I've not tried a linux distro yet, but have been reading about them on their
different websites.

One of the things that puzzles me is to what extent it matters whether one
uses KDE or GNOME or something else?  I realise that each probably has a
different feel, but is that all that there is that's different?  

I was looking at the website for Linux Mint last night and rather liked the
look of XFCE.  Now I don't know if one can use XFCE in any distro...


Also if I want to run an app that's distributed in binary form only, and is
written using Qt, does it follow that I can only run the app if I'm using
KDE?

Can one install multiple desktops and switch between them? 



-- 
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to newsreplynnn@wingsandbeaks.org.uk replacing "nnn" by "284".  

On 2009-09-19, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:

> Can one install multiple desktops and switch between them? 

For example Slackware comes with kde, xfce, fluxbox, blackbox,
WindowMaker,fvwm2 and twm. Gnome is available by 3rd party.

Andrew

-- 
Do you think that's air you're breathing?

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:

> I've not tried a linux distro yet, but have been reading about them on
> their different websites.
> 
> One of the things that puzzles me is to what extent it matters whether
> one
> uses KDE or GNOME or something else?  I realise that each probably has
> a different feel, but is that all that there is that's different?
> 
> I was looking at the website for Linux Mint last night and rather
> liked the
> look of XFCE.  Now I don't know if one can use XFCE in any distro...
> 
> 
> Also if I want to run an app that's distributed in binary form only,
> and is written using Qt, does it follow that I can only run the app if
> I'm using KDE?
> 
> Can one install multiple desktops and switch between them?
> 
> 
> 

I've installed Gnome on a CentOS system, and then ended up switching to
KDE (I don't recall why, it just seemed better, it's been too long
since I've used Gnome to recall).  Most of the stuff I do is in
shell/cli all day anyway, so I really don't use it a whole lot. 
Personally, I would use KDE, but CentOS allows you to simply switch
back and forth and use whatever one you want, when you want.  I'm sure
it's the same for others.  It's been too long since I've used
fvwm2/xfce to comment on them and I've not used any of the rest.  I'm
pretty happy in the cli, unless it's email, usenet or web surfing (for
which I use KDE 3.x)  So, yeah, you can switch between the different
types.

Thanks for the reply.

andrew <andrew@skamandros.invalid> wrote:

> On 2009-09-19, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
<jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:
> 
> > Can one install multiple desktops and switch between them? 
> 
> For example Slackware comes with kde, xfce, fluxbox, blackbox,
> WindowMaker,fvwm2 and twm. Gnome is available by 3rd party.

OK, but does "comes with" mean that in essence you choose one and live with
it?  Win XP comes with Outlook etc, and if you once started using that it'd
be impractical to use other mail clients as well.  

Or can you shut one desktop down and start another, then shut it and try
something else, then go back to the first...?

Or does choosing one have implications for the way some (or most or all)
apps will then get configured?

If you run a particular app under KDE, then shut KDE and start XFCE, can you
still run the same app?  (I dare say it will look a bit different, but will
it function the same way?)



-- 
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to newsreplynnn@wingsandbeaks.org.uk replacing "nnn" by "284".  

Jeremy Nicoll writes:
> OK, but does "comes with" mean that in essence you choose one and live
> with it?

No, of course not.

> Or does choosing one have implications for the way some (or most or all)
> apps will then get configured?

No.

> If you run a particular app under KDE, then shut KDE and start XFCE, can you
> still run the same app?

Yes, of course.

> I dare say it will look a bit different, but will it function the same
> way?

Yes, of course.  You can use any "desktop environment" or none at all.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhasler@newsguy.com
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk>
writes:

> I've not tried a linux distro yet, but have been reading about them on their
> different websites.
>
> One of the things that puzzles me is to what extent it matters whether one
> uses KDE or GNOME or something else?  I realise that each probably has a
> different feel, but is that all that there is that's different?  

That depends on you point of view. KDE, Gnome, XFCE etc. are desktop
environments build on top of GNU/Linux (or other Unix-like systems) and
the X Window System. They give you a different look & feel but have the
same system under the hood. How much they deffer depends on how you are
working with them.


> I was looking at the website for Linux Mint last night and rather liked the
> look of XFCE.  Now I don't know if one can use XFCE in any distro...

Most of the major Linux distributions will let you use XFCE as desktop
environment. Some of them, like Xubuntu, use it as the default, while
with others you have to explicitly install it.


> Also if I want to run an app that's distributed in binary form only, and is
> written using Qt, does it follow that I can only run the app if I'm using
> KDE?

No. Qt is a library to build (GUI) applications. Qt applications run
on every desktop environment if you have Qt installed.

The XWindow-Overview-HOWTO
<http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XWindow-Overview-HOWTO/index.html> can give you
a nice overview about thing like that.


> Can one install multiple desktops and switch between them? 

Yes, with most major distributions you can install multiple desktop
environments and you choose at login time what you want to use.


   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/software/shell-scripts/>

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:
> I've not tried a linux distro yet, but have been reading about them on their
> different websites.
> 
> One of the things that puzzles me is to what extent it matters whether one
> uses KDE or GNOME or something else?  I realise that each probably has a
> different feel, but is that all that there is that's different?  

That is about it. Some have some different little applications built in, but 
they do not matter very much.

I happen to use Gnome because I thought KDE was too complicated. I run Red 
Hat Enterprise Linux on this machine and CentOS 4 on my other machine.

With these distros, you can load both of these, but use only one at a time. 
If you load both, there is an item somewhere in the menus where you select 
the one you want; each user can select a different one. The system remembers 
which you select and you get it the next time. But you can switch anytime.
> 
> I was looking at the website for Linux Mint last night and rather liked the
> look of XFCE.  Now I don't know if one can use XFCE in any distro...
> 
> 
> Also if I want to run an app that's distributed in binary form only, and is
> written using Qt, does it follow that I can only run the app if I'm using
> KDE?

No; I have Qt loaded on my machine, and I never loaded KDE at all.
> 
> Can one install multiple desktops and switch between them? 
> 
Yes.

-- 
   .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
   /V\  PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A         Registered Machine   241939.
  /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey    http://counter.li.org
  ^^-^^ 20:40:01 up 23 days, 14:44, 3 users, load average: 4.81, 4.46, 4.33

On Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:59:55 +0100, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:

> I've not tried a linux distro yet, but have been reading about them on
> their different websites.

Why not boot up some of the Live CDs? It won't do a thing to your current 
setup.

> 
> One of the things that puzzles me is to what extent it matters whether
> one uses KDE or GNOME or something else?  I realise that each probably
> has a different feel, but is that all that there is that's different?
> 

Pretty much. 

> I was looking at the website for Linux Mint last night and rather liked
> the look of XFCE.  Now I don't know if one can use XFCE in any distro...
> 

Pretty much.

> 
> Also if I want to run an app that's distributed in binary form only, and
> is written using Qt, does it follow that I can only run the app if I'm
> using KDE?

No - you just need the libraries. Most distros will handle the 
dependencies when you install the program.

> 
> Can one install multiple desktops and switch between them?

Certainly. You install several, for example, in Ubuntu and there will be 
a drop down list from which you can choose at the login screen.

On 2009-09-20, Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8@verizon.net> wrote:

>> Also if I want to run an app that's distributed in binary form
>> only, and is written using Qt, does it follow that I can only
>> run the app if I'm using KDE?
>
> No; I have Qt loaded on my machine, and I never loaded KDE at all.

As long as it's a Qt app and not a KDE app, then all you need
is Qt and you don't need KDE.  

That said, you can use KDE apps even if you're not _running_
KDE as your desktop (you will need the libraries installed.
Likewise for Gnome apps.  In my experience the apps will
generally work, though sometimes a particular feature (e.g. the
help system), might not work if you haven't set up a few things
in the app's desktop environment.

I run XFCE as my desktop, yet I use both KDE and Gnome apps
sometimes.

-- 
Grant

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
<jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:

> I've not tried a linux distro yet, but have been reading about
> them on their different websites.
>
> One of the things that puzzles me is to what extent it matters
> whether one uses KDE or GNOME or something else? I realise that
> each probably has a different feel, but is that all that there
> is that's different?

No. They each require a lot of experience and study to learn to
use comfortably and what you learn about one won't necessarily
help you with the other.

>
> I was looking at the website for Linux Mint last night and
> rather liked the look of XFCE. Now I don't know if one can use
> XFCE in any distro...

Why not? They are just suites of graphical applications.

> Also if I want to run an app that's distributed in binary form
> only, and is written using Qt, does it follow that I can only
> run the app if I'm using KDE?

No. Usually you will need to install the kdelibs to run kde
apps, though.

>
> Can one install multiple desktops and switch between them?
>

Why not? They are just suites of graphical applications.

You would be much better off to just do a minimal X install (just
a simple window manager and x-term plus the graphical apps you
want to run.) and learn to run Linux from the commmand line.
Takes just as much time and allows you to run Linux anywhere,
regardless of the distro.

You need a GUI, you do not need a GDE. They are invaders from
the Windows world and will just mess up your ability to run Linux
in the long run.

Sid

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:

> I've not tried a linux distro yet, but have been reading about them on
> their different websites.
> 
> One of the things that puzzles me is to what extent it matters whether one
> uses KDE or GNOME or something else?  I realise that each probably has a
> different feel, but is that all that there is that's different?

Depends on what you consider to be part of the feel.
The Gnome teem are determined to remove anything that might confuse poor
old aunt Tilie. If you just want to be able to find all of your apps in the
menu it's what your after.

KDE on the other hand has pretty much all of the configuration options that 
you could want[1]. The design philosophy is that they should all be placed
where you would expect them to be.

XFCE's main goal is to be vary sparing in how it uses the hard ware.
This makes it a little harder to use but it's still much easier than a
bare windowing manager like icewm.

> I was looking at the website for Linux Mint last night and rather liked
> the
> look of XFCE.  Now I don't know if one can use XFCE in any distro...
> 
> 
> Also if I want to run an app that's distributed in binary form only, and
> is written using Qt, does it follow that I can only run the app if I'm
> using KDE?

> Can one install multiple desktops and switch between them?
Generally you can change which one you use while logging in.

[1]Well KDE 3.5.x did. KDE 4.3.x has most of the missing ones back now and 
some others as well.

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:
> I've not tried a linux distro yet, but have been reading about them on their
> different websites.
> 
> One of the things that puzzles me is to what extent it matters whether one
> uses KDE or GNOME or something else?  I realise that each probably has a
> different feel, but is that all that there is that's different?  
> 
> I was looking at the website for Linux Mint last night and rather liked the
> look of XFCE.  Now I don't know if one can use XFCE in any distro...
> 
> 
> Also if I want to run an app that's distributed in binary form only, and is
> written using Qt, does it follow that I can only run the app if I'm using
> KDE?
> 
> Can one install multiple desktops and switch between them? 
> 
> 
I believe so, BUT each distro that is more or less geared at end users 
rather than people who like playing with computers, tends to gear a 
complete suite of apps designed to work under one desktop manager.

Frankly the desktop manager is the least of my concerns. As long as it 
has an easy way to launch programs, and resize windows, I really 
couldn't give a toss.


> 

Thanks to everyone for their replies, so far.  Very helpful.

Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:

> You would be much better off to just do a minimal X install (just
> a simple window manager and x-term plus the graphical apps you
> want to run.) and learn to run Linux from the commmand line.
> Takes just as much time and allows you to run Linux anywhere,
> regardless of the distro.
> 
> You need a GUI, you do not need a GDE.

Interesting; I've an IBM mainframe systems programming background so
command-lines etc do not particularly worry me.  In fact I tend to loathe
GUIs that hide what's really going on, interpreting error messages for me,
hiding all the stuff in config files etc.

OTOH I have a feeling that getting started in Linux might be easier with
some sort of GUI, and I can explore config files etc when I feel like it.


Someone suggested trying some live CDs; I'm pondering that.  One problem is
I have a chronic illness and concentration is hard a lot of the time. Lack
of data persistence on live systems makes it harder to keep notes in situ
that remind one of what one did last time...


-- 
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to newsreplynnn@wingsandbeaks.org.uk replacing "nnn" by "284".  

On 2009-09-20, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:
> OTOH I have a feeling that getting started in Linux might be easier with
> some sort of GUI, and I can explore config files etc when I feel like it.

Personally, I think it doesn't matter one way or the other how you start
out.  But if you want a browser like Firefox running, you need some sort
of X and window manager.  But as many others have pointed out, you don't
need GNOME or KDE for this purpose.

> Someone suggested trying some live CDs; I'm pondering that.  One problem is
> I have a chronic illness and concentration is hard a lot of the time. Lack
> of data persistence on live systems makes it harder to keep notes in situ
> that remind one of what one did last time...

There are at least two ways around this problem: 1) mount a writable
disk from within your live system, and write your notes there; 2) if
possible, find a live CD that supports booting from a pen drive or
similar, buy a bunch of them, and use them for testing.

--keith

-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk>
writes:

> Thanks to everyone for their replies, so far.  Very helpful.
>
> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
>> You would be much better off to just do a minimal X install (just
>> a simple window manager and x-term plus the graphical apps you
>> want to run.) and learn to run Linux from the commmand line.
>> Takes just as much time and allows you to run Linux anywhere,
>> regardless of the distro.
>> 
>> You need a GUI, you do not need a GDE.
>
> Interesting; I've an IBM mainframe systems programming background so
> command-lines etc do not particularly worry me.  In fact I tend to loathe
> GUIs that hide what's really going on, interpreting error messages for me,
> hiding all the stuff in config files etc.

Fellow mainframer here.

I wouldn't pay much attention to Sid.  He's really in a world of his own.

> OTOH I have a feeling that getting started in Linux might be easier with
> some sort of GUI, and I can explore config files etc when I feel like it.

Yes, that is the case.

> Someone suggested trying some live CDs; I'm pondering that.  One problem is
> I have a chronic illness and concentration is hard a lot of the time. Lack
> of data persistence on live systems makes it harder to keep notes in situ
> that remind one of what one did last time...

Sorry to hear about your illness.

Booting up a live CD is not a commitment.  It only takes a little while
and you can look around, see how your hardware is supported, etc.

As you get deeper, you'd definitely want to install on a hard disk though.

I'm still doing mainframe work and I use Linux every day.
The ISPF editor is great and all, but I can do so much more running
my mainframe development from my Linux desktop.

A Systems Programmer should find the Linux environment fascinating.
Come back and tell us what you think of SMP vs. Linux package management.

On Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:49:47 +0100, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:

> Thanks to everyone for their replies, so far.  Very helpful.
> 
> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> You would be much better off to just do a minimal X install (just a
>> simple window manager and x-term plus the graphical apps you want to
>> run.) and learn to run Linux from the commmand line. Takes just as much
>> time and allows you to run Linux anywhere, regardless of the distro.
>> 
>> You need a GUI, you do not need a GDE.
> 
> Interesting; I've an IBM mainframe systems programming background so
> command-lines etc do not particularly worry me.  In fact I tend to
> loathe GUIs that hide what's really going on, interpreting error
> messages for me, hiding all the stuff in config files etc.
> 
> OTOH I have a feeling that getting started in Linux might be easier with
> some sort of GUI, and I can explore config files etc when I feel like
> it.
> 
> 
> Someone suggested trying some live CDs; I'm pondering that.  One problem
> is I have a chronic illness and concentration is hard a lot of the time.
> Lack of data persistence on live systems makes it harder to keep notes
> in situ that remind one of what one did last time...

You might also consider installing a Linux in a virtual machine within 
your current OS. It's much faster to bring up, then, than dual booting - 
it's persistent - if you decide to get rid of it, it's quite easy.

Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote:

> There are at least two ways around this problem: 1) mount a writable
> disk from within your live system, and write your notes there; 2) if
> possible, find a live CD that supports booting from a pen drive or
> similar, buy a bunch of them, and use them for testing.

Unfortunately neither my laptop nor desktop machines offer BIOS support for
booting from USB pen drives...

-- 
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to newsreplynnn@wingsandbeaks.org.uk replacing "nnn" by "284".  

Sidney Lambe wrote:

> Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
> <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:
> 
>> I've not tried a linux distro yet, but have been reading about
>> them on their different websites.
>>
>> One of the things that puzzles me is to what extent it matters
>> whether one uses KDE or GNOME or something else? I realise that
>> each probably has a different feel, but is that all that there
>> is that's different?
> 
> No. They each require a lot of experience and study to learn to
> use comfortably and what you learn about one won't necessarily
> help you with the other.

About five minutes of experimentation is enough to learn how to use
Gnome. Another fifteen would be required if you want to cover KDE.

[Sarcastic] That is allot of wasted time compared to the hour and a half
or more needed to learn the basics of the shell.

[Serious] Don't get me wrong here, knowing how to use BASH (at least) is
a very important skill, but starting with a desktop means that you'll be
doing _something_ constructive sooner.


> You would be much better off to just do a minimal X install (just
> a simple window manager and x-term plus the graphical apps you
> want to run.) and learn to run Linux from the commmand line.
> Takes just as much time and allows you to run Linux anywhere,
> regardless of the distro.
> 
> You need a GUI, you do not need a GDE. They are invaders from
> the Windows world and will just mess up your ability to run Linux
> in the long run.

Sid, most people don't have the patience to learn that way.
Yes, I know that is how everyone learnt back in the day, but it was
only very determined people with allot of time who did.

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk>
writes:

> Thanks to everyone for their replies, so far.  Very helpful.
>
> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
>> You would be much better off to just do a minimal X install (just
>> a simple window manager and x-term plus the graphical apps you
>> want to run.) and learn to run Linux from the commmand line.
>> Takes just as much time and allows you to run Linux anywhere,
>> regardless of the distro.
>> 
>> You need a GUI, you do not need a GDE.
>
> Interesting; 

Note that some people consider Sidney to be a troll.


> I've an IBM mainframe systems programming background so
> command-lines etc do not particularly worry me.  In fact I tend to loathe
> GUIs that hide what's really going on, interpreting error messages for me,
> hiding all the stuff in config files etc.

Desktop environments give you some additional functions (and hide some
others), but there's always a terminal with your favourite shell and
your favourite editor if you want them.


> OTOH I have a feeling that getting started in Linux might be easier with
> some sort of GUI, and I can explore config files etc when I feel like it.

http://xwinman.org/ is a good starting point to see what's available.




> Someone suggested trying some live CDs; I'm pondering that.  One problem is
> I have a chronic illness and concentration is hard a lot of the time. Lack
> of data persistence on live systems makes it harder to keep notes in situ
> that remind one of what one did last time...

Most major distributions let you install multiple desktop environments
and window managers in parallel so you can choose at login time what you
want to use.



   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/software/pdfrecycle/>

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:
> Thanks to everyone for their replies, so far.  Very helpful.
> 
> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> You would be much better off to just do a minimal X install (just
>> a simple window manager and x-term plus the graphical apps you
>> want to run.) and learn to run Linux from the commmand line.
>> Takes just as much time and allows you to run Linux anywhere,
>> regardless of the distro.
>>
>> You need a GUI, you do not need a GDE.
> 
> Interesting; I've an IBM mainframe systems programming background so
> command-lines etc do not particularly worry me.  In fact I tend to loathe
> GUIs that hide what's really going on, interpreting error messages for me,
> hiding all the stuff in config files etc.

The point about linux, is that whilst there is a dashboard, unlike MS 
windows, the hood isn't welded shut, so you can see what's going on.


> 
> OTOH I have a feeling that getting started in Linux might be easier with
> some sort of GUI, and I can explore config files etc when I feel like it.
> 


Its very much part of the character, that the thing these days mostly 
'just works' using the GUI tools.

That allows you to get up and working fast, and then delve into the 
config files to solve specific issues.


> 
> Someone suggested trying some live CDs; I'm pondering that.  One problem is
> I have a chronic illness and concentration is hard a lot of the time. Lack
> of data persistence on live systems makes it harder to keep notes in situ
> that remind one of what one did last time...
> 
Most peole have a 2-10 year old chassis with a bit of hard disk lying 
around. Best to make a 'sandbox' and trial install some stuff.

> 

Sidney Lambe wrote:

> No. They each require a lot of experience and study to learn to
> use comfortably and what you learn about one won't necessarily
> help you with the other.

Seriously dumb thing to say.  It takes NO TIME (i.e., LESS time) to
learn where a program is on a menu or by clicking an icon.  No one said
it is the best way to do everything or never learn anything else, but
to say it requires any experience, let alone a "lot of" experience to
be "comfortable" clicking on icons or from a program menu, is just the
stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.

Florian Diesch wrote:

> Note that some people consider Sidney to be a troll.

Where some is defined as everyone but Sidney who thinks that everyone
else here is either a troll or an evil, under cover agent.

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
<jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:

> Thanks to everyone for their replies, so far. Very helpful.
>
> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
>> You would be much better off to just do a minimal X install
>> (just a simple window manager and x-term plus the graphical
>> apps you want to run.) and learn to run Linux from the
>> commmand line. Takes just as much time and allows you to run
>> Linux anywhere, regardless of the distro.
>>
>> You need a GUI, you do not need a GDE.
>
> Interesting; I've an IBM mainframe systems programming
> background so command-lines etc do not particularly worry me.

Are you talking UNIX operating systems?

> In fact I tend to loathe GUIs that hide what's really going on,
> interpreting error messages for me, hiding all the stuff in
> config files etc.
>
> OTOH I have a feeling that getting started in Linux might be
> easier with some sort of GUI, and I can explore config files
> etc when I feel like it.

You are confusing me with your use of "GUI". I run a GUI, but
I do _not_ run a GDE (Graphical Desktop Environment) like kde
or gnome. They are very different things indeed.

A GUI is just a simple window manager that's available for X apps
to run in. You can run it from a plain term or from an x-term
within the window manager. A GDE is a massive suite of graphical
applications, libs, and utilities attempting to be a complete
user-interface.

With your experience I cannot imagine that it would take you
long to learn enough about the Linux OS to run this way. Less
time than it would take you to learn to use a GDE, I daresay.

Here are some links you will, hopefully, find helpful:

http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/howlinuxworks/
http://rute.2038bug.com/rute.html.tar.bz2
http://www.linuxpackages.net/howto/slackfiles/books/slackware-basics/html/shell.
html
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-who-where-and-what
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-man-command
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-directory-manipulation
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-files-manipulation
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/6/bash-history-in-the-making
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/6/bash-use-your-local-bin
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/index.html
http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/abs-guide/en/
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1052574.html
kind of odd "shell ninja" but lots of good info:
http://www.slideshare.net/brian_dailey/nyphp-march-2009-presentation
http://stat-www.berkeley.edu/classes/s243/bash.html
http://www.learnaboutlinux.net/blog/41-programming/50-bash-basics-1
http://linux.about.com/cs/glossaries/a/aglossary.htm
http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Dictionary/
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

http://axiom.anu.edu.au/~okeefe/p2b
for:
From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO
Building a Minimal Linux System from Source Code


> Someone suggested trying some live CDs; I'm pondering that.

Why not? DSL, Damned Small Linux, will auto-configure itself
on almost any box.

> One problem is I have a chronic illness and concentration
> is hard a lot of the time. Lack of data persistence on live
> systems makes it harder to keep notes in situ that remind one
> of what one did last time...

I just mount the harddrive and write them to a file there.


Sid

Ryan McCoskrie <ryan.mccoskrie@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>
>> Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
>> <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> I've not tried a linux distro yet, but have been reading
>>> about them on their different websites.
>>>
>>> One of the things that puzzles me is to what extent it
>>> matters whether one uses KDE or GNOME or something else? I
>>> realise that each probably has a different feel, but is that
>>> all that there is that's different?
>>
>> No. They each require a lot of experience and study to
>> learn to use comfortably and what you learn about one won't
>> necessarily help you with the other.
>
> About five minutes of experimentation is enough to learn how
> to use Gnome. Another fifteen would be required if you want to
> cover KDE.
>
> [Sarcastic] That is allot of wasted time compared to the hour
> and a half or more needed to learn the basics of the shell.

This is only true because the Linux GDEs are clones of the
Windows/Mac interfaces you are already familiar with.

Given two people with no computer experience at all, it takes
about the same amount of time to learn either interface well
enough to operate the system.

But the person learning the shell interface will have much
more freedom and control of the OS.

> [Serious] Don't get me wrong here, knowing how to use BASH (at
> least) is a very important skill, but starting with a desktop
> means that you'll be doing _something_ constructive sooner.

Bullshit.

All you have to do, assuming X and your insternet connection
are up, which probably happenned at boot, is enter

$ firefox google.com &

at the prompt and you are on the Web, 'doing something useful'.

If you want to use another application, enter its name, and
you are doing something else useful.

There's no functional difference between clicking an icon
and entering a name at the command prompt.

>
>
>> You would be much better off to just do a minimal X install
>> (just a simple window manager and x-term plus the graphical
>> apps you want to run.) and learn to run Linux from the
>> commmand line. Takes just as much time and allows you to run
>> Linux anywhere, regardless of the distro.
>>
>> You need a GUI, you do not need a GDE. They are invaders from
>> the Windows world and will just mess up your ability to run
>> Linux in the long run.
>
> Sid, most people don't have the patience to learn that way.

Good thing for you you are wrong. That's how Linux was run,
exclusively, throughout its early years. If it wasn't for
tens of thousands of people running Linux that way there wouldn't
be any Linux.

What you mean is: There are a whole lot of lazy and spoiled
couch potato appliance operator jerks from the Windows/Mac
world who want to run Linux.

We shouldn't be catering to them. They can run Windows
or Mac if they want to use computers. We should not allow
them to turn Linux into a Windows clone.

> Yes, I know that is how everyone learnt back in the day, but it
> was only very determined people with allot of time who did.

More bullshit. Even you, in the very article, say it only takes
an hour and a half to learn the shell interface.

The idea that it is hard to run Linux from the command line is a
myth promoted by the ignorant or by technocrats (and wannabees)
who want them to learn a GDE and therefore become dependent on
those who know the shell interface.

http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/howlinuxworks/
http://rute.2038bug.com/rute.html.tar.bz2
http://www.linuxpackages.net/howto/slackfiles/books/slackware-basics/html/shell.
html
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-who-where-and-what
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-man-command
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-directory-manipulation
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-files-manipulation
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/6/bash-history-in-the-making
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/6/bash-use-your-local-bin
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/index.html
http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/abs-guide/en/
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1052574.html
kind of odd "shell ninja" but lots of good info:
http://www.slideshare.net/brian_dailey/nyphp-march-2009-presentation
http://stat-www.berkeley.edu/classes/s243/bash.html
http://www.learnaboutlinux.net/blog/41-programming/50-bash-basics-1
http://linux.about.com/cs/glossaries/a/aglossary.htm
http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Dictionary/
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

http://axiom.anu.edu.au/~okeefe/p2b
for:
From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO
Building a Minimal Linux System from Source Code


Sid

Let me describe what's going on my computer at the moment.

I'm logged into a KDE 4.3 session.
On the first desktop I have dolphin (the file manager) and konsole
(KDE's xterm equivalent) open to where I'm working on a virtual
machine for an ISA of my design.
On the second desktop I've got Zim open so that I can document the
working of the virtual machine.
Third desktop I have Amarok playing some music that I have picked out
to help me concentrate one what I'm doing[1].
The fourth desktop is communications.

You may think that running a DE is incorrect but notice that I'm 
implementing my own ISA. There won't be a desktop there for quite
a while. Or even a proper shell.

Oh, and I'm running FreeBSD as well. You should give that a try.

[1] Beethoven, Pink Floyd, Guns and Roses etc.

On 09/21/2009 02:23 PM, Evergreen wrote:
[snip]
> Are you talking UNIX operating systems?
[snip]
> Here are some links you will, hopefully, find helpful:
> 
> http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/howlinuxworks/
> http://rute.2038bug.com/rute.html.tar.bz2
> http://www.linuxpackages.net/howto/slackfiles/books/slackware-basics/html/shell.
> html
> http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-who-where-and-what
> http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-man-command
> http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-directory-manipulation
> http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-files-manipulation
> http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/6/bash-history-in-the-making
> http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/6/bash-use-your-local-bin
> http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ
> http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/index.html
> http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/abs-guide/en/
> http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
> http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1052574.html
> kind of odd "shell ninja" but lots of good info:
> http://www.slideshare.net/brian_dailey/nyphp-march-2009-presentation
> http://stat-www.berkeley.edu/classes/s243/bash.html
> http://www.learnaboutlinux.net/blog/41-programming/50-bash-basics-1
> http://linux.about.com/cs/glossaries/a/aglossary.htm
> http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Dictionary/
> http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
> 
> http://axiom.anu.edu.au/~okeefe/p2b
> for:
> From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO
> Building a Minimal Linux System from Source Code
[snip]

You still forget to mention a must read:
http://werc.homelinux.net/links/reference/unix_prog_design.pdf (Program
design in the UNIX� environment, Rob Pike and Brian W. Kernighan).

-- 
Balwinder S "bdheeman" Dheeman        Registered Linux User: #229709
Anu'z Linux@HOME (Unix Shoppe)        Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192
Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India         Plan9, T2, Arch/Debian/FreeBSD/XP
Home: http://werc.homelinux.net/      Visit: http://counter.li.org/

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, Sidney Lambe wrote:


> Given two people with no computer experience at all, it takes
> about the same amount of time to learn either interface well
> enough to operate the system.
>
Get real.  Virtually nobody has no computer experience at all.

If they have limited experience, they've had that where there
are GUIs, ie a Windows machine or a Macintosh.

If they have no experience with computers, chances are good they
are five years old, and their first experience will be with their
parents computer which is either Windows or Mac.  Those kids don't
need to learn the command line.

You will find very few people who are computer virgins at this point.
They may have limited experience, but it will be really hard to find
someone with no experience.

I keep seeing nonsense about "senior citizens" and computers, when
small computers have been around long enough that most people who are
past retirement age weren't particularly old when computers came
home, and rare would be the person who hasn't had some experience
with them by old age.

Since there are very few who don't have some experience, the reality is
that people can go zooming on the GUIs because the "basics" are the same,
even if there are finicky differences like where the menus are or how many
times you have to click the button.  They don't have to learn anything,
they just have to familiarize themselves with the differences.

    Michael

Evergreen <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:

> Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
> <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:

> > Interesting; I've an IBM mainframe systems programming
> > background so command-lines etc do not particularly worry me.
> 
> Are you talking UNIX operating systems?

No; VM/CMS about 30 years ago, and MVS->S/390 more recently.  

I did use VMS (?) on a VAX around 30 years ago...

> 
> > In fact I tend to loathe GUIs that hide what's really going on,
> > interpreting error messages for me, hiding all the stuff in
> > config files etc.
> >
> > OTOH I have a feeling that getting started in Linux might be
> > easier with some sort of GUI, and I can explore config files
> > etc when I feel like it.
> 
> You are confusing me with your use of "GUI". I run a GUI, but
> I do _not_ run a GDE (Graphical Desktop Environment) like kde
> or gnome. They are very different things indeed.
> 
> A GUI is just a simple window manager that's available for X apps
> to run in. You can run it from a plain term or from an x-term
> within the window manager. A GDE is a massive suite of graphical
> applications, libs, and utilities attempting to be a complete
> user-interface.

Hmm, I understand the difference between 'window manager' and 'desktop
environment', I think.  

But to most users I'd have thought a GUI was simply any graphical
representation of a task, whether it was very basic or not.  

Maybe the way you use the term is linux-specific?  



-- 
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to newsreplynnn@wingsandbeaks.org.uk replacing "nnn" by "284".  

On 2009-09-21, September Storm <it.is.me@an.invalid> wrote: 

> ....is just the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.

If you're gonna reply to Sid often, you may want to keep that phrase
at the ready.

nb

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk>
writes:

> Evergreen <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
>> <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> > Interesting; I've an IBM mainframe systems programming
>> > background so command-lines etc do not particularly worry me.
>> 
>> Are you talking UNIX operating systems?
>
> No; VM/CMS about 30 years ago, and MVS->S/390 more recently.  
>
> I did use VMS (?) on a VAX around 30 years ago...
>
>> 
>> > In fact I tend to loathe GUIs that hide what's really going on,
>> > interpreting error messages for me, hiding all the stuff in
>> > config files etc.
>> >
>> > OTOH I have a feeling that getting started in Linux might be
>> > easier with some sort of GUI, and I can explore config files
>> > etc when I feel like it.
>> 
>> You are confusing me with your use of "GUI". I run a GUI, but
>> I do _not_ run a GDE (Graphical Desktop Environment) like kde
>> or gnome. They are very different things indeed.
>> 
>> A GUI is just a simple window manager that's available for X apps
>> to run in. You can run it from a plain term or from an x-term
>> within the window manager. A GDE is a massive suite of graphical
>> applications, libs, and utilities attempting to be a complete
>> user-interface.
>
> Hmm, I understand the difference between 'window manager' and 'desktop
> environment', I think.  
>
> But to most users I'd have thought a GUI was simply any graphical
> representation of a task, whether it was very basic or not.  
>
> Maybe the way you use the term is linux-specific?  

No, whoever you are replying to mis-defined GUI.
A GUI is any "drawn" application, even on Linux.

GDEs go beyond Window Managers in that they provide a bunch of
applications.

Most of those applications will run in any Window Manager
unless they take specific advantage of non-standardized things
(like the systray).

Sidney Lambe wrote:

> This is only true because the Linux GDEs are clones of the
> Windows/Mac interfaces you are already familiar with.
> 

What a complete shit head you are.  You really want to claim that it's
just as "hard" to locate an icon on your screen for any number of
things that are categorized under areas of a menu as well, and that
remembering all of the names of the binaries in shell to launch are the
same for a "new person" to computers?  You're just an impossibly stupid
person.  I hope someone kicks your teeth out.

Evergreen wrote:

> Sid

You forgot to change your sockpuppet name.  You aren't a happy or sane
(or smart) person... you should kill yourself.

On 2009-09-21, September Storm <it.is.me@an.invalid> wrote:

> What a complete shit head you are.  You really want to claim that it's
> just as "hard" to locate an icon on your screen for any number of
> things that are categorized under areas of a menu as well, and that
> remembering all of the names of the binaries in shell to launch are the
> same for a "new person" to computers?  You're just an impossibly stupid
> person.  I hope someone kicks your teeth out.

His sole purpose of posting is to elicit just the type of response you
provided.  Wise up.

nb

notbob wrote:

> His sole purpose of posting is to elicit just the type of response you
> provided.  Wise up.
> 
> nb

Don't get so worked up about someone refuting what he says.  I actually
doubt he's trying to be proven wrong, his posting history shows how
desperate he is to try and convince people of what he's saying.  Should
no one refute it all because they are scared they'll look like they are
"giving the troll what he wants", then it gives some (by silence)
potential credence to it (should no one call him on the obvious lies). 
Wise up.

notbob wrote:

> On 2009-09-21, September Storm <it.is.me@an.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> ....is just the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.
> 
> If you're gonna reply to Sid often, you may want to keep that phrase
> at the ready.
> 
> nb

I don't know why you're so concerned, but I really don't have any plans
to make this person my usenet buddy.

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:47:40 +0000, notbob wrote:

> On 2009-09-21, September Storm <it.is.me@an.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> What a complete shit head you are.  You really want to claim that it's
>> just as "hard" to locate an icon on your screen for any number of
>> things that are categorized under areas of a menu as well, and that
>> remembering all of the names of the binaries in shell to launch are the
>> same for a "new person" to computers?  You're just an impossibly stupid
>> person.  I hope someone kicks your teeth out.
> 
> His sole purpose of posting is to elicit just the type of response you
> provided.  Wise up.

	What's wrong with such people? Do they perhaps get off when 
(justifiably) insulted and abused in public? Is it a sort of immaterial 
extension of masochism?

On 2009-09-21, Jens Stuckelberger <Jens_Stuckelberger@nowhere.net> wrote:

> 	What's wrong with such people? Do they perhaps get off when 
> (justifiably) insulted and abused in public? Is it a sort of immaterial 
> extension of masochism?

I think you overly complicate the problem.  I think it's simply that
he's crazier than a shit house rat.  ;)

nb

Sidney Lambe wrote:

> There's no functional difference between clicking an icon
> and entering a name at the command prompt.

The "functional difference" is that a (especially "new") user is
unlikely to know what the name of the binary is to launch the
application.  The GDE allows them to not have to know all of those
things.  Speaking of, I've read the history and I don't see a single
person pushing GDE's on anyone, nor anyone trying to convince anyone
else to do anything *but* learn how to work their way around in shell,
so it's a wonder why you are all worked up about this issue. 
Regardless, I'll save time and filter your posts out for now on anyway.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:09:27 +0000, despen wrote:

>> Hmm, I understand the difference between 'window manager' and 'desktop
>> environment', I think.
>>
>> But to most users I'd have thought a GUI was simply any graphical
>> representation of a task, whether it was very basic or not.
>>
>> Maybe the way you use the term is linux-specific?
> 
> No, whoever you are replying to mis-defined GUI. A GUI is any "drawn"
> application, even on Linux.

Graphical User Interface.

In my brain that even applies to console programs such as mc.

September Storm <it.is.me@an.invalid> writes:

> notbob wrote:
>
>> His sole purpose of posting is to elicit just the type of response you
>> provided.��Wise�up.
>> 
>> nb
>
> Don't get so worked up about someone refuting what he says.  I actually
> doubt he's trying to be proven wrong, his posting history shows how
> desperate he is to try and convince people of what he's saying.

Uh no.  Sidney's posting history goes back a lot further than you might
suspect.  As far as anyone can tell, his sole purpose is to gain
attention.  By replying, you are simply feeding him.

How do I know?  People have been trying to reason with him for years.
Absolutly nothing works.

despen@verizon.net wrote:

>>
>> Don't get so worked up about someone refuting what he says.  I
>> actually doubt he's trying to be proven wrong, his posting history
>> shows how desperate he is to try and convince people of what he's
>> saying.
> 
> Uh no.  Sidney's posting history goes back a lot further than you
> might suspect.  As far as anyone can tell, his sole purpose is to gain
> attention.  By replying, you are simply feeding him.

Sometimes letting a problem member run their mouths isn't helping
either.  True, trolls don't respond to anything sometimes, but I don't
agree it's feeding a troll by pointing out they are stupid and what
they say is untrue (albeit, what good does any of it do, once a troll
decides to never relent, *nothing* matters (including "feeding them" or
not), so why debate it at all or act like anything's adding to the
problem that has already existed for so long?)
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On 2009-09-21, despen@verizon.net <despen@verizon.net> wrote:


> Absolutly nothing works.

Same as with my aging mom.  It's pointless to argue.  She suffers from
2nd stage dementia.

nb

jellybean stonerfish <stonerfish@geocities.com> writes:

> On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:09:27 +0000, despen wrote:
>
>>> Hmm, I understand the difference between 'window manager' and 'desktop
>>> environment', I think.
>>>
>>> But to most users I'd have thought a GUI was simply any graphical
>>> representation of a task, whether it was very basic or not.
>>>
>>> Maybe the way you use the term is linux-specific?
>> 
>> No, whoever you are replying to mis-defined GUI. A GUI is any "drawn"
>> application, even on Linux.
>
> Graphical User Interface.
>
> In my brain that even applies to console programs such as mc.

I don't think so.
mc is character mode, full screen.
Sometimes called curses based or raw mode.

Normal shell interaction is line mode or cooked.

notbob wrote:

> On 2009-09-21, despen@verizon.net <despen@verizon.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Absolutly nothing works.
> 
> Same as with my aging mom.  It's pointless to argue.  She suffers from
> 2nd stage dementia.
> 
> nb

That's incredibly unfortunate.  However, I wouldn't confuse someone
pointing out the flaws in someone's claims as meaning they are arguing
with the person making the claims.  Arguing with someone that doesn't
understand is different from pointing out the problem with that
person's argument (since it's not just those two people in a room
alone, for example).  Surely, it's pointless to argue with this troll,
but people aren't replying to him to argue *with him*.  Agreed, it's
all pointless anyway, so long as people like him can run their mouths
freely on usenet, adding clutter, annoying people and just not
relenting, ever.  If usenet wasn't dead for the most part anyway, I
might find it annoying (instead, I only find him in my killfile).
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On 2009-09-21, Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
>
> Sometimes letting a problem member run their mouths isn't helping
> either.  True, trolls don't respond to anything sometimes, but I don't
> agree it's feeding a troll by pointing out they are stupid and what
> they say is untrue (albeit, what good does any of it do, once a troll
> decides to never relent, *nothing* matters (including "feeding them" or
> not), so why debate it at all or act like anything's adding to the
> problem that has already existed for so long?)

I agree that someone needs to correct obvious factual errors in
''Sid's'' posts.  Anything beyond that and/or humour is pointless.
(Unfortunately, ''Sid'' knows this, which is why many of his posts are
riddled with obvious factual errors, thus obligating somebody to
respond.)

--keith


-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

Keith Keller wrote:

> 
> I agree that someone needs to correct obvious factual errors in
> ''Sid's'' posts.  Anything beyond that and/or humour is pointless.
> (Unfortunately, ''Sid'' knows this, which is why many of his posts are
> riddled with obvious factual errors, thus obligating somebody to
> respond.)
> 

So, what to "correct" or not then?  I didn't see the danger of
antagonization with people saying things like how it's ridiculous to
say that it's no easier to just click on an icon or use the program
menu over expecting someone to know the name of all of the binaries to
launch the programs they want to use.  Makes sense, and so what if it
was interluded with "what a shit head you are", because everyone's fed
up with this jerkoff.  Other than that, I don't think anyone's
disagreeing with anyone else, so why have all of the other members
argue, debate or even fight about it?  If anything, that's what "Sid"
wants.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:
> Evergreen <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
>> <jn.nntp.scrap004@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> > Interesting; I've an IBM mainframe systems programming
>> > background so command-lines etc do not particularly worry me.
>> 
>> Are you talking UNIX operating systems?
>
> No; VM/CMS about 30 years ago, and MVS->S/390 more recently.  
>
> I did use VMS (?) on a VAX around 30 years ago...
>
>> 
>> > In fact I tend to loathe GUIs that hide what's really going on,
>> > interpreting error messages for me, hiding all the stuff in
>> > config files etc.
>> >
>> > OTOH I have a feeling that getting started in Linux might be
>> > easier with some sort of GUI, and I can explore config files
>> > etc when I feel like it.
>> 
>> You are confusing me with your use of "GUI". I run a GUI, but
>> I do _not_ run a GDE (Graphical Desktop Environment) like kde
>> or gnome. They are very different things indeed.
>> 
>> A GUI is just a simple window manager that's available for X apps
>> to run in. You can run it from a plain term or from an x-term
>> within the window manager. A GDE is a massive suite of graphical
>> applications, libs, and utilities attempting to be a complete
>> user-interface.
>
> Hmm, I understand the difference between 'window manager' and 'desktop
> environment', I think.  
>
> But to most users I'd have thought a GUI was simply any graphical
> representation of a task, whether it was very basic or not.  

Sure they do. Most users these days, because they think that
Windows-clone GDEs like kde and gnome _are_ Linux, are quite
ignorant of the Linux operating system.

There's no need for you to be as ignorant as they are.

GUIs have been around for about 40 years and are the basic
graphical interface platform.

GDEs, which have been around in the Linux world since 1996,
are suites of graphical applications that run _in_ GUIs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUI/History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Linux#history

> Maybe the way you use the term is linux-specific?  

Linux/Unix-specific. Windows and Mac aren't built like Linux/Unix.
Linux has a base operating system that isn't graphical (I'm running
from it right now). 

Then you have the _option_ of running a GUI, which I do whenever
I need to use firefox, for example. (Usually I use a text-mode
browser called "links" and a console (non-X) image viewer called
"zgv".)

The third layer, which no one needs at all, is the GDE, which
is about twice the size of the Linux OS all of itself. It is a
destructive invader from the Windows/Mac world.

I don't have time to read most of the other responses to
my post here (direct responses are given a 200 score in my
newsreader's display) and I can see that most of them are from
trolls and technocratic assholes who freak out whenever anyone
criticizes the GDEs, which they love because their use produces
Linux-ignorant users who are dependent on them.



Sid

Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>
>> There's no functional difference between clicking an icon
>> and entering a name at the command prompt.
>
> The "functional difference" is that a (especially "new") user is
> unlikely to know what the name of the binary is to launch the
> application.  The GDE allows them to not have to know all of those
> things.

You don't need 100,000+ superfluous files (yes, that's how large
GDEs are) to provide a menu of applications to run.

Try this simple script.

#!/bin/bash

#menu.sh

# This script reads a list of commands in
# /etc/menu/menu.txt and creates a menu from them
# The commands should be one per line and be whatever
# you would put on the commandline. Limit 26. Press
# the letter corresponding to the command and it runs

set - a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

command=1

echo
while read line
do
echo  "${1}) $line"
shift
eval var${command}=$line
let "command += 1"
done < /etc/menu/menu.txt
echo

read -s -n1 bb
echo

case "$bb" in

a) eval $var1 ;;
b) eval $var2 ;;
c) eval $var3 ;;
d) eval $var4 ;;
e) eval $var5 ;;
f) eval $var6 ;;
g) eval $var7 ;;
h) eval $var8 ;;
i) eval $var9 ;;
j) eval $var10 ;;
k) eval $var11 ;;
l) eval $var12 ;;
m) eval $var13 ;;
n) eval $var14 ;;
o) eval $var15 ;;
p) eval $var16 ;;
q) eval $var17 ;;
r) eval $var18 ;;
s) eval $var19 ;;
t) eval $var20 ;;
u) eval $var21 ;;
v) eval $var22 ;;
w) eval $var23 ;;
x) eval $var24 ;;
y) eval $var25 ;;
z) eval $var26 ;;

esac

Put the script in /usr/local/bin
and make it executable with:

$ chmod +rx menu.sh

alias the script to m in your bashrc

alias m='/usr/local/bin/menu.sh'

Then all you have to do to bring up the menu,
which would have a bunch of entries for the newbies, is
enter m at the prompt.

>  Speaking of, I've read the history and I don't see a single
> person pushing GDE's on anyone,

Really? They are a part of the default install of most or all
of the major distros.

The install docs do not usually mention the option of running
Linux without them.

Instructions for running Linux without a GDE, once a part of
every Linux runners basic education, are not provided.

I call that "pushing" in a big way. An absolute way.

> nor anyone trying to convince anyone
> else to do anything *but* learn how to work their way around in shell,

Yes. It is quite clear that you have a very simplistic notion of
what is involved in the everyday maninpulating of people.

> so it's a wonder why you are all worked up about this issue. 
> Regardless, I'll save time and filter your posts out for now on anyway.


Poor baby. All freaked out at the thought of having to take time
off from playing games and watching movies to do a little studying.

These are the kinds of losers from the Windows/Mac world that we
are being flooded with since the maturation of the GDEs.


Sid 

Sidney Lambe wrote:

> Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
>> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>>
>>> There's no functional difference between clicking an icon
>>> and entering a name at the command prompt.
>>
>> The "functional difference" is that a (especially "new") user is
>> unlikely to know what the name of the binary is to launch the
>> application.  The GDE allows them to not have to know all of those
>> things.
> 
> You don't need 100,000+ superfluous files (yes, that's how large
> GDEs are) to provide a menu of applications to run.

Since I forgot to add you yet, I'll reply to this post of yours.  I
never said you need 100K+ files, and it doesn't take that anyway.  If
you install everything along with the GDE, you might get that.  That's
pretty irrelevant though.

> Try this simple script.
> 
> #!/bin/bash

<snip>

That bash script doesn't really do anything, and so what?  I never said
you shouldn't (or couldn't) use shell.  YOU are the one saying no one
should use a GDE.  Plenty of people use GDE's for some things, and even
use shell for everything else.

> 
> Put the script in /usr/local/bin

(no thanks)

> alias m='/usr/local/bin/menu.sh'

Why would I want to do that?  That lame script you've posted is nonsense
and pointless.  I was making the point about a new user and how it's
not "just as easy" or "more easy" for them to try and get around in
shell over a GDE.  Of course a GDE is easier, and that allows people to
get right into Linux and start using it.  They can get around to do
everything they want or need, and allows them the ability to learn to
use shell (some people never need to, by the way, but everyone in Linux
encourages it, so I don't know what your problem is).  Also, aliasing a
command to a single letter is just stupid.  How about at least saying
to name is something relevant (an actual word)?  Especially, something
not close to "mc", etc.

> Then all you have to do to bring up the menu,
> which would have a bunch of entries for the newbies, is
> enter m at the prompt.

Right, and what's the point of your "menu"?  What do you think that
example is going to do to help some new user to Linux?

>>  Speaking of, I've read the history and I don't see a single
>> person pushing GDE's on anyone,
> 
> Really? They are a part of the default install of most or all
> of the major distros.

And those installs give the installer many options, such as NOT
installing a GDE.  I work on thousands of servers and install for
runlevel 3, no GDE, no GUI, no X, nothing else.  Everything is done in
shell.  You can install a workstation, a home system, a router, a
server, and so on.

> The install docs do not usually mention the option of running
> Linux without them.

So what?  And what difference does it make what YOU like or not?  Why do
you think your personal opinion is so important to the Linux world?  No
one gives you flack for not wanting to use a GDE, so why do you get so
stupid about people that want to?  Anyway, all installs have an option
of what you want to install (if you don't want it, ensure it's not
selected).  Of course any OS install default selects certain things for
people, depending on them installing a networking station, server, or
"other".  Have them select a server install then, and they won't have
to deselect anything.  Big fucking deal!?

> Instructions for running Linux without a GDE, once a part of
> every Linux runners basic education, are not provided.

Neither is provided on the install for how to use a GDE or not.  And so
what?  Linux is very shell user friendly, many thousands of people have
put in thousands of hours of time to provide info/man pages.

> I call that "pushing" in a big way. An absolute way.

So what if you want to call it that!?  It's not.  It's just making it
easy for the new users, so it doesn't alienate people that could
benefit from a GDE and slowly get into shell (if they want or need to). 
Your rants have nothing to do with it.  You aren't explaining why GDE's
are bad, and you go on about how you can do the same things in shell. 
So?  Why reinvent the wheel?  How many of those people just want what
the GDE's already provide and don't need or want anything else?  Why
force those people to use only shell and figure that out?  Why do you
care if they know (in-depth) how Linux works?  You clearly don't know
given your posts and examples.  You seem to be very new to Linux and
you can't manage to give it a fair shake based on unfounded paranoia.

>> nor anyone trying to convince anyone
>> else to do anything *but* learn how to work their way around in
>> shell,
> 
> Yes. It is quite clear that you have a very simplistic notion of
> what is involved in the everyday maninpulating of people.

I don't agree with you, I think you're dumb, and it's supposed to be
surprising that you want to claim the person you don't agree with to be
ignorant?  I guess you're not just new to Linux, but usenet as well.

>> so it's a wonder why you are all worked up about this issue.
>> Regardless, I'll save time and filter your posts out for now on
>> anyway.
> 
> 
> Poor baby. All freaked out at the thought of having to take time
> off from playing games and watching movies to do a little studying.

Who is "freaked out"?  Is that what you assume people must be feeling if
they say you're being stupid and don't agree with your paranoid rants? 
Ironically, (and not that it matters at all anyway), I don't play games
and I rarely watch movies.  I use my (Linux) system(s) for real work,
on thousands of servers, not to whine to people on usenet because I'm
too dumb to figure out what a GDE actually means and what impact(s) it
actually has.

> These are the kinds of losers from the Windows/Mac world that we
> are being flooded with since the maturation of the GDEs.
> 
> 
> Sid

Yes, I see you make that claim often, in fact, only and every time
anyone calls you on your bullshit or disagrees with you.  Anyway,
you're right, the Linux world has basically come to an end, I agree
with others here, you should just kill yourself.  I think there's some
web sites that can help you with that.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On 2009-09-21, Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
>
> So, what to "correct" or not then?  I didn't see the danger of
> antagonization with people saying things like how it's ridiculous to
> say that it's no easier to just click on an icon or use the program
> menu over expecting someone to know the name of all of the binaries to
> launch the programs they want to use.

When I say "factual" I say, for example, that when ''Sid'' claims to
have written a dozen or so scripts to filter content from his newsfeed,
you can respond "...or simply use the filtering from leafnode and/or
slrn".  Or (this is a more recent example) when he claims that you
should put a certain alias into /etc/profile, you can recommend strongly
against this, since there are valid techincal reasons not to do so (and
you should try to explain what they are, and in what situations it would
be valid to modify /etc/profile instead).

In other words, if his ''advice'' is liable to break someone's box,
correct him.  Otherwise ignore him.

If you want a parallel between his GDE vs CLI crusade, think of it as
emacs vs vi--a religious war that can have no good end.

> why have all of the other members
> argue, debate or even fight about it?  If anything, that's what "Sid"
> wants.

''Sid'' wants responses.  Even this response will feed his ego, I'm
sure.  :(

--keith

-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

Keith Keller wrote:

....
 
> In other words, if his ''advice'' is liable to break someone's box,
> correct him.  Otherwise ignore him.

Well, I disagree about that view, but I can respect it.  I don't think
people should worry about exactly what they respond to, what with, or
how, when it involves a super-troll, since we all know it doesn't make
a difference anyway.  It's not like if everyone ignores even every
single one of his posts, that he'll go away (won't make a damn bit of
difference), so why even debate about the content of people's replies? 
Besides, why bother warning people about things he says that can break
their box (the global settings in profile could, sure, but it's not the
end of the world, after all), so why bother responding to anything he
says short of telling someone to use dd backwards, rm -rf on their root
file system partition, or anything else, if someone can't just respond
about how it doesn't make sense to claim shell is "easier" than a GDE
for someone that's never used a computer before?

Every member on every group has a different view/opinion, and what you
might think is going too far, someone might think you are, or maybe
it's not gone far enough.  It goes both ways.  As soon as you are
involved, it's too late.  I doubt any single person has been able to
use usenet over all of the years without having the same problem. 
People are fucking worthless sometimes, there's no way around it.  Why
sweat the small stuff about who responds with what?  If it's a problem,
ignore them, too.  That's the only way to ensure you are personally
happy with what you read on usenet.  Someone riles your feathes, if
it's too much to handle without getting emotional about it (even
slightly to the point where you want to say they are wrong, are
"feeding a troll", or anything else, it's had an emotional response
enough to make you chime in about what you think and how you feel, and
that's a sign that it's too much, so just ignore that person, too.) 
You might end up ignoring everyone or everyone but a few people, but
then you'll be happier on usenet, it seems, so just do that.

 
> If you want a parallel between his GDE vs CLI crusade, think of it as
> emacs vs vi--a religious war that can have no good end.

That's not even a reasonably comparable example.  In fact, I doubt
anything like a language or editor war even comes close to what this
retard is doing.
 
>> why have all of the other members
>> argue, debate or even fight about it?  If anything, that's what "Sid"
>> wants.
> 
> ''Sid'' wants responses.  Even this response will feed his ego, I'm
> sure.  :(
> 
> --keith

Perhaps, but he also clearly does not want to be corrected or called on
his bullshit, so if he's posting his rants anyway, I personally don't
have a problem with him being miserable, so I think it's a positive
thing.  No matter though, I don't think he's that interesting, even if
to make fun of, so he's already in my kf anyway.  Not because I can't
deal with him, I just have better things to do with my time (and that
includes discussing how people respond to him, so I'll politely drop
out of this conversation/thread, too, while I'm at it).

-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>
>> Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
>>> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>>>
>>>> There's no functional difference between clicking an icon
>>>> and entering a name at the command prompt.
>>>
>>> The "functional difference" is that a (especially "new") user is
>>> unlikely to know what the name of the binary is to launch the
>>> application.  The GDE allows them to not have to know all of those
>>> things.
>> 
>> You don't need 100,000+ superfluous files (yes, that's how large
>> GDEs are) to provide a menu of applications to run.
>
> Since I forgot to add you yet, I'll reply to this post of yours.  I
> never said you need 100K+ files, and it doesn't take that anyway.  If
> you install everything along with the GDE, you might get that.  That's
> pretty irrelevant though.
>
>> Try this simple script.
>> 
>> #!/bin/bash
>
><snip>
>
> That bash script doesn't really do anything, and so what?

Yes. It makes a menu from a list of a commands in a file.
No different than the menu made by KDE or XFCE except it
doesn't have all the eye-candy.

Duh <<<<<<<<<

You've got a _long_ way to go to becoming a sys admin.

[delete]


Sid

Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
>> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>>
>>> There's no functional difference between clicking an icon
>>> and entering a name at the command prompt.
>>
>> The "functional difference" is that a (especially "new") user is
>> unlikely to know what the name of the binary is to launch the
>> application.  The GDE allows them to not have to know all of those
>> things.
>
> You don't need 100,000+ superfluous files (yes, that's how large
> GDEs are) to provide a menu of applications to run.
>
> Try this simple script.
>
> #!/bin/bash
>
> #menu.sh
>
> # This script reads a list of commands in
> # /etc/menu/menu.txt and creates a menu from them
> # The commands should be one per line and be whatever
> # you would put on the commandline. Limit 26. Press
> # the letter corresponding to the command and it runs

CORRECTION: the lines in /etc/menu/menu.txt have to
be enclosed in double quotes.

Sid

>
> set - a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
>
> command=1
>
> echo
> while read line
> do
> echo  "${1}) $line"
> shift
> eval var${command}=$line
> let "command += 1"
> done < /etc/menu/menu.txt
> echo
>
> read -s -n1 bb
> echo
>
> case "$bb" in
>
> a) eval $var1 ;;
> b) eval $var2 ;;
> c) eval $var3 ;;
> d) eval $var4 ;;
> e) eval $var5 ;;
> f) eval $var6 ;;
> g) eval $var7 ;;
> h) eval $var8 ;;
> i) eval $var9 ;;
> j) eval $var10 ;;
> k) eval $var11 ;;
> l) eval $var12 ;;
> m) eval $var13 ;;
> n) eval $var14 ;;
> o) eval $var15 ;;
> p) eval $var16 ;;
> q) eval $var17 ;;
> r) eval $var18 ;;
> s) eval $var19 ;;
> t) eval $var20 ;;
> u) eval $var21 ;;
> v) eval $var22 ;;
> w) eval $var23 ;;
> x) eval $var24 ;;
> y) eval $var25 ;;
> z) eval $var26 ;;
>
> esac
>
> Put the script in /usr/local/bin
> and make it executable with:
>
> $ chmod +rx menu.sh
>
> alias the script to m in your bashrc
>
> alias m='/usr/local/bin/menu.sh'
>
> Then all you have to do to bring up the menu,
> which would have a bunch of entries for the newbies, is
> enter m at the prompt.
>
>>  Speaking of, I've read the history and I don't see a single
>> person pushing GDE's on anyone,
>
> Really? They are a part of the default install of most or all
> of the major distros.
>
> The install docs do not usually mention the option of running
> Linux without them.
>
> Instructions for running Linux without a GDE, once a part of
> every Linux runners basic education, are not provided.
>
> I call that "pushing" in a big way. An absolute way.
>
>> nor anyone trying to convince anyone
>> else to do anything *but* learn how to work their way around in shell,
>
> Yes. It is quite clear that you have a very simplistic notion of
> what is involved in the everyday maninpulating of people.
>
>> so it's a wonder why you are all worked up about this issue. 
>> Regardless, I'll save time and filter your posts out for now on anyway.
>
>
> Poor baby. All freaked out at the thought of having to take time
> off from playing games and watching movies to do a little studying.
>
> These are the kinds of losers from the Windows/Mac world that we
> are being flooded with since the maturation of the GDEs.
>
>
> Sid 

On Monday 21 September 2009 22:45, someone identifying as *Wanna-Be Sys
Admin* wrote in /comp.os.linux.setup:/

> Sidney Lambe wrote:
> 
>> Yes. It is quite clear that you have a very simplistic notion of
>> what is involved in the everyday maninpulating of people.
> 
> I don't agree with you, I think you're dumb, and it's supposed to be
> surprising that you want to claim the person you don't agree with to
> be ignorant?  I guess you're not just new to Linux, but usenet as
> well. 

Oh no, he has a longstanding reputation on Usenet already... as a total
netkook, an antisocial, narcissistic bully and an obsessive-compulsive
troll. ;-)

His method of operation...:

(1) Bring up unsubstantiated wild conspiracy claims about desktop
    environments, and boast his (self-assumed) knowledge of the /bash/
    commandline in the meantime, praising those of whom he accepts that
    they know a lot of UNIX, or of whom he /believes/ that they never
    use an X server, even if said people have already outspokenly 
    disagreed with him.

(2) When asked to prove his wild conspiracy claims, he ignores the
    poster inquiring about it, failing each time to provide evidence
    for his claims in a convenient way, i.e. he attacks the other
    poster, not upon what they are saying but upon their person and
    with outright namecalling.

(3) He has this "gagging" filter which he conveniently uses to stroke
    his ego, i.e. it's like a killfile, but he can still see who has
    replied to him without seeing their articles.  He will then
    repeatedly post follow-ups to his own posts in which he gloats
    over the fact that someone has replied to him again.  His
    narcissism causes him to need to see that someone has given him
    the attention of replying to him, and his cowardness and ignorance
    can hide the reply from his view, so that he doesn't need to be
    confronted with how terribly wrong he is and how he is asked to
    provide evidence for his wild claims.

(4) He is so attention-starved that he hijacks threads which have
    nothing whatsoever to do with any GDEs by telling the poster
    that he knows the answer to his question but that he's not going
    to give it - quite in contrast to his claims about evil companies
    that are pouring billions of dollars into GDEs so as to keep the
    users dependent on technocrats - and then changes the subject to
    GDEs and adds a number of originally not addressed newsgroups to
    the Groups field before sending off his reply.

(5) He regularly nymshifts - he has been known as Alan Connor, Sidney
    Lambe, Tom Newton and another half a dozen aliases or so, and he
    also posts here as "Evergreen" - and also regularly changes his
    obsession.  For about a couple of months now, it's been with GDEs
    but he has earlier on had similar obessions - in the promoting
    sense, not in the "disapproving" sense - with challenge-response
    systems, of which he had set up one which obviously didn't work
    the way he had hoped it would have, but of course his ego is too
    big to admit to that.
    
(6) He falsely accuses everyone who replies to him - either on purpose
    as a tactic or out of his paranoid delusions - of being one and the
    same person, projecting his own habit of nymshifting onto the
    replying poster, but in his great guru-ness, he is unable to tell
    from the headers of the replies that the people who reply to his
    posts are really all separate individuals from all over the world.
    Must be a shorcircuit in his so incredibly genius brain, I guess.

(7) He is incredibly paranoid about just about everything, but he does
    whatever his daily work is while logged in as root, which, together
    with his loathing for anything GDE-related - and especially KDE
    and Gnome, of which I'm sure he's never even seen or used them -
    suggests that he used to be an MS-DOS user and possibly a Windows
    user as well, who now feels and considers himself to be a member
    of a superior technocratic elite, testimonial of which the fact that
    he sucks up bigtime to anyone of whom he believes that they don't
    use a GDE, even if those people don't agree with him or express
    dislike over his behavior.  Anyone who does use a GDE, even if they
    extensively use /bash/ or another shell alongside of it gets berated
    and treated like an enemy.

(8) Being polite to him is of no effect.  If he's convinced you are the
    enemy, he will treat you as such and won't spare a single bad word
    in the book before (and after) he applies his "gagging" filter on
    you, and then he arrogantly and childishly mocks you in his own
    follow-ups to his own posts.

(9) He is a self-acclaimed witchmaster and apprentice sorcerer.

>> These are the kinds of losers from the Windows/Mac world that we
>> are being flooded with since the maturation of the GDEs.
> 
> Yes, I see you make that claim often, in fact, only and every time
> anyone calls you on your bullshit or disagrees with you.  Anyway,
> you're right, the Linux world has basically come to an end, I agree
> with others here, you should just kill yourself.  I think there's some
> web sites that can help you with that.

In the best interests of mankind's posterity, we can only hope that the
man does not procreate or would have done so already.

-- 
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>> Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
>>> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>>>
>>>> There's no functional difference between clicking an icon
>>>> and entering a name at the command prompt.
>>>
>>> The "functional difference" is that a (especially "new") user is
>>> unlikely to know what the name of the binary is to launch the
>>> application.  The GDE allows them to not have to know all of those
>>> things.
>>
>> You don't need 100,000+ superfluous files (yes, that's how large
>> GDEs are) to provide a menu of applications to run.
>>
>> Try this simple script.
>>
>> #!/bin/bash
>>
>> #menu.sh
>>
>> # This script reads a list of commands in
>> # /etc/menu/menu.txt and creates a menu from them
>> # The commands should be one per line and be whatever
>> # you would put on the commandline. Limit 26. Press
>> # the letter corresponding to the command and it runs
>
> CORRECTION: the lines in /etc/menu/menu.txt have to
> be enclosed in double quotes.
>
> Sid
>
>>
>> set - a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
>>
>> command=1
>>
>> echo
>> while read line
>> do

CORRECTION: The menu will look better with this
line

echo  "${1}) $line" | sed 's/\"//g'

instead of this one:

>> echo  "${1}) $line"

Hey! I wrote that script in about 30 seconds.
Give me a break :-)

Sid

>> shift
>> eval var${command}=$line
>> let "command += 1"
>> done < /etc/menu/menu.txt
>> echo
>>
>> read -s -n1 bb
>> echo
>>
>> case "$bb" in
>>
>> a) eval $var1 ;;
>> b) eval $var2 ;;
>> c) eval $var3 ;;
>> d) eval $var4 ;;
>> e) eval $var5 ;;
>> f) eval $var6 ;;
>> g) eval $var7 ;;
>> h) eval $var8 ;;
>> i) eval $var9 ;;
>> j) eval $var10 ;;
>> k) eval $var11 ;;
>> l) eval $var12 ;;
>> m) eval $var13 ;;
>> n) eval $var14 ;;
>> o) eval $var15 ;;
>> p) eval $var16 ;;
>> q) eval $var17 ;;
>> r) eval $var18 ;;
>> s) eval $var19 ;;
>> t) eval $var20 ;;
>> u) eval $var21 ;;
>> v) eval $var22 ;;
>> w) eval $var23 ;;
>> x) eval $var24 ;;
>> y) eval $var25 ;;
>> z) eval $var26 ;;
>>
>> esac
>>
>> Put the script in /usr/local/bin
>> and make it executable with:
>>
>> $ chmod +rx menu.sh
>>
>> alias the script to m in your bashrc
>>
>> alias m='/usr/local/bin/menu.sh'
>>
>> Then all you have to do to bring up the menu,
>> which would have a bunch of entries for the newbies, is
>> enter m at the prompt.
>>
>>>  Speaking of, I've read the history and I don't see a single
>>> person pushing GDE's on anyone,
>>
>> Really? They are a part of the default install of most or all
>> of the major distros.
>>
>> The install docs do not usually mention the option of running
>> Linux without them.
>>
>> Instructions for running Linux without a GDE, once a part of
>> every Linux runners basic education, are not provided.
>>
>> I call that "pushing" in a big way. An absolute way.
>>
>>> nor anyone trying to convince anyone
>>> else to do anything *but* learn how to work their way around in shell,
>>
>> Yes. It is quite clear that you have a very simplistic notion of
>> what is involved in the everyday maninpulating of people.
>>
>>> so it's a wonder why you are all worked up about this issue. 
>>> Regardless, I'll save time and filter your posts out for now on anyway.
>>
>>
>> Poor baby. All freaked out at the thought of having to take time
>> off from playing games and watching movies to do a little studying.
>>
>> These are the kinds of losers from the Windows/Mac world that we
>> are being flooded with since the maturation of the GDEs.
>>
>>
>> Sid 


-- 
Sidney Lambe
Wiccan Priest and Apprentice Magician
http://tinyurl.com/7vs9zb
usenet4444  (at) gmail (dot) com

Aragorn wrote:

> On Monday 21 September 2009 22:45, someone identifying as *Wanna-Be
> Sys Admin* wrote in /comp.os.linux.setup:/
> 
>> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>> 
>>> Yes. It is quite clear that you have a very simplistic notion of
>>> what is involved in the everyday maninpulating of people.
>> 
>> I don't agree with you, I think you're dumb, and it's supposed to be
>> surprising that you want to claim the person you don't agree with to
>> be ignorant?  I guess you're not just new to Linux, but usenet as
>> well.
> 
> Oh no, he has a longstanding reputation on Usenet already... as a
> total netkook, an antisocial, narcissistic bully and an
> obsessive-compulsive troll. ;-)

Perhaps when he started, like a GDE (or Linux CLI/shell), he never
bothered to learn what he was doing/using and it just "feels like" he's
new? :-) 

> 
> In the best interests of mankind's posterity, we can only hope that
> the man does not procreate or would have done so already.

I think there are a few bibles that talk about the end of the world. 
I'm sure he's gobbling up our precious tax paying free cheese as we
speak.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On 2009-09-21, Aragorn <aragorn@chatfactory.invalid> wrote:
> Oh no, he has a longstanding reputation on Usenet already... as a total
> netkook, an antisocial, narcissistic bully and an obsessive-compulsive
> troll. ;-)
>
> His method of operation...:

[excellent and funny summary deleted]

We should all remember that this is just the persona that ''Sid''
projects.  We have no evidence that he actually *does* the things he
claims to do (e.g., run as root).  For all we know he's a l33t h4x0r
laughing at us for trying to correct the l4m0rz shell scripts that he
wrote a bot to write for him.  ;-)

--keith



-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

Keith Keller wrote:

> On 2009-09-21, Aragorn <aragorn@chatfactory.invalid> wrote:
>> Oh no, he has a longstanding reputation on Usenet already... as a
>> total netkook, an antisocial, narcissistic bully and an
>> obsessive-compulsive troll. ;-)
>>
>> His method of operation...:
> 
> [excellent and funny summary deleted]
> 
> We should all remember that this is just the persona that ''Sid''
> projects.  We have no evidence that he actually *does* the things he
> claims to do (e.g., run as root).  For all we know he's a l33t h4x0r
> laughing at us for trying to correct the l4m0rz shell scripts that he
> wrote a bot to write for him.  ;-)
> 
> --keith

That's a fun thing to consider, except the fact he spends so much time
doing this isn't just "fun" for him.  Anyone that would act/say/do
these things has a problem.  No intelligent person would go that far
for so long, even if just to mess with people.  So, he's not a person
in a position to be laughing at anyone, but he's definitely no brighter
than a bot, regardless, so you're probably half right.  For what it's
worth, I don't get the impression he does what he says (for the record)
either.

I bet he runs a Mac or Windows, or used a GDE on Linux.  Afterall, by
what he says and what he posts (including this "shell script" that only
was worthwhile as a "menu" if a user ALREADY had the commands in the
file it pulls them from, which was also limited as in he had to add a
new function for each potential command (and to keep going if he wanted
more than 26 of them)), he is already super crippled in his own lack of
knowledge about the environment he insists everyone use.

In other words, he'd not be trolling usenet if he had to use shell to
manage to do it.  Besides, either this fool only does a few simple
things and thinks that makes him a shell expert (it's possible that's
the case), or he is using the GDE's he hates to much if he does more
than that (which is likely the case), because either way, he'd not be
doing anything based on his poor skills (which is already the case).  I
just don't think he could be emotionally stable or smart in any way,
just by the time he wastes here.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:45:05 +0200, Sidney Lambe wrote:

> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>> Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
>>>> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> There's no functional difference between clicking an icon and
>>>>> entering a name at the command prompt.
>>>>
>>>> The "functional difference" is that a (especially "new") user is
>>>> unlikely to know what the name of the binary is to launch the
>>>> application.  The GDE allows them to not have to know all of those
>>>> things.
>>>
>>> You don't need 100,000+ superfluous files (yes, that's how large GDEs
>>> are) to provide a menu of applications to run.
>>>
>>> Try this simple script.
>>>
>>> #!/bin/bash
>>>
>>> #menu.sh
>>>
>>> # This script reads a list of commands in # /etc/menu/menu.txt and
>>> creates a menu from them # The commands should be one per line and be
>>> whatever # you would put on the commandline. Limit 26. Press # the
>>> letter corresponding to the command and it runs
>>
>> CORRECTION: the lines in /etc/menu/menu.txt have to be enclosed in
>> double quotes.
>>
>> Sid
>>
>>
>>> set - a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
>>>
>>> command=1
>>>
>>> echo
>>> while read line
>>> do
> 
> CORRECTION: The menu will look better with this line
> 
> echo  "${1}) $line" | sed 's/\"//g'
> 
> instead of this one:
> 
>>> echo  "${1}) $line"
> 
> Hey! I wrote that script in about 30 seconds. Give me a break :-)
> 
> Sid
> 
>>> shift
>>> eval var${command}=$line
>>> let "command += 1"
>>> done < /etc/menu/menu.txt
>>> echo
>>>
>>> read -s -n1 bb
>>> echo
>>>
>>> case "$bb" in
>>>
>>> a) eval $var1 ;;
>>> b) eval $var2 ;;
>>> c) eval $var3 ;;
>>> d) eval $var4 ;;
>>> e) eval $var5 ;;
>>> f) eval $var6 ;;
>>> g) eval $var7 ;;
>>> h) eval $var8 ;;
>>> i) eval $var9 ;;
>>> j) eval $var10 ;;
>>> k) eval $var11 ;;
>>> l) eval $var12 ;;
>>> m) eval $var13 ;;
>>> n) eval $var14 ;;
>>> o) eval $var15 ;;
>>> p) eval $var16 ;;
>>> q) eval $var17 ;;
>>> r) eval $var18 ;;
>>> s) eval $var19 ;;
>>> t) eval $var20 ;;
>>> u) eval $var21 ;;
>>> v) eval $var22 ;;
>>> w) eval $var23 ;;
>>> x) eval $var24 ;;
>>> y) eval $var25 ;;
>>> z) eval $var26 ;;
>>>
>>> esac
>>>
>>> Put the script in /usr/local/bin
>>> and make it executable with:
>>>
>>> $ chmod +rx menu.sh
>>>
>>> alias the script to m in your bashrc
>>>
>>> alias m='/usr/local/bin/menu.sh'
>>>
>>> Then all you have to do to bring up the menu, which would have a bunch
>>> of entries for the newbies, is enter m at the prompt.
>>>
>>>>  Speaking of, I've read the history and I don't see a single
>>>> person pushing GDE's on anyone,
>>>
>>> Really? They are a part of the default install of most or all of the
>>> major distros.
>>>
>>> The install docs do not usually mention the option of running Linux
>>> without them.
>>>
>>> Instructions for running Linux without a GDE, once a part of every
>>> Linux runners basic education, are not provided.
>>>
>>> I call that "pushing" in a big way. An absolute way.
>>>
>>>> nor anyone trying to convince anyone
>>>> else to do anything *but* learn how to work their way around in
>>>> shell,
>>>
>>> Yes. It is quite clear that you have a very simplistic notion of what
>>> is involved in the everyday maninpulating of people.
>>>
>>>> so it's a wonder why you are all worked up about this issue.
>>>> Regardless, I'll save time and filter your posts out for now on
>>>> anyway.
>>>
>>>
>>> Poor baby. All freaked out at the thought of having to take time off
>>> from playing games and watching movies to do a little studying.
>>>
>>> These are the kinds of losers from the Windows/Mac world that we are
>>> being flooded with since the maturation of the GDEs.
>>>
>>>
>>> Sid

Golly gee Sid, I guess you don't know your way around as well as you 
claim. It's an idiotic script anyway. Why continue to post updates to 
this work of art?

-- 
d.b. cooper

On Tue, 22 Sep 2009, d.b. cooper wrote:

>
> Golly gee Sid, I guess you don't know your way around as well as you
> claim. It's an idiotic script anyway. Why continue to post updates to
> this work of art?
>
He likes talking to himself?

But seriously, nobody else is going to try the stuff, so there's no
"community" of users who will provide feedback and improvement, so
he has to be the maker and the user in order for it to have any value as 
open source.

    Michael

Jens Stuckelberger wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:47:40 +0000, notbob wrote:
> 
>> On 2009-09-21, September Storm <it.is.me@an.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> What a complete shit head you are.  You really want to claim that it's
>>> just as "hard" to locate an icon on your screen for any number of
>>> things that are categorized under areas of a menu as well, and that
>>> remembering all of the names of the binaries in shell to launch are the
>>> same for a "new person" to computers?  You're just an impossibly stupid
>>> person.  I hope someone kicks your teeth out.
>> His sole purpose of posting is to elicit just the type of response you
>> provided.  Wise up.
> 
> 	What's wrong with such people? Do they perhaps get off when 
> (justifiably) insulted and abused in public? Is it a sort of immaterial 
> extension of masochism?
> 

I once had a man who had a business partner, who were my boses as it were.

One of them was a complete arsehole. He went out of his way to make 
people dislike him. The other was a genial approachable type. Both 
turned out to be crooks. However that is not pertinent. I asked the one, 
'why is Dick such a complete cunt, why does he go out of his way to make 
himself disliked'

'Arr,' he said 'Oi rackon Dick doesn't actually know much about people, 
and he gets a bit confused as to whether or not he can trust em. If he 
makes sure they hate his guts, he knows where he stands like, and feels 
  on safer ground'

I later discovered, that Dick actually had a slight conscience. He 
didn't like ripping off people who liked him. If on the other hand, they 
didn't, he felt it was suitable revenge. The other superficially nicer 
guy simply didn't have a conscience at all.

I remember at the last meeting we had, where he discovered I had sold 
some equipment left with me for repairs to cover the wages he hadn't 
paid me, his outrage knew no bounds 'where d'you learn a trick like 
that, I thought you was a college educated gentleman' 'I was' I said 
'till I learnt better from you.'

'He's got you there, Tony' was the delighted response of the only other 
witness..

Nowt as queer as folk..

notbob wrote:
> On 2009-09-21, Jens Stuckelberger <Jens_Stuckelberger@nowhere.net> wrote:
> 
>> 	What's wrong with such people? Do they perhaps get off when 
>> (justifiably) insulted and abused in public? Is it a sort of immaterial 
>> extension of masochism?
> 
> I think you overly complicate the problem.  I think it's simply that
> he's crazier than a shit house rat.  ;)
> 

Ah, but its the exact nature of his insanity that is so appealing.

I mean he's a paranoid, and likely schizophrenic, but why is he pissing 
around on a Linux group?

> nb

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:39:03 -0400, Michael Black wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Sep 2009, d.b. cooper wrote:
> 
> 
>> Golly gee Sid, I guess you don't know your way around as well as you
>> claim. It's an idiotic script anyway. Why continue to post updates to
>> this work of art?
>>
> He likes talking to himself?
> 
> But seriously, nobody else is going to try the stuff, so there's no
> "community" of users who will provide feedback and improvement, so he
> has to be the maker and the user in order for it to have any value as
> open source.
> 
>     Michael

Well of course you're right. I wouldn't touch a script of his for 
anything, which is a shame because it's possible he does know something. 
It's buried in all the paranoid muck going on in his head.


-- 
d.b. cooper

d.b. cooper wrote:

> Golly gee Sid, I guess you don't know your way around as well as you
> claim. It's an idiotic script anyway. Why continue to post updates to
> this work of art?

hehe, this is pretty much what everyone has been saying.  I just don't
get why he posted that.  Even if it was a useful "menu" script, it's
broken, basic and doesn't mean jack if it doesn't already have the
features (commands) a user wants/needs, which was the point (the new
users wouldn't know).  That was his solution to why shell can be as
easily used for a new computer user compared to an icon or graphical
menu on a GDE.  It's shear nonsense.  It's silly, he tried to boast,
show off and insult and he comes back with this pointless bash script
that has static functions one typed after the other, instead of being
flexible, dynamic or even having a list of commands and their
descriptions.  Granted, not everything should need graphics to spice it
up, but it should be "as functional" and have some type of merit if the
script is supposed to supplant the graphical program menu shown in KDE
or Gnome (those being his two least liked environments).  It's just all
silly.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

jellybean stonerfish wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:09:27 +0000, despen wrote:
> 
>>> Hmm, I understand the difference between 'window manager' and 'desktop
>>> environment', I think.
>>>
>>> But to most users I'd have thought a GUI was simply any graphical
>>> representation of a task, whether it was very basic or not.
>>>
>>> Maybe the way you use the term is linux-specific?
>> No, whoever you are replying to mis-defined GUI. A GUI is any "drawn"
>> application, even on Linux.
> 
> Graphical User Interface.
> 
> In my brain that even applies to console programs such as mc.
> 
well..no. It is generally referred to interface that use not (just) a 
keyboard and a character screen, but have pixel mapped displays and some 
kind of input device like a mouse or a tablet

Any program that does CAD or graphics of any sort, or indeed has wysiwyg 
text in more than one font style is essentially running under a GUI of 
some sort.

This is confusing for Sidney, who thinks GUI==GDE.

Michael Black wrote:

> But seriously, nobody else is going to try the stuff, so there's no
> "community" of users who will provide feedback and improvement, so
> he has to be the maker and the user in order for it to have any value
> as open source.

Nobody is going to try something this clown tried to whip out, because
there's better things out there now, including for the CLI, and by
people that actually know what they are doing.  Having nothing to do
with Sid's little sarcasm project not evolving from lack of input from
the community (which wisely widely shuns him).
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

Aragorn wrote:
> On Monday 21 September 2009 22:45, someone identifying as *Wanna-Be Sys
> Admin* wrote in /comp.os.linux.setup:/
> 
>> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>>
>>> Yes. It is quite clear that you have a very simplistic notion of
>>> what is involved in the everyday maninpulating of people.
>> I don't agree with you, I think you're dumb, and it's supposed to be
>> surprising that you want to claim the person you don't agree with to
>> be ignorant?  I guess you're not just new to Linux, but usenet as
>> well. 
> 
> Oh no, he has a longstanding reputation on Usenet already... as a total
> netkook, an antisocial, narcissistic bully and an obsessive-compulsive
> troll. ;-)
> 
> His method of operation...:
> 
> (1) Bring up unsubstantiated wild conspiracy claims about desktop
>     environments, and boast his (self-assumed) knowledge of the /bash/
>     commandline in the meantime, praising those of whom he accepts that
>     they know a lot of UNIX, or of whom he /believes/ that they never
>     use an X server, even if said people have already outspokenly 
>     disagreed with him.
> 
> (2) When asked to prove his wild conspiracy claims, he ignores the
>     poster inquiring about it, failing each time to provide evidence
>     for his claims in a convenient way, i.e. he attacks the other
>     poster, not upon what they are saying but upon their person and
>     with outright namecalling.
> 
> (3) He has this "gagging" filter which he conveniently uses to stroke
>     his ego, i.e. it's like a killfile, but he can still see who has
>     replied to him without seeing their articles.  He will then
>     repeatedly post follow-ups to his own posts in which he gloats
>     over the fact that someone has replied to him again.  His
>     narcissism causes him to need to see that someone has given him
>     the attention of replying to him, and his cowardness and ignorance
>     can hide the reply from his view, so that he doesn't need to be
>     confronted with how terribly wrong he is and how he is asked to
>     provide evidence for his wild claims.
> 
> (4) He is so attention-starved that he hijacks threads which have
>     nothing whatsoever to do with any GDEs by telling the poster
>     that he knows the answer to his question but that he's not going
>     to give it - quite in contrast to his claims about evil companies
>     that are pouring billions of dollars into GDEs so as to keep the
>     users dependent on technocrats - and then changes the subject to
>     GDEs and adds a number of originally not addressed newsgroups to
>     the Groups field before sending off his reply.
> 
> (5) He regularly nymshifts - he has been known as Alan Connor, Sidney
>     Lambe, Tom Newton and another half a dozen aliases or so, and he
>     also posts here as "Evergreen" - and also regularly changes his
>     obsession.  For about a couple of months now, it's been with GDEs
>     but he has earlier on had similar obessions - in the promoting
>     sense, not in the "disapproving" sense - with challenge-response
>     systems, of which he had set up one which obviously didn't work
>     the way he had hoped it would have, but of course his ego is too
>     big to admit to that.
>     
> (6) He falsely accuses everyone who replies to him - either on purpose
>     as a tactic or out of his paranoid delusions - of being one and the
>     same person, projecting his own habit of nymshifting onto the
>     replying poster, but in his great guru-ness, he is unable to tell
>     from the headers of the replies that the people who reply to his
>     posts are really all separate individuals from all over the world.
>     Must be a shorcircuit in his so incredibly genius brain, I guess.
> 
> (7) He is incredibly paranoid about just about everything, but he does
>     whatever his daily work is while logged in as root, which, together
>     with his loathing for anything GDE-related - and especially KDE
>     and Gnome, of which I'm sure he's never even seen or used them -
>     suggests that he used to be an MS-DOS user and possibly a Windows
>     user as well, who now feels and considers himself to be a member
>     of a superior technocratic elite, testimonial of which the fact that
>     he sucks up bigtime to anyone of whom he believes that they don't
>     use a GDE, even if those people don't agree with him or express
>     dislike over his behavior.  Anyone who does use a GDE, even if they
>     extensively use /bash/ or another shell alongside of it gets berated
>     and treated like an enemy.
> 
> (8) Being polite to him is of no effect.  If he's convinced you are the
>     enemy, he will treat you as such and won't spare a single bad word
>     in the book before (and after) he applies his "gagging" filter on
>     you, and then he arrogantly and childishly mocks you in his own
>     follow-ups to his own posts.
> 
> (9) He is a self-acclaimed witchmaster and apprentice sorcerer.
> 
>>> These are the kinds of losers from the Windows/Mac world that we
>>> are being flooded with since the maturation of the GDEs.
>> Yes, I see you make that claim often, in fact, only and every time
>> anyone calls you on your bullshit or disagrees with you.  Anyway,
>> you're right, the Linux world has basically come to an end, I agree
>> with others here, you should just kill yourself.  I think there's some
>> web sites that can help you with that.
> 
> In the best interests of mankind's posterity, we can only hope that the
> man does not procreate or would have done so already.
> 
As usual, a masterful summary.

d.b. cooper wrote:

> which is a shame because it's possible he does know something.
> It's buried in all the paranoid muck going on in his head.

Problem is, none of his non conspiracy rants about GDE's are any better. 
I think his entire attitude and trolling nature is purely based on his
own personal frustrations, because he's aware he's uneducated, lacks
skills or the mind to even eventually get somewhere, so he's here
trying to scream his way into being right.  "Today's episode has been
brought to you by our sponsor: YELLING! ... Yelling -- the next best
thing to being right!"
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> I mean he's a paranoid, and likely schizophrenic, but why is he
> pissing around on a Linux group?

Don't forget the magic(k) (that's with a "K", so you know it's
"Special") and Wicca group popularity he has a good following for as
well, apparently.  Even those kooks shun him.  That's what happens when
you're a shitty person, no matter where you go, people continue to
dislike and shun you.  If he had any skills, knowledge or redeeming
qualities that he could contribute, it would be potentially bearable. 
I mean, I bitch and moan as much as anyone else and tell people how it
is, but I also try and help people when the opportunity arises.  He's
never once done such a thing (even if he does try, God love the fool
for trying), he insists on tacking on a sarcastic, loony, paranoid or
outright lie to knock on anyone that touches a GDE or doesn't agree
with him, so it's hard to respect that.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

d.b. cooper wrote:

PS: I dig the name.

-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:25:06 -0700, Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:

> d.b. cooper wrote:
> 
>> Golly gee Sid, I guess you don't know your way around as well as you
>> claim. It's an idiotic script anyway. Why continue to post updates to
>> this work of art?
> 
> hehe, this is pretty much what everyone has been saying.  I just don't
> get why he posted that.  Even if it was a useful "menu" script, it's
> broken, basic and doesn't mean jack if it doesn't already have the
> features (commands) a user wants/needs, which was the point (the new
> users wouldn't know).  That was his solution to why shell can be as
> easily used for a new computer user compared to an icon or graphical
> menu on a GDE.  It's shear nonsense.  It's silly, he tried to boast,
> show off and insult and he comes back with this pointless bash script
> that has static functions one typed after the other, instead of being
> flexible, dynamic or even having a list of commands and their
> descriptions.  Granted, not everything should need graphics to spice it
> up, but it should be "as functional" and have some type of merit if the
> script is supposed to supplant the graphical program menu shown in KDE
> or Gnome (those being his two least liked environments).  It's just all
> silly.

You know, I feel sorry for the guy. He really seems to suffer. It's a 
shame. He may know something, it's hard to tell, but it's all goobered up 
in his sad little mind. I enjoy reading his posts, they're usually pretty 
funny. It's weird to see someone all worked up about a Usenet post. I 
mean really. I'm glad you like my name. Everyone thinks I died after I 
bailed out of the plane, but I really came back just to pester Sidney 
Lambe. 

-- 
d.b. cooper

["Newsgroups:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]

On 2009-09-22, d.b. cooper <db@cooper.net> wrote:
>
> Golly gee Sid, I guess you don't know your way around as well as you 
> claim. It's an idiotic script anyway. Why continue to post updates to 
> this work of art?

Did you *really* have to quote 140 lines of ''Sid's'' junk to add the
above two+ lines?  Please try to trim your posts next time.

--keith

-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

d.b. cooper wrote:

> Everyone thinks I died after I
> bailed out of the plane, but I really came back just to pester Sidney
> Lambe.
> 

And, finally, all of the pieces fit together in Sid's conspiracy theory. 
Damn it, now I have to apologize to him.  It would figure if D.B.
Cooper came back, all planning (knowing way back from DARPA) that Sid
would come along and D.B. could be there to correct his rantings. Or,
wait, wouldn't it be awesome if Sid WAS Cooper!?  I'd have to give him
props then.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:47:40 +0000, notbob wrote:

> On 2009-09-21, September Storm <it.is.me@an.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> What a complete shit head you are.  You really want to claim that it's
>> just as "hard" to locate an icon on your screen for any number of
>> things that are categorized under areas of a menu as well, and that
>> remembering all of the names of the binaries in shell to launch are the
>> same for a "new person" to computers?  You're just an impossibly stupid
>> person.  I hope someone kicks your teeth out.
> 
> His sole purpose of posting is to elicit just the type of response you
> provided.  Wise up.

"September Storm" is very nearly as stupid as Sid/Alan, if that's even 
possible.  


-- 
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
"Bother!" said Pooh, as he garotted another passing Liberal.
Usenet Improvement Project: http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> 
>> I mean he's a paranoid, and likely schizophrenic, but why is he
>> pissing around on a Linux group?
> 
> Don't forget the magic(k) (that's with a "K", so you know it's
> "Special") and Wicca group popularity he has a good following for as
> well, apparently.  Even those kooks shun him. 


Oh? he's in alt.magick as well?

See what you mean.

On 2009-09-22, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> 
> well..no. It is generally referred to interface that use not (just) a 
> keyboard and a character screen, but have pixel mapped displays and some 
> kind of input device like a mouse or a tablet

Like when running links2 in graphics mode with gpm?

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> 
>>> I mean he's a paranoid, and likely schizophrenic, but why is he
>>> pissing around on a Linux group?
>> 
>> Don't forget the magic(k) (that's with a "K", so you know it's
>> "Special") and Wicca group popularity he has a good following for as
>> well, apparently.  Even those kooks shun him.
> 
> 
> Oh? he's in alt.magick as well?
> 
> See what you mean.

I guess, I've seen him mention it.  Pretty odd stuff (I didn't bother
reading any of it).  Looks like he has just as many problems with
everyone in every other group.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:52:42 +0000, d.b. cooper jacked :
....
> Everyone thinks I died
> after I bailed out of the plane, but I really came back just to pester
> Sidney Lambe.

nonsense !D)

though in a thread in the name of our "Sid (I aint the lamb) ad. min."
that would be quite 'normal' nonsense ,->

On Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:35:21 +0000, Curt wrote:

> On 2009-09-22, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>> 
>> well..no. It is generally referred to interface that use not (just) a
>> keyboard and a character screen, but have pixel mapped displays and
>> some kind of input device like a mouse or a tablet
> 
> Like when running links2 in graphics mode with gpm?

Oh yes I remember that game...what a golf game that was but it did 
require a windows to run it ;) 

I have never ran it with gpm thou.

-- 
GNU/Linux runs on IBM mainframes and on the world's fastest supercomputers
Windows supercomputers on the other hand are called botnets. :0

On 2009-09-22, d.b. cooper wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:45:05 +0200, Sidney Lambe wrote:
>
>> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>>> Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
>>>>> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> There's no functional difference between clicking an icon and
>>>>>> entering a name at the command prompt.
>>>>>
>>>>> The "functional difference" is that a (especially "new") user is
>>>>> unlikely to know what the name of the binary is to launch the
>>>>> application.  The GDE allows them to not have to know all of those
>>>>> things.
>>>>
>>>> You don't need 100,000+ superfluous files (yes, that's how large GDEs
>>>> are) to provide a menu of applications to run.
>>>>
>>>> Try this simple script.
>>>>
>>>> #!/bin/bash
>>>>
>>>> #menu.sh
>>>>
>>>> # This script reads a list of commands in # /etc/menu/menu.txt and
>>>> creates a menu from them # The commands should be one per line and be
>>>> whatever # you would put on the commandline. Limit 26. Press # the
>>>> letter corresponding to the command and it runs
>>>
>>> CORRECTION: the lines in /etc/menu/menu.txt have to be enclosed in
>>> double quotes.
>>>
>>> Sid
>>>
>>>
>>>> set - a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
>>>>
>>>> command=1
>>>>
>>>> echo
>>>> while read line
>>>> do
>> 
>> CORRECTION: The menu will look better with this line
>> 
>> echo  "${1}) $line" | sed 's/\"//g'
>> 
>> instead of this one:
>> 
>>>> echo  "${1}) $line"
>> 
>> Hey! I wrote that script in about 30 seconds. Give me a break :-)
>> 
>> Sid
>> 
>>>> shift
>>>> eval var${command}=$line
>>>> let "command += 1"
>>>> done < /etc/menu/menu.txt
>>>> echo
>>>>
>>>> read -s -n1 bb
>>>> echo
>>>>
>>>> case "$bb" in
>>>>
>>>> a) eval $var1 ;;
>>>> b) eval $var2 ;;
>>>> c) eval $var3 ;;
>>>> d) eval $var4 ;;
>>>> e) eval $var5 ;;
>>>> f) eval $var6 ;;
>>>> g) eval $var7 ;;
>>>> h) eval $var8 ;;
>>>> i) eval $var9 ;;
>>>> j) eval $var10 ;;
>>>> k) eval $var11 ;;
>>>> l) eval $var12 ;;
>>>> m) eval $var13 ;;
>>>> n) eval $var14 ;;
>>>> o) eval $var15 ;;
>>>> p) eval $var16 ;;
>>>> q) eval $var17 ;;
>>>> r) eval $var18 ;;
>>>> s) eval $var19 ;;
>>>> t) eval $var20 ;;
>>>> u) eval $var21 ;;
>>>> v) eval $var22 ;;
>>>> w) eval $var23 ;;
>>>> x) eval $var24 ;;
>>>> y) eval $var25 ;;
>>>> z) eval $var26 ;;
>>>>
>>>> esac
>>>>
>>>> Put the script in /usr/local/bin
>>>> and make it executable with:
>>>>
>>>> $ chmod +rx menu.sh
>>>>
>>>> alias the script to m in your bashrc
>>>>
>>>> alias m='/usr/local/bin/menu.sh'
>>>>
>>>> Then all you have to do to bring up the menu, which would have a bunch
>>>> of entries for the newbies, is enter m at the prompt.
>>>>
>>>>>  Speaking of, I've read the history and I don't see a single
>>>>> person pushing GDE's on anyone,
>>>>
>>>> Really? They are a part of the default install of most or all of the
>>>> major distros.
>>>>
>>>> The install docs do not usually mention the option of running Linux
>>>> without them.
>>>>
>>>> Instructions for running Linux without a GDE, once a part of every
>>>> Linux runners basic education, are not provided.
>>>>
>>>> I call that "pushing" in a big way. An absolute way.
>>>>
>>>>> nor anyone trying to convince anyone
>>>>> else to do anything *but* learn how to work their way around in
>>>>> shell,
>>>>
>>>> Yes. It is quite clear that you have a very simplistic notion of what
>>>> is involved in the everyday maninpulating of people.
>>>>
>>>>> so it's a wonder why you are all worked up about this issue.
>>>>> Regardless, I'll save time and filter your posts out for now on
>>>>> anyway.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Poor baby. All freaked out at the thought of having to take time off
>>>> from playing games and watching movies to do a little studying.
>>>>
>>>> These are the kinds of losers from the Windows/Mac world that we are
>>>> being flooded with since the maturation of the GDEs.
>
> Golly gee Sid, I guess you don't know your way around as well as you 
> claim. It's an idiotic script anyway. Why continue to post updates to 
> this work of art?

   If that's Sid's level of shell scripting, he should start using a
   GUI ASAP!


-- 
   Chris F.A. Johnson, author   |    <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
   Shell Scripting Recipes:     |  My code in this post, if any,
   A Problem-Solution Approach  |         is released under the
   2005, Apress                 |    GNU General Public Licence

On 22 Sep, 10:31, Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysad...@example.com> wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> > I mean he's a paranoid, and likely schizophrenic, but why is he
> > pissing around on a Linux group?
>
> Don't forget the magic(k) (that's with a "K", so you know it's
> "Special") and Wicca group popularity he has a good following for as
> well, apparently. =A0Even those kooks shun him. =A0That's what happens wh=
en

Yes we do. He can't cast spells -- and Sidney can't even configure a
spell checker for SLRN -- even though he was given step-by-step
instructions for doing so.

On 23 Sep, 12:36, "Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohn...@gmail.com> wrote:

> =A0 =A0If that's Sid's level of shell scripting, he should start using a
> =A0 =A0GUI ASAP!

His excuse is that he was in a hurry.

On 2009-09-23, Ren wrote:
> On 23 Sep, 12:36, "Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ? ?If that's Sid's level of shell scripting, he should start using a
>> ? ?GUI ASAP!
>
> His excuse is that he was in a hurry.

  If that were true he would have written it in a fraction of that
  number of lines.

-- 
   Chris F.A. Johnson, author   |    <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
   Shell Scripting Recipes:     |  My code in this post, if any,
   A Problem-Solution Approach  |         is released under the
   2005, Apress                 |    GNU General Public Licence

On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:47:50 +0000, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:

> On 2009-09-23, Ren wrote:
>> On 23 Sep, 12:36, "Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ? ?If that's Sid's level of shell scripting, he should start using a ?
>>> ?GUI ASAP!
>>
>> His excuse is that he was in a hurry.
> 
>   If that were true he would have written it in a fraction of that
>   number of lines.

I really thought criticism would smoke Sid out. I'm very disappointed. 
C'mon Sid!

-- 
d.b. cooper

Ren wrote:

> He can't cast spells --

How old are you people?

> and Sidney can't even configure a 
> spell checker for SLRN

That's funny though. :-)
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

d.b. cooper wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:47:50 +0000, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
> 
>> On 2009-09-23, Ren wrote:
>>> On 23 Sep, 12:36, "Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> ? ?If that's Sid's level of shell scripting, he should start using
>>>> a ? ?GUI ASAP!
>>>
>>> His excuse is that he was in a hurry.
>> 
>>   If that were true he would have written it in a fraction of that
>>   number of lines.
> 
> I really thought criticism would smoke Sid out. I'm very disappointed.
> C'mon Sid!
> 

Give him a little bit, he needs to frantically search google for some
other irrelevant snippet or crappy shell scripting that he thinks will
impress people.  Can't wait to see how unrelated and bad the next one
will be.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On comp.os.linux.misc, Ren <ren1999@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 23 Sep, 12:36, "Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If that's Sid's level of shell scripting, he should start using a
>> A GUI ASAP!

I am using a GUI at the moment. And it doesn't help mine nor anyone
else's scripting one iota.

Scripting involves plain text files. Whether they are created or
edited in a console or an x-term is irrelevant.

As a supposed expert he should know that.

> His excuse is that he was in a hurry.

Poor Ren. 

He thinks that attacking me on the Linux groups is going to drive
me off alt.religion.wicca.

You'd think that after a year of futile tactics like this he'd
learn that there is simply no way that a nasty little dickless
creep hiding in a room somewhere and running his sewer mouth
can make me do anything I don't choose to do.

Ren wants me to go away because I keep asking him awkward
questions like: "When are you going to demonstrate your
supposed magickal powers?"

Sid

Known as "Evergreen" on the magick/religious groups

Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> 
>> I mean he's a paranoid, and likely schizophrenic, but why is he
>> pissing around on a Linux group?
> 
> Don't forget the magic(k) (that's with a "K", so you know it's
> "Special") and Wicca group popularity he has a good following for as
> well, apparently.  Even those kooks shun him.

Ignoring the important parts of this thread, I must point out that _magick_ 
is an archaic, but correct, spelling of what is now called _magic_. For 
example, Aleister Crowley wrote a book in 1929 entitled
_Magick: in Theory and Practice_ (that I have never read). I prefer the kind 
of magic in _Harry Potter_ and _Little Big_.


-- 
   .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
   /V\  PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A         Registered Machine   241939.
  /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey    http://counter.li.org
  ^^-^^ 07:40:01 up 27 days, 1:44, 3 users, load average: 4.77, 4.43, 4.33

On 2009-09-22, Baho Utot <baho-utot@invalid.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:35:21 +0000, Curt wrote:
>
>> On 2009-09-22, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> 
>>> well..no. It is generally referred to interface that use not (just) a
>>> keyboard and a character screen, but have pixel mapped displays and
>>> some kind of input device like a mouse or a tablet
>> 
>> Like when running links2 in graphics mode with gpm?
>
> Oh yes I remember that game...what a golf game that was but it did 
> require a windows to run it ;) 

Ah, golf links.  No, I was referring to the browser, which you can run
in graphics mode from the console with the mouse as an "input device"
(gpm).

I just meant to illustrate the tenuous nature of the provided definition,
although I'm not certain what "pixel mapped displays" are as opposed to
pixel displays or mere unqualifed pixels, but there you go.

Or maybe when running links2 in graphics mode from the console with gpm
I _am_ in a GUI, and the definition intended to include such a case.

Anyway, the French have an expression for what we often end up doing
here--"enculer une mouche" (fscking a fly in the ass).

;-)

> I have never ran it with gpm thou.
>

Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> I mean he's a paranoid, and likely schizophrenic, but why is he
>>> pissing around on a Linux group?
>>
>> Don't forget the magic(k) (that's with a "K", so you know it's
>> "Special") and Wicca group popularity he has a good following for as
>> well, apparently.  Even those kooks shun him.
> 
> Ignoring the important parts of this thread, I must point out that 
> _magick_ is an archaic, but correct, spelling of what is now called 
> _magic_. For example, Aleister Crowley wrote a book in 1929 entitled
> _Magick: in Theory and Practice_ (that I have never read). I prefer the 
> kind of magic in _Harry Potter_ and _Little Big_.
> 
> 
Crowley used a k to distinguish between that and illusionary (stage) magic.


Its been used by his wannabe followers ever since.

Chris F.A. Johnson <cfajohnson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2009-09-22, d.b. cooper wrote:
>> On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:45:05 +0200, Sidney Lambe wrote:
>>
>>> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>>> Sidney Lambe <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>>>> Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Sidney Lambe wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There's no functional difference between clicking an icon and
>>>>>>> entering a name at the command prompt.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The "functional difference" is that a (especially "new") user is
>>>>>> unlikely to know what the name of the binary is to launch the
>>>>>> application.  The GDE allows them to not have to know all of those
>>>>>> things.
>>>>>
>>>>> You don't need 100,000+ superfluous files (yes, that's how large GDEs
>>>>> are) to provide a menu of applications to run.
>>>>>
>>>>> Try this simple script.
>>>>>
>>>>> #!/bin/bash
>>>>>
>>>>> #menu.sh
>>>>>
>>>>> # This script reads a list of commands in # /etc/menu/menu.txt and
>>>>> creates a menu from them # The commands should be one per line and be
>>>>> whatever # you would put on the commandline. Limit 26. Press # the
>>>>> letter corresponding to the command and it runs
>>>>
>>>> CORRECTION: the lines in /etc/menu/menu.txt have to be enclosed in
>>>> double quotes.
>>>>
>>>> Sid
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> set - a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
>>>>>
>>>>> command=1
>>>>>
>>>>> echo
>>>>> while read line
>>>>> do
>>> 
>>> CORRECTION: The menu will look better with this line
>>> 
>>> echo  "${1}) $line" | sed 's/\"//g'
>>> 
>>> instead of this one:
>>> 
>>>>> echo  "${1}) $line"
>>> 
>>> Hey! I wrote that script in about 30 seconds. Give me a break :-)
>>> 
>>> Sid
>>> 
>>>>> shift
>>>>> eval var${command}=$line
>>>>> let "command += 1"
>>>>> done < /etc/menu/menu.txt
>>>>> echo
>>>>>
>>>>> read -s -n1 bb
>>>>> echo
>>>>>
>>>>> case "$bb" in
>>>>>
>>>>> a) eval $var1 ;;
>>>>> b) eval $var2 ;;
>>>>> c) eval $var3 ;;
>>>>> d) eval $var4 ;;
>>>>> e) eval $var5 ;;
>>>>> f) eval $var6 ;;
>>>>> g) eval $var7 ;;
>>>>> h) eval $var8 ;;
>>>>> i) eval $var9 ;;
>>>>> j) eval $var10 ;;
>>>>> k) eval $var11 ;;
>>>>> l) eval $var12 ;;
>>>>> m) eval $var13 ;;
>>>>> n) eval $var14 ;;
>>>>> o) eval $var15 ;;
>>>>> p) eval $var16 ;;
>>>>> q) eval $var17 ;;
>>>>> r) eval $var18 ;;
>>>>> s) eval $var19 ;;
>>>>> t) eval $var20 ;;
>>>>> u) eval $var21 ;;
>>>>> v) eval $var22 ;;
>>>>> w) eval $var23 ;;
>>>>> x) eval $var24 ;;
>>>>> y) eval $var25 ;;
>>>>> z) eval $var26 ;;
>>>>>
>>>>> esac
>>>>>
>>>>> Put the script in /usr/local/bin
>>>>> and make it executable with:
>>>>>
>>>>> $ chmod +rx menu.sh
>>>>>
>>>>> alias the script to m in your bashrc
>>>>>
>>>>> alias m='/usr/local/bin/menu.sh'
>>>>>
>>>>> Then all you have to do to bring up the menu, which would have a bunch
>>>>> of entries for the newbies, is enter m at the prompt.
>>>>>
>>>>>>  Speaking of, I've read the history and I don't see a single
>>>>>> person pushing GDE's on anyone,
>>>>>
>>>>> Really? They are a part of the default install of most or all of the
>>>>> major distros.
>>>>>
>>>>> The install docs do not usually mention the option of running Linux
>>>>> without them.
>>>>>
>>>>> Instructions for running Linux without a GDE, once a part of every
>>>>> Linux runners basic education, are not provided.
>>>>>
>>>>> I call that "pushing" in a big way. An absolute way.
>>>>>
>>>>>> nor anyone trying to convince anyone
>>>>>> else to do anything *but* learn how to work their way around in
>>>>>> shell,
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes. It is quite clear that you have a very simplistic notion of what
>>>>> is involved in the everyday maninpulating of people.
>>>>>
>>>>>> so it's a wonder why you are all worked up about this issue.
>>>>>> Regardless, I'll save time and filter your posts out for now on
>>>>>> anyway.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Poor baby. All freaked out at the thought of having to take time off
>>>>> from playing games and watching movies to do a little studying.
>>>>>
>>>>> These are the kinds of losers from the Windows/Mac world that we are
>>>>> being flooded with since the maturation of the GDEs.
>>
>> Golly gee Sid, I guess you don't know your way around as well as you 
>> claim. It's an idiotic script anyway. Why continue to post updates to 
>> this work of art?
>
>    If that's Sid's level of shell scripting, he should start using a
>    GUI ASAP!
>

Shell scripts are plain text files, idiot. Doesn't matter whether
they are created or edited in a console editor or a fancy
graphical editor.

>
> -- 
>    Chris F.A. Johnson, author   |    <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
>    Shell Scripting Recipes:     |  My code in this post, if any,
>    A Problem-Solution Approach  |         is released under the
>    2005, Apress                 |    GNU General Public Licence

Chris is your typical technocratic bully and fatheaded in the
extreme.

He just doesn't get it: shellscripting is something that anyone
can do. You don't have to be an expert to write scripts that
work.


Sid

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>> Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>
>>>> I mean he's a paranoid, and likely schizophrenic, but why is he
>>>> pissing around on a Linux group?
>>> Don't forget the magic(k) (that's with a "K", so you know it's
>>> "Special") and Wicca group popularity he has a good following for as
>>> well, apparently.  Even those kooks shun him.
>> Ignoring the important parts of this thread, I must point out that 
>> _magick_ is an archaic, but correct, spelling of what is now called 
>> _magic_. For example, Aleister Crowley wrote a book in 1929 entitled
>> _Magick: in Theory and Practice_ (that I have never read). I prefer the 
>> kind of magic in _Harry Potter_ and _Little Big_.
>>
>>
> Crowley used a k to distinguish between that and illusionary (stage) magic.
> 
I was unaware of that. I do not really consider stage magic to be real 
magic, merely deception (without wanting to deprecate it: it is quite a 
skill in itself).
> 
> Its been used by his wannabe followers ever since.

I suppose so.

-- 
   .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
   /V\  PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A         Registered Machine   241939.
  /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey    http://counter.li.org
  ^^-^^ 10:25:01 up 27 days, 4:29, 3 users, load average: 4.52, 4.63, 4.53

Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>>> Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>>>> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I mean he's a paranoid, and likely schizophrenic, but why is he
>>>>> pissing around on a Linux group?
>>>> Don't forget the magic(k) (that's with a "K", so you know it's
>>>> "Special") and Wicca group popularity he has a good following for as
>>>> well, apparently.  Even those kooks shun him.
>>> Ignoring the important parts of this thread, I must point out that 
>>> _magick_ is an archaic, but correct, spelling of what is now called 
>>> _magic_. For example, Aleister Crowley wrote a book in 1929 entitled
>>> _Magick: in Theory and Practice_ (that I have never read). I prefer 
>>> the kind of magic in _Harry Potter_ and _Little Big_.
>>>
>>>
>> Crowley used a k to distinguish between that and illusionary (stage) 
>> magic.
>>
> I was unaware of that. I do not really consider stage magic to be real 
> magic, merely deception (without wanting to deprecate it: it is quite a 
> skill in itself).

The problem is, that so called real magick, is also a form of deception 
as far as I can tell. It deceives the subconscious rather than the 
conscious though.


>>
>> Its been used by his wannabe followers ever since.
> 
> I suppose so.
> 
I know so..

On 2009-09-23, Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> I prefer the kind 
> of magic in _Harry Potter_ and _Little Big_.

I like ImageMagick myself.  :)

--keith

-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote:
> On 2009-09-23, Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> I prefer the kind 
>> of magic in _Harry Potter_ and _Little Big_.
>
> I like ImageMagick myself.  :)

ImageMagick is an excellent suite of console (non-X/non-GUI)
utilities for manipulating images.

But let's get back on-topic, shall we?

# Subject: Re: Puzzled about KDE or GNOME or what?

The Graphical Desktop Environments (GDE) for Linux are
massive (around twice the size of a fully-functional
Linux OS w/GUI) suites of graphical applications that
supposedly offer a complete user-interface to the
Linux that any lazy and not-very-bright person can
utilize.

They are clones of the Windows/Mac GDEs.

But on Linux and Unix they are optional, although a lot
of people want people to believe they are mandatory, the
only option.

The fact is that even the GUI is optional on Linux. I
rarely bring up X, doing most of my 'surfing' with
links, a console browser, viewing images with zgv,
and manipulating images with ImageMagick and netpbm.

Creating and maintaining the GDEs are enormously expensive
undertakings financed by various corporations. Why?

Because technical support is a trillion dollar industry
and they don't make tech support income from people 
who understand their OS.

Plus, _they_ get to decide which applications and utilities
are easily accessible and they will provide technical support
for.

Try this: get to a command prompt and hit Tab twice. You'll
get something like this:

Display all 914 possibilities? (y or n)

That's how many executables I have on my Linux OS.

Now compare the figure you get with the number of
applications offered in the GDE menus.

The technocrats want you to believe that its extremely
difficult to run Linux from with the shell interface,
the command line.

They are lying. All you need to know is the basics of
how Linux works and the basics of the shell.

http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/howlinuxworks/
http://rute.2038bug.com/rute.html.tar.bz2
http://www.linuxpackages.net/howto/slackfiles/books/slackware-basics/html/shell.
html
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-who-where-and-what
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-man-command
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-directory-manipulation
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/5/bash-files-manipulation
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/6/bash-history-in-the-making
http://www.usefuljaja.com/2007/6/bash-use-your-local-bin
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/index.html
http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/abs-guide/en/
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1052574.html
kind of odd "shell ninja" but lots of good info:
http://www.slideshare.net/brian_dailey/nyphp-march-2009-presentation
http://stat-www.berkeley.edu/classes/s243/bash.html
http://www.learnaboutlinux.net/blog/41-programming/50-bash-basics-1
http://linux.about.com/cs/glossaries/a/aglossary.htm
http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Dictionary/
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

http://axiom.anu.edu.au/~okeefe/p2b
for:
From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO
Building a Minimal Linux System from Source Code


Let's take Linux back from the corporate lackeys.


Just Say No to their Windows-clone GDEs.


Sid

-- 
Shell Interface Mailing List
screening address: usenet4444 
[AT] gmail (dot) com

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>>>> Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>>>>> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> I mean he's a paranoid, and likely schizophrenic, but why is he
>>>>>>  pissing around on a Linux group?
>>>>> Don't forget the magic(k) (that's with a "K", so you know it's 
>>>>> "Special") and Wicca group popularity he has a good following for
>>>>> as well, apparently.  Even those kooks shun him.
>>>> Ignoring the important parts of this thread, I must point out that
>>>>  _magick_ is an archaic, but correct, spelling of what is now
>>>> called _magic_. For example, Aleister Crowley wrote a book in 1929
>>>> entitled _Magick: in Theory and Practice_ (that I have never read).
>>>> I prefer the kind of magic in _Harry Potter_ and _Little Big_.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> Crowley used a k to distinguish between that and illusionary (stage)
>>>  magic.
>>> 
>> I was unaware of that. I do not really consider stage magic to be real
>>  magic, merely deception (without wanting to deprecate it: it is quite
>> a skill in itself).
> 
> The problem is, that so called real magick, is also a form of deception 
> as far as I can tell. It deceives the subconscious rather than the 
> conscious though.
> 
I do not know enough about real magick to have an opinion. I am inclined to 
disbelieve in it, but I am not sure. Were I convinced that the actions 
depicted in Harry Potter stories to be physical reality, I would have to 
believe in supernatural powers that these people exercised, or that they had 
a much greater understanding, at some level, than classically trained 
physicists possess. Luckily, the Harry Potter stories are clearly fiction, 
so I need not deal with them on a "real" level.

-- 
   .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
   /V\  PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A         Registered Machine   241939.
  /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey    http://counter.li.org
  ^^-^^ 16:55:01 up 27 days, 10:59, 3 users, load average: 4.16, 4.38, 4.40

Jean-David Beyer wrote:

> I do not know enough about real magick to have an opinion.

Over thousands of years, no proof of "real magick" leads me to believe
it's a subject best left for children's books and kooks.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> 
>> I do not know enough about real magick to have an opinion.
> 
> Over thousands of years, no proof of "real magick" leads me to believe
> it's a subject best left for children's books and kooks.

Well having studied it extensively, as part of something not 
particularly related to it,  I am inclined to believe that there is a 
real psychological component, and the myths are simply oral tradition of 
it handed down, mixed in with a lot of inter-cultural misunderstanding. 
I.e. 'any science if sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic'


Of course, current quantum theory leaves a LOT more space for the 
'paranormal' than classical physics did, and we may yet be surprised.

Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> wrote:

> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>
>> I do not know enough about real magick to have an opinion.
>
> Over thousands of years, no proof of "real magick" leads me
> to believe it's a subject best left for children's books and
> kooks.

What an incredibly stupid and ignorant statement.

You'd think he had a time machine and had spent the last
40 years exploring the entire world a decade at a time
up the timeline.

Junior, _no_one_ knows everthing that happens on this planet
even today, much less thousands of years ago.

The body of evidence supporting the existence of magick
(including 'psychic' abilities/ESP/reincarnation) that has
accumulated since the beginning of recorded human history is
staggering.

It is simply ignored by the mainstream physical science establishment.

These religious fanatics have decided in advance that such
things cannot possibly exist because they don't fit in with
their theories (religious beliefs). So like all true religious
fanatics, they turn a blind eye to them and mock them if the
subject comes up.

Note that one does not have to believe in darwinian evolution or
the physical science worldview to be a very good technologist.

A hammer works just as well regardless of whether one believes
that supposed 'physical laws' (whatever their current theories
are about those) are at work or it is the power of a god at work.

One does not have to buy the philosophy of physical science
(scientific materialism) in order to make use of the practical
value of some of its work.

Many of the brilliant technologists coming out of Asia are devout
Buddhists or Taoists who think the Theory of Evolution is bunk
and that the entire universe is alive and conscious and nothing
happens by chance.


Sid   

Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> 
>> I do not know enough about real magick to have an opinion.
> 
> Over thousands of years, no proof of "real magick" leads me to believe
> it's a subject best left for children's books and kooks.

The reason I have trouble with arguments like that are several.

There are a lot of things that escaped proof for centuries (e.g., Fermat's 
Last Theorem, The Four Color Problem) that were later found to be true.

There are other things that were obviously true for millennia that turned 
out to be false (e.g., the earth is flat, the earth is at the center of the 
earth, solar system, etc.)

And recently, a class of things are known that are provably unprovable has 
been discovered; they are not necessarily true, nor are they necessarily 
false. Kurt Friedrich G�del, Alan Turing, and Whitehead & Russell proved 
essentially equivalent theorems about this.

In the last 40 years or so, a lot of things that scientists consider so far 
beyond the pale have been pretty much shown to exist, with the odds against 
these results being due to chance are pretty phenomenal. See Dean Radin's 
book, "The Intelligent Universe" for example. I have first-hand experience 
with a little of this, though what any of this has to do with KDE or GNOME 
escapes me.

-- 
   .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
   /V\  PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A         Registered Machine   241939.
  /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey    http://counter.li.org
  ^^-^^ 20:05:01 up 27 days, 14:09, 3 users, load average: 4.35, 4.34, 4.32

Jean-David Beyer wrote:

> The reason I have trouble with arguments like that are several.

Some things that have been shown to be different than thought (flat
world, and other ignorance), as well as other things we don't know or
can't confirm exist are completely different topics and things than
"magick".  It's all just so childish and I have no idea what this has
to do with KDE/Gnome either, but it does go some way to explain Sid's
stupidity.  It's pretty easy to argue that people are ignorant when
they aren't willing to be "open" to accepting anything someone suggests
as being possible, let alone existing (for sure).  Not that you're
suggesting that, but the fools I mentioned.  Like I said, best left to
children stories and kooks.  Anyone wishes to prove me wrong (and can't
a spell on me, by all means, go for it).
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> writes:

> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>
>> I do not know enough about real magick to have an opinion.
>
> Over thousands of years, no proof of "real magick" leads me to believe
> it's a subject best left for children's books and kooks.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.


   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/linux/asciipinguine.html>

Florian Diesch wrote:

> 
> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
> 

Pretty soon, Sid will discover fire, and maybe the wheel.  If it's
'magick' to him, then I guess everyone else is 'ignorant', just as
everyone's "ignorant" for not aligning their views with his paranoid
rants about GDE's.  FFS, this is just getting pathetic.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>>
>>> I do not know enough about real magick to have an opinion.
>>
>> Over thousands of years, no proof of "real magick" leads me to believe
>> it's a subject best left for children's books and kooks.
> 
> The reason I have trouble with arguments like that are several.
> 
> There are a lot of things that escaped proof for centuries (e.g., 
> Fermat's Last Theorem, The Four Color Problem) that were later found to 
> be true.
> 
> There are other things that were obviously true for millennia that 
> turned out to be false (e.g., the earth is flat, the earth is at the 
> center of the earth, solar system, etc.)
> 
> And recently, a class of things are known that are provably unprovable 
> has been discovered; they are not necessarily true, nor are they 
> necessarily false. Kurt Friedrich G�del, Alan Turing, and Whitehead & 
> Russell proved essentially equivalent theorems about this.
> 
> In the last 40 years or so, a lot of things that scientists consider so 
> far beyond the pale have been pretty much shown to exist, with the odds 
> against these results being due to chance are pretty phenomenal. See 
> Dean Radin's book, "The Intelligent Universe" for example. I have 
> first-hand experience with a little of this, though what any of this has 
> to do with KDE or GNOME escapes me.
> 
Well its better to talk about sidney, than to him.

Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
> Florian Diesch wrote:
> 
>> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
>>
> 
> Pretty soon, Sid will discover fire, and maybe the wheel.  If it's
> 'magick' to him, then I guess everyone else is 'ignorant', just as
> everyone's "ignorant" for not aligning their views with his paranoid
> rants about GDE's.  FFS, this is just getting pathetic.

I thought it was just getting interesting actually.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>> Florian Diesch wrote:
>> 
>>> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
>>> magic.
>>>
>> 
>> Pretty soon, Sid will discover fire, and maybe the wheel.  If it's
>> 'magick' to him, then I guess everyone else is 'ignorant', just as
>> everyone's "ignorant" for not aligning their views with his paranoid
>> rants about GDE's.  FFS, this is just getting pathetic.
> 
> I thought it was just getting interesting actually.

Well, anything is better/more interesting than engaging that moron.  Not
a lot of actual useful or on topic posts in the Linux groups these
days, I suppose we should take what we can get, just so long as it's
not his lame posts.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

"Sidney Lambe" <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote in message 
news:slrnhbefkq.pni.sidneylambe@evergreen.net...
>

I'd say that I'm an "expert" in writing SQL code for querying databases but 
I have no problem whatsoever with newbies using the graphical grid in MS 
Access to create their own queries.  Why on Earth should I?  It gets the job 
done.  Some people who can write SQL code prefer the GUI in Access.  Should 
they be treated like second class citizens too?  You become a bigger fool 
with each rant you post. 

"Sidney Lambe" <sidneylambe@nospam.invalid> wrote in message 
news:slrnhbfss9.pni.sidneylambe@evergreen.net...
>

Correction:  Sidney Lame. 

Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
> Florian Diesch wrote:
> 
>> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
>>
> 
> Pretty soon, Sid will discover fire, and maybe the wheel. 

Discovery of the wheel was obvious. The breakthrough came when a primitive 
person thought to put a triangle-shape stone on an axle. After that, adding 
more sides just made the thing more efficient.

> If it's
> 'magick' to him, then I guess everyone else is 'ignorant', just as
> everyone's "ignorant" for not aligning their views with his paranoid
> rants about GDE's.  FFS, this is just getting pathetic.


-- 
   .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
   /V\  PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A         Registered Machine   241939.
  /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey    http://counter.li.org
  ^^-^^ 11:10:01 up 28 days, 5:14, 3 users, load average: 4.41, 4.26, 4.21

Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> 
>> Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>>> Florian Diesch wrote:
>>>
>>>> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
>>>> magic.
>>>>
>>> Pretty soon, Sid will discover fire, and maybe the wheel.  If it's
>>> 'magick' to him, then I guess everyone else is 'ignorant', just as
>>> everyone's "ignorant" for not aligning their views with his paranoid
>>> rants about GDE's.  FFS, this is just getting pathetic.
>> I thought it was just getting interesting actually.
> 
> Well, anything is better/more interesting than engaging that moron.  Not
> a lot of actual useful or on topic posts in the Linux groups these
> days, I suppose we should take what we can get, just so long as it's
> not his lame posts.

Lack of posts reflects lack of problems?

-- 
   .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
   /V\  PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A         Registered Machine   241939.
  /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey    http://counter.li.org
  ^^-^^ 11:15:01 up 28 days, 5:19, 3 users, load average: 4.37, 4.26, 4.20

Jean-David Beyer wrote:

> Lack of posts reflects lack of problems?

Sometimes, though I don't imagine it'll be leaving.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

Jean-David Beyer wrote:

> Discovery of the wheel was obvious. The breakthrough came when a
> primitive person thought to put a triangle-shape stone on an axle.
> After that, adding more sides just made the thing more efficient.
> 

If you tell ALL of our secrets, Sid will have nothing new to argue
about.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:36:00 -0700, Wanna-Be Sys Admin did cat :

> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> 
>> Discovery of the wheel was obvious. The breakthrough came when a
>> primitive person thought to put a triangle-shape stone on an axle.
>> After that, adding more sides just made the thing more efficient.

which besides show that Euler just probably discovered some ancient
magick carved on a runestone somewhere near a lake or a river in
St Petersburg, which incidentally explains the name of StP paradox!

>> 
>> 
> If you tell ALL of our secrets, Sid will have nothing new to argue
> about.

on the contrary, not only, as he says an oft,'we all are one' but
that very one stole all his future discoveries in the past, how evil are me ,->

On 2009-09-24, Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>
>> Discovery of the wheel was obvious. The breakthrough came when a
>> primitive person thought to put a triangle-shape stone on an axle.
>> After that, adding more sides just made the thing more efficient.
>> 
>
> If you tell ALL of our secrets, Sid will have nothing new to argue
> about.

   You don't think he'll actually understand them, do you?

-- 
   Chris F.A. Johnson, author   |    <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
   Shell Scripting Recipes:     |  My code in this post, if any,
   A Problem-Solution Approach  |         is released under the
   2005, Apress                 |    GNU General Public Licence

Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:

> On 2009-09-24, Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>>
>>> Discovery of the wheel was obvious. The breakthrough came when a
>>> primitive person thought to put a triangle-shape stone on an axle.
>>> After that, adding more sides just made the thing more efficient.
>>> 
>>
>> If you tell ALL of our secrets, Sid will have nothing new to argue
>> about.
> 
>    You don't think he'll actually understand them, do you?
> 

You're right, I'm sure he won't disappoint.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On 2009-09-24, Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8@verizon.net> wrote:
> Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>> 
>> Well, anything is better/more interesting than engaging that moron.  Not
>> a lot of actual useful or on topic posts in the Linux groups these
>> days, I suppose we should take what we can get, just so long as it's
>> not his lame posts.
>
> Lack of posts reflects lack of problems?
>
Or it could reflect ISPs dropping newsgroup service, and users not knowing
about alternate servers, or even knowing that Usenet exists.

On Friday 25 September 2009 00:36, someone identifying as *Bill Marcum*
wrote in /comp.os.linux.misc:/

> On 2009-09-24, Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:
>>> 
>>> Well, anything is better/more interesting than engaging that moron. 
>>> Not a lot of actual useful or on topic posts in the Linux groups
>>> these days, I suppose we should take what we can get, just so long
>>> as it's not his lame posts.
>>
>> Lack of posts reflects lack of problems?
>>
> Or it could reflect ISPs dropping newsgroup service, and users not
> knowing about alternate servers, or even knowing that Usenet exists.

I'd say the latter.  The same applies for IRC as a medium.  I happen to
be running an IRC server/network - in transition now to a new domain
name - and I have gradually seen the number of users on IRC drop over
the years.  

Most of the new generations simply use MSN Messenger - which as of
Windows XP came installed with Windows by default - instead of
installing some third-party application, and recently it's things like
MySpace, Twitter and Facebook that have become the default "chat
boxes".  Facebook even has its own "chat service", and if you invite or
even suggest IRC to those people, then you get to hear "no thanks, I
would rather stay on Facebook", as if you can't use both at the same
time.  They simply don't understand the concept of IRC anymore.

So it is with Usenet.  Most people these days who pick up something
about newsgroups will go look for them on Google Groups, and will use
Google Groups to post to Usenet, thinking that Usenet is just Google
Groups itself.  They don't have a clue anymore.

In addition to the above, I happen to have an anecdote from today... 
Ever since yesterday, I could not post to Usenet anymore, using my ISPs
newsserver and SMTP.  Every message I tried to send simply timed out. 
I called their helpdesk this afternoon, and I was told that "my account
could have gotten corrupted" and that I needed to "delete it and try
again".  I was also suggested to try another newsreader - which I did,
thinking that one of the recent hardware-induced crashes of my system
had left my newsreader corrupted or something.  All to no avail.

So...  I call them again.  This time I get some young chick on the phone
who obviously doesn't know what she's there to do.  So I tell her the
same thing, can't post to newsgroups anymore, blah blah.  She asks me
for my username and so forth, and then she sees that I called in
earlier this afternoon, and that I'm running GNU/Linux.  "We don't
support Linux, Sir."  I explain to her that it doesn't matter, and then
she says "Then you have to call Linux".  I swear!  I know this showed
up in another post from another poster a while ago, but this time I was
told the same thing myself.  I have to call Linux, wow.  I don't know
whether the kernel I'm using has a phone number, but I could try, I
guess... :p

Anyway, I assure her that everything on my system is as it should be,
and that a message is a message, whether you send it from Windows,
MacIntosh or GNU/Linux.  Then she says she'll ask someone else.  She
puts me on hold for five minutes, and then she comes back and tells me
that newsgroups are not supported anymore.  No matter what I try to get
her to realize that this is a ludicrous statement - although I'm not
using that exact word - she gets more stringent and irritated with me
by the minute, and so I finally say, "Okay, thank you" and I hang up.

So they are offering newsgroups as a service to their clients and have
even transfered their newsgroup pool onto an American company - which,
as Google was kind enough to tell me, is having serious problems at the
moment with regard to spam flood attacks and which doesn't seem eager
to do anything about that - but they are not supporting it?

Okay, now if *this* is the level of competence you must accept from
helpdesks, then what must the level of knowledge (or absence thereof)
be for the newer generations of internet denizens?  And all those New
Agers talking about an upcoming shift in consciousness...  Well, if
they mean a downward shift, then I would concur with that.

        <frightened>

                "I see stupid people...  They're everywhere..."

        </frightened>

<evil grin>

So this afternoon I registered at Eternal September, and I am now
happily using their excellent free news service. ;-)

-- 
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Aragorn wrote:
>         <frightened>
> 
>                 "I see stupid people...  They're everywhere..."
> 
>         </frightened>
> 
> <evil grin>
> 
> So this afternoon I registered at Eternal September, and I am now
> happily using their excellent free news service. ;-)
> 

  Good for you. I've been a subscriber for 100 years and have never had 
a problem with them. They are good at what they do

user <user@invalid.com> wrote:
> Aragorn wrote:
>>         <frightened>
>> 
>>                 "I see stupid people...  They're everywhere..."
>> 
>>         </frightened>
>> 
>> <evil grin>

Having read a number of of Aragorn's articles, I can state with
some assurance that he was looking in the mirror when he typed
the above statement.

Stupid people are always running around calling other people
"stupid".

It's the stupid person's way of trying to be smarter. 

His defense of the Windows-clone interfaces is another example
of his stupidity.

And entirely understandable. Stupid people have to use those
dreadful things.



Sid

Sidney Lambe wrote:

> Stupid people are always running around calling other people
> "stupid".

The sooner you realize you're "that" person, the better off we'll all
be.  Honestly, when you argue with every single last member of the
Linux groups every day, how this consideration escapes you that YOU are
the problem, is beyond the logic of even the most retarded of people.
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

On 2009-09-25, user <user@invalid.com> wrote:
> Aragorn wrote:
>> 
>> So this afternoon I registered at Eternal September, and I am now
>> happily using their excellent free news service. ;-)
>
>   Good for you. I've been a subscriber for 100 years and have never had 
> a problem with them. They are good at what they do

I know it says "Eternal", but have they really been around for 100
years?  Did they use IPoAC back then?

--keith


-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009, Keith Keller wrote:

> On 2009-09-25, user <user@invalid.com> wrote:
>> Aragorn wrote:
>>>
>>> So this afternoon I registered at Eternal September, and I am now
>>> happily using their excellent free news service. ;-)
>>
>>   Good for you. I've been a subscriber for 100 years and have never had
>> a problem with them. They are good at what they do
>
> I know it says "Eternal", but have they really been around for 100
> years?  Did they use IPoAC back then?
>
Wasn't that the point of "eternel September"?  It hit so bad that it 
seemed to be there forever.

   Michael

On Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:34:21 +0200, Sidney Lambe wrote:

>>> I do not know enough about real magick to have an opinion.

>> Over thousands of years, no proof of "real magick" leads me to believe
>> it's a subject best left for children's books and kooks.
 
> What an incredibly stupid and ignorant statement.

And right here we see the opinion of one of the above-mentioned KOOKS.

One of the most widely known (and detested) Kooks on Usenet, in fact.  A 
known troll, fool, and dipshit who is best ignored.


-- 
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
"Bother!" said Pooh, as he garotted another passing Liberal.
Usenet Improvement Project: http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

On Sep 23, 4:34=A0pm, Sidney Lambe <sidneyla...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
> The body of evidence supporting the existence of magick
> (including 'psychic' abilities/ESP/reincarnation) that has
> accumulated since the beginning of recorded human history is
> staggering.

The accumulated number of comic books with superheroes in them is
staggering, therefore Sidney believes he's going to get superpowers if
he gets bit by a radioactive spider.

Stories do not become true because they get told a lot.  Reality is
not democratic.  It's not something that's voted upon at all, let
alone something that can be influenced by stuffing the ballot boxes
with fakes.

I don't care how many e-mails you get saying otherwise, there is no
Nigerian prince who wants to give you millions of dollars.

It is the quality of the evidence, not the quantity, that intelligent
people use to make good decisions.

Tom wrote:
> On Sep 23, 4:34 pm, Sidney Lambe <sidneyla...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>> The body of evidence supporting the existence of magick
>> (including 'psychic' abilities/ESP/reincarnation) that has
>> accumulated since the beginning of recorded human history is
>> staggering.
> 
> The accumulated number of comic books with superheroes in them is
> staggering, therefore Sidney believes he's going to get superpowers if
> he gets bit by a radioactive spider.
> 
> Stories do not become true because they get told a lot.  Reality is
> not democratic.  It's not something that's voted upon at all, let
> alone something that can be influenced by stuffing the ballot boxes
> with fakes.
> 
> I don't care how many e-mails you get saying otherwise, there is no
> Nigerian prince who wants to give you millions of dollars.
> 
> It is the quality of the evidence, not the quantity, that intelligent
> people use to make good decisions.

To be fair there is a lot of anecdotal evidence of weird shit, but none 
of it is repeatable, and most explanations break natural laws we have 
come to think of as inviolate, so no one really investigates it.

I have dabbled in the intellectual exercise of coming up with a 
'science' that would give space to all of it, and, to my own 
satisfaction, succeeded. Not in doing magick, but in making up a 
theoretical framework that could explain at least the reports that were 
not obvious fakes, lies etc.

The curious thing is that the more recondite areas of philosophy, and 
the current worldview of Quantum physics, both tend to support the theory.

To the point where I would say that today, quantum physics IS magick ;-)

Of course the problem is that the result is not a science as such: it is 
a metaphysical hypothesis.

And as such is relatively untestable by scientific methodology, though 
some of its conclusions might be.

This of course does not means that I deviate from the consensus here, 
that Sidney Lambe is nuttier than a fruitcake, but such people can and 
do often lay themselves open to more weird shit than the rest of us. My 
theory accounts for that, too :-)

I'll stop there. Let's talk about Linux...

"The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in message 
news:h9l2qi$hd2$1@news.albasani.net...
> Let's talk about Linux...

Which distributed version do you prefer ?

bassos wrote:
> 
> "The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in message 
> news:h9l2qi$hd2$1@news.albasani.net...
>> Let's talk about Linux...
> 
> Which distributed version do you prefer ?
> 
Dunno. All much of a muchness I reckon.

For purely historical reasons I use Debian..

"The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in message 
news:h9lm5i$ffv$1@news.albasani.net...
> bassos wrote:
>>
>> "The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in message 
>> news:h9l2qi$hd2$1@news.albasani.net...
>>> Let's talk about Linux...
>>
>> Which distributed version do you prefer ?
>>
> Dunno. All much of a muchness I reckon.
>
> For purely historical reasons I use Debian..

Ah, no slave to Ubuntu :)

On 2009-09-26, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> For purely historical reasons I use Debian..

Pray tell, what historical significance does debian hold?

nb

On 2009-09-26, bassos <zebazz_nope> wrote:

> Ah, no slave to Ubuntu :)

How do you figure anyone is a "slave" to ubuntu?  Ubuntu is just a
choice, not an imperative.  Better to have some, nay, many!, using
ubuntu than not using linux at all.  I myself am not an ubutnu fan,
but almost everything is better than Winblows.

nb 

notbob wrote:
> On 2009-09-26, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> For purely historical reasons I use Debian..
> 
> Pray tell, what historical significance does debian hold?
> 
> nb
only that I was looking to use Linux, about 5 years ago, and a friend 
had the disks..

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

> only that I was looking to use Linux, about 5 years ago, and a friend
> had the disks..

Ahh....  those elusive debian discs.  I would have tried debian, but
could never get "the disks"!  I had cable, I had red hat, I had windows,
but I never had debian disks.  I don't know what their download scheme
was.  Torrents?  I knew zip about torrents, then.  I was even gonna buy
"the disks" at the next big LinuxExpo in SF, but Computer Central(?)
quit hosting a booth and never showed again.  Even Fry's and another
dedicated linux store didn't have "the disks".  I guess I'm doomed to
never try debian.  I finally found slackware and that's all she wrote.
I have no desire to even try debian, anymore and I've yet to get ubuntu
to load on 2 different boxes.  Must be the curse of no-debian-disks on
me.  ;)

nb

nb writes:
> Ahh....  those elusive debian discs.

<http://www.debian.org/CD/>
-- 
John Hasler 
jhasler@newsguy.com
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA

On 2009-09-26, notbob <notbob@nothome.com> wrote:
>
> How do you figure anyone is a "slave" to ubuntu?  Ubuntu is just a
> choice, not an imperative.  Better to have some, nay, many!, using
> ubuntu than not using linux at all.  I myself am not an ubutnu fan,
> but almost everything is better than Winblows.

Given a choice between Windows and a box admin'd by ''Sid'', I would
choose Windows.  But it'd be a tough choice.  ;-)

--keith

-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> writes:

> On 2009-09-26, notbob <notbob@nothome.com> wrote:
>>
>> How do you figure anyone is a "slave" to ubuntu?  Ubuntu is just a
>> choice, not an imperative.  Better to have some, nay, many!, using
>> ubuntu than not using linux at all.  I myself am not an ubutnu fan,
>> but almost everything is better than Winblows.
>
> Given a choice between Windows and a box admin'd by ''Sid'', I would
> choose Windows.  But it'd be a tough choice.  ;-)

I'd choose Sid's box. Shouldn't be hard to get root access there.


   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/software/shell-scripts/>

On 2009-09-26, Florian Diesch <diesch@spamfence.net> wrote:
> Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> writes:
>>
>> Given a choice between Windows and a box admin'd by ''Sid'', I would
>> choose Windows.  But it'd be a tough choice.  ;-)
>
> I'd choose Sid's box. Shouldn't be hard to get root access there.

Well, seeing as how he doesn't have any user accounts, I assume you
get root access is done by default.  The real problem is *he* has
root access too!  Danger!  Danger Will Robinson!  *flails arms wildly*

--keith

-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

On Sep 26, 5:52=A0am, The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:
> Tom wrote:
> > On Sep 23, 4:34 pm, Sidney Lambe <sidneyla...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> >> The body of evidence supporting the existence of magick
> >> (including 'psychic' abilities/ESP/reincarnation) that has
> >> accumulated since the beginning of recorded human history is
> >> staggering.
>
> > The accumulated number of comic books with superheroes in them is
> > staggering, therefore Sidney believes he's going to get superpowers if
> > he gets bit by a radioactive spider.
>
> > Stories do not become true because they get told a lot. =A0Reality is
> > not democratic. =A0It's not something that's voted upon at all, let
> > alone something that can be influenced by stuffing the ballot boxes
> > with fakes.
>
> > I don't care how many e-mails you get saying otherwise, there is no
> > Nigerian prince who wants to give you millions of dollars.
>
> > It is the quality of the evidence, not the quantity, that intelligent
> > people use to make good decisions.
>
> To be fair there is a lot of anecdotal evidence of weird shit, but none
> of it is repeatable, and most explanations break natural laws we have
> come to think of as inviolate, so no one really investigates it.

Lots of people have investigated it.  The repeatable parts become
"science" and the unrepeatable parts become "superstition".

Magic is simply the production of effects that seem miraculous to
people who don't know what's going on.  Its practice is the
exploitation of ignorance and confusion.  Its serious study is the
destruction of belief in magic.  The competent magician is the one who
knows that what he's doing is really not miraculous at all.

> I have dabbled in the intellectual exercise of coming up with a
> 'science' that would give space to all of it, and, to my own
> satisfaction, succeeded. Not in doing magick, but in making up a
> theoretical framework that could explain at least the reports that were
> not obvious fakes, lies etc.

Science isn't just coming up with theories.  What makes a science is
the systematic testing of those theories in ways that can demonstrate
whether or not they are consistent with observeable phenomena.  You
haven't gotten that far.  What you have is more accurately labelled
"pseudoscience".

> To the point where I would say that today, quantum physics IS magick ;-)

To the extent that you don't actually know what QM is, it seems like
magic to you.  As I say, the practice of magic is the exploitation of
ignorance.

> And as such is relatively untestable by scientific methodology, though
> some of its conclusions might be.

As long as you choose to keep your claims restricted to useless
metaphysical double-talk, it's untestable.  As soon as you try to
claim something specific, some real use for what you're calling
"magic", it is testable.

Sidney likes to do exactly what you're doing, engage in a lot of empty
talk with absolutely nothing to offer that is actually has anything at
all to do with the real world.

Tom wrote:

>> I have dabbled in the intellectual exercise of coming up with a
>> 'science' that would give space to all of it, and, to my own
>> satisfaction, succeeded. Not in doing magick, but in making up a
>> theoretical framework that could explain at least the reports that were
>> not obvious fakes, lies etc.
> 
> Science isn't just coming up with theories.  What makes a science is
> the systematic testing of those theories in ways that can demonstrate
> whether or not they are consistent with observeable phenomena.  You
> haven't gotten that far.  What you have is more accurately labelled
> "pseudoscience".
> 

Actually no, Tom. In fact I discovered it's metaphysics. It is in fact a 
philosophical hypothesis.

But it has scientific ramifications.


>> To the point where I would say that today, quantum physics IS magick ;-)
> 
> To the extent that you don't actually know what QM is, it seems like
> magic to you.  As I say, the practice of magic is the exploitation of
> ignorance.
> 

I think you have missed my meaning by a very long way here.

>> And as such is relatively untestable by scientific methodology, though
>> some of its conclusions might be.
> 
> As long as you choose to keep your claims restricted to useless
> metaphysical double-talk, it's untestable. 

All of science at the metaphysical level is untestable.


The foundations on which knowledge rests are a lot shakier than most 
people realise.

I would direct you to Godels incompleteness theorm, Turings 
incomputability and possibly Kant's critique of pure reason to get a 
drift of the underlying issues,

> As soon as you try to
> claim something specific, some real use for what you're calling
> "magic", it is testable.
> 

Yes. However things can only BE tested in the context of the 
metaphysical assumptions that are made *before* the science is developed.



> Sidney likes to do exactly what you're doing, engage in a lot of empty
> talk with absolutely nothing to offer that is actually has anything at
> all to do with the real world.

I don't think you actually know what I am trying to convey here at all.
Perhaps its best expressed by saying that science *assumes* a 1:1 
correlation between what is *perceived* to be there, and what is really 
there.

My thesis is to say 'suppose that is only an ad hoc assumption., suppose 
that perception is actually a process which creates a view on reality, 
not one which actually apprehends it directly: and suppose also that 
that process is subject to modification, either inadvertently, or with 
deliberate intent'

Now you see the problem between stage magic and so called real magick. 
In this context stage magick fools perception at a mundane level: Fool 
it at a deeper level, below the one that science assumes is a starting 
point, and you have a different order of experience.

In essence this is no different from the development of a normal 
scientific theory, in that some noumenous entity - a Natural Law, is 
presupposed to lie behind and be the cause of phenomenal events, as they 
are observed.

The subtle difference is that the entity presupposed is one that 
actually affects the perception, rather than the real underlying 
nature.. by definition if that is not constant between two observers, 
they will see different things when observing the same event.

The parallels between relativity, which says precisely that in a very 
specific way (velocity differences between observers lead to different 
observations) and quantum theory ( that reality can only be observed as 
a quantum probability state collapses into a discrete macro event ) are 
relevant.

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

> Tom wrote:
> 
> >> I have dabbled in the intellectual exercise of coming up with a
> >> 'science' that would give space to all of it, and, to my own
> >> satisfaction, succeeded. Not in doing magick, but in making up a
> >> theoretical framework that could explain at least the reports that were
> >> not obvious fakes, lies etc.
> > Science isn't just coming up with theories.  What makes a science is
> > the systematic testing of those theories in ways that can demonstrate
> > whether or not they are consistent with observeable phenomena.  You
> > haven't gotten that far.  What you have is more accurately labelled
> > "pseudoscience".
> >
> 
> Actually no, Tom. In fact I discovered it's metaphysics. It is in fact a
> philosophical hypothesis.
> 
> But it has scientific ramifications.
> 
> 
> >> To the point where I would say that today, quantum physics IS magick ;-)
> > To the extent that you don't actually know what QM is, it seems like
> > magic to you.  As I say, the practice of magic is the exploitation of
> > ignorance.
> >
> 
> I think you have missed my meaning by a very long way here.
> 
> >> And as such is relatively untestable by scientific methodology, though
> >> some of its conclusions might be.
> > As long as you choose to keep your claims restricted to useless
> > metaphysical double-talk, it's untestable.
> 
> All of science at the metaphysical level is untestable.


If it's not testable, it's not science.

That's typical pseudoscience.  You're engaging in wild speculation, but
desire the status of science, so you call it "science at the metaphysical
level" instead.


I'll repost a favorite joke of mine for you:

   A group of physicist were visiting a dean of their university. They
   were asking for a new particle accelerator to be built on university
   grounds.

   The Dean was exasperated: "You physicists!  Always demanding more
   outrageously expensive equipment.  If you had your way, you'd
   bankrupt this university!"

   He continued: "Why can't you be like the mathematicians?  They never
   ask me for anything but pens, paper and wastebaskets!"

   The Dean then paused, thought for a while, and continued: "Actually,
   the philosophers are even better.  All they ever ask me for is pens
   and paper."


> The foundations on which knowledge rests are a lot shakier than most people
> realise.
> 
> I would direct you to Godels incompleteness theorm, Turings incomputability
> and possibly Kant's critique of pure reason to get a drift of the underlying
> issues,


You forgot chaos theory.  That seems to be an old favorite to invoke when
engaging in pseudoscience, as well.  Or was it a fad whose time has passed?


> > As soon as you try to
> > claim something specific, some real use for what you're calling
> > "magic", it is testable.
> >
> 
> Yes. However things can only BE tested in the context of the metaphysical
> assumptions that are made *before* the science is developed.
> 
> 
> 
> > Sidney likes to do exactly what you're doing, engage in a lot of empty
> > talk with absolutely nothing to offer that is actually has anything at
> > all to do with the real world.
> 
> I don't think you actually know what I am trying to convey here at all.
> Perhaps its best expressed by saying that science *assumes* a 1:1 correlation
> between what is *perceived* to be there, and what is really there.
> 
> My thesis is to say 'suppose that is only an ad hoc assumption., suppose that
> perception is actually a process which creates a view on reality, not one
> which actually apprehends it directly: and suppose also that that process is
> subject to modification, either inadvertently, or with deliberate intent'


[SNIP]  I'll stop you right here, if you don't mind.


Can this thing you're supposing be tested?

If not, it belongs to the realm of speculation, and does not deserve the term
"science".  (Or "science at the metaphysical level".  Or "I can't believe
it's not science!")

If it can be tested, then please tell us in which way it could be.


                HG

[delete]

I don't read this intellectual bigot and bully's posts, (Tom).

>> > Tom wrote:
>> >
>> > [Physical] Science isn't just coming up with theories.

Notice that I had to add the "[Physical]" because the religious
fanatics who subscribe those doctrines are so self-involved, so
blinded by their chosen beliefs about the nature of reality, that
they don't even realize that there are other sciences around that
are based on different concepts of how reality works.

And he is right, of course. I never said otherwise. Physical Science
is also about collecting data that seems to support their theories
and then convincing themselves they are accurate until they are
proven otherwise, which happens quite often over the decades and
centuries. 

>> > What makes a science is the systematic testing of those
>> > theories in ways that can demonstrate whether or not they
>> > are consistent with observeable phenomena.

Nice little recitation of official physical science dogma. But
complete nonsense. The 'Scientific Method' is based upon a number
of concepts about the nature of reality that can't be tested with
that same method. They have to be taken on faith.

Like the assumption that what they call the physical laws have
always been what they are now. Like the only perceivable reality
is that which can be apprehended with the physical senses. That
something called 'randomness' exists.

>> > You haven't gotten that far. What you
>> > have is more accurately labelled "pseudoscience".

According to the flawed doctrines of Physical Science.

Who cares what a bunch of religious zealots think?

They can believe anything they want, just like anyone else.

If they believe their beliefs are facts, then they are true
religious fanatics. 


[delete]

Sid

-- 
Sidney Lambe
Wiccan Priest and Apprentice Magician
http://tinyurl.com/7vs9zb
usenet4444  (at) gmail (dot) com

HG wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
> 
>> Tom wrote:
>>
>>>> I have dabbled in the intellectual exercise of coming up with a
>>>> 'science' that would give space to all of it, and, to my own
>>>> satisfaction, succeeded. Not in doing magick, but in making up a
>>>> theoretical framework that could explain at least the reports that were
>>>> not obvious fakes, lies etc.
>>> Science isn't just coming up with theories.  What makes a science is
>>> the systematic testing of those theories in ways that can demonstrate
>>> whether or not they are consistent with observeable phenomena.  You
>>> haven't gotten that far.  What you have is more accurately labelled
>>> "pseudoscience".
>>>
>> Actually no, Tom. In fact I discovered it's metaphysics. It is in fact a
>> philosophical hypothesis.
>>
>> But it has scientific ramifications.
>>
>>
>>>> To the point where I would say that today, quantum physics IS magick ;-)
>>> To the extent that you don't actually know what QM is, it seems like
>>> magic to you.  As I say, the practice of magic is the exploitation of
>>> ignorance.
>>>
>> I think you have missed my meaning by a very long way here.
>>
>>>> And as such is relatively untestable by scientific methodology, though
>>>> some of its conclusions might be.
>>> As long as you choose to keep your claims restricted to useless
>>> metaphysical double-talk, it's untestable.
>> All of science at the metaphysical level is untestable.
> 
> 
> If it's not testable, it's not science.
> 

Yes, that is entirely correct. Its metaphysics. But that is precisely 
the point. Science RESTS on untestable hypotheses.. That was essentially 
the train of thought first expressed clearly by Kant, and subesquently 
proved correct by Godel and others. And IIRC grudgingly accepted by Russell.


> That's typical pseudoscience.  You're engaging in wild speculation, but
> desire the status of science, so you call it "science at the metaphysical
> level" instead.
> 
That's not typical pseudoscience, because I have both a great respect 
for science, and a lifetime of trying to understand the philosophical 
basis on which it rests.



> 
> I'll repost a favorite joke of mine for you:
> 
>    A group of physicist were visiting a dean of their university. They
>    were asking for a new particle accelerator to be built on university
>    grounds.
> 
>    The Dean was exasperated: "You physicists!  Always demanding more
>    outrageously expensive equipment.  If you had your way, you'd
>    bankrupt this university!"
> 
>    He continued: "Why can't you be like the mathematicians?  They never
>    ask me for anything but pens, paper and wastebaskets!"
> 
>    The Dean then paused, thought for a while, and continued: "Actually,
>    the philosophers are even better.  All they ever ask me for is pens
>    and paper."
> 

Not bad ;-)
> 
>> The foundations on which knowledge rests are a lot shakier than most people
>> realise.
>>
>> I would direct you to Godels incompleteness theorm, Turings incomputability
>> and possibly Kant's critique of pure reason to get a drift of the underlying
>> issues,
> 
> 
> You forgot chaos theory.  That seems to be an old favorite to invoke when
> engaging in pseudoscience, as well.  Or was it a fad whose time has passed?
> 

No Chaos therory is more about incomputability than lack of adherence to 
cause-and-effect or the actual nature of reality. Chaos theory is really 
a con, like the Gaia 'theory'. Its has always been understood : just not 
given a fancy name as if it was something new.




> 
>>> As soon as you try to
>>> claim something specific, some real use for what you're calling
>>> "magic", it is testable.
>>>
>> Yes. However things can only BE tested in the context of the metaphysical
>> assumptions that are made *before* the science is developed.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Sidney likes to do exactly what you're doing, engage in a lot of empty
>>> talk with absolutely nothing to offer that is actually has anything at
>>> all to do with the real world.
>> I don't think you actually know what I am trying to convey here at all.
>> Perhaps its best expressed by saying that science *assumes* a 1:1 correlation
>> between what is *perceived* to be there, and what is really there.
>>
>> My thesis is to say 'suppose that is only an ad hoc assumption., suppose that
>> perception is actually a process which creates a view on reality, not one
>> which actually apprehends it directly: and suppose also that that process is
>> subject to modification, either inadvertently, or with deliberate intent'
> 
> 
> [SNIP]  I'll stop you right here, if you don't mind.
> 
> 
> Can this thing you're supposing be tested?
> 

Only as any science can, within its own internally self consistent set 
of rules.

You cannot however, say that this makes it correct. Only that  - like 
e.g. replacing planar euclidean geomtery with a geometery of spherical 
surfaces, that, given the logic of the way its defined, a tniangle CAN 
have three angles that add up to 270 degrees, for example.

If you like, to carry the analogy further, the metaphysical part of 
those two geometries might consist in asking ' how can you tell when 
something is flat, not curved' and your answer, so simple at first 
sight, when faced with the Relativistic worldview, becomes less and less 
simple. And ultimately the answer is that you cannot actually tell when 
a surface is flat, in the limit. Its always in terms of some other 
condition.






> If not, it belongs to the realm of speculation, and does not deserve the term
> "science".  (Or "science at the metaphysical level".  Or "I can't believe
> it's not science!")
> 

Oh,  for sure its speculative. No denying that at all. And not its not 
science as we know it. Its a metaphysical proposition that leaves 
science as we know it, as it is, but relocates it en bloc to a subset of 
the totality of knowledge, not the pinnacle. That's all. In so doing it 
also leaves space for a radical re-interpretation of religion, magick 
and mental health. Which if it were ever to be adopted would upset 
EVERYONE who holds beliefs about these . In fact I would venture to 
suggest that I haven't left an icon un clasted or a sacred cow 
unslaughtered anwywhere.

> If it can be tested, then please tell us in which way it could be.
> 
That's a tough call HG,

I will explain why. Suppose you consider the mediaeval mindset, in which 
say disease is in fact an attack by evil spirits, and so on, and you 
want to say its down to 'microbes' and 'bacteria' and you have an 
instrument that shows these things, allegedly, called a 'microscope'.

You could show a thousand men these things, and they would I am almost 
certain

-  Accuse you of trickery, and that what appears in the magic lens, is 
nothing but a trick
- say that all you have done is given a picture of what demons look 
like, and nothing has actually changed so, very clever, but so what?
- refuse to look through your microscope, on the grounds that its all 
balderdash anyway, and they dont want to get sucked into mystical 
pseudoscience and fantasies.

You might say that you can give them antibiotics, and they would insist 
that its simply a very good demonbane. So good its probably the work of 
the devil. A position a lot of fundamentalist christians adopt to this day.


No scientific hypothesis is testable for truth. Its merely refutable in 
its own terms. Cf Popper/Kuhn at al.  No matter how much more 
efficacious a study of micro organisms makes medicine, it doesn't prove 
they exist. The situation is that the hypothesis works, and works better 
than the alternatives, and no one has either refuted it or come up with 
a better one. So it stands.
  So, in my case, if I say that there is a way of looking at things 
which makes some sense of some of what is loosely termed paranormal 
experience and magick, and possibly religion and insanity, and that 
these are all about the way something called consciousness works, that 
actually says nothing at all about science, other than that it is the 
study of *one particular solution* of a general equation of 
consciousness, whereas the other stuff is all about different solutions 
to it, I don't know whether that makes it a science or not.

Many scientists have dismissed the whole thing with 'consciousness 
doesn't exist'! So its a sticky wicket to defend from square one.


You see, before qwe can measure a microbe, and test for it, we have to 
agree that it exists. If we don't, we can never get so far as to test 
any theory based on the unwarranted  assumption that microbes exist.

Science is about testing what we all agree exists in some sense or 
other. Science as we know it cannot deal with testing things that we 
don't agree exists. There is always room to simply shovel the 
inexplicable into a bucket marked 'nonsense'. Now this is genrally a 
reasonable thing to do. If stuff is commonplace and repeatable, it 
behooves us to consider its existence relatively safe, if not absolutely 
proven. As long as you can get at least a hundred learned men to have 
viewed dissected and examined a duck billed platypus, its existence 
becomes more solid than a Unicorn.

And yet, millions of earnest learned men have asserted the existence of 
God, but we remain sceptical.  Very few have asserted the existence of 
superstrings, yet we find these more acceptable? Why? Because they are 
somehow closer to a 21st century rational scientific worldview than God.

So I hope you see my dilemma here. If you read Popper carefully, he 
makes the clear point that a hypothesis has to be useful, do more than 
predecessors and to be refutable. If its not its pseudoscience or 
metaphysical.

I think his analysis is excellent. Ergo, given the irrefutability of 
what amounts to simply a different viewpoint on the same data, since 
nothing about the data changes particularly, it cant be a scientific 
theory, since it leads to no predictions that science doesn't already 
deal with adequately.

It is essentially metaphysical. Not scientific. And that is the core 
point. That renders it irrefutable. It is at the level of any Godelian 
system, you either buy into it, or you dont. It has its own internal 
logic, and its sole attraction is that it DOES provide a unified theory 
of experience  including all the weird shit, that science does not.

It does that simply by making the aristotelian world, of causality, 
space, time energy and matter, a SPECIAL solution of a generalised 
equation of consciousness: The weird shit, is what happens when other 
solutions happen. At which point we leave the realm of consensus as to 
what is happening, and become embroiled instead in what *seems to be 
happening to us, personally*.

E.g. when you get knocked out, or go to sleep, you cease to experience 
the world as normal. The 'fact' of its continued existence, is something 
you assume, because other people whom you trust, who were not asleep, or 
unconscious, all broadly agree that it carried on, in your absence. Yet 
you have no direct experience, or at least no recollection of this. Your 
actual experience is at odds with the consensus. This is so common we 
'explain it away;' by saying 'I was unconscious' and thereby  make a 
huge mystery into an event of no importance at all.

So when I say that science rests on trust, on faith, on belief, I am not 
pissing about. It rests on the belief that the world exists 
independently and orthogonally to our experience of it, than the trust 
that bits of it we have not personally experienced, do exist as others 
report them to, and on the faith that tomorrow the rules wont have 
changed, and we all fall upwards into outer space.

Nothing of that can be proved to be correct. However it is a good 
working hypothesis, because it works.

In the limit, we KNOW it isn't correct. The world that we measure, is 
not quite the world it would have been if we had not. We cannot deny 
that we think: If nothing exists but energy matter space time and Laws 
in this world, and if we are part of it, then our thoughts must be some 
indication of material and energy changes within our bodies. So, in the 
limit, thinking about the world changes the world. Is that not what 
Magick is supposed to be based on?

Does not neuroscience already admit that what the brain perceives, is 
not what is out there, but a composite construction derived from the 
nervous data that is transmitted up to it? Suppose that is interfered 
with, does the construction not change? become gloomy or rose tinted, or 
paranoid? We are superb at pattern recognition. If we got a load of data 
  that we couldn't quite make sense of, would we throw it away, or 
attempt to make a pattern out of it, and end up 'seeing a ghost' or 
'hearing voices' for example?

So I might predict that in addition to being stark raving bonkers, a 
schizophrenic should also show some changes in neurochemistry. Big deal. 
You wouldn't accept that as evidence of anything. Its when the aforesaid 
gent appears to be able to read your mind, you have to say 'is this just 
and example of a really acute reading of my body language, or is his 
condition contagious, or is it in fact that we are all connected in some 
way we don't normally choose to be, and its broken down in him;'

Cos believe me, I've experienced that.

Take autism. and the idiot savant. My metaphysic has a space for that. 
His interpretation of reality is sane, but radically different. He is 
recognising a completely different pattern set. One that excludes normal 
  ones.


Its not a question of whether or not this is a 'true' way of looking at 
it, its whether its *useful*. According to Popper, the WHOLE of 
psychiatric theory a la Freud, is completely specious pseudo-science. (A 
position I am inclined to agree with largely). Does that means it 
doesn't work? patently on occasion, it does work.

So..there you are. A metaphysical position is not refutable: Its sole 
justification is that it may or may not allow the development of a new 
type of science to solve new problems. Its simply a new way of looking 
at things. Mine is a bit weirder than most because it is an explanation 
as to how we can arrive at new ways of looking at things when we assume 
the world itself hasn't changed: We change ourselves, adapt our ideas 
and consciousness. Or something does it for us. Paranormal experience 
and insanity are simply examples of looking at the world differently 
from normal. As is religion. Practical religion  and magick, are the 
study of how to achieve changes in consciousness, in order to experience 
the world in radically different ways, as is chemical self abuse.





























> 
>                 HG

On Sep 28, 12:35=A0am, The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:
> Tom wrote:
> >> I have dabbled in the intellectual exercise of coming up with a
> >> 'science' that would give space to all of it, and, to my own
> >> satisfaction, succeeded. Not in doing magick, but in making up a
> >> theoretical framework that could explain at least the reports that wer=
e
> >> not obvious fakes, lies etc.
>
> > Science isn't just coming up with theories. =A0What makes a science is
> > the systematic testing of those theories in ways that can demonstrate
> > whether or not they are consistent with observeable phenomena. =A0You
> > haven't gotten that far. =A0What you have is more accurately labelled
> > "pseudoscience".
>
> Actually no, Tom. In fact I discovered it's metaphysics. It is in fact a
> philosophical hypothesis.

That's not something you "discovered"; that's something you "made
up".  "Dabbling in intellectual exercises" is not equivalent to
employing the scientific method.

> >> To the point where I would say that today, quantum physics IS magick ;=
-)
>
> > To the extent that you don't actually know what QM is, it seems like
> > magic to you. =A0As I say, the practice of magic is the exploitation of
> > ignorance.
>
> I think you have missed my meaning by a very long way here.

I don't think I've missed your meaning at all.  I'm challenging your
half-baked, pseudoscientific use of words you don't actually
understand at all.  Of course QM seems like magic to you.  That's
because you don't understand it.  *Anything* not understood appears to
be magic.  I have made that point clear on numerous occasions.

> > As long as you choose to keep your claims restricted to useless
> > metaphysical double-talk, it's untestable.
>
> All of science at the metaphysical level is untestable.

There is no "science at the metaphysical level".

> The foundations on which knowledge rests are a lot shakier than most
> people realise.

"Knowledge" is just another philosophical buzzword.  Scientific
theories are not "knowledge".  They are the best guess that fits the
observeable evidence at the time.  Where observeable evidence does not
exist, science does not exist.

> I would direct you to Godels incompleteness theorm,

Which you don't understand any better than you understand quantum
mechanics.

> Turings incomputability

Or this.

> and possibly Kant's critique of pure reason

Or this.

> > As soon as you try to
> > claim something specific, some real use for what you're calling
> > "magic", it is testable.
>
> Yes. However things can only BE tested in the context of the
> metaphysical assumptions that are made *before* the science is developed.

One cannot test metaphysical assumptions because metaphysical
assumptions have no observeable phenomena.  Ergo, there in no science
to metaphysics.

> > Sidney likes to do exactly what you're doing, engage in a lot of empty
> > talk with absolutely nothing to offer that is actually has anything at
> > all to do with the real world.
>
> I don't think you actually know what I am trying to convey here at all.

I don't believe what you are trying to convey because you have not
made anything like a reasoned case for your assertions.

> Perhaps its best expressed by saying that science *assumes* a 1:1
> correlation between what is *perceived* to be there, and what is really
> there.

That's bunk.  You're claiming that science doesn't accept the
existence of illusions, that anything perceived is assumed to be
real/   That's patently and observeably false.  One merely has to
point out that there are scientists who study optical illusions and
your whole argument falls flat on its face.

The scientific method tests the validity of perceptions all the time.
It *never* makes any assumption that what is perceived from any
particular point of view is exactly as it seems to be.

> My thesis is to say 'suppose that is only an ad hoc assumption., suppose
> that perception is actually a process which creates a view on reality,
> not one which actually apprehends it directly: and suppose also that
> that process is subject to modification, either inadvertently, or with
> deliberate intent'

You can make those supposititons.  But then let me add another.
Suppose you're wrong and perception is *not* a creation of something
out of nothing.  Now, how are you going to test which suppostion is
more accurately describing reality.

> Now you see the problem between stage magic and so called real magick.

There is no difference between stage magic and "real magick".  Both
are the production of effects that seem to be miracles to those who
don't know how those effects were produced.

> In essence this is no different from the development of a normal
> scientific theory, in that some noumenous entity - a Natural Law, is
> presupposed to lie behind and be the cause of phenomenal events, as they
> are observed.

A "Natural Law" is an invention, a fiction concocted by philosophers,
not an assertion of science.  Every scientific theory is a proposition
which seeks to explain as best it can the consistency between observed
phenomena.  It does it's best to approximate such "Laws" but it never
asserts one as absolutely true.  Now a lot of people, even many of
those who practice science, like to think they "know the truth", but
when we examine it closely, they really don't know anything of the
sort.  They are making their best guess based on the information they
have available.  The difference between what you are doing and what
science does is that you are cherry-picking your "noumenous"
assumptions to fit your convenience and then refusing the challenge
those assumptions in any meaningful way.  Science does not deal with
"noumenous entities" at all and challenges all assumptions that apply
to observeable phenomena.

On Sep 28, 3:46=A0am, Evergreen <sidneyla...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> [delete]
>
> I don't read this intellectual bigot and bully's posts, (Tom).
>
> >> > Tom wrote:
>
> >> > [Physical] Science isn't just coming up with theories.

So Sid tells us he doesn't read my posts and then quotes my posts,
thus demonstrating to everyone that he's about the most inept liar in
the whole world.

> Notice that I had to add the "[Physical]"

Of course he has to add his own words to what I wrote.  Otherwise his
straw man arguments wouldn't seem plausible even to his own deluded
mind.

Tom wrote:
> On Sep 28, 12:35 am, The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid>
> wrote:
>> Tom wrote:
>>>> I have dabbled in the intellectual exercise of coming up with a
>>>> 'science' that would give space to all of it, and, to my own
>>>> satisfaction, succeeded. Not in doing magick, but in making up a
>>>> theoretical framework that could explain at least the reports that were
>>>> not obvious fakes, lies etc.
>>> Science isn't just coming up with theories.  What makes a science is
>>> the systematic testing of those theories in ways that can demonstrate
>>> whether or not they are consistent with observeable phenomena.  You
>>> haven't gotten that far.  What you have is more accurately labelled
>>> "pseudoscience".
>> Actually no, Tom. In fact I discovered it's metaphysics. It is in fact a
>> philosophical hypothesis.
> 
> That's not something you "discovered"; that's something you "made
> up".  "Dabbling in intellectual exercises" is not equivalent to
> employing the scientific method.
> 

I think at its root, you will find that is exactly what it is. Dabbling 
in intellectual exercises WITH PURPOSE.



>>>> To the point where I would say that today, quantum physics IS magick ;-)
>>> To the extent that you don't actually know what QM is, it seems like
>>> magic to you.  As I say, the practice of magic is the exploitation of
>>> ignorance.
>> I think you have missed my meaning by a very long way here.
> 
> I don't think I've missed your meaning at all.  I'm challenging your
> half-baked, pseudoscientific use of words you don't actually
> understand at all.  Of course QM seems like magic to you.  That's
> because you don't understand it.  *Anything* not understood appears to
> be magic.  I have made that point clear on numerous occasions.
> 

Oh dear. I probably know the meaning of words a shade better than you think.


>>> As long as you choose to keep your claims restricted to useless
>>> metaphysical double-talk, it's untestable.
>> All of science at the metaphysical level is untestable.
> 
> There is no "science at the metaphysical level".
> 

Well that depends on what you want to call science. Not very long ago, 
science was called natural philosophy, and there is a very good reason 
why I adopted the moniker I use here. To remind myself that science is 
after all just  a dabbling in intellectual ideas, that seems (within 
strict bounds), to work.

You seem to have forgotten that in your arrogance, whilst at the same 
time playing lip service to the fact that you intellectually accept that 
science is not reality, and reality is not science.




>> The foundations on which knowledge rests are a lot shakier than most
>> people realise.
> 
> "Knowledge" is just another philosophical buzzword.  Scientific
> theories are not "knowledge".  They are the best guess that fits the
> observeable evidence at the time.  Where observeable evidence does not
> exist, science does not exist.
> 

Knowledge is not just another buzzword. Its a precisely defined 
philosophical concept.


>> I would direct you to Godels incompleteness theorm,
> 
> Which you don't understand any better than you understand quantum
> mechanics.
> 

I haven't seen any evidence that you understand either frankly, so I'll 
nit be bothered by that..


>> Turings incomputability
> 
> Or this.
> 
>> and possibly Kant's critique of pure reason
> 
> Or this.

Ah. so, when I say things myself, I am talking bullshit, when I say that 
this is consistent with someone else, you say I cant possibly understand 
them, without you actually having read them at all?

I like it. Its as good as arguing with Sidney really.

> 
>>> As soon as you try to
>>> claim something specific, some real use for what you're calling
>>> "magic", it is testable.
>> Yes. However things can only BE tested in the context of the
>> metaphysical assumptions that are made *before* the science is developed.
> 
> One cannot test metaphysical assumptions because metaphysical
> assumptions have no observeable phenomena. 

I woiuuld say, that the core of my thesis is the proposition  that in 
fact, all observable phenomena are the result of metaphysical 
assumptions. But I suspect that's way over your head.


  Ergo, there in no science
> to metaphysics.
> 

Indeed. That doesn't invalidate the philosophy though. Science depends 
on metaphysics to exist. Its the metaphysics that says what is real, 
what is not real, what size is, and quantity. Its the metaphysical 
assumptions you make that turn incoherent experience into coherent 
perceptions. The pixels into the picture. That's long before science 
starts to analyse the picture...





>>> Sidney likes to do exactly what you're doing, engage in a lot of empty
>>> talk with absolutely nothing to offer that is actually has anything at
>>> all to do with the real world.
>> I don't think you actually know what I am trying to convey here at all.
> 
> I don't believe what you are trying to convey because you have not
> made anything like a reasoned case for your assertions.
> 

Oh dear. Do we HAVE to go back to all those philosophers? There was a 
reason why Kant wrote a book called the 'critique of pure reason.

Reason can only work with a defined logical framework, which is based on 
assumptions, and a valid set of experiences, based on agreement as to 
what those are.

Metaphysics is the study of whether or not the logic is applicable, and 
the agreements about what is real, are in fact valid. You make a million 
metaphysical judgements every single minute.

I am not asserting anything, nor am I using reason. I am positing a view.

Perhaps as if the whole of what you take to be real and there, is 
actually a highly compressed and probably verbalised  take on the data 
that is pouring into your sensory apparatus (and possibly extra sensory 
apparatus). At a totally trivial level you cannot deny that this is 
true. You don't know how many hairs there are on the back of your hand. 
You discard that as irrelevant. You probably never even think about it. 
As long as your hands work, and do what you need them to do, an dare 
more or less like everybodies hands appaer to you to be, they are, to 
you, just 'hands' a short hand highly compressed term for something that 
is in fact incredibly detailed and complicated, and contains a LOT more 
information than 'a pair of hands' which his expressible in precisely 15 
characters, or about 75 bytes, less if you know its english, and can 
compress it down some more. 'a pr. o hnds'

So, how about the rest of your experience? teh short ansqwer is you 
actually discard maybe 99% of it and compress teh est into a short story 
about what happened to you today. Can you remember every second of every 
day? so how do you KNOW you were actually there? you dont.

Its all assumptions. Metaphysical assumptions. What people call rational 
assumptions of actual knowledge. Like 'I was sitting here a minute ago, 
I am sitting here now, ergo I have probably been sitting here all the 
time, not making a quick visit to Arcturus'.



>> Perhaps its best expressed by saying that science *assumes* a 1:1
>> correlation between what is *perceived* to be there, and what is really
>> there.
> 
> That's bunk.  You're claiming that science doesn't accept the
> existence of illusions, that anything perceived is assumed to be
> real/   That's patently and observeably false.  One merely has to
> point out that there are scientists who study optical illusions and
> your whole argument falls flat on its face.
> 

But how can you tell an illusion from reality?

How is science making that distinction?


An illusion is merely something you see (or someone else claims to see) 
that does not accord with your IDEA of what reality really is.

Once again, that metaphysical assumption. Now, what happens if say out 
of 500 people 25 see something different from the 475. And agree exactly 
on what they see? And you have no 'rational explanation' - where does 
that leave you?.





> The scientific method tests the validity of perceptions all the time.
> It *never* makes any assumption that what is perceived from any
> particular point of view is exactly as it seems to be.
> 
No, but it assumes that some perceptions are more valid than others. You 
in fact said more or less exactly that above.

So science is making value judgements. On what basis is it doing that?

What secret access to the Truth, do you have, to judge one perception 
correct and real, and another one false and illusory?

what yardstick do you have? Do tell, because I don't have one. I cant 
tell if my perceptions are real or illusory. All I can say is that they 
seem real enough to me, and that sometimes other people agree, and 
that's nice, sometimes they don't, because they weren't there, and 
occasionally they don't agree when they were there.

I wish I was as sure as you, what is real, and what is not. It must be a 
great comfort to have access to Truth. Do you do the God things as well?



>> My thesis is to say 'suppose that is only an ad hoc assumption., suppose
>> that perception is actually a process which creates a view on reality,
>> not one which actually apprehends it directly: and suppose also that
>> that process is subject to modification, either inadvertently, or with
>> deliberate intent'
> 
> You can make those supposititons.  But then let me add another.
> Suppose you're wrong and perception is *not* a creation of something
> out of nothing.  Now, how are you going to test which suppostion is
> more accurately describing reality.
> 

Its as impossible as testing whether God created the universe 6000 years 
ago, or it all went bang 45 million tears ago.  No scientific or indeed 
any other hypothesis cam be tested for ultimate validity. Systems of 
thought can only be refuted, and then only in the context of their own a 
priori assumptions.

Ultimately a metaphysic is only  judgeable on its utility, or perhaps 
aesthetically. ;-)

whether you decide that the world is

- all part of gods imagination
- made up of solid objects in a space time theater
- magical n dimensional force fields controlled by super beings

really makes very little difference in terms of being able to say that 
one is right and another is wrong.

The real question is, which is the more USEFUL  view in terms of what 
you are trying to achieve.


Is it a wave, is it a particle? already we have pretty schizoid ways to 
look at certain phenomena.

All I am saying is that  its not just photons, it could easily be 
everything that is subject to multi-level interpretations.

If two people appear to experience the same thing, and yet seem to have 
perceived something different, I don't have to call one of them (or both 
of them ) liars, or suffering from delusions. I trade certainty for 
flexibility.

Because I cant be sure. Unlike you, I don't pay lip service to 
uncertainty, whilst feeling absolutely sure of myself.



>> Now you see the problem between stage magic and so called real magick.
> 
> There is no difference between stage magic and "real magick".  Both
> are the production of effects that seem to be miracles to those who
> don't know how those effects were produced.
> 

well thats of course is by definition, that everything must have some 
kind of cause and effect relationship, and if weird stuff happens, 
something it causing it. However at least my way of thinking hints at 
where that area is. Simply sayinmg 'there must be a rational 
explanation' is about as empty as saying 'because God wills it'.

It simply closes it into a box and renders it harmless and mundane. and 
stops you from considering it worthwhile to study.


>> In essence this is no different from the development of a normal
>> scientific theory, in that some noumenous entity - a Natural Law, is
>> presupposed to lie behind and be the cause of phenomenal events, as they
>> are observed.
> 
> A "Natural Law" is an invention, a fiction concocted by philosophers,
> not an assertion of science. 

I think that while that may be true, science does proceed on the 
assumption that causality, which is the effect of if you like Natural 
law, is always present. Stuff doesn't just happen all by itself. There 
are patterns that repeat. Science looks at those an attempts to 
hypothecate an underlying mechanism.


> Every scientific theory is a proposition
> which seeks to explain as best it can the consistency between observed
> phenomena.  It does it's best to approximate such "Laws" but it never
> asserts one as absolutely true.  

Good.
> Now a lot of people, even many of
> those who practice science, like to think they "know the truth", but
> when we examine it closely, they really don't know anything of the
> sort.  They are making their best guess based on the information they
> have available. 

Its not QUITE like that, but close.

  >The difference between what you are doing and what
> science does is that you are cherry-picking your "noumenous"
> assumptions to fit your convenience and then refusing the challenge
> those assumptions in any meaningful way.  

Not really.

Yes, I am cherry picking, but its not arbitrary.

Take a Fourier transform as an example. Is it more true to say that 
'this is a sinewave that repeats itself every millisecond' or 'this is a 
single 1Khz tone'

Neither is more true, or less true. Both are valid, but you pick the way 
of looking at it that suits the thing you want to do with it.


Science does not deal with
> "noumenous entities" at all and challenges all assumptions that apply
> to observeable phenomena.
> 

Science deals exclusively with noumenous entities (gravity, force. mass, 
energy atoms, sub atomic particles etc etc etc.), and only actually 
deals with observable phenomena in order to refute the noumenous 
entities it has proposed. Or not.


Th real question is, apart from these conscious and challengable 
noumena, are there in fact subconscious, and hence never challenged, 
noumena?. Like space, time causality and existence as we understand it, 
itself.

You fail to take your scepticism far enough. Its not just the scientific 
theories that are up for refutation, its the whole nature of the 
phenomena you are using to refute them. And how much these are in fact 
real, and how much a necessary illusion, on account of the fact that 
that is wall we can actually deal with?

You talk the sceptical talk, but you sure have never walked the walk. 
You may have accepted uncertainty intellectually, but you have never 
lived on the horns of that dilemma for any length of time.

Deep down you have a certainty that it's all rational, and if not yet 
understood, one day will be. You simply haven't examined the impact of 
people like Godel. Lucky you.

On Sep 29, 6:21=A0am, The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:
> Tom wrote:
> > On Sep 28, 12:35 am, The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid>
> > wrote:
> >> Tom wrote:
> >>>> I have dabbled in the intellectual exercise of coming up with a
> >>>> 'science' that would give space to all of it, and, to my own
> >>>> satisfaction, succeeded. Not in doing magick, but in making up a
> >>>> theoretical framework that could explain at least the reports that w=
ere
> >>>> not obvious fakes, lies etc.
> >>> Science isn't just coming up with theories. =A0What makes a science i=
s
> >>> the systematic testing of those theories in ways that can demonstrate
> >>> whether or not they are consistent with observeable phenomena. =A0You
> >>> haven't gotten that far. =A0What you have is more accurately labelled
> >>> "pseudoscience".
> >> Actually no, Tom. In fact I discovered it's metaphysics. It is in fact=
 a
> >> philosophical hypothesis.
>
> > That's not something you "discovered"; that's something you "made
> > up". =A0"Dabbling in intellectual exercises" is not equivalent to
> > employing the scientific method.
>
> I think at its root, you will find that is exactly what it is. Dabbling
> in intellectual exercises WITH PURPOSE.
>
> >>>> To the point where I would say that today, quantum physics IS magick=
 ;-)
> >>> To the extent that you don't actually know what QM is, it seems like
> >>> magic to you. =A0As I say, the practice of magic is the exploitation =
of
> >>> ignorance.
> >> I think you have missed my meaning by a very long way here.
>
> > I don't think I've missed your meaning at all. =A0I'm challenging your
> > half-baked, pseudoscientific use of words you don't actually
> > understand at all. =A0Of course QM seems like magic to you. =A0That's
> > because you don't understand it. =A0*Anything* not understood appears t=
o
> > be magic. =A0I have made that point clear on numerous occasions.
>
> Oh dear. I probably know the meaning of words a shade better than you thi=
nk.
>
> >>> As long as you choose to keep your claims restricted to useless
> >>> metaphysical double-talk, it's untestable.
> >> All of science at the metaphysical level is untestable.
>
> > There is no "science at the metaphysical level".
>
> Well that depends on what you want to call science. Not very long ago,
> science was called natural philosophy, and there is a very good reason
> why I adopted the moniker I use here. To remind myself that science is
> after all just =A0a dabbling in intellectual ideas, that seems (within
> strict bounds), to work.
>
> You seem to have forgotten that in your arrogance, whilst at the same
> time playing lip service to the fact that you intellectually accept that
> science is not reality, and reality is not science.
>
> >> The foundations on which knowledge rests are a lot shakier than most
> >> people realise.
>
> > "Knowledge" is just another philosophical buzzword. =A0Scientific
> > theories are not "knowledge". =A0They are the best guess that fits the
> > observeable evidence at the time. =A0Where observeable evidence does no=
t
> > exist, science does not exist.
>
> Knowledge is not just another buzzword. Its a precisely defined
> philosophical concept.
>
> >> I would direct you to Godels incompleteness theorm,
>
> > Which you don't understand any better than you understand quantum
> > mechanics.
>
> I haven't seen any evidence that you understand either frankly, so I'll
> nit be bothered by that..
>
> >> Turings incomputability
>
> > Or this.
>
> >> and possibly Kant's critique of pure reason
>
> > Or this.
>
> Ah. so, when I say things myself, I am talking bullshit, when I say that
> this is consistent with someone else, you say I cant possibly understand
> them, without you actually having read them at all?
>
> I like it. Its as good as arguing with Sidney really.
>
>
>
> >>> As soon as you try to
> >>> claim something specific, some real use for what you're calling
> >>> "magic", it is testable.
> >> Yes. However things can only BE tested in the context of the
> >> metaphysical assumptions that are made *before* the science is develop=
ed.
>
> > One cannot test metaphysical assumptions because metaphysical
> > assumptions have no observeable phenomena.
>
> I woiuuld say, that the core of my thesis is the proposition =A0that in
> fact, all observable phenomena are the result of metaphysical
> assumptions. But I suspect that's way over your head.
>
> =A0 Ergo, there in no science
>
> > to metaphysics.
>
> Indeed. That doesn't invalidate the philosophy though. Science depends
> on metaphysics to exist. Its the metaphysics that says what is real,
> what is not real, what size is, and quantity. Its the metaphysical
> assumptions you make that turn incoherent experience into coherent
> perceptions. The pixels into the picture. That's long before science
> starts to analyse the picture...
>
> >>> Sidney likes to do exactly what you're doing, engage in a lot of empt=
y
> >>> talk with absolutely nothing to offer that is actually has anything a=
t
> >>> all to do with the real world.
> >> I don't think you actually know what I am trying to convey here at all=
..
>
> > I don't believe what you are trying to convey because you have not
> > made anything like a reasoned case for your assertions.
>
> Oh dear. Do we HAVE to go back to all those philosophers? There was a
> reason why Kant wrote a book called the 'critique of pure reason.
>
> Reason can only work with a defined logical framework, which is based on
> assumptions, and a valid set of experiences, based on agreement as to
> what those are.
>
> Metaphysics is the study of whether or not the logic is applicable, and
> the agreements about what is real, are in fact valid. You make a million
> metaphysical judgements every single minute.
>
> I am not asserting anything, nor am I using reason. I am positing a view.
>
> Perhaps as if the whole of what you take to be real and there, is
> actually a highly compressed and probably verbalised =A0take on the data
> that is pouring into your sensory apparatus (and possibly extra sensory
> apparatus). At a totally trivial level you cannot deny that this is
> true. You don't know how many hairs there are on the back of your hand.
> You discard that as irrelevant. You probably never even think about it.
> As long as your hands work, and do what you need them to do, an dare
> more or less like everybodies hands appaer to you to be, they are, to
> you, just 'hands' a short hand highly compressed term for something that
> is in fact incredibly detailed and complicated, and contains a LOT more
> information than 'a pair of hands' which his expressible in precisely 15
> characters, or about 75 bytes, less if you know its english, and can
> compress it down some more. 'a pr. o hnds'
>
> So, how about the rest of your experience? teh short ansqwer is you
> actually discard maybe 99% of it and compress teh est into a short story
> about what happened to you today. Can you remember every second of every
> day? so how do you KNOW you were actually there? you dont.
>
> Its all assumptions. Metaphysical assumptions. What people call rational
> assumptions of actual knowledge. Like 'I was sitting here a minute ago,
> I am sitting here now, ergo I have probably been sitting here all the
> time, not making a quick visit to Arcturus'.
>
> >> Perhaps its best expressed by saying that science *assumes* a 1:1
> >> correlation between what is *perceived* to be there, and what is reall=
y
> >> there.
>
> > That's bunk. =A0You're claiming that science doesn't accept the
> > existence of illusions, that anything perceived is assumed to be
> > real/ =A0 That's patently and observeably false. =A0One merely has to
> > point out that there are scientists who study optical illusions and
> > your whole argument falls flat on its face.
>
> But how can you tell an illusion from reality?
>
> How is science making that distinction?
>
> An illusion is merely something you see (or someone else claims to see)
> that does not accord with your IDEA of what reality really is.
>
> Once again, that metaphysical assumption. Now, what happens if say out
> of 500 people 25 see something different from the 475. And agree exactly
> on what they see? And you have no 'rational explanation' - where does
> that leave you?.
>
> > The scientific method tests the validity of perceptions all the time.
> > It *never* makes any assumption that what is perceived from any
> > particular point of view is exactly as it seems to be.
>
> No, but it assumes that some perceptions are more valid than others. You
> in fact said more or less exactly that above.
>
> So science is making value judgements. On what basis is it doing that?
>
> What secret access to the Truth, do you have, to judge one perception
> correct and real, and another one false and illusory?
>
> what yardstick do you have? Do tell, because I don't have one. I cant
> tell if my perceptions are real or illusory. All I can say is that they
> seem real enough to me, and that sometimes other people agree, and
> that's nice, sometimes they don't, because they weren't there, and
> occasionally they don't agree when they were there.
>
> I wish I was as sure as you, what is real, and what is not. It must be a
> great comfort to have access to Truth. Do you do the God things as well?
>
> >> My thesis is to say 'suppose that is only an ad hoc assumption., suppo=
se
> >> that perception is actually a process which creates a view on reality,
> >> not one which actually apprehends it directly: and suppose also that
> >> that process is subject to modification, either inadvertently, or with
> >> deliberate intent'
>
> > You can make those supposititons. =A0But then let me add another.
> > Suppose you're wrong and perception is *not* a creation of something
> > out of nothing. =A0Now, how are you going to test which suppostion is
> > more accurately describing reality.
>
> Its as impossible as testing whether God created the universe 6000 years
> ago, or it all went bang 45 million tears ago. =A0No scientific or indeed
> any other hypothesis cam be tested for ultimate validity. Systems of
> thought can only be refuted, and then only in the context of their own a
> priori assumptions.
>
> Ultimately a metaphysic is only =A0judgeable on its utility, or perhaps
> aesthetically. ;-)
>
> whether you decide that the ...
>
> read more =BB

The book ''the Tao of Physics'' attempts to show how certain
scientific beliefs reside in what we call metaphysics. Metaphysics and
science are both important.

Kartik Vashishta

Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> writes:

> On 2009-09-26, notbob <notbob@nothome.com> wrote:
>>
>> How do you figure anyone is a "slave" to ubuntu?  Ubuntu is just a
>> choice, not an imperative.  Better to have some, nay, many!, using
>> ubuntu than not using linux at all.  I myself am not an ubutnu fan,
>> but almost everything is better than Winblows.
>
> Given a choice between Windows and a box admin'd by ''Sid'', I would
> choose Windows.  But it'd be a tough choice.  ;-)

At least you could use a mouse to launch a program..... :-)

On Sep 28, 6:21=A0pm, The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:
> Tom wrote:
>
> > That's not something you "discovered"; that's something you "made
> > up". =A0"Dabbling in intellectual exercises" is not equivalent to
> > employing the scientific method.
>
> I think at its root, you will find that is exactly what it is.

Well, you're wrong, but there's no convincing someone whose best
efforts at discovery are limited to "dabbling in intellectual
exercises".  You're too lazy to do the work, so you settle for sitting
around dreaming up "metaphysical" bullshit.  There's no ignorance so
adamant as willful ignorance.

On 28 Sep, 19:36, Tom <danto...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Where observeable evidence does not
> exist, science does not exist.

'Nullius in verba'

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/29/yamal_scandal/

In comp.os.linux.misc Tom <dantomel@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Sep 28, 6:21�pm, The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid>
> wrote:
>> Tom wrote:
>>
>> > That's not something you "discovered"; that's something you "made
>> > up". �"Dabbling in intellectual exercises" is not equivalent to
>> > employing the scientific method.
>>
>> I think at its root, you will find that is exactly what it is.
> 
> Well, you're wrong, but there's no convincing someone whose best
> efforts at discovery are limited to "dabbling in intellectual
> exercises".  You're too lazy to do the work, so you settle for sitting
> around dreaming up "metaphysical" bullshit.  There's no ignorance so
> adamant as willful ignorance.
> 
Looked at modern physics lately? Specifically string theory. It's
mathematically elegant, but untestable in the forseeable future. The
energies required for testing are just unobtainable. Given its
unntestable status, why is it considered science rather than
metaphysics?

	Jerry

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:


152 new lines of text... One hundred and fifty-two!  Jesus Fucking Christ!

Ever heard of brevity?  I'm only going to answer briefly, enough to make my
point, and cut most of the stuff.


> HG wrote:
> > The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
> >
> >> Tom wrote:
> >>
> >>>> I have dabbled in the intellectual exercise of coming up with a
> >>>> 'science' that would give space to all of it, and, to my own
> >>>> satisfaction, succeeded. Not in doing magick, but in making up a
> >>>> theoretical framework that could explain at least the reports that were
> >>>> not obvious fakes, lies etc.
> >>> Science isn't just coming up with theories.  What makes a science is
> >>> the systematic testing of those theories in ways that can demonstrate
> >>> whether or not they are consistent with observeable phenomena.  You
> >>> haven't gotten that far.  What you have is more accurately labelled
> >>> "pseudoscience".
> >>>
> >> Actually no, Tom. In fact I discovered it's metaphysics. It is in fact a
> >> philosophical hypothesis.
> >>
> >> But it has scientific ramifications.
> >>
> >>
> >>>> To the point where I would say that today, quantum physics IS magick ;-)
> >>> To the extent that you don't actually know what QM is, it seems like
> >>> magic to you.  As I say, the practice of magic is the exploitation of
> >>> ignorance.
> >>>
> >> I think you have missed my meaning by a very long way here.
> >>
> >>>> And as such is relatively untestable by scientific methodology, though
> >>>> some of its conclusions might be.
> >>> As long as you choose to keep your claims restricted to useless
> >>> metaphysical double-talk, it's untestable.
> >> All of science at the metaphysical level is untestable.
> > If it's not testable, it's not science.
> >
> 
> Yes, that is entirely correct. Its metaphysics. But that is precisely the
> point. Science RESTS on untestable hypotheses..


Ah, there it is where you go astray.

You elevate your abstract, mental la-la land above reality.

You see, science observes reality, goes off to do mental abstractions,
then comes *back* to reality to see if the mental models fit, then
back to mental land, then back to reality, etc, etc.

Whereas you're under the impression that the abstract constructions in your
mental virtual reality are actually *more fundamental* than physical reality.
You may start with physical reality, then go off into mental land, but then
you check your abstract mental theories, not against reality, but against
*other* abstract thoughts.

Thus you stay forever masturbating in mental fantasyland.  That's not worthy
of the name science.


There's a tale I read once in some book about mathematics.  I'll paraphrase
it from memory:


        Once upon a time there was this huge, magnificient castle, built
        over many generations.  Each generation added more towers, more
        turrets, more walls to this glorious castle.

        In the cellars lived a group of spiders, spinning their webs between
        the foundations of the castle.

        Then one day there was an earthquake.  The castle stayed upright, but
        all of the little webs of the little spiders in the cellar were
        destroyed.

        The spiders panicked and frantically rewove their webs as quickly as
        they could.

        You see, the spiders thought that it was their network of webs that
        actually kept the castle from collapsing.



                HG

HG wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
> 
> 
> 152 new lines of text... One hundred and fifty-two!  Jesus Fucking Christ!
> 
> Ever heard of brevity?  I'm only going to answer briefly, enough to make my
> point, and cut most of the stuff.
> 
> 
>> HG wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>>
>>>> Tom wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> I have dabbled in the intellectual exercise of coming up with a
>>>>>> 'science' that would give space to all of it, and, to my own
>>>>>> satisfaction, succeeded. Not in doing magick, but in making up a
>>>>>> theoretical framework that could explain at least the reports that were
>>>>>> not obvious fakes, lies etc.
>>>>> Science isn't just coming up with theories.  What makes a science is
>>>>> the systematic testing of those theories in ways that can demonstrate
>>>>> whether or not they are consistent with observeable phenomena.  You
>>>>> haven't gotten that far.  What you have is more accurately labelled
>>>>> "pseudoscience".
>>>>>
>>>> Actually no, Tom. In fact I discovered it's metaphysics. It is in fact a
>>>> philosophical hypothesis.
>>>>
>>>> But it has scientific ramifications.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>> To the point where I would say that today, quantum physics IS magick ;-)
>>>>> To the extent that you don't actually know what QM is, it seems like
>>>>> magic to you.  As I say, the practice of magic is the exploitation of
>>>>> ignorance.
>>>>>
>>>> I think you have missed my meaning by a very long way here.
>>>>
>>>>>> And as such is relatively untestable by scientific methodology, though
>>>>>> some of its conclusions might be.
>>>>> As long as you choose to keep your claims restricted to useless
>>>>> metaphysical double-talk, it's untestable.
>>>> All of science at the metaphysical level is untestable.
>>> If it's not testable, it's not science.
>>>
>> Yes, that is entirely correct. Its metaphysics. But that is precisely the
>> point. Science RESTS on untestable hypotheses..
> 
> 
> Ah, there it is where you go astray.
> 
> You elevate your abstract, mental la-la land above reality.
> 
> You see, science observes reality, 

No, that is precisely what it doesn't do.

That is what it ASSUMES it does. But in reality, it has no way of 
telling for sure.

You should have READ the 152 lines..



>goes off to do mental abstractions,
> then comes *back* to reality to see if the mental models fit, then
> back to mental land, then back to reality, etc, etc.
> 
> Whereas you're under the impression that the abstract constructions in your
> mental virtual reality are actually *more fundamental* than physical reality.

Yes, that's a reasonable summary. The proposition is 'what if the way we 
perceive is as fundamental to our notion of reality, as the supposed 
underlying reality?'

i.e. to put its simply, hard materialistic science assues that 
perception (of some phenomenon) P is a function of reality, R.

P=f(R).

What I am saying is that at the least stage magic, and other overt 
illusions, lead to a refutation of that principle.

So I consider it is broken.,  and replace it with a second term, which 
for the sake of giving it a name, I call consciousness, C.

P=f(C,R)


Now if C is as constant, then mutatis mutandis, its an empty term  - its 
essentially invisible to perception, and whether it exists or not is 
in-decidable as a proposition. If the Matrix is perfect, whether its 
reality or a program is irrelevant.

However my experience is that a lot of things at the fringes of science 
make sense if you allow that its a variable. Hence the whole thesis. To 
examine the implications of a variable mapping between what is 'really 
there' and what we seem to see is there. No different in principle to te 
mapping between what Quantum physics seems to say is there, and what we 
seem to see is there.


Because if you go to the quantum level, the physicists say more or less 
the same thing. there is a presupposed underlying reality with its own 
rules, that we only become aware of via quantum interactions..a photon 
comes off somewhere etc. thereby changing the state of the 
system..largely what we see depends on how we choose to make the 
measurement..

You break the basic tenet of science - the 'detached observer' at the 
quantum level. Any observation IS  an interaction.

So the basic assumption that science traditionally rests on is easily 
refutable.


My proposition is to allow this not to be the special case, but the 
general case, and examine the implications.

 > You may start with physical reality, then go off into mental land,
 > but then
 > you check your abstract mental theories, not against reality,
 > but against
 > *other* abstract thoughts.

Not really. I start with perception, and examine its nature..

It boils down to one simple question I posed you, and you totally failed 
to address.

Namely, how can you distinguish what is 'real' from what is 'illusory'?

My conclusions is that a single person cannot, and the only yardstick we 
have, is consensual agreement.

I don't mean by that that if we all agree on something specious, it 
*becomes* real. I am not a religious or political animal. But I do say 
that stuff we cant agree on is dismissed as unreal, because, largely, we 
can't agree. Whether it represents something of value, or not.


> 
> Thus you stay forever masturbating in mental fantasyland.  That's not worthy
> of the name science.
> 
> 

Why do you have to resort to pejoratives? Is it because without them you 
feel you may lose the argument?




> There's a tale I read once in some book about mathematics.  I'll paraphrase
> it from memory:
> 
> 
>         Once upon a time there was this huge, magnificient castle, built
>         over many generations.  Each generation added more towers, more
>         turrets, more walls to this glorious castle.
> 
>         In the cellars lived a group of spiders, spinning their webs between
>         the foundations of the castle.
> 
>         Then one day there was an earthquake.  The castle stayed upright, but
>         all of the little webs of the little spiders in the cellar were
>         destroyed.
> 
>         The spiders panicked and frantically rewove their webs as quickly as
>         they could.
> 
>         You see, the spiders thought that it was their network of webs that
>         actually kept the castle from collapsing.
> 

And who is the spider here? you or me?


Eintsein has already made the point that perception of reality is 
relative to the observational platform. Heisenberg Turing et all show 
that there are some things you cant know without  to losing information 
on other things.

I am merely extending te principle to show that in teh general case, the 
metaphsyics of science is still stuck in the 17th century, in that 
despite Einstein and Quantum 'facts' people simply cant get their heads 
round the fact that there is no 1:1 correlation between the world we 
think we live in, and the world that really exists.

Introduce one more term, call it consciousness, or the processes of 
consciousness, and the thing drops out very neatly, with the so called 
'real world' being a construction of consciousness designed to map 'what 
is really there' to 'something we can deal with relatively simply'. 
Space time energy mass matter - all these are actually artificial 
constructs used to build the edifice.

I hesitate to say this is what is meant by the term 'Maya'  but its does 
come close..


Bt its not surprising, since Western ideology has been focussed on 
absolutely maintaining a fixed and unalterable view of the world, ..the 
One True Sanity of Rational Thought, whereas the East has its 
disciplines designed to do one sole thing. CHANGE consciousness in order 
to understand the part it plays.

Whether or not you like this meta view, the fact remains it accommodates 
both Western science, Eastern mysticism,  paranormal and religious 
*experiences* (I make no claim for their validity), and mental health 
*experiences*  in a neat package.

If you like, the vast majority of science is examining P when p~=f(R) 
whilst hopefully holding the invisiole term C, constant.

The vats majority of 'weird shit; is when you keep R relatively static, 
and vary C so that P~=f(C).

Magick, so called real or stage, is about generating changes in peoples 
consciousnesses.

Applied sconce, is about generating changes in the supposed underlying 
reality.

If consciousness is an ordered system, there ought to be a science to 
work out how to 'do magick'. Actually there are several. They are buried 
right at the bottom of the heap of religious, occult and mystical fluff 
and bollocks that pervades the world of idiots like Sidney, but the 
noise to signal swamps them.

In the modern western world, probably the only place you would find such 
is in the nastier depths of political and marketing theory.. In MY 
terms, advertisements are precise analogues to spells. Designed to 
change someone's consciousness for selfish motives. Saatchi and Saatchi 
are the warlocks of today ;-)

Oh, and of course the master black magicians - the priests and mullahs, 
are still with us. "Start believing in God, Allah, instead of yourself, 
and your whole world will change' Exactly so. It will. Elementary, my 
Dear Watson..

Have a nice day..


> 
> 
>                 HG

Aragorn wrote:
> On Wednesday 30 September 2009 09:06 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
> identifying as The Natural Philosopher wrote...
> 
>> HG wrote:
> 
>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>>
>>>> HG wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> All of science at the metaphysical level is untestable.
>>>>> If it's not testable, it's not science.
>>>>>
>>>> Yes, that is entirely correct. Its metaphysics. But that is
>>>> precisely the point. Science RESTS on untestable hypotheses..
>>> Ah, there it is where you go astray.
>>>
>>> You elevate your abstract, mental la-la land above reality.
>>>
>>> You see, science observes reality, [...
>> No, that is precisely what it doesn't do.
>>
>> That is what it ASSUMES it does. But in reality, it has no way of
>> telling for sure.
> 
> That is indeed correct.
> 
>> You should have READ the 152 lines..
>>
>>> ...] goes off to do mental abstractions, then comes *back* to reality
>>> to see if the mental models fit, then back to mental land, then back
>>> to reality, etc, etc. 
> 
> ... And eventually arrogantly decides that reality is exactly as they
> think it is, which is the exact same thing people with psychosis do,
> only in their case we mock it all away and call them insane, while
> those who pretend to be sane do exactly the same thing, but rely on the
> presumed wisdom of the majority to consider their theories to be the
> one and only truths.
> 
> Science is based upon observation and analysis of the observed.  By
> definition, humans are limited in their observation and alas, also in
> their thinking.  If it falls "out of the box", then it simply must be
> wrong...  Or so it is presumed, or sold to the public, or both.
> 
>>> Whereas you're under the impression that the abstract constructions
>>> in your mental virtual reality are actually *more fundamental* than
>>> physical reality.
>> Yes, that's a reasonable summary. The proposition is 'what if the way
>> we perceive is as fundamental to our notion of reality, as the
>> supposed underlying reality?'
>>
>> i.e. to put its simply, hard materialistic science assues that
>> perception (of some phenomenon) P is a function of reality, R.
>>
>> P=f(R).
>>
>> What I am saying is that at the least stage magic, and other overt
>> illusions, lead to a refutation of that principle.
> 
> True.
> 
>> So I consider it is broken.,  and replace it with a second term, which
>> for the sake of giving it a name, I call consciousness, C.
>>
>> P=f(C,R)
>>
>>
>> Now if C is as constant, then mutatis mutandis, its an empty term  -
>> its essentially invisible to perception, and whether it exists or not
>> is in-decidable as a proposition. If the Matrix is perfect, whether
>> its reality or a program is irrelevant.
> 
> That is indeed correct.
> 
>> However my experience is that a lot of things at the fringes of
>> science make sense if you allow that its a variable. Hence the whole
>> thesis. To examine the implications of a variable mapping between what
>> is 'really there' and what we seem to see is there. No different in
>> principle to te mapping between what Quantum physics seems to say is
>> there, and what we seem to see is there.
> 
> Quantum physics itself already lends itself to this, in that the act of
> observation influences the outcome of the experiment, making the
> observer part of the concept of reality.  And this goes hand in hand
> with the basic principle of Einstein's relativity, because even "the
> inertial observer" is not quite neutral, and thus his/her perceptions
> are just as relative to reality as that which is observed.
> 
>> Because if you go to the quantum level, the physicists say more or
>> less the same thing. there is a presupposed underlying reality with
>> its own rules, that we only become aware of via quantum
>> interactions..a photon comes off somewhere etc. thereby changing the
>> state of the system..largely what we see depends on how we choose to
>> make the measurement..
>>
>> You break the basic tenet of science - the 'detached observer' at the
>> quantum level. Any observation IS  an interaction.
> 
> Absolutely correct, and this is what I wrote higher up. ;-)
> 
>> So the basic assumption that science traditionally rests on is easily
>> refutable.
> 
> Correct again. 
> 
>> My proposition is to allow this not to be the special case, but the
>> general case, and examine the implications.
> 
> That would be interesting, but unfortunately against the interests of
> some established names in the field. ;-)
> 
>>> You may start with physical reality, then go off into mental land,
>>> but then you check your abstract mental theories, not against
>>> reality, but against *other* abstract thoughts.
>> Not really. I start with perception, and examine its nature..
>>
>> It boils down to one simple question I posed you, and you totally
>> failed to address.
>>
>> Namely, how can you distinguish what is 'real' from what is
>> 'illusory'?
>>
>> My conclusions is that a single person cannot, and the only yardstick
>> we have, is consensual agreement.
> 
> Not much of a yardstick either, if you consider how consensus has
> already gotten humanity in loads of trouble.
> 
>> I don't mean by that that if we all agree on something specious, it
>> *becomes* real. I am not a religious or political animal. But I do say
>> that stuff we cant agree on is dismissed as unreal, because, largely,
>> we can't agree. Whether it represents something of value, or not.
> 
> Not so much because we can't agree, but because we find it of no
> interest to our agenda.  Never underestimate cynicism and arrogance.  
> 
>>> There's a tale I read once in some book about mathematics.  I'll
>>> paraphrase it from memory:
>>>
>>>
>>>         Once upon a time there was this huge, magnificient castle,
>>>         built
>>>         over many generations.  Each generation added more towers,
>>>         more turrets, more walls to this glorious castle.
>>>
>>>         In the cellars lived a group of spiders, spinning their webs
>>>         between the foundations of the castle.
>>>
>>>         Then one day there was an earthquake.  The castle stayed
>>>         upright, but all of the little webs of the little spiders in
>>>         the cellar were destroyed.
>>>
>>>         The spiders panicked and frantically rewove their webs as
>>>         quickly as they could.
>>>
>>>         You see, the spiders thought that it was their network of
>>>         webs that actually kept the castle from collapsing.
> 
> I know those spiders.  They regularly visit me and insist on reinforcing
> the structural integrity of my apartment with their webs. :p
>  
>> Eintsein has already made the point that perception of reality is
>> relative to the observational platform. Heisenberg Turing et all show
>> that there are some things you cant know without  to losing
>> information on other things.
> 
> Correct.
> 
>> I am merely extending te principle to show that in teh general case,
>> the metaphsyics of science is still stuck in the 17th century, in that
>> despite Einstein and Quantum 'facts' people simply cant get their
>> heads round the fact that there is no 1:1 correlation between the
>> world we think we live in, and the world that really exists.
> 
> I completely agree.
> 
>> Introduce one more term, call it consciousness, or the processes of
>> consciousness, and the thing drops out very neatly, with the so called
>> 'real world' being a construction of consciousness designed to map
>> 'what is really there' to 'something we can deal with relatively
>> simply'. Space time energy mass matter - all these are actually
>> artificial constructs used to build the edifice.
> 
> I agree on that too. ;-)
> 
>> [...]
>> In the modern western world, probably the only place you would find
>> such is in the nastier depths of political and marketing theory.. In
>> MY terms, advertisements are precise analogues to spells. Designed to
>> change someone's consciousness for selfish motives. Saatchi and
>> Saatchi are the warlocks of today ;-)
>>
>> Oh, and of course the master black magicians - the priests and
>> mullahs, are still with us. "Start believing in God, Allah, instead of
>> yourself, and your whole world will change' Exactly so. It will.
>> Elementary, my Dear Watson..
>>
>> Have a nice day..
> 
> Well done, Grasshopper. :-)
> 
You, of all people, should know what I am driving at.

Thanks.

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

> HG wrote:
> > The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
> > 152 new lines of text... One hundred and fifty-two!  Jesus Fucking Christ!
> > Ever heard of brevity?  I'm only going to answer briefly, enough to make my
> > point, and cut most of the stuff.
> >
> >> HG wrote:
> >> Yes, that is entirely correct. Its metaphysics. But that is precisely the
> >> point. Science RESTS on untestable hypotheses..
> > Ah, there it is where you go astray.
> > You elevate your abstract, mental la-la land above reality.
> > You see, science observes reality,
> 
> No, that is precisely what it doesn't do.
> 
> That is what it ASSUMES it does. But in reality, it has no way of telling for
> sure.


Oh, there *is* a way.

You do experiments.  You see what happens.


> You should have READ the 152 lines..


I find your writing tedious and overly verbose.

If you have a point to make, you can do it shortly and simply.


>  > You may start with physical reality, then go off into mental land,
>  > but then
>  > you check your abstract mental theories, not against reality,
>  > but against
>  > *other* abstract thoughts.
> 
> Not really. I start with perception, and examine its nature..
> 
> It boils down to one simple question I posed you, and you totally failed to
> address.
> 
> Namely, how can you distinguish what is 'real' from what is 'illusory'?


"Reality is that which refuses to go away when you stop believing in it."

        -Philip K. Dick


> Whether or not you like this meta view, the fact remains it accommodates both
> Western science, Eastern mysticism,  paranormal and religious *experiences*
> (I make no claim for their validity), and mental health *experiences*  in a
> neat package.


Literature accomodates both fact and fiction.

That does not make fiction true.


> If consciousness is an ordered system, there ought to be a science to work
> out how to 'do magick'. Actually there are several. They are buried right at
> the bottom of the heap of religious, occult and mystical fluff and bollocks
> that pervades the world of idiots like Sidney, but the noise to signal swamps
> them.


Listen to yourself: "there ought to be a science"

You're talking about your likes and dislikes, and confusing them with
reality.


                HG

On Sep 30, 8:03=A0am, HG <h...@iki.fi> wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid> writes:
> > Yes, that is entirely correct. Its metaphysics. But that is precisely t=
he
> > point. Science RESTS on untestable hypotheses..
>
> Ah, there it is where you go astray.
>
> You elevate your abstract, mental la-la land above reality.
>
> You see, science observes reality, goes off to do mental abstractions,
> then comes *back* to reality to see if the mental models fit, then
> back to mental land, then back to reality, etc, etc.
>
> Whereas you're under the impression that the abstract constructions in yo=
ur
> mental virtual reality are actually *more fundamental* than physical real=
ity.
> You may start with physical reality, then go off into mental land, but th=
en
> you check your abstract mental theories, not against reality, but against
> *other* abstract thoughts.
>
> Thus you stay forever masturbating in mental fantasyland. =A0That's not w=
orthy
> of the name science.

Precisely so. One of my favourite quotes from Nicholas Fearn:

"Shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United
States, a supporter of the Natural Law Party reportedly attempted to
tender for President George W. Bush's ballistic missile defence
programme. Major General Kalwant Singh, a former Indian Army officer,
reportedly proposed to 10,000 - 25,000 trained 'yogic fliers' could
generate enough meditational energy to deflect any threat directed at
the United States and her allies. Unfortunately, more than the power
of positive thinking is needed when national survival is at stake, and
it was Lockheed Martin who duly won the contract...

"Relativism was given a new hope in the eighteenth century when the
German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed that space and time are not
inherent features of the world around us, but rather ways in which our
minds order our experiences. This is no doubt true to some extent.
Zoologists tell us that different animals perceive the passage of time
differently. For example, the optic system of a starling has a higher
'frame-rate' than a human's, so perhaps if we could see through the
bird's eyes, the world would appear to move in slow motion compared to
what we are used to....

"However, to say that our minds order the way we perceive the world
does not mean that we thereby have any *power* over how the world is.
Anti-realists - even Major Singh's trained yogic fliers - are no
better at acts of mind-over-matter than the rest of us, no matter how
much time they spend meditating. For, even if the world is in fact
'unreal' and created in some way by the mind, this need not make it
any more malleable to our desires. As Immanuel Kant argued, we may not
be capable of ordering the world in any other way than we do. A world
structured by the mind in accordance with strict laws of design over
which we have no control begins to look more like the concrete
external reality of common sense than the illusory fantasy of a madman
or the wishful thinking of a mystic. That the construction work takes
place partly within our skulls does not help to bring it within the
power of our minds. The point is that though the character of the
world may not obtain independently of our perceptual machinery, it
nonetheless exists independently of our desires, and this amounts to
much the same thing."

Quite apart from this idiot's delusions that optical illusions and
stage magic somehow refute the fundamental principle of science, which
Tom has already shown to be farcically inane and foolish, this
question of "Namely, how can you distinguish what is 'real' from what
is 'illusory'?" is a moot point as far as explanations go, because no
amount of believing what reality is changes what we actually perceive.
The agenda only barely concealed beneath the surface of these clowns
is that if "reality" is somehow a "function of consciousness" then we
can mentally bend reality to our designs, which is naturally absolute
garbage. I'm not even going to go into the stupidity required to
assert that the theory of relativity states that reality is somehow
dependent on observation, and I've already shown how Godel's theorems
have absolutely nothing to say on the possibility of acquiring
knowledge of the universe.

You're 100% on-point when you say that "you check your abstract mental
theories, not against reality, but against *other* abstract thoughts".
Many occultists want to use this "relativism" idea to argue that they
"really are" evoking honest-to-goodness demons if it appears that they
are, because "reality" is merely a label of convenience. The obvious
problem with that is that it *doesn't* appear that you're evoking
honest-to-goodness demons; it doesn't appear anything like that at
all. You have to deliberately not pay attention to reality and
steadfastly pay attention to the contents of your own imagination to
even begin to have a thought that it looks like you're really doing
this silly shit. If you really think you're evoking demons, it's not
because "reality is dependent on consciousness"; it's because you're
not looking at what you are doing closely enough. If you do a
raindance and it starts to rain, it might at first glance "appear that
you made it rain". But it only appears like this because you've jumped
to an inappropriate conclusion, and repeated trials would reveal to
you the magnitude of your errors. Once you learn how to think
critically about what you're doing, all those things that you thought
appeared "as real as anything else" suddenly and obviously stop
appearing like that, and whether or not one can determine anything
about the "ultimate nature of reality" is absolutely irrelevant to
this. One cannot use this idea of relativism to support occult beliefs
because the simple fact is that occult claims don't appear to be true
even in a purely imaginary universe.

Occultists need to move on from the nineteenth century. These inane
philosophical platitudes have been outdated for decades, yet these
twits still predictably continue to confuse themselves over them.

Erwin Hessle, 8=3D3

On Wednesday 30 September 2009 09:06 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
identifying as The Natural Philosopher wrote...

> HG wrote:

>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>> 
>>> HG wrote:
>>>
>>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> All of science at the metaphysical level is untestable.
>>>>
>>>> If it's not testable, it's not science.
>>>>
>>> Yes, that is entirely correct. Its metaphysics. But that is
>>> precisely the point. Science RESTS on untestable hypotheses..
>> 
>> Ah, there it is where you go astray.
>> 
>> You elevate your abstract, mental la-la land above reality.
>> 
>> You see, science observes reality, [...
> 
> No, that is precisely what it doesn't do.
> 
> That is what it ASSUMES it does. But in reality, it has no way of
> telling for sure.

That is indeed correct.

> You should have READ the 152 lines..
> 
>> ...] goes off to do mental abstractions, then comes *back* to reality
>> to see if the mental models fit, then back to mental land, then back
>> to reality, etc, etc. 

.... And eventually arrogantly decides that reality is exactly as they
think it is, which is the exact same thing people with psychosis do,
only in their case we mock it all away and call them insane, while
those who pretend to be sane do exactly the same thing, but rely on the
presumed wisdom of the majority to consider their theories to be the
one and only truths.

Science is based upon observation and analysis of the observed.  By
definition, humans are limited in their observation and alas, also in
their thinking.  If it falls "out of the box", then it simply must be
wrong...  Or so it is presumed, or sold to the public, or both.

>> Whereas you're under the impression that the abstract constructions
>> in your mental virtual reality are actually *more fundamental* than
>> physical reality.
> 
> Yes, that's a reasonable summary. The proposition is 'what if the way
> we perceive is as fundamental to our notion of reality, as the
> supposed underlying reality?'
> 
> i.e. to put its simply, hard materialistic science assues that
> perception (of some phenomenon) P is a function of reality, R.
> 
> P=f(R).
> 
> What I am saying is that at the least stage magic, and other overt
> illusions, lead to a refutation of that principle.

True.

> So I consider it is broken.,  and replace it with a second term, which
> for the sake of giving it a name, I call consciousness, C.
> 
> P=f(C,R)
> 
> 
> Now if C is as constant, then mutatis mutandis, its an empty term  -
> its essentially invisible to perception, and whether it exists or not
> is in-decidable as a proposition. If the Matrix is perfect, whether
> its reality or a program is irrelevant.

That is indeed correct.

> However my experience is that a lot of things at the fringes of
> science make sense if you allow that its a variable. Hence the whole
> thesis. To examine the implications of a variable mapping between what
> is 'really there' and what we seem to see is there. No different in
> principle to te mapping between what Quantum physics seems to say is
> there, and what we seem to see is there.

Quantum physics itself already lends itself to this, in that the act of
observation influences the outcome of the experiment, making the
observer part of the concept of reality.  And this goes hand in hand
with the basic principle of Einstein's relativity, because even "the
inertial observer" is not quite neutral, and thus his/her perceptions
are just as relative to reality as that which is observed.

> Because if you go to the quantum level, the physicists say more or
> less the same thing. there is a presupposed underlying reality with
> its own rules, that we only become aware of via quantum
> interactions..a photon comes off somewhere etc. thereby changing the
> state of the system..largely what we see depends on how we choose to
> make the measurement..
> 
> You break the basic tenet of science - the 'detached observer' at the
> quantum level. Any observation IS  an interaction.

Absolutely correct, and this is what I wrote higher up. ;-)

> So the basic assumption that science traditionally rests on is easily
> refutable.

Correct again. 

> My proposition is to allow this not to be the special case, but the
> general case, and examine the implications.

That would be interesting, but unfortunately against the interests of
some established names in the field. ;-)

>> You may start with physical reality, then go off into mental land,
>> but then you check your abstract mental theories, not against
>> reality, but against *other* abstract thoughts.
> 
> Not really. I start with perception, and examine its nature..
> 
> It boils down to one simple question I posed you, and you totally
> failed to address.
> 
> Namely, how can you distinguish what is 'real' from what is
> 'illusory'?
> 
> My conclusions is that a single person cannot, and the only yardstick
> we have, is consensual agreement.

Not much of a yardstick either, if you consider how consensus has
already gotten humanity in loads of trouble.

> I don't mean by that that if we all agree on something specious, it
> *becomes* real. I am not a religious or political animal. But I do say
> that stuff we cant agree on is dismissed as unreal, because, largely,
> we can't agree. Whether it represents something of value, or not.

Not so much because we can't agree, but because we find it of no
interest to our agenda.  Never underestimate cynicism and arrogance.  

>> There's a tale I read once in some book about mathematics.  I'll
>> paraphrase it from memory:
>> 
>> 
>>         Once upon a time there was this huge, magnificient castle,
>>         built
>>         over many generations.  Each generation added more towers,
>>         more turrets, more walls to this glorious castle.
>> 
>>         In the cellars lived a group of spiders, spinning their webs
>>         between the foundations of the castle.
>> 
>>         Then one day there was an earthquake.  The castle stayed
>>         upright, but all of the little webs of the little spiders in
>>         the cellar were destroyed.
>> 
>>         The spiders panicked and frantically rewove their webs as
>>         quickly as they could.
>> 
>>         You see, the spiders thought that it was their network of
>>         webs that actually kept the castle from collapsing.

I know those spiders.  They regularly visit me and insist on reinforcing
the structural integrity of my apartment with their webs. :p
 
> Eintsein has already made the point that perception of reality is
> relative to the observational platform. Heisenberg Turing et all show
> that there are some things you cant know without  to losing
> information on other things.

Correct.

> I am merely extending te principle to show that in teh general case,
> the metaphsyics of science is still stuck in the 17th century, in that
> despite Einstein and Quantum 'facts' people simply cant get their
> heads round the fact that there is no 1:1 correlation between the
> world we think we live in, and the world that really exists.

I completely agree.

> Introduce one more term, call it consciousness, or the processes of
> consciousness, and the thing drops out very neatly, with the so called
> 'real world' being a construction of consciousness designed to map
> 'what is really there' to 'something we can deal with relatively
> simply'. Space time energy mass matter - all these are actually
> artificial constructs used to build the edifice.

I agree on that too. ;-)

> [...]
> In the modern western world, probably the only place you would find
> such is in the nastier depths of political and marketing theory.. In
> MY terms, advertisements are precise analogues to spells. Designed to
> change someone's consciousness for selfish motives. Saatchi and
> Saatchi are the warlocks of today ;-)
> 
> Oh, and of course the master black magicians - the priests and
> mullahs, are still with us. "Start believing in God, Allah, instead of
> yourself, and your whole world will change' Exactly so. It will.
> Elementary, my Dear Watson..
> 
> Have a nice day..

Well done, Grasshopper. :-)

-- 
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On Wednesday 30 September 2009 15:31 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
identifying as The Natural Philosopher wrote...

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Well done, Grasshopper. :-)
>> 
> You, of all people, should know what I am driving at.
> 
> Thanks.

Oh, but I do, I do... ;-)

-- 
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

HG wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
> 
>> HG wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>> 152 new lines of text... One hundred and fifty-two!  Jesus Fucking Christ!
>>> Ever heard of brevity?  I'm only going to answer briefly, enough to make my
>>> point, and cut most of the stuff.
>>>
>>>> HG wrote:
>>>> Yes, that is entirely correct. Its metaphysics. But that is precisely the
>>>> point. Science RESTS on untestable hypotheses..
>>> Ah, there it is where you go astray.
>>> You elevate your abstract, mental la-la land above reality.
>>> You see, science observes reality,
>> No, that is precisely what it doesn't do.
>>
>> That is what it ASSUMES it does. But in reality, it has no way of telling for
>> sure.
> 
> 
> Oh, there *is* a way.
> 
> You do experiments.  You see what happens.
> 
> 

I see that you havent actually understood anythiung. Oh well.

>> You should have READ the 152 lines..
> 
> 
> I find your writing tedious and overly verbose.
> 

I am sorry. Perhaps you would do better with the Holy Bible. Or a 
popcorn commercial.


> If you have a point to make, you can do it shortly and simply.
> 
I did.

> 
>>  > You may start with physical reality, then go off into mental land,
>>  > but then
>>  > you check your abstract mental theories, not against reality,
>>  > but against
>>  > *other* abstract thoughts.
>>
>> Not really. I start with perception, and examine its nature..
>>
>> It boils down to one simple question I posed you, and you totally failed to
>> address.
>>
>> Namely, how can you distinguish what is 'real' from what is 'illusory'?
> 
> 
> "Reality is that which refuses to go away when you stop believing in it."
> 
First almost useful thing you have said.

Now, how do you know what you are believing in subconsciously, and how 
do you stop it?


>         -Philip K. Dick
> 
> 
>> Whether or not you like this meta view, the fact remains it accommodates both
>> Western science, Eastern mysticism,  paranormal and religious *experiences*
>> (I make no claim for their validity), and mental health *experiences*  in a
>> neat package.
> 
> 
> Literature accomodates both fact and fiction.
> 
> That does not make fiction true.
> 
oh dear.
> 
>> If consciousness is an ordered system, there ought to be a science to work
>> out how to 'do magick'. Actually there are several. They are buried right at
>> the bottom of the heap of religious, occult and mystical fluff and bollocks
>> that pervades the world of idiots like Sidney, but the noise to signal swamps
>> them.
> 
> 
> Listen to yourself: "there ought to be a science"
> 
> You're talking about your likes and dislikes, and confusing them with
> reality.
> 
I see the subtleties of English language escape you. I was trying to 
make it simple for you.

Ought as in 'implies that' not 'some kind of moral imperative.

> 
>                 HG

Erwin Hessle wrote:
> On Sep 30, 8:03 am, HG <h...@iki.fi> wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>> Yes, that is entirely correct. Its metaphysics. But that is precisely the
>>> point. Science RESTS on untestable hypotheses..
>> Ah, there it is where you go astray.
>>
>> You elevate your abstract, mental la-la land above reality.
>>
>> You see, science observes reality, goes off to do mental abstractions,
>> then comes *back* to reality to see if the mental models fit, then
>> back to mental land, then back to reality, etc, etc.
>>
>> Whereas you're under the impression that the abstract constructions in your
>> mental virtual reality are actually *more fundamental* than physical reality.
>> You may start with physical reality, then go off into mental land, but then
>> you check your abstract mental theories, not against reality, but against
>> *other* abstract thoughts.
>>
>> Thus you stay forever masturbating in mental fantasyland.  That's not worthy
>> of the name science.
> 
> Precisely so. One of my favourite quotes from Nicholas Fearn:
> 
> "Shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United
> States, a supporter of the Natural Law Party reportedly attempted to
> tender for President George W. Bush's ballistic missile defence
> programme. Major General Kalwant Singh, a former Indian Army officer,
> reportedly proposed to 10,000 - 25,000 trained 'yogic fliers' could
> generate enough meditational energy to deflect any threat directed at
> the United States and her allies. Unfortunately, more than the power
> of positive thinking is needed when national survival is at stake, and
> it was Lockheed Martin who duly won the contract...
> 
> "Relativism was given a new hope in the eighteenth century when the
> German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed that space and time are not
> inherent features of the world around us, but rather ways in which our
> minds order our experiences. This is no doubt true to some extent.
> Zoologists tell us that different animals perceive the passage of time
> differently. For example, the optic system of a starling has a higher
> 'frame-rate' than a human's, so perhaps if we could see through the
> bird's eyes, the world would appear to move in slow motion compared to
> what we are used to....
> 
> "However, to say that our minds order the way we perceive the world
> does not mean that we thereby have any *power* over how the world is.

Very good. That of course is exactly the point..

> Anti-realists - even Major Singh's trained yogic fliers - are no
> better at acts of mind-over-matter than the rest of us, no matter how
> much time they spend meditating. For, even if the world is in fact
> 'unreal' and created in some way by the mind, this need not make it
> any more malleable to our desires. 

Yes. This is a point I got to about 1970 when I first started developing 
all this.  To say that P=f(C) alone was patently absurd: perceived 
reality was definitely subject to changes in consciousness, but that 
didn't mean there was not an element of underlying externality there as 
well.

To deny that is to go the monistic route, essentially, and end up in a 
quasi religious fantasy.


>As Immanuel Kant argued, we may not
> be capable of ordering the world in any other way than we do. 

Well he was wrong there, it sure can be done.  The real question is how 
to do it, and whether it is any more useful to do so.

> A world
> structured by the mind in accordance with strict laws of design over
> which we have no control begins to look more like the concrete
> external reality of common sense than the illusory fantasy of a madman
> or the wishful thinking of a mystic. That the construction work takes
> place partly within our skulls does not help to bring it within the
> power of our minds. The point is that though the character of the
> world may not obtain independently of our perceptual machinery, it
> nonetheless exists independently of our desires, and this amounts to
> much the same thing."
> 

He is missing a bit there, but yes, the point is made as I made it, that 
if C is constant, no experiment will decide if P=f(C,R) is more or less 
true than P=f(R).

However, I assert tow points

C is not constant
C is to a limited extent subject to desire.

But to manipulate C with the objects of what it produces, is very hard 
indeed.

> Quite apart from this idiot's delusions that optical illusions and
> stage magic somehow refute the fundamental principle of science,which
> Tom has already shown to be farcically inane and foolish, this
> question of "Namely, how can you distinguish what is 'real' from what
> is 'illusory'?" is a moot point as far as explanations go, because no
> amount of believing what reality is changes what we actually perceive.

I have to disagree with you there. Possible believing is the wrong word.

But changing what one perceives by changing the nature of the perceptual 
processes is very very easy. Just a couple of bottles of wine will 
generally do it.

> The agenda only barely concealed beneath the surface of these clowns
> is that if "reality" is somehow a "function of consciousness" then we
> can mentally bend reality to our designs, which is naturally absolute
> garbage.

That is absolutely not where I am coming from at all.
And if you had bothered to read it, you would know.

I totally agree that is a delusion: The whole point is to explain why 
that delusion has arisen. And show that there is actually something far 
more relevant than convincing yourself you can 'do magic' or 'talk to God'



  I'm not even going to go into the stupidity required to
> assert that the theory of relativity states that reality is somehow
> dependent on observation, and I've already shown how Godel's theorems
> have absolutely nothing to say on the possibility of acquiring
> knowledge of the universe.
> 
Well actually, you haven't. Because in fact relativity does show that 
you measuring sticks change length with velocity.

And Godels incompleteness theorem says ultimately that no mathematical 
system can actually be proved to be correct.

> You're 100% on-point when you say that "you check your abstract mental
> theories, not against reality, but against *other* abstract thoughts".
> Many occultists want to use this "relativism" idea to argue that they
> "really are" evoking honest-to-goodness demons if it appears that they
> are, because "reality" is merely a label of convenience. The obvious
> problem with that is that it *doesn't* appear that you're evoking
> honest-to-goodness demons; it doesn't appear anything like that at
> all. You have to deliberately not pay attention to reality and
> steadfastly pay attention to the contents of your own imagination to
> even begin to have a thought that it looks like you're really doing
> this silly shit. If you really think you're evoking demons, it's not
> because "reality is dependent on consciousness"; it's because you're
> not looking at what you are doing closely enough. If you do a
> raindance and it starts to rain, it might at first glance "appear that
> you made it rain". But it only appears like this because you've jumped
> to an inappropriate conclusion, and repeated trials would reveal to
> you the magnitude of your errors. Once you learn how to think
> critically about what you're doing, all those things that you thought
> appeared "as real as anything else" suddenly and obviously stop
> appearing like that, and whether or not one can determine anything
> about the "ultimate nature of reality" is absolutely irrelevant to
> this. One cannot use this idea of relativism to support occult beliefs
> because the simple fact is that occult claims don't appear to be true
> even in a purely imaginary universe.
> 
> Occultists need to move on from the nineteenth century. These inane
> philosophical platitudes have been outdated for decades, yet these
> twits still predictably continue to confuse themselves over them.
> 
> Erwin Hessle, 8=3


This is a straw man Erwin. You have attacked a point that I never made.

To put it simply, I have said that perception (of reality) is a function 
of consciousness, and that consciousness is not constant,  I NEVER said 
that reality *itself* is affected by consciousness (except that 
conciousness itself is presumably part of reality).

I.e. you are attacking  R=f(C).
Which I never proposed.

People who think that, are as deluded as people who think that P=f(R).

the assertion is that P=f(C,R).

Let me put it very simply.

Classical science rest on the assumption that

P=f(R). What you see is what it is. Or at least it varies precisely in 
accordance with what is.

Lunatic mystical bullshit asserts that:

P=f(C). and hence eliminates R altogether, and arrives at the conclusion 
that in fact all there is, is consciousness,,the world becomes a magical 
dream of all of us.

This is what you are attacking, and as it happens I entirely agree with 
you, for the reasons you have clearly stated, that if one cannot affect 
consciousness, its makes no bloody difference whether C or R is in the 
equation, you just replace an external unalterable reality with an 
internal unaltererable process of consciousness, and it makes not one 
jot of difference.

Which is I believe what you are saying here.

But it is NOT what I said, I said
P=f(R,C).

And that is an entirely different kettle of fish, because it unifies the 
two views, making each partially correct. Each is seen as less complete 
than it was.


A very good analogy is the computer you are sitting at. The picture on 
it, is both a function of presumed real world data..me typing here, and 
creating these words, AND a process by which these get displayed on 
whatever screen you have there.

Now what you see is affected by me typing. BUT it is also affected by 
other things. You could resize it. You could, given a bit of software 
knowledge, fiddle with it and turn it into giant text, a series of 
coloured dots, or even tack a speech synthesiser on the end and hear it 
as words. The data has not changed. But the presentation has. I might 
also, if I were smart enough, have encoded a secret message in it, that 
you could see by convoluting it with some secret function, and then you 
would realise there was an entirely different message being sent.

You would also be hard put to display a picture using text tools. Sidney 
uses no GUI. So Sidney cannot watch videos, except as a stream of 
hexadecimal. Sidney therefore doesn't believe that videos exist..just 
random noise..

Only a fool thinks that by resizing the text, he has made the person at 
the other end get bigger.

Only a fool thinks that because he hasn't got a GUI, video doesn't exist.

The question is, are you that fool?

On Oct 1, 2:57=A0am, The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:
> Yes. This is a point I got to about 1970 when I first started developing
> all this.

Well, perhaps there's hope for you after all, then. Maybe over the
next 39 years you'll be able to get rid of the rest of your juvenile
ideas, too.

> But changing what one perceives by changing the nature of the perceptual
> processes is very very easy. Just a couple of bottles of wine will
> generally do it.

"What one perceives" is not the same thing as "reality". And getting
drunk does not "change the nature of the perceptual processes",
either; the nature of the perceptual processes is that they can be
influenced by alcohol. You aren't changing them when you drink a
couple bottles of wine; you're just showing how they work.

> =A0 I'm not even going to go into the stupidity required to> assert that =
the theory of relativity states that reality is somehow
> > dependent on observation, and I've already shown how Godel's theorems
> > have absolutely nothing to say on the possibility of acquiring
> > knowledge of the universe.
>
> Well actually, you haven't. Because in fact relativity does show that
> you measuring sticks change length with velocity.

So what? We live in a universe where length is not a fixed quantity.
If you measure something at rest, and then measure it again at high
speed, the fact that your measurements differs does not mean that
you've somehow "altered the reality" of your measuring stick by going
faster. You just want to give qualities like length some kind of
privileged mystical and metaphysical standing in the definition of
"reality", which is utter garbage as Einstein would have told you if
you'd paid attention to him properly.

> And Godels incompleteness theorem says ultimately that no mathematical
> system can actually be proved to be correct.

No, his incompleteness theorems don't say that. Not even close.
Godel's theorems state that formal logical systems which are rich
enough to contain the *whole* of arithmetic - or, to simplify, which
contain both the addition and multiplication operators - can be used
to derive statements which contain more information than the axioms
themselves do, and that these statements cannot therefore be proven to
be either true or false by the particular formal logical system in
question. They may be provable by a different system, and they may be
proven true or false by adding to axioms to the original system, but
Godel showed that this expanded system would be able to create even
more such statements, and so on into infinity. There are plenty of
formal logical and mathematical systems which are *not* this rich and
which *can* be shown to be both consistent and complete. Presburger
arithmetic is one. Euclidian geometry is another. Further, if we're
looking to explain the observed universe, we aren't dealing with an
infinite potential for conceivable statements that a system *could*
produce, but with a limited population of statements derived from
observation, and the latter is all that needs to be explained. Even
notwithstanding that, at least one former Gresham Professor of
Astronomy and current Professor of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical
Physics at Cambridge University thinks it is "very likely to be true"
that "the laws of nature use only the decidable part of mathematics".
So pop goes your argument about the impossibility of knowledge from
recourse to Godel, before we even get to the point that knowledge is
not a formal logical system and is not formed by a formal logical
system in the first place. There's a lesson somewhere in there for you
about blinding yourself with mathematical concepts you don't
understand and using them to develop spurious mystical and
metaphysical conclusions.

> People who think that, are as deluded as people who think that P=3Df(R).
>
> the assertion is that P=3Df(C,R).

So you are asserting that consciousness is not real? Because if it is,
the first parameter of your function is completely redundant, and
you've just labeled yourself "deluded". And if it isn't, perception
obviously cannot be a function of it. So which way do you want it?
Either way, looks like it's back to the drawing board for you, son.

> You would also be hard put to display a picture using text tools. Sidney
> uses no GUI. So Sidney cannot watch videos, except as a stream of
> hexadecimal. Sidney therefore doesn't believe that videos exist..just
> random noise..

I care even less about your silly little friend than I do about you.

Erwin Hessle, 8=3D3

Erwin Hessle wrote:
> On Oct 1, 2:57 am, The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid>
> wrote:
>> Yes. This is a point I got to about 1970 when I first started developing
>> all this.
> 
> Well, perhaps there's hope for you after all, then. Maybe over the
> next 39 years you'll be able to get rid of the rest of your juvenile
> ideas, too.
> 
>> But changing what one perceives by changing the nature of the perceptual
>> processes is very very easy. Just a couple of bottles of wine will
>> generally do it.
> 
> "What one perceives" is not the same thing as "reality". And getting
> drunk does not "change the nature of the perceptual processes",
> either; the nature of the perceptual processes is that they can be
> influenced by alcohol. You aren't changing them when you drink a
> couple bottles of wine; you're just showing how they work.
> 

That's a very slender point. Whether seeing pink elephants is changing 
the nature, or showing how they work..



>>   I'm not even going to go into the stupidity required to> assert that the theory of relativity states that reality is somehow
>>> dependent on observation, and I've already shown how Godel's theorems
>>> have absolutely nothing to say on the possibility of acquiring
>>> knowledge of the universe.
>> Well actually, you haven't. Because in fact relativity does show that
>> you measuring sticks change length with velocity.
> 
> So what? We live in a universe where length is not a fixed quantity.
> If you measure something at rest, and then measure it again at high
> speed, the fact that your measurements differs does not mean that
> you've somehow "altered the reality" of your measuring stick by going
> faster. You just want to give qualities like length some kind of
> privileged mystical and metaphysical standing in the definition of
> "reality", which is utter garbage as Einstein would have told you if
> you'd paid attention to him properly.
> 

Well I am glad we can agree that perception is at least relative.

>> And Godels incompleteness theorem says ultimately that no mathematical
>> system can actually be proved to be correct.
> 
> No, his incompleteness theorems don't say that. Not even close.
> Godel's theorems state that formal logical systems which are rich
> enough to contain the *whole* of arithmetic - or, to simplify, which
> contain both the addition and multiplication operators - can be used
> to derive statements which contain more information than the axioms
> themselves do, and that these statements cannot therefore be proven to
> be either true or false by the particular formal logical system in
> question. They may be provable by a different system, and they may be
> proven true or false by adding to axioms to the original system, but
> Godel showed that this expanded system would be able to create even
> more such statements, and so on into infinity. There are plenty of
> formal logical and mathematical systems which are *not* this rich and
> which *can* be shown to be both consistent and complete. Presburger
> arithmetic is one. Euclidian geometry is another. Further, if we're
> looking to explain the observed universe, we aren't dealing with an
> infinite potential for conceivable statements that a system *could*
> produce, but with a limited population of statements derived from
> observation, and the latter is all that needs to be explained. Even
> notwithstanding that, at least one former Gresham Professor of
> Astronomy and current Professor of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical
> Physics at Cambridge University thinks it is "very likely to be true"
> that "the laws of nature use only the decidable part of mathematics".
> So pop goes your argument about the impossibility of knowledge from
> recourse to Godel, before we even get to the point that knowledge is
> not a formal logical system and is not formed by a formal logical
> system in the first place. There's a lesson somewhere in there for you
> about blinding yourself with mathematical concepts you don't
> understand and using them to develop spurious mystical and
> metaphysical conclusions.
> 
>> People who think that, are as deluded as people who think that P=f(R).
>>
>> the assertion is that P=f(C,R).
> 
> So you are asserting that consciousness is not real? Because if it is,
> the first parameter of your function is completely redundant, and
> you've just labeled yourself "deluded". And if it isn't, perception
> obviously cannot be a function of it. So which way do you want it?
> Either way, looks like it's back to the drawing board for you, son.
> 

Well spotted.

Yes, its is a simplification.

But its less of a simplification that rational materialism, saying that 
perception is a 1:1 correlation with an EXTERNAL reality, and that the 
processes of perception do not affect the perceptions, or that the 
perceiver is not actually part of the reality so perceived.

There is a recursive element here: its the same as you pointed out, with 
Godel, which is why I mentioned it. Godel is merely a formal and narrow 
example of a general principle.  Any system of thought that attempts to 
divide reality into an observer and the observed, necesseraily has two 
fundamentally important features. The first is that it places the 
observer outside of the world of observation, and renders the resultant 
view *incomplete*, and the second is that depending on where you draw 
the line between 'self' and 'other' the whole character of the 
perception alters.

I.e. the rational materialist draws a very precise and localised line, 
at or about where he considers 'mental processes' to start, which 
therefore implicitly denies that consciousness exists (it cannot be 
observed by itself)

Whereas the mentalist extends the boundaries of self to include the 
whole of everything, and denies that reality exists.

I am merely trying to strike a better balance. The problems of recursion 
mean that there can never be a final truth here.

Perfect objectivity requires a divine viewpoint which stands outside of 
that which it observes.

The triumph of Western science has  been to take that point, which was 
originally the province of the mystical Christians oddly enough, and 
define it as precisely as possible to CREATE a stable detached godlike 
view from which science could be done.Almost. Works very well at te 
macro level.

BUT its gone nearly as far as it can go. We now realise that taking 
observations at the nano level alters the reality of what we are trying 
to measure. . WE cannot write the processes of observation out of the 
equations we are trying to formulate.

BUT two serious problems remain. I tells us next to nothing about 
ourselves, at the mental level, because we have written ourselves out of 
the picture, and in the limit, the actual process of acquiring 
perceptual data *do* disturb what is being examined. Because we actually 
cannot write ourselves out of the experiment. We are, we assume, NOT 
godlike consciousnesses, but part of the reality we seek to interpret.

I think at the philosophical level that is a necessary statement to 
make, because it sets a limit on what can be achieved with rational 
thought. WE actually cannot come up with a complete theory of 
everything. WE can either have an incomplete theory of everything, or a 
complete theory of a part. Not both together. The philosophical analogue 
of Heisenberg.

All my theory says, is that when splitting the totality of things into 
the concept of 'self' and 'other' be aware that is what you are doing, 
and be aware that the dividing line is not a fixed fault line, it may be 
varied, though not at the will of (most) people, easily.

In other words, however it arises, the deepest process choices (you?) 
make at a (sub?)conscious level are the concept of yourself, as an 
individual thinking being, observing a world that you then regard as 
external and independent of you. To engage in any rational thought, that 
transformation has to take place, but it is not an inevitable 
transformation, nor fixed in nature. That is the essence of my assertion.

The rational sciences, concern themselves with defining a very fixed and 
ordered transformation, and examining in minute detail the resultant 
worldview. The (irrational) sciences, the magicks, religious disciplines 
and occultisms, seem to be more about techniques for varying the 
transformation away from a fixed 'normal' place, and observing the 
effects. Usually that at the very least things change in importance, and 
if you go far enough, some patterns become invisible, and others become 
visible.

Its all a question of what filters you use..




>> You would also be hard put to display a picture using text tools. Sidney
>> uses no GUI. So Sidney cannot watch videos, except as a stream of
>> hexadecimal. Sidney therefore doesn't believe that videos exist..just
>> random noise..
> 
> I care even less about your silly little friend than I do about you.
> 

No friend of mine, I assure you. But you share similar characteristics.
> Erwin Hessle, 8=3
Ah 8=3

An interesting assertion.

On Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:57:40 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> You would also be hard put to display a picture using text tools. Sidney
> uses no GUI. So Sidney cannot watch videos, except as a stream of
> hexadecimal. Sidney therefore doesn't believe that videos exist..just
> random noise..

Maybe Sidney knows how to use aview

jellybean stonerfish wrote:

> Maybe Sidney knows how to use aview

Speaking of, this was funny when people were ripping on Sid the troll,
but can we please have this topic no longer cross-posted to the Linux
or other irrelevant groups?
-- 
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
  >
  >
  > I would  say, that the core of my thesis is the proposition  that in
  > fact, all observable phenomena are the result of metaphysical
  > assumptions.


Hmmmmm ...wouldn't any "proposition" be merely a thought? even if of
matters "metaphysical" a speculation about first principles is just a
speculation with no demonstrable proof of a first principle or cause.
Apparently, something was going on before the big bang
(how long before may be irrelevant if 'Time' began with the "big bang')

Hunger, the experience of hunger, fear or other such stimuli are then 
"metaphysical assumptions?"  Of course your argument works better with 
stones and planets and nebulae and such and while applicable to the 
human  condition i think, is, rather more hubristic, species chauvinism, 
than it is representative of some fundamental perceptual bias, if i 
understand your use of the term "metaphysical."


  > But I suspect that's way over your head.
  >
  >
  >  Ergo, there in no science
  >
  >> to metaphysics.

As i understand it we can not directly observe the "big bang".  I
understand that some "Scientists" reject the idea of a big bang and/or
postulate an infinite series of 'big bangs.'  We can conceptualize
"eternal" which would seem to me to have no beginning as well as no end.

  >>
  >
  > Indeed. That doesn't invalidate the philosophy though.

Which philosophy?

  > Science depends

"Science" and the activities the word stands for no more depends on
metaphysics or what that word might represent than any or everything
else.  The demonstrable influence of "Metaphysics' is largely confined
to books and obscure letters on the subject.

Assuming one agrees with the metaphysics being expressed.  Can no -
thing be a first cause?

  > on metaphysics to exist. Its the metaphysics that says what is real,

Last i checked that was still being debated.

  > what is not real, what size is, and quantity. Its the metaphysical
  > assumptions you make that turn incoherent experience into coherent
  > perceptions. The pixels into the picture. That's long before science
  > starts to analyze the picture...

Pre programed?  people learn up, down, right, left which is all  you
seem to be talking about unless your going to include in the pixelation
of consciousness the deliberate indoctrination of the young into the
social customs of its environment.

As the more draconian and Apollonian social controls have broken down in 
some parts of the world
so people have the freedom to speculate about previously taboo subjects.

It still fascinates some of us, even as we acknowledge its ultimately
futile nature. Talking or writing about life is not experiencing life.
It is writing and talking about the experience of life.  And
metaphysical speculation on first causes has occupied both metaphysics
and science.

Whether science seems to be approaching some previously stated 
metaphysical platitude remains to be seen.

Both are honestly forced to admit their limitations.  Though you really
have to drag the metaphysics out or the room, kicking and screaming,
when you set down to calculate an orbital decay:)

What will science find, if any thing, an original nothing? some small
part of the big bang or what ever that may have in any way initiated
the big bang at the core of every atom?

The macrocosmic anatomy has a distinctly biological look to it, imo,
when i see the Hubbell images.

Speculating on the consciousness of matter, even with our self as
"Exhibit A" in any expansion of the dignity to anything other than
ourselves is simply not thought about. Especially if extending the
consciousness of matter to encompass the entire universe as one vast
living conscious matter.  Are we  hubristic enough as a species to thing
that in the entire universe only mankind has risen to the level of self
aware matter?
-- 

Mr. Joseph Littleshoes Esq.

Domine, dirige nos.
Let the games begin!
http://fredeeky.typepad.com/fredeeky/files/sf_anthem.mp3

Mr. Joseph Littleshoes Esq. wrote:
> 
> 
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>  >
>  >
>  > I would  say, that the core of my thesis is the proposition  that in
>  > fact, all observable phenomena are the result of metaphysical
>  > assumptions.
> 
> 
> Hmmmmm ...wouldn't any "proposition" be merely a thought? even if of
> matters "metaphysical" a speculation about first principles is just a
> speculation with no demonstrable proof of a first principle or cause.
> Apparently, something was going on before the big bang

really?

News to me. Time starts at the big bang. No 'before' existed. Least 
that's the way I understand it.

> (how long before may be irrelevant if 'Time' began with the "big bang')
> 
> Hunger, the experience of hunger, fear or other such stimuli are then 
> "metaphysical assumptions?"  Of course your argument works better with 
> stones and planets and nebulae and such and while applicable to the 
> human  condition i think, is, rather more hubristic, species chauvinism, 
> than it is representative of some fundamental perceptual bias, if i 
> understand your use of the term "metaphysical."
> 

I doubt you do.
If you like, the sensation of hunger, rather than  a slippery slide down 
a multicolored slope of bramble thorns, is the expression of a 
metaphsyical choice you don't know you are making ;-)
> 
>  > But I suspect that's way over your head.
>  >
>  >
>  >  Ergo, there in no science
>  >
>  >> to metaphysics.
> 
> As i understand it we can not directly observe the "big bang".  I
> understand that some "Scientists" reject the idea of a big bang and/or
> postulate an infinite series of 'big bangs.'  We can conceptualize
> "eternal" which would seem to me to have no beginning as well as no end.
> 

yeah. Its all in yer mind boyo. Its just a questiuon of drawing usable 
maps and telling helpful stories.

>  >>
>  >
>  > Indeed. That doesn't invalidate the philosophy though.
> 
> Which philosophy?
> 
metaphysics.

>  > Science depends
> 
> "Science" and the activities the word stands for no more depends on
> metaphysics or what that word might represent than any or everything
> else.  The demonstrable influence of "Metaphysics' is largely confined
> to books and obscure letters on the subject.
> 
That is a sad fact. Whereas of course, its the adrdessing of the most 
fundamental problem humans who like to understand stuff, face.

The demonstrable influence of mathematics might be so described as well.

> Assuming one agrees with the metaphysics being expressed.  Can no -
> thing be a first cause?
> 

Why not?
Causality is simply another metaphysical assumption. No way to tell if 
its universally valid as a yardstick or not.

>  > on metaphysics to exist. Its the metaphysics that says what is real,
> 
> Last i checked that was still being debated.
> 

So is how many angels fit in the head of a pin.

cant you make up your own mind?

>  > what is not real, what size is, and quantity. Its the metaphysical
>  > assumptions you make that turn incoherent experience into coherent
>  > perceptions. The pixels into the picture. That's long before science
>  > starts to analyze the picture...
> 
> Pre programed?  people learn up, down, right, left which is all  you
> seem to be talking about unless your going to include in the pixelation
> of consciousness the deliberate indoctrination of the young into the
> social customs of its environment.
> 

All? A baby knows NOTHING. it cant even perceive properly. Its aware, 
for sure, but having a fully functional awareness of the elements that 
make up the adult world? no. Its *all* learnt.

> As the more draconian and Apollonian social controls have broken down in 
> some parts of the world
> so people have the freedom to speculate about previously taboo subjects.
> 

I'd say actually, in this country, they have a lot less. There is a new 
orthodoxy in science, in matters of morality, and the rest. Only 
behaviour is liberalised. It seems you can indeed get away with 
anything, except expressing ideas freely. That, it seems is almost a 
capital crime.

> It still fascinates some of us, even as we acknowledge its ultimately
> futile nature. Talking or writing about life is not experiencing life.
> It is writing and talking about the experience of life.  And
> metaphysical speculation on first causes has occupied both metaphysics
> and science.
> 

Who is speculating of first causes? not me, not in the sense you mean..

I merely show a pattern and a hierarchy. I don't admit to causality, or 
time, so 'first cause' has no meaning.

> Whether science seems to be approaching some previously stated 
> metaphysical platitude remains to be seen.
> 
youve lost me there guvnor.

> Both are honestly forced to admit their limitations.  Though you really
> have to drag the metaphysics out or the room, kicking and screaming,
> when you set down to calculate an orbital decay:)
> 
Before you start your calculation, you have already decided the 
metaphysics you will use.  If it works, use it. The answer is implicit 
in the view that results from the metaphysics.

> What will science find, if any thing, an original nothing? some small
> part of the big bang or what ever that may have in any way initiated
> the big bang at the core of every atom?
> 

Ultimately if pursued long enough, it will find the metaphysical 
assumptions on which it is based, that's all. Big deal.

The answer is the world you always thought it was to be sure. How could 
it be anything else?

> The macrocosmic anatomy has a distinctly biological look to it, imo,
> when i see the Hubbell images.
> 
*shrug* we are great at pattern recognition. Similar causes we say, 
produce similar patterns. We live and die by analogy and metaphor.


> Speculating on the consciousness of matter, even with our self as
> "Exhibit A" in any expansion of the dignity to anything other than
> ourselves is simply not thought about. Especially if extending the
> consciousness of matter to encompass the entire universe as one vast
> living conscious matter.  Are we  hubristic enough as a species to thing
> that in the entire universe only mankind has risen to the level of self
> aware matter?

Frankly, I couldn't care less. I am only interested in pragmatic applied 
science of consciousness. It is possible to concoct and infinite number 
of metaphysics that make the world all matter, all mind, or something in 
between, or none of the above. Its an open ended process of increased 
sophistication.


It may seem that the choice of metaphysic is arbitrary and meaningless. 
Meaningless perhaps..what is meaning? but arbitrary, no. It has to be 
functional and effective in the context of its purpose, which is a human 
thing. vapid speculation is not my intent. I developed what I did for a 
specific reason, as the most elegant solution to a problem that 
confronted me. Namely how to reconcile classes of experience that did 
not fit a rational materialistic worldview. In so doing, it appeared to 
me it had far reaching implications that might be of interest to others. 
Sadly, it seems it is not of much interest to anybody. The people who 
need it can't understand it, and the people who can, don't want to.


You might say that the solution for me was to realise that ordinary 
consciousness, is not the general case, it is the exception that proves 
the rule. Ordinary consciousness, (of which science as we know it is the 
critical faculty) is a special case of a more generalised spectrum of 
experience. I.e. if I have a starting point at all, it is not the 
perceived factual reality of rational materialism, it is the experience 
of being alive, in whatever way it is experienced. The baby experiences, 
the adult perceives. The development of the entrance fee to the world of 
adult perceptions, is long and hard, and only by massive efforts of will 
that we don't appreciate till it wears us into old age, can we maintain 
the 'normal sane' vision of the world.


Science in a way IS magick, in the sense that it takes enormous efforts 
of will to maintain the necessary worldview in which phsyical reality 
CAN be affected by our desires. Namely by building machines, concocting 
chemicals, planning solutions and the like.

Now try applying as much effort to maintaining a different view.."Why, 
as  child I used to believe ten impossible things before breakfast!" 
said the White Queen.

One can only assume THAT is the price of admission to Wonderland ;-)

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Mr. Joseph Littleshoes Esq. wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> >  >
> >  >
> >  > I would  say, that the core of my thesis is the proposition  that in
> >  > fact, all observable phenomena are the result of metaphysical
> >  > assumptions.
> >
> >
> > Hmmmmm ...wouldn't any "proposition" be merely a thought? even if of
> > matters "metaphysical" a speculation about first principles is just a
> > speculation with no demonstrable proof of a first principle or cause.
> > Apparently, something was going on before the big bang
>
>
> really?
>
> News to me. Time starts at the big bang. No 'before' existed. Least
> that's the way I understand it.


Yes i have tried to address that idea that time in any conventional 
sence began with the big bang, that there was no before.  However that 
strikes me as a bit like the rejection of the copernican idea of the sun 
revolving around the earth. It seems inescapably  obvious to me that if 
a beggining is postulated there must have been something before the 
postulated beggining.  No matter how much one defines this previous 
state as a lack of anything it is still that.

>
>
> > (how long before may be irrelevant if 'Time' began with the "big bang')
> >
> > Hunger, the experience of hunger, fear or other such stimuli are then
> > "metaphysical assumptions?"  Of course your argument works better with
> > stones and planets and nebulae and such and while applicable to the
> > human  condition i think, is, rather more hubristic, species
> > chauvinism, than it is representative of some fundamental perceptual
> > bias, if i understand your use of the term "metaphysical."
> >
>
> I doubt you do.
> If you like, the sensation of hunger, rather than  a slippery slide down
> a multicolored slope of bramble thorns, is the expression of a
> metaphsyical choice you don't know you are making ;-)


Pleasant vs. unpleasant seems to be one of the easiest concious choice 
to make, what are more difficult choices are when one knows the proper 
choice will result in pain or somekind of suffering.  As it so often does.

>
>
> >
> >  > But I suspect that's way over your head.
> >  >
> >  >
> >  >  Ergo, there in no science
> >  >
> >  >> to metaphysics.
> >
> > As i understand it we can not directly observe the "big bang".  I
> > understand that some "Scientists" reject the idea of a big bang and/or
> > postulate an infinite series of 'big bangs.'  We can conceptualize
> > "eternal" which would seem to me to have no beginning as well as no end.
> >
>
> yeah. Its all in yer mind boyo. Its just a questiuon of drawing usable
> maps and telling helpful stories.


Why? to what end? i can accept a totaly random, meaningless, accidental 
universe, more of an 'Ooops' than a "Fiat Lux."  But that just makes me 
look for loopholes:)

>
>
> >  >>
> >  >
> >  > Indeed. That doesn't invalidate the philosophy though.
> >
> > Which philosophy?
> >
> metaphysics.


The philosophy of first causes?

>
>
> >  > Science depends
> >
> > "Science" and the activities the word stands for no more depends on
> > metaphysics or what that word might represent than any or everything
> > else.  The demonstrable influence of "Metaphysics' is largely confined
> > to books and obscure letters on the subject.
> >
> That is a sad fact. Whereas of course, its the adrdessing of the most
> fundamental problem humans who like to understand stuff, face.

Yes but which is really fundamental? hunger, fear and pain or abstract 
speculation on first casuses?

>
>
> The demonstrable influence of mathematics might be so described as well.


not sure i understand you unless you mean life is quantifiable even if 
not gualifiable?

>
>
> > Assuming one agrees with the metaphysics being expressed.  Can no -
> > thing be a first cause?
> >
>
> Why not?
> Causality is simply another metaphysical assumption. No way to tell if
> its universally valid as a yardstick or not.
>
> >  > on metaphysics to exist. Its the metaphysics that says what is real,
> >
> > Last i checked that was still being debated.
> >
>
> So is how many angels fit in the head of a pin.
>
> cant you make up your own mind?


So far it seems to me that all standards of measure be that mathmaticl, 
euclidian or social are arbitrary, and for convienience only.

>
>
> >  > what is not real, what size is, and quantity. Its the metaphysical
> >  > assumptions you make that turn incoherent experience into coherent
> >  > perceptions.


Hmmmmm ...... first causes may have an originating influence on any 
present percetions i have but it seems to me concsiouness is relatively 
mundane?

>  The pixels into the picture. That's long before science
> >  > starts to analyze the picture...
> >
> > Pre programed?  people learn up, down, right, left which is all  you
> > seem to be talking about unless your going to include in the pixelation
> > of consciousness the deliberate indoctrination of the young into the
> > social customs of its environment.
> >
>
> All? A baby knows NOTHING. 

Your sure of that?

> it cant even perceive properly. Its aware,
> for sure, but having a fully functional awareness of the elements that
> make up the adult world? no. Its *all* learnt.
>
> > As the more draconian and Apollonian social controls have broken down
> > in some parts of the world
> > so people have the freedom to speculate about previously taboo subjects.
> >
>
> I'd say actually, in this country, they have a lot less.

Perhaps the number of people that want to are less, most people find the 
open ended unresolvable  intellectual speculation bores a lot of people.

>  There is a new
> orthodoxy in science, in matters of morality, and the rest. Only
> behaviour is liberalised. It seems you can indeed get away with
> anything, except expressing ideas freely. That, it seems is almost a
> capital crime.


I can read your words but again, i think you tabloidize social taboos.

>
>
> > It still fascinates some of us, even as we acknowledge its ultimately
> > futile nature. Talking or writing about life is not experiencing life.
> > It is writing and talking about the experience of life.  And
> > metaphysical speculation on first causes has occupied both metaphysics
> > and science.
> >
>
> Who is speculating of first causes? not me, not in the sense you mean..
>
> I merely show a pattern and a hierarchy. I don't admit to causality, or
> time, so 'first cause' has no meaning.


Well arent you special:)

>
> > Whether science seems to be approaching some previously stated
> > metaphysical platitude remains to be seen.
> >
> youve lost me there guvnor.


There are metaphysical statements about the fundamental nature of the 
universe that have been experessed by ancient philosophers that some 
people believe are expressive of the direction modern science.

>
>
> > Both are honestly forced to admit their limitations.  Though you really
> > have to drag the metaphysics out or the room, kicking and screaming,
> > when you set down to calculate an orbital decay:)
> >
> Before you start your calculation, you have already decided the
> metaphysics you will use.  If it works, use it. The answer is implicit
> in the view that results from the metaphysics.


Yes thats the kind of thing i meant above when i suggested that all 
measurement systems, all mapping systems are arbitrary.

>
>
> > What will science find, if any thing, an original nothing? some small
> > part of the big bang or what ever that may have in any way initiated
> > the big bang at the core of every atom?
> >
>
> Ultimately if pursued long enough, it will find the metaphysical
> assumptions on which it is based, that's all. Big deal.


It will find the 'no - thing' *chuckle*

>
>
> The answer is the world you always thought it was to be sure. How could
> it be anything else?
>
> > The macrocosmic anatomy has a distinctly biological look to it, imo,
> > when i see the Hubbell images.
> >
> *shrug* we are great at pattern recognition. Similar causes we say,
> produce similar patterns. We live and die by analogy and metaphor.
>
>
> > Speculating on the consciousness of matter, even with our self as
> > "Exhibit A" in any expansion of the dignity to anything other than
> > ourselves is simply not thought about. Especially if extending the
> > consciousness of matter to encompass the entire universe as one vast
> > living conscious matter.  Are we  hubristic enough as a species to thing
> > that in the entire universe only mankind has risen to the level of self
> > aware matter?
>
>
> Frankly, I couldn't care less. I am only interested in pragmatic applied
> science of consciousness. 

Then why even use the word "metaphysic."

> It is possible to concoct and infinite number
> of metaphysics that make the world all matter, all mind, or something in
> between, or none of the above. Its an open ended process of increased
> sophistication.
>
>
> It may seem that the choice of metaphysic is arbitrary and meaningless.
> Meaningless perhaps..what is meaning? but arbitrary, no. It has to be
> functional and effective in the context of its purpose, which is a human
> thing. 

Yes, well one has to get past the romantcized idealization of the 
species, it speicies hubris to say nothing of mankinds transcendental 
spritual pride.  Is that the "metaphysics" you are talking about?  And 
God created Man!


> vapid speculation is not my intent. I developed what I did for a
> specific reason, as the most elegant solution to a problem that
> confronted me. 


T+A={R}=O+T

> Namely how to reconcile classes of experience that did
> not fit a rational materialistic worldview. In so doing, it appeared to
> me it had far reaching implications that might be of interest to others.
> Sadly, it seems it is not of much interest to anybody. The people who
> need it can't understand it, and the people who can, don't want to.


Welllll....it does seem to me you are elevating something rather 
ordinary to a  false ideal.  Which is not at all unusual given the 
general tendency of the animale.

>
>
>
> You might say that the solution for me was to realise that ordinary
> consciousness, is not the general case, it is the exception that proves
> the rule.


That there is an exception to every rule? seems a long way to go for 
very little:)

>  Ordinary consciousness, (of which science as we know it is the
> critical faculty) is a special case of a more generalised spectrum of
> experience.

Dont know if i understand you here or if you are expressing yourself well.

>  I.e. if I have a starting point at all, it is not the
> perceived factual reality of rational materialism, it is the experience
> of being alive, 


Semantic quibble.

> in whatever way it is experienced. The baby experiences,
> the adult perceives. The development of the entrance fee to the world of
> adult perceptions, is long and hard, and only by massive efforts of will
> that we don't appreciate till it wears us into old age, can we maintain
> the 'normal sane' vision of the world.


Again, if i understand you, i think your putting too much emphasis on 
what is mostly instinct.

One dont need an intellectual analysis of existance to exist.

>
>
>
> Science in a way IS magick, 


Nope dont agree. Espicaly etymologicaly.

> in the sense that it takes enormous efforts
> of will to maintain the necessary worldview in which phsyical reality
> CAN be affected by our desires. 


No not that either, as i wrote earlier, its almost all instinct.

> Namely by building machines, concocting
> chemicals, planning solutions and the like.


Specialization.

>
>
> Now try applying as much effort to maintaining a different view.."Why,
> as  child I used to believe ten impossible things before breakfast!"
> said the White Queen.
>
> One can only assume THAT is the price of admission to Wonderland ;-)

Most magicians know tghe value of and how to play:)

And my apologies for typing this in a machine with no spell checker:(
-- 

Mr. Joseph Littleshoes Esq.

Domine, dirige nos.
Let the games begin!
http://fredeeky.typepad.com/fredeeky/files/sf_anthem.mp3

On Friday 02 October 2009 02:34 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
identifying as The Natural Philosopher wrote...

> Mr. Joseph Littleshoes Esq. wrote:
>> 
>> > I would  say, that the core of my thesis is the proposition  that
>> > in fact, all observable phenomena are the result of metaphysical
>> > assumptions.
>> 
>> Hmmmmm ...wouldn't any "proposition" be merely a thought? even if of
>> matters "metaphysical" a speculation about first principles is just a
>> speculation with no demonstrable proof of a first principle or cause.
>> Apparently, something was going on before the big bang
> 
> really?
> 
> News to me. Time starts at the big bang. No 'before' existed. Least
> that's the way I understand it.

That's because time itself as a concept is an invention of mankind.  In
essence, there is only the "now", and the "now" is simply a shifting
location on one of the coordinates of the spacetime continuum.  

We don't know why this shift along that coordinate occurs, but we do
know that the experience of it is subjective.  It's even in some of our
expressions, e.g. "Time sure flies when you're having fun."

>> Assuming one agrees with the metaphysics being expressed.  Can no -
>> thing be a first cause?
> 
> Why not?
> Causality is simply another metaphysical assumption. No way to tell if
> its universally valid as a yardstick or not.

It is, but it's more complicated than that.  Causality is not
necessarily time-bound, and those who insist that it is are the very
same people who are unwilling to accept the notion that there is more
than one temporal dimension to the spacetime continuum.

The above seems contradictory to my earlier statement that there is in
fact only the "now", but like I said, it's more complicated than that. 
It all starts making sense once you consider all possible temporal and
physical coordinates in the spacetime continuum to be only a
holographic projection of a higher reality.  

And ironically, the same scientists who mock such a statement and/or
refer to it as fringe science are the very ones you'll find praying to
their Lord Jesus Christ Almighty up in Heaven in church on Sunday.  Not
that Jesus of Nazareth has not existed, but he was not quite what most
people think he was - this statement not intended in the negative
sense, but in the sense that religious indoctrination and manipulation
have warped history and interwoven it with something that suited the
Roman Catholic Church's agenda as one of the players among the powers
that be on this planet.

Despite Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" being a fictional story, the
background of that story is based upon cold hard facts, and the
statement from both the book and the movie that Jesus of Nazareth was
not even considered a distant nephew of the Judeo-Christian God let
alone his ("only begotten") son by the Roman Catholic Church up until
the fourth Century is true, just as the fact that the Roman Catholic
Church was founded by Peter and Paul - the latter never having known
Jesus of Nazareth during his life as he was himself still a
Jewish-Roman Christian hunter at the time - who both strictly adhered a
philosophy of celebacy, while Jesus himself was married to Mary
Magdalen.  And the latter was not the prostitute rescued by Jesus from
stoning that the Roman Catholic Church made her out to be all of these
years - for which they have apologized only a few years ago - but a
well-educated and respected woman.  

Furthermore, Jesus's name was not even Jesus to begin with.  The name
Jesus is a Latinization of the Hebrew Jeshua, which has a meaning
similar to the guy's actual Arameic name, Jmmanuel - the "J" was
pronounced as an "I".

All of the above just goes to show that many of the scientists who
immediately and cynically refute anything metaphysical are actually
hypocrites, because they're actually religious themselves.  Maybe
they're not even practicing their religion, but indoctrination has made
sure that religion has become a subliminal part of all of our lives in
the Western world, whether we're actually religious or not.

The two largest of the three major religions in the world are
Christianity and Islam.  Both of them are widespread, but this has
nothing to do with any truths behind those religions.  Ask yourself why
most of Latin America is Catholic, and then find the answer in the
statement that most of Latin America also speaks Spanish.  

Likewise for Islam in the Arab world, or for Christianity - in various
forms - in the United States of America.  It's simply a matter of
expansion of a cultural context, either by migration or by imperialism
and colonization.  Most Americans are descendents from European
immigrants, their former African slaves, and their underpaid Oriental
employees during the development of the railroads in North-America. 
Hell, even the current US President is half-Kenian.  

And what religion domineered Europe - and ruthlessly persecuted and
cruelly tortured and brutally murdered non-believers during the middle
ages - in all of the years before the Unites States were formed as a
nation?  Exactly...: the self-proclaimed followers of Jmmanuel, who was
probably the greatest peace activist of his time.

>> > what is not real, what size is, and quantity. Its the metaphysical
>> > assumptions you make that turn incoherent experience into coherent
>> > perceptions. The pixels into the picture. That's long before
>> > science starts to analyze the picture...
>> 
>> Pre programed?  people learn up, down, right, left which is all  you
>> seem to be talking about unless your going to include in the
>> pixelation of consciousness the deliberate indoctrination of the
>> young into the social customs of its environment.
> 
> All? A baby knows NOTHING. it cant even perceive properly. Its aware,
> for sure, but having a fully functional awareness of the elements that
> make up the adult world? no. Its *all* learnt.

That's because anything before adulthood should be considered a
diminished state of awareness, comparable to a hypnotic state - in the
literal meaning of the Greek word "hypnos", which means "sleep".

>> As the more draconian and Apollonian social controls have broken down
>> in some parts of the world so people have the freedom to speculate
>> about previously taboo subjects.
> 
> I'd say actually, in this country, they have a lot less. There is a
> new orthodoxy in science, in matters of morality, and the rest. Only
> behaviour is liberalised. It seems you can indeed get away with
> anything, except expressing ideas freely. That, it seems is almost a
> capital crime.

        "When stupidity is considered patriotism, then an intellectual
        will become an enemy of the state."
                -- Isaac Asimov, deceased mathematician and sci-fi author

> I don't admit to causality, or time, so 'first cause' has no meaning.

They both exist, but they are quite different things from what we
perceive through the five senses and this biological spacesuit that
we're wearing. ;-)

>> What will science find, if any thing, an original nothing? some small
>> part of the big bang or what ever that may have in any way initiated
>> the big bang at the core of every atom?
> 
> Ultimately if pursued long enough, it will find the metaphysical
> assumptions on which it is based, that's all. Big deal.

Yes, but now you say it all: "Ultimately, if pursued long enough."  But
that would be very inconvenient for a lot of scientists, because they
too are guilty of the same arrogance as religion in that they proclaim
to know the answers to everything, except for a few little things here
and there which they conveniently find of no interest to them.

Just ask NASA about their opinion on UFOs, and then have a good laugh at
the answer they'll give you. ;-)  (NASA is an acronym for "Never A
Straight Answer". :p)

>> The macrocosmic anatomy has a distinctly biological look to it, imo,
>> when i see the Hubbell images.

Don't forget Plato and the allegory of the cave. ;-)

> *shrug* we are great at pattern recognition. Similar causes we say,
> produce similar patterns. We live and die by analogy and metaphor.

Don't forget human arrogance either. ;-)

>> Speculating on the consciousness of matter, even with our self as
>> "Exhibit A" in any expansion of the dignity to anything other than
>> ourselves is simply not thought about. Especially if extending the
>> consciousness of matter to encompass the entire universe as one vast
>> living conscious matter.  Are we  hubristic enough as a species to
>> thing that in the entire universe only mankind has risen to the level
>> of self aware matter?
> 
> Frankly, I couldn't care less. I am only interested in pragmatic
> applied science of consciousness. It is possible to concoct and
> infinite number of metaphysics that make the world all matter, all
> mind, or something in between, or none of the above. Its an open ended
> process of increased sophistication.

Those who live in Flatland cannot be convinced that they live in
Flatland, because they have no understanding of the word "flat"... ;-)

> Science in a way IS magick, in the sense that it takes enormous
> efforts of will to maintain the necessary worldview in which phsyical
> reality CAN be affected by our desires. Namely by building machines,
> concocting chemicals, planning solutions and the like.

        "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
        magic."
                -- Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author.

;-)

-- 
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On Friday 02 October 2009 04:31 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
identifying as Mr. Joseph Littleshoes Esq. wrote...

> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> 
>> News to me. Time starts at the big bang. No 'before' existed. Least
>> that's the way I understand it.
> 
> Yes i have tried to address that idea that time in any conventional
> sence began with the big bang, that there was no before.  However that
> strikes me as a bit like the rejection of the copernican idea of the
> sun revolving around the earth. It seems inescapably  obvious to me
> that if a beggining is postulated there must have been something
> before the postulated beggining.  No matter how much one defines this
> previous state as a lack of anything it is still that.

Ahh, but you humans think in such linear terms... ;-)

<mysterious grin>

>> Its all in yer mind boyo. Its just a questiuon of drawing
>> usable maps and telling helpful stories.
> 
> Why? to what end? i can accept a totaly random, meaningless,
> accidental universe, more of an 'Ooops' than a "Fiat Lux."  But that
> just makes me look for loopholes:)

As in my reply to The Natural Philosopher, you cannot convince a
Flatlander that he lives in Flatland, because he does not understand
the meaning of "flat", given that this requires a notion of depth,
which he does not have.  

Humans are officially said to only have five senses, so anything that
would require a sixth and/or more senses either cannot be conveived at
all or can only be conceived with great effort by the human mind, which
is accustomed - through lifelong indoctrination *by* these five
senses - to think only in terms of what is perceived *through* these
senses.

Of course, one can make an abstract of things and start thinking in
mathematical equations, which all make up for very neat models that all
work out perfectly within the manifold in which they have been
concocted, but that still doesn't prove anything, since many if not
most of those equations cannot be verified against the actual construct
of the universe.  They can only be verified against that which the
human being can perceive... through those five senses... ;-)

> There are metaphysical statements about the fundamental nature of the
> universe that have been experessed by ancient philosophers that some
> people believe are expressive of the direction modern science.

The only modern science that would touch upon those metaphysical
statements would be quantum mechanics, and there are still a great
number of people who consider that "too far out", which is of course
not helped in any way by some of the fundamental flaws of quantum
mechanics, such as their misunderstanding of what gravity is and how it
works.  They're so dead-set on quantizing everything that they make the
mistake of ascribing gravity to a purported quantizable particle, the
graviton, of which no experiment to date has yet proved the existence,
and probably never will.

>> Ordinary consciousness, (of which science as we know it is the
>> critical faculty) is a special case of a more generalised spectrum of
>> experience.
> 
> Dont know if i understand you here or if you are expressing yourself
> well.

I understood him, and I am biologically communication-impaired - not to
mention that English is officially not even my first language - so he
must be expressing himself well. :-)

>> I.e. if I have a starting point at all, it is not the
>> perceived factual reality of rational materialism, it is the
>> experience of being alive,
> 
> Semantic quibble.

Not in my book, because I agree with him on that. :-)

>> in whatever way it is experienced. The baby experiences,
>> the adult perceives. The development of the entrance fee to the world
>> of adult perceptions, is long and hard, and only by massive efforts
>> of will that we don't appreciate till it wears us into old age, can
>> we maintain the 'normal sane' vision of the world.
> 
> Again, if i understand you, i think your putting too much emphasis on
> what is mostly instinct.

I think he doesn't, and it would be wrong to use instinct in this
matter, since a number of instincts stem from the combination of
consciousness and identity, while a great other number of instincts
simply stem from the cerebellum, which is also dubbed "the reptile
brain", and which responds to very physical things only. ;-)

-- 
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Wanna-Be Sys Admin <sysadmin@example.com> writes:

> jellybean stonerfish wrote:
> 
> > Maybe Sidney knows how to use aview
> 
> Speaking of, this was funny when people were ripping on Sid the troll,
> but can we please have this topic no longer cross-posted to the Linux
> or other irrelevant groups?


Certainly.  My apologies.


                HG