Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 19:07:23 +0200 From: Mario Hoerich <spambox@MHoerich.de> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: jahnke@fmjassoc.com, youshi10@u.washington.edu, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: IE in FreeBSD? Message-ID: <20050918170722.GA36371@Pandora.MHoerich.de> In-Reply-To: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNAEGDFCAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> References: <1126889851.702.74.camel@localhost> <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNAEGDFCAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com>
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# Ted Mittelstaedt:
> # On Behalf Of Frank Jahnke
> >
> >filled out and saved on a FreeBSD system?
> >
>
> PDF doesn't belong in complex forms that are filled out online. I use
> PDF at my job and we use it for one use only - contracts. A contract
> must be in paper with a human's signature on it to have any validity
> whatsoever in a court of law, despite what you may read otherwise.
In Germany, electronic signatures conforming to the conditions in
§17 SiG ("signature law") and §15 Annex 1 SigV ("signature decree")
are as valid as a "hard" signature and can (for example) be used for
communication with government departments.
The world doesn't end on US borders.
> >>The Mac isn't
> >> a gateway to UNIX by any means. Apple made it easy for Mac users to
> >> continue to be stone stupid, and the Mac users by and large chose to
> >> stay stone stupid. Apple knows it's customer base that's for sure.
*Shrug*. I'm a CS + Math student and I've used FreeBSD since 3.3
(Linux before). I don't think I'm stone stupid. Yet I happen to
like my Powerbook.
> >I find this attitude to be very distressing, but remarkably common.
Yup.
> >Sure, users are not as informed as they might be, and they can do stupid
> >things. But they use the computer as a tool to do certain tasks, and
> >they shouldn't have to know about how the computer works to accomplish
> >those tasks.
>
> Yah yah yah. I hear the same thing about cars - "we shouldn't need to
> know how a car works to drive it" Sure - sounds great.
Cars != computers. With cars, failure to understand their basic
features is likely to get people killed. I don't see that kind
of risk with ordinary PCs. The analogy is thus pointless.
You could just as well demand that anyone ever using mathematics
knows the entire theory behind it. Next time you assume that
"1*(1 + 1) = 2" (in |R), please take a brief moment to remind
yourself that the result is guaranteed to exist solely because |R
is a field and thus both (|R, +) and (|R, *) form abelean groups,
i.e. |R is closed under both addition and multiplication.
Please remember as well the proof that 1 is uniquely identified,
2 defined as 1+1 and thus 2 is uniquely identified as well.
Don't forget that 1 is also the neutral element of (|R, *)
and thus you can safely assume that 1*(1+1) = (1+1).
And sure as hell hope you never need \pi, because that's a
rather unpleasant series, even using the simple Leibniz
formula.
> It's like teaching mathematics in school. You can teach the kids to do
> addition, subtraction, multiplication and division by hand, so they
> understand what is going on,
No, they don't. Mathematics in school is nothing but a "desktop"
for real mathematics. With just school mathematics, you don't
understand the slightest thing of what's going on, but you've
learned how to use it. The above example is *very* basic (this
is the stuff you usually learn at the very beginning of your
first math-lecture at a university), but you won't learn any
of that in school. At least not around here.
A more advanced example are integrals. You learn how to integrate,
but you haven't got the slightest clue an integral is really defined
as (from the top of my head)
\int f := \sum_{k=1}^{\infty} f_k
where each f_k is a step function, i.e. an element of the
vector space \mathcal{F}_{ST}(|R,|R) spanned by the elementary
functions g_i. That is:
f_k := \sum_{i=1}^{k} \lamda_i g_i
with
g_i(x) := \begin{cases}1 & x \in [a,b[ \\ 0 & otherwise\end{cases}
There's a *lot* of theory behind those few lines and believe me,
it ain't pretty or simple. However, there's no reason anyone
but a mathematician should care about this.
That's why the "desktop" school mathematics exists. So people
who aren't interested in mathematics won't have to deal with
its intricacies.
I think this is a better analogy than yours, because in both cases
i) the matters involved are widely considered complicated.
ii) the users have to deal with "virtual" quantities, i.e. they
can't touch them. This tends to be a problem for many people.
iii) the risks involved are pretty much the same.
None of this applies to cars.
> >It seems that you are arguing the BSDs (Free, Net, Open and so on)
> >should be used only for servers (and perhaps a few other applications
> >like embedded systems), and to leave the desktop to the Mac and Windows.
>
> No, you are missing the point totally. I'm arguing that the so-called
> "desktop" isn't important.
For you. There's other needs than yours and they're of no less
importance.
> The desktop needs to serve as a portal to the real applications
> and processing, which is centralized. It is a means to an end,
> not an end itself. The servers in the center that are doing the
> Really Important Work are of course all FreeBSD.
This doesn't exactly make sense for home PCs. I'll certainly not
stick another machine in my single room appartment so I have a
"server".
[ data on notebooks ]
> Move the data to a central location and the notebook becomes a dumb
> window with no data on it, and there's no need to pay attention to
> the notebook.
Not all the world's a company. And I certainly wouldn't like
my data or applications on a "central location" not owned and
controlled by me.
> It's a shame these days that people have so little respect for someone
> else's point of view that they are more concerned with the feelings of
> the person than the actual ideas of that person. I think you've been
> around those government shirts too long, you've been contaminated
> by political correctness. Tell me, do you really believe in anything
> anymore or is everything just shades of gray to you? Sorry
> though I forgot the words to Kumbiya.
>
> Jesus, at least call me an asshole then I will have some hope you
> actually believe what your saying!
Ad hominem attacks are *precisely* what implies disrespect with
another's ideas. Besides, they usually show a notable lack of
both self-discipline and arguments. They're not really efficient
either.
Regards,
Mario
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