Re^2: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores.

in reply to Re: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores.
in thread Please remember that geeks have their own social mores.

> Cooperation beats individual excellence.

This, of course, explains why ants have built spaceships and discovered broad-spectrum antibiotics, while we humans still consider finding a yummy dead mouse the highlight of our existence.

Individual excellence supported by cooperation - and please note the order in which these must come - has taken us to our current status. Without individual excellence, we'd be just another species (and most likely found only in the fossil records of some ancient stratum.)


-- 
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. -- HG Wells

Comment on Re^2: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores.

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Re^3: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Mar 30, 2008 at 14:28 UTC
Hear, hear. Cooperative development gave us the Lada and Trabant. Competition gave us Toyota, Chrysler, VWAudi, Renault, Fiat, Kia ... Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. "Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."	[reply]
Re^4: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by Gavin (Archbishop) on Mar 30, 2008 at 15:03 UTC
But hopefully cooperative development will give us "The Semantic Web".	[reply]
Re^5: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Mar 30, 2008 at 16:12 UTC
Somehow I seriously doubt it. I cannot see Intel very obligingly tagging their chip specs with `<chip type='xyz' bus-speed='4GHz' performance='3.2 MIPS' />` [download] so that Motorola can easily locate that information for comparison with their similar chip that has a 'effective performance' of '3.5 MIPS'. Call me a semantic web skeptic, but I see three problems with it: Companies and organisations (and individuals), will only tag what they want to tag. Tags are as ambiguous as natural langauge. Unless you can program a computer to 'read' through all your web content and tag it, where is the ROI that will encourage companies to pay humans to do the job? The tag `<BUG..../>` could relate to computer programming, entomology, or a teenager angst site? The spammers will start putting tags for everything in their pages advertising Via.... If some organisation, say CERN, were to propose some "standard" for semantic tagging, then it would inevitably be a design-by-commitee thing so complex and unituative that noone would use it. The French would propose a "Toubon Laws" alternative ("économie et culture, même combat"). Microsoft would extend it to support Silverlight. Adobe would (incompatibly) extend it to support Flash. The 'patent sponge' holding companies will start patenting every spelling (and misspelling, and aLt3Rn7iV3 aRraNGm3nt of letters) and sit back waiting for someone to use them as a tag. The US government will start reserving certain words for "security purposes only". The Chinese Government will start blocking any site that refers to Beijing as Peking. The UK government? They'll wait to see what the rest of the world does. Then commission a PPI to develop a comprehensive solution which will go 10 years and £2 billion over budget before being quietly cancelled. And then there will be the open source initative which will cobble together 17 SourceForge projects and wikipedia under a GNU 7 licence to ensure free access to information for all. Provided you run Linux or BSD, know how to use a compiler, don't mind spending your weekends compiling 17 disparate and incompatible packages, one of which will have a major release or unavoidable security patch every weekend of the year (except Thanksgiving weekend). Meanwhile Google will solve the problem, and make 2 cents on every tag followed or located by anyone, anywhere on the planet. Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. "Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by shmem (Chancellor) on Mar 30, 2008 at 18:04 UTC
Cooperative development gave us the Lada and Trabant. Not too bad cars those, not too bad... specially the Lada_Niva (based on the old Shiguli), of which a fleet of 45 vehicles serviced the Euro Tunnel construction. But has their development really been cooperative? Not mandated, somehow? Competition gave us Toyota, Chrysler, VWAudi, Renault, Fiat, Kia ... ...and myriads of incompatible spare parts ;-) Thinking about that... cooperation (by necessity) made British Rail possible, imposed competition destroyed it... (not yet ;-) update: thinking about that again - privatizing public matters works as well as privatizing the republic (or the monetary system - see the FED) and equally well as creating private luxury by means of common effort... --shmem _($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo. G°\ / /\_¯/(q / ---------------------------- \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."· ");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}	[reply]
Re^4: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by educated_foo (Vicar) on Mar 30, 2008 at 18:20 UTC
"omg commies!" is so 80s...	[reply]
Re^5: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Mar 30, 2008 at 18:29 UTC
Naf all to do with commies. British Leyland would have served as an equally poignant example. That said, those that do not learn from history, even history as recent as the 80's, are destined to repeat it. Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. "Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."	[reply]
Re^6: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by Anonymous Monk on Mar 30, 2008 at 18:50 UTC
Re^6: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by educated_foo (Vicar) on Mar 30, 2008 at 18:51 UTC
Re^7: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Mar 30, 2008 at 21:17 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re^4: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by zby (Vicar) on Oct 24, 2008 at 09:37 UTC
I did not know that Toyota was build by one genius ingineer. I thought the cars are build by large teams of people and companies cooperating with each other.	[reply]
Re^5: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Oct 24, 2008 at 10:12 UTC
Sorry, but I do not understand your point? I read back 3 levels and do not see where anyone suggested that Toyota was built by one individual. Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. "Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."	[reply]
Re^6: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by zby (Vicar) on Oct 24, 2008 at 11:14 UTC
Re^7: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Oct 24, 2008 at 11:25 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re^3: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores. by zby (Vicar) on Mar 30, 2008 at 16:26 UTC
Hmm - yeah. Maybe you are right - actually most such absolute statements are mostly meaningless. Now I think I should formulate that in terms of dynamic, in terms of change. That now cooperation is cheaper - so it is economically applicable in broader spectrum of situations.	[reply]

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