like religion (regardless of whether it is a true description of the world) seems to fit my observations of the world more than the notion that any of these beliefs are true.
So, a psychological understanding of religion is helpful in trying to figure out what is going on in the world, but not out of some misguided attempt to disprove religion. I'm not influenced by any "strong interest in explaining religion through psychology", I just find it a useful indicator in my own quest at figuring out this world.
-Steve
Parent
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Informative)
a) There is no God.
b) There is no Paris.
Sorry, but NO. The burden of proof is ONLY on the one who claims existence, including the case of Paris, in which existence HAS been proven. People go and come from there, we see footage etc.
Take neutrinos. You don't have to build a detector inside a mine shaft and operate it yourself. You trust the reports that their existence has been proven, because they come from enough independent sources, and imagining all of them are building an elaborate lie is sillier than the simpler explanation - both the particle and the city actually exist. (Occam's razor)
The burden is there, it's just that it has been met successfully.
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
The burden is there, it's just that it has been met successfully.
(For the record, I am agnostic, but your argument seems weak)
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
To me the explanation that people are lieing and/or delusional is much, much more likely than Elvis' having risen from the dead. Jesus is no different... more unlikely even given the age of the reports.
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Funny)
In this case, God would be a lot simpler than a lot of the physics we have pulled out of our ass to explain the world, just remember that
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
Hardly. God is an excuse, not an explanation. It's passing the buck to a poorly (or perhaps I should say convieniently poorly) defined supernatural entity which itself needs even more explanation than the natural world it supposedly explains. More importantly, the explanation(s) for God and his actions are confined to (a particular) human culture (along with a whole hell of a lot of other explanations for the same things from cultures all over the world, many of which don't even involve god(s)), wheras the explanations of science are based on inference and experiment of the natural world, subject to provability and falsification. Modern physics is built around explanations difficult for anyone to comprehend but which are nonetheless extremely accurate and reproducible. Physics was not pulled out of anyones ass. Can't say the same for God.
Re:About atheism (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't understand the evidence for God, so it must have been pulled out of someone's ass. You probably need to study theology a little more before you can make such assumptions.
Parent
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
Proof: Suppose that such a prime exists. Call it p. Since p is even, it is divisible by two. However, we have already stated that p is greater than two; this means that p is divisible by something besides one and itself. This contradicts our supposition that p is prime. Proof by contradiction.
It follows that it is not impossible to prove that something does not exist.
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't take an abstract and limited system like discrete math and apply it directly in the real world, to anything but abstract and limited systems.
Discrete math describes computers, because computers make up their own little abstract and limited universe. It's totally synthetic.
Lacking omniscience, it is impossible to prove, or even show with any force, that something doesn't exist.
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, we have lots of evidence. Overwhelming quantities of evidence. We can't prove it because outside of formal systems in mathematics/logic, we can't prove anything. The world could have been created 5700 years ago with its fossil records, geological evidence, astronomical setup, etc created "just right"; it could also have been created 5700 seconds ago, with all of us already created, with our desks and computers and everything, and our memories pre-programmed to make us think we had a childhoood. None of this can be disproved, so it makes sense to look for the reasonable solution.
(And if you really want to believe in God, I think it would be nicer to believe in a God who isn't a confidence trickster, who wouldn't set up all these fossil records and stuff just to con us for his amusement...)
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
One can not assume rationality in a being that would torture humans for eternity if they don't belive that he exists.
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is, we have not proven Evolution by any means either.
Evolution has been actively observed, therefore, it is proven that it is a process in nature.
The only thing that isn't "proven" is that mankind itself (and most other animals) arose through evolution. For that, we only have overwhelming evidence.
Re:About atheism (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at it this way: taking Occam's Razor into account, if the simplest explanation is usually the "right" one, with evolution, it's the simplest explanation for the information we have. I guess that's debatable, if you think that assuming the existence of a superbeing is simpler than assuming everything happened on its own.
As for whether or not god exists, is it simpler to assume the universe just exists, or to assume that not only does it exist, but it was created by a superbeing of some sort? Personally, I think the second option adds a layer of unnecessary complexity.
I'll agree with the original poster - In response to Moshe's comment about atheists ignoring or avoiding the question of what is the devine, my response is just that I never thought there was any devine. I don't know what that means. It's not part of my world view. If that's disgusting to some people, I'm sorry, but I just haven't ever had an experience that could only be described as devine, so I have no reason to consider the question. I'm not avoiding it, I'm saying that it's moot to begin with.
Parent
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with the Bible is that, while it is a collection of people's different encouters with God, it's a bad translation of an nth hand version passed down by oral tradition.
The other problem is that the Bible isn't consistent with external evidence. Consider the following passage:
A cursory examination of any insect, including flying insects, reveals that it has six legs, not four. Any God that would go through all the trouble to write all the laws in Exodus and Leviticus, should at least be vaguely aware that insects have six legs. The lack of such knowledge tells me that the person(s) who wrote that law were probably priests, as opposed to, say, farmers or deities.
Now, granted, this doesn't mean that the core principles of Christianity (e.g. ressurection and redemption from sin) are false; only that the Bible isn't useful as evidence of God's existence, at least where reasonable non-believers are concerned.
(NB: I am aware of the claim that the original Hebrew reads "swarming things" for "insects", which could apply to rats. The problem is twofold: one, they specifically mention that the forbidden swarming things have wings, and the only swarming, winged thing that could remotely be described as having four legs, is a bat. The passage also mentions locusts, crickets, etc., as walking on all fours. It should be noted that the language is consistent across translations. Also note that I can't read Hebrew.)
Closed mindedness (Score:4, Insightful)
A person with an open mind is a person who will believe in something if they have been convinced.
A person with a closed mind is a person who will never believe in something, no matter what evidence is presented.
If you believe in something even though existence cannot be shown, then that's not a virtue, that's a fault of discrimination. Following that rule means that a person doesn't use their logical and reasoning abilities to determine what is true or what is not true. The pursuit of an open mind should not be confused with filling that mind with any garbage that comes along. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
Parent
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Informative)
And also, there is no such thing as "faith" in science. Either you can test a theory and show that the reality agrees with theory or you can't.
As for close mindedness, I believe there is a god that shit out the galaxies, from which we humans evolved. Are you going to be close minded or are you going to put my theory on your list next to intelligent design? No I can't prove my theory, but you can neither disprove it therefore you must accept it as possible. Is your flaw in your logic obvious or must I whip out the rigourous baseball bat of science?
t.
Re:About atheism (Score:4, Insightful)
I also happen to believe in evolution, all the way from single cellular critters to humans, whales, birds, and what have you.
I'm not, however, so blind that I'm going to say that it's a "fact" - because there's a good bit that we can't yet explain through it (consider just how freaking complex something like your eye is -- and where did it evolve from? Any creatures that had intermediate stages have apparantly been expunged from the world), and there's some pretty big freaking missing links involved. (I'll happily play devil's advocate against anyone who starts spouting creationism as a fact too... but they're often way too easy to shoot down).
A lot of religious scientists do reconcile the creationism/evolution discrepancies, and in a fairly rational way. God didn't make the universe in 7 Earth days, it's just an allegory. Note that in most versions of the bible Genesis has the creation of the animals in evolutionary order -- although I personally don't know if this is in the original texts or an artifact of translation. Similarly god nudged evolution in specific directions, or some even say that small scope evolution is inherent in every creature, but that those evolutionary paths were already available for it and they just needed the proper environment to become active (and when 97% of our DNA appears to be "junk" that has no real use, and we share 85% of our DNA with a zebrafish, it's pretty damn hard to definitively disprove the idea, at least from my limited understanding of genetics).
Even as an atheist, I have to admit that a certain few people have had a long lasting impact on our culture. Of course, this isn't solely limited to religious figures like Jesus and Mohammud, but also other political and military figures like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Confucious (arguably religious), and so forth. But the religious ones seem to have had a somewhat higher impact. You may be able to explain that as humanity wanting/needing explanation and something greater than itself. But that's just as much of an explanation as belief in a higher being in the first place.
What it boils down to is that macroevolution is not proven, and people who wander around proclaiming that it is a cold hard fact are doing science and scientists a disservice. The Creationists are very much correct in stating that while you may not have a blind faith in God, you have supplanted that blind faith with another - the god of Technology and Science.
Parent
Re:DARWIN on the EYE (Score:3, Interesting)
> your eye is -- and where did it evolve from?
'to suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
and chromatic aberration could have been formed by natural
selection, seems, i freely confess, absurd in the highest
degree.'
(Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species)
'The eye is created by the light, for the Light' (Goethe)
regards,
john [earthlink.net]
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Informative)
See also this massive blog fest [pigsandfishes.org] which summarizes the history.
t.
Re:About atheism (Score:5, Informative)
Agnosticism was a word coined by Thomas Huxley, as a play on the gnostics, who claimed special knowledge of God. Agnosticism is not a metaphysical statement like atheism is, it's an epistemic statement. In other words, it's not a statement about the nature of the universe or the existence of God; it's a statement about the nature of knowledge and the limitations on it.
An agnostic might believe in God. An agnostic might be an atheist. But in either case, an agnostic believes that knowledge on the subject is not possible. An agnostic believes that it is impossible to prove the existence of nonexistence of God.
Atheism and agnosticism are completely orthogonal. You can be a theistic agnostic, or an atheistic agnostic. From your statement above, you're not an agnostic, because your beliefs leave open the possibility of confirmation or disproof of God's existence, and that's exactly what agnostics don't believe are possible. Your description indicates that you are, however, a negative, or "weak", atheist.
Parent
Re:About atheism (Score:4, Insightful)
Well done!
As Isaac Asimov said:
People act like the concept of God somehow requires one step more lightly, and less logically. How many people would say "I will neither believe, nor disbelieve, that there is an Easter Bunny until someone offers proof one way or the other"? Christians are quick to dismiss Norse gods, Roman gods, Mayan gods, Greek gods, and the gods of ancient Egypt (to name but a few examples). Yet there is no more evidence of the existence of the Christian God than their is for the existence of these other gods.
I am a modern man with logic and reasoning. I do not believe in all-powerful, invisible beings that turn people can be turned to pillers of salt, that someone put two of every animal on earth into a boat, or that someone parted the sea just because ancient people wrote down those claims 2,000 years ago.
Parent
Re:About atheism (Score:5, Insightful)
"That a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality"
- George Bernard Shaw
Which even in an athiests view is the ultimate goal of an honest religioun.
Perhaps you shouldn't speak of all atheists. I'm a bit confused as to the notion of an "honest" religion which doesn't care whether or not what it's saying is true, so long as it makes people happy.
Parent
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
And that is exactly what is wrong with religion. For millenia, people have had that same attitude. "Why doe X do Y?" - "I don't know, must be God." Science seeks to actually find out. We can look farther into the universe now than ever before. We can see things "up close" that would have been called gods at earlier times in human history. Comets? Not exactly angry gods pummeling the earth, but hunks of frozen debris hurtling through space. One of my biggest problems with religion is that it disuades people from asking "Why?" and from admitting "I don't know." Science is eager to find things it doesn't know. But for science, we would have rested on our laurels for far too long. Why? Don't know. Must be God.
Re:About atheism (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that if you attempt to use the question "Can God create a stone too heavy for even Him to lift?" in an attempt to disprove the possibility of the existance of an omnipotent being, you'd also have to challenge the concept of infinity, which is certainly valid even in human mathematics.
What is the maximum weight of a stone which an all-powerful God can create? Infinite.
What is the maximum lifting power of God? Infinite.
So, which is greater, infinity or infinity? Another poster came up with the answer, "God can create and lift ANY stone", which is also pretty good. It's beyond us to compare two such concepts, just as it's beyond us to compare infinity with itself. But just because I'm not capable of fully understanding/scientifically proving something does not mean that I can't/shouldn't believe in it. We still don't even understand the Earth's own oceans; when I ask my brother what a particular thing in his saltwater tank eats, the answer half of the time is, "No one really knows."
Programming for the young? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trying to be a pompous ass, I'm just trying to say that there's more to software development than breakneck coding speed, stuff that only comes from years of experience.
Re:Programming for the young? (Score:4, Informative)
yes, the kids today have more raw stamina than someone of my age. but there's just no way they could have such a fine tuned understanding of the art of programming; and more important, seen enough of the 'world' to have an eye for what will work in a given situation and what wont.
not saying I want to move into management (yikes!) but more as a designer and less as a raw coder. isn't that pretty usual, these days?
Parent
Re:Programming for the young? (Score:4, Interesting)
A very good project manager with excellent knowledge, but that knowledge is a hinderance because of how much of the picture he knows.
I think of it along the lines of a lot of logic puzzles: There are many that the young (12 or less) can do in 5 minutes, but an adult will ponder for hours because they have too much experience to think about the problem properly. Too many options are available...
Parent
Re:Programming for the young? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a good point, one that deserves two ansers:
I don't think too many fresh-out programmers appreciate what it took to get programming where it is today, and not many would survive that environment nowadays.
It is better that they don't have to!
This is not that far from other industries. I think they should learn the history of programming, it can teach good skills, like memory and storage management. But don't be limited by that stuff, or you won't grow. The older guys can give that perspective, and the younger guys can pick up the ball and run, pushing the limits of current systems.
"Why, I used to be able to create a program in 50k of space. Now kids are putting things in 50M of space." You have to look at it as an evolving thing. The 50M code probably could be tweaked to fit in a smaller space, but the 50k code simply doesn't have the horsepower to contend with the new stuff. Do you need to know assembler to program Java? No. Do we still need assembler programmers around? Yes. Will we always? Probably not.
No stable API? (Score:3, Insightful)
An advantage to whom? Not to the user, who may have some obsolete hardware that they wan't to use with a newer distribution. If the driver branch hasn't been kept up to date, then since the API may not be compatible there's less chance of things working.
Cheers,
Ian
On creation and evolution (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I reconcile creationism and evolution through a very simple statement.
It took God 7 days to create the universe. No one can presume to know how long one of God's days lasted. Plenty of time in one of God's days for evolution to occur.
No contradiction at all.
Re:On creation and evolution (Score:3, Informative)
To quote a couple of paraphrased examples in your favour: "the trees of the fields will clap their hands", and "the eye of the Lord runs to and fro throughout the earth". Most Christians, would say that these are actually literally true. But to be actually literally true, the trees of the fields would have to have hands like ours and the Lord's eye ball has to run around on legs. Fortunately, for the Christian, it is better to say that the figures of speech describe things that are 100% true. So, the Christian should be standing up for the intended meaning. It's just that most North Americans are so used to thinking skeptically from a literal stand point, that it is difficult to interpret the text.Perhaps I misunderstand you. This doesn't sound redundant to me at all. I believe that God can use the resources available to him to produce *exactly* what he wants. The Bible says that he can raise up rocks to be children of Abraham. In that context, Jesus Christ was speaking, and he wasn't speaking figuratively at all. He was trying to be emphatic about the Father's skills. Therefore, I don't believe that it is too great a task for God to use error prone man to create a Bible.I don't believe that there are any losses in translations, so I guess I'm free to go now?
If you will you allow me to digress just for a moment, I try to tie this next example in. In the book of Acts, there is a man described as "the chief man of the island", according to the KJV. The point is that the man wasn't described as the chief, big wig, or the leader. Many non-Christians claimed that this was just a made up fable or whatever. When archelogists found manuscripts describing "the chief man of the island" [in the original language of course], they began to see that the Bible does have some credibility. My point is that the Bible is trying to be a context sensitive compilation of 66 books, as opposed to 1 text book.
Thus, in the gospels, different authors will try to describe the same events, in different ways to make different points. The one about the centurian and his servant is a perfect example of my point. Matthew states, "...there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him...", and "...the centurian answered...". Luke states, "...and when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him...", and "...the centurian sent friends to him, saying unto him...".
I'm going to continue in another post, because I don't want Netscape to crash and loose this entire message. Netscape crashes on me when my messages get too big.
bitkeeper (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Larry stated his opinion about this here [kerneltrap.org]
The other question is: would it be so difficult to produce a bk-compatible openBK? Don't think so either. If the community continues to adopt bk at this rate, sooner or alter, someone will come out with an openBK for sure. Welcome to the wonderful world of OpenSource!
If "the community" had produced anything better than CVS, bit keeper wouldn't exist, and Linus/Linux would be using it. Welcome to the wonderful world of OpenSource!
Re:bitkeeper (Score:3, Insightful)
A tool like CVS is good enough to get the job done, roughly speaking, but it is not best-of-breed for a number of reasons.
Why do these projects stop when they are good enough? Is it due to a lack of a strong maintainer, as ESR recommends? Or is it something else?
I'm interested to hear what others think.
Kernel API stability (Score:3, Interesting)
I would very, very much prefer if the driver API were frozen at least for the "stable" kernel series. I don't really mind what happens in 2.5.x.
I understand and agree with Linus' philosophy that large-scale code breakages are sometimes required to force reluctant stragglers to adapt to a new, improved API. Just don't do this in a "stable" kernel series!
IMHO the world would also be a better place if binary-only driver vendors (read NVIDIA) had to target only one, stable kernel API. But feel free to disagree...
Device drivers (Score:3, Informative)
I completely disagree with the above statement. As a device driver writer with experience being involved in Windows, Mac, Linux, SCO Unix, AIX device drivers let me say that although Linux drivers are the easiest to write, they are the most difficult to support. A device driver that works for Windows 2000 can often work on Windows Me or Windows XP with no changes at all or at most fairly minimal changes. Under Windows you can have a single binary that runs on Win 98/Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Under Linux you need a different binary for practically every different kernel. I have had Linux drivers break from kernel 2.4.x to 2.4.x+1 on more than one occasion.
There are lots of things to dislike about Windows or Mac device driver development but unstable API's is not one of them. There are lots of things to like about Linux driver development but API stability/driver compatibility is not one of them.
Re:Damn, I missed this one. (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Muy-shee
2) Moh-sheh
3) May-sheh
All with stress on the penultimate syllable.
The third is not nearly as common as the others.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
But they disagree on whether or not this same restriction applies to English words that refer to God. There's a famous story about Rabbi Joseph B. Soleveitchik (ztz"l), "The Rav", one of the most influential Orthodox rabbis of the 20th century: He visited a classroom in the school he was running, and observed that one of the teachers had written "G-d" on the blackboard. The Rav, in front of the students, wrote "GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD" all over the blackboard, and then erased it.
Also, even for the Hebrew names, if you're displaying the name on a computer screen, I don't think this rule applies. I think there are some people who would say that it doesn't even apply when you're using a printing press rather than holding a pen and writing.
But there are some who use "G-d" instead, either because they follow a stricter opinion or because that's what everyone else in their community does. Heck, there are some people who put dashes in the middle of English transliterations of Hebrew euphemisms for names of God. Go figure.
(Disclaimer: I am not a rabbi.)
Parent
Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
L-rd
G-d
YHVH
Shocking, I know. When Our L-rd personally scribbled the Torah down on paper, He did it in Hebrew because that language doesn't have any of those temptation-inducing, voluptuous sounding vowels. After all, during fornication many people vocalize nothing but vowel sounds. Fortunately, since Y is only sometimes a vowel, it is allowed.
Why Our L-rd took went to the effort of personally appearing as a burning bush before Moses (when he could have just dropped him a note the same way he wrote the Torah) is still a mystery. Perhaps Moses was a skeptic.
FN-RD
Parent
Re:G-d & Un*x (Score:5, Funny)
From the Jargon File [tuxedo.org]:
Source: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/UNX.h tml
Parent
Re:Too bad about the Israel Boycott question... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Kierkegaard trying to disprove God? (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, that's right, and to think, we just call it trolling aroung these parts...