We don't need more Continental philosophers. We need all the Analytic philosophers we can get. A curriculum that emphasizes rigorous thinking skills and logic is an invaluable foundation for CS as well as every other valuable human endeavor.
Philosophy also teaches one to carefully define terms and examine underlying assumptions. Clearly stating the problem often makes the solution obvious.
She answered that question already, in paragraph #3:
"I idolized Archimedes, Galileo, da Vinci, Faraday, Newton, Maxwell, Tesla, Pasteur, and Darwin. I couldn’t believe they were all dead, and that I would never get to meet them and hear them talk."
You have a point there considering that a few of those were considered either lunatics, heretics or idiots in their own time. And I'm not convinced that we'd be able to recognize their genius even with an additional 20-30 years with them.
I agree. I want to support fellow HNers, so I hesitated a moment before closing the tab. But in the end I'm not going to give away my email address just to find out what this thing does.
The word "hacker" has a highly negative connotation to the mass media. This site may as well be called "Terrorist News" from their POV. The last thing our SOPA opposition needs is to be associated with "hackers" in the popular press. For that reason I vote No.
While I'm a big fan of naps, I'm not a big fan of government. It's not their job to legislate when we sleep, and the Law of Unintended Consequences assures that it would be a disaster.
A better approach is to start your own business, and incorporate naps into the company culture.
Same here. I've been allowing myself to sleep pretty much whenever I feel like it for the past several months, and I don't appear to have any sleep pattern. Sometimes I sleep 3 or 4 hours, and wake up feeling well-rested and ready to get back to work; other times I'll sleep 12 hours at a stretch. It's irrespective of the 24-hour day. After reading your comment, I'm going to start logging my sleep, to see if there's any noticeable pattern. Thanks.
If you removed artificial lighting (including computer screens, tv, etc) from your life between sunset and sunrise, I can almost guarantee your sleep would fall into a pattern. Artificial light wrecks havoc on our automatic systems and stops our internal clocks from properly tracking time.
I highly recommend you try this for a month. Have a set time (say, 10-12PM) after which you will be able to get 8 hours of sleep and declare that blackout time: no lights, candles, tvs, computers, phones, etc. You will be amazed when within that month you aquire the ability to go to sleep and wake at the same times each day.
I have a hunch that you might be absolutely right. But it's unclear to me whether following this advice would improve my quality of life. Right now I'm productive, working whenever I can without respect to the clock. Limiting my productivity just so I can conform to an Earth day seems like it could be counterproductive.
Painters were copying paintings long before digital film made the practice easy. Musicians were covering other musicians long before the advent of mechanical sound recording. Copying is an inherent facet of the arts. It's our natural way of appreciating other people's work. It has nothing to do with technological ease.
Forgery has neer been seen as a legitimate undertaking in the world of painting. While pieces of art have always been heavily derivative, it has never been common for artists to forge. The first reason for this being the ethical implications behind it, and the second being the massive amount of effort required to accurately copy a masterpiece. Even those forgeries that have fooled experts for some time pale in comparison to the real thing.
Furthermore, whats being discussed now is not analogous to the topic of forgery. A more apt comparison would be likening the piracy of music to viewing photographs of Vermeer's work. Yet even this isn't a perfect fit, as one can argue ( and quite correctly in my opinion ) that viewing a photograph of a Vermeer is in no way is the same as seeing it in person. And almost invariably the owners of these paintings charge money for access to them. While these parties are generally not profiting off of these fees money still needs to be paid for access.
In the case of audio files, the ease at which one can copy and distribute a perfect replica of the original work certainly does contribute to its ubiquity. If one could only download a 96kbit/s CBR mp3 of a song, I'd bet far fewer people would be downloading their music.
Democrats tend to favor government regulations of any kind, while Republicans are somewhat more likely to oppose them in general. So it doesn't surprise me at all.
While you're right, that's why I wrote "somewhat more likely". Republicans may not favor limited government today, but on average they are still less likely than Democrats to support regulation. The OP's link demonstrates this tendency.
