Re: [Flightgear-devel] Web 2.0 paradigms (was: New styled FGFS--Manual)
On Tue, 2012-02-28 at 12:06 +0200, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: Naturally, LaTeX is not some click-it tool, it's a powerful and flexible tool, and so it must be learned. Which is work, and that's not well-taken in the shiny Web 2.0 world, so... the digital natives can't do it. They have learned to use the things that are easy to use and they've learned to demand easy tools and easy information snippets, but the majority of them has no real concept of what's underneath all the infrastructure. My pretty consistent experience is that the closer you get to where information is actually produced or where work is actually done, the less fancy the tools are on the outside. Case in point - we're writing on a mailing list here which is technology from 20 years ago - but it does the job well... So, I prefer to do my studies 'the old way'. Not because I would be averse to technology or unable to learn anything new (after all, I did learn to use GLSL just by reverse-engineering shaders others have written and by trial and error when I felt I needed it), but because I understand 'the new way' all too well and have concluded that replacing the somehwat uncomfortable real thing with the confortable illusion of it is not a good idea. This was just the end of a long and detailed discourse about learning and writing and thinking. I believe I can take that as a short summary - pinpoint pretty well our different views. I assure you I have read the complete discourse several times -- but even now I am not sure where there is my standing between the digital natives, the scientists or experts or scholars or whatever During all my productive life I was just a hard working guy being payed for developing new things that should find a market-place and/or find solutions for problems popping up in the real, technical, mostly computer oriented, very competitive, engineering world. So please forgive me, if I sometimes talk a little bluntly when trying to make a point. Actually I wonder a little why you accept using a modern tool like LaTeX being just 20 years old - while we all learned that the optimum scholar-environment was developed by the old Greeks (to my knowledge without any computers and/or LaTeX) -- after that we never had such a development of basic wisdom as during that time! So actually we should do like them: 1 Prof, 2 Students, and walking and talking and thinking and... Well - (to some extend) that was meant as a joke - but seriously: Did you ever consider how fast the environment changes today - for every human being in any kind of doing? And how fast the tools change that you can use to develop and deploy new ideas or to evaluate the basics? ~50 years ago: I was a Student and was not even allowed to use a hand-held calculator - my Profs insisted on using slide-rulers and they checked that we calculated with a deviation better then 10% (but definitely bigger 1% - or you raised suspicion of cheating!). ~40 years ago: I joined into the BIG (blue)-Computer-World (System/360) and had to input my ingenious inventions by punching little carbon cards -- hand-carry those in boxes to the Data-Processing-Center -- and retrieve them the next morning with many many meters of Chain-Printer output. ~30 years ago: PCs and DOS (1981) became available for personal use - and printers learned to print condensed and enlarged -- wonderful: We could define headers and comments! (in March 1981 I bought an Apple II for 3.130,-$ and enjoyed learning to write an own word-program in Microcode). ~25 years ago: We entered the wonderful world of MS-Word (first release 1983) -- parallel to that also began the wonderful world of Post-Script printers! i.e. first time you could print something worth being read! But it also produced quit some headaches because of drivers, money, knowledge, incompatibilities, etc.! ~20 years ago: Those wonderful PDF-files were introduced - we now could even transfer documents from one PC to another - even with different Operating Systems and/or different printer capabilities! That was also when LaTeX was developed - for high quality and quantity printing. (And according to Wikipedia: LaTeX is widely used in academia). also 1991 Linux had it's first appearance etc. Believe me: I do understand that someone does not want to change his tools every couple of years - just about nobody wants to do that and really nobody needs to -- unless he is in a competitive environment! For sure FGFS is not depending on market shares - but somewhere inside I guess every developers would like to be better than the others! Can you really imagine the existence of the FGFS over a longer time-frame without all the new communication and development tools that were implemented in recent years and will continue to change rapidly - even after LaTeX? Should we, as a worldwide distributed engineering team not always consider new developments? Those new tools will not have any effect onto the contents of any
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Web 2.0 paradigms
Actually I wonder a little why you accept using a modern tool like LaTeX being just 20 years old - while we all learned that the optimum scholar-environment was developed by the old Greeks (to my knowledge without any computers and/or LaTeX) -- after that we never had such a development of basic wisdom as during that time! Because you misunderstood a basic point: I use tools not because they're fashionable, but because I convinced myself they are the best choice to get a task done. I don't care what you learned about the optimum scholar environment, I also don't care what someone told me about it, it's one of the things which I can find out myself easily. Well - (to some extend) that was meant as a joke - but seriously: Did you ever consider how fast the environment changes today - for every human being in any kind of doing? And how fast the tools change that you can use to develop and deploy new ideas or to evaluate the basics? I'm looking out at this moment. There's trees and blue sky. They pretty much look like in my childhood. I'm looking forward to ice-skating later today - pretty much as in my childhood. I'll probably play in the snow with the kids layer - pretty much as in my childhood. When driving home, there'll be traffic and snow on the roads - just as in my childhood. I'll meet friends and we'll talk - pretty much as in my childhood. To first approximation, my physical and social environment looks pretty stable to me. My mind didn't change so much over the last years - I can process information at a certain rate, some things make me happy, others sad, I can dream up stories,... Is it possible that you're confusing 'environment' and 'any kind of doing' with something else which is much narrower? At the moment, I need to prepare a presentation. A 20 years ago, I would have done this with pens - now I use LaTeX. I'm going to reference other works - 20 years ago, I would have had to go through the library, now I can use arXive and spires to do it from my laptop. The tasks are unchanged, but there has been some progress in tools, and since I understand that the tools are superior for the task at hand, I use them (somewhat funnily, among all colleagues I know, I've been the first to use computer typesetting and my laptop for presentations...). There have been significant changes in available tools since - we've seen Powerpoint Co - but they simply don't deliver. I get a worse layout for two times the work and 100 times the file-size. So I don't use Powerpoint, even if it's fashionable to do so. We can look at Flightgear (and in the virtual world, the environment actually changed a lot). I want to do something (make nice clouds), so I acquire the tools I need (Nasal, GLSL) to get the job done. Note that we can argue if Nasal is the best tool or not (we've done this on this list a few times), but that I personally think it was the right choice. Believe me: I do understand that someone does not want to change his tools every couple of years - just about nobody wants to do that and really nobody needs to -- unless he is in a competitive environment! There's a reason LaTeX is still around despite all competition, and that it that it's hard to beat. Both its flexibility and its ability to do decent typesetting are so compelling that I haven't ever seen anything coming close. You're missing the simple point that you have so far not come up with much compelling evidence that your tools actually can do better than what we have, you've just delivered a few lines of web 2.0 phrases. I'd have to guess at what Martin and Stuart think, but at least I'm not impressed by web 2.0 phrases, I use what does the job at hand best. Those new tools will not have any effect onto the contents of any dispute about e.g. Egyptian myth and similar! Except that you can do that now with modern tools with every scientist worldwide in real time! Excuse me, but didn't you try to make a point about multiple languages? That's clearly a content issue, not a tool issue, and yet you somehow claimed it would argue for different tools. The sum of your statements did not seem to be 'leave the content what it is, just change to better processing tools', but you argued for changing the whole structure (including who gets to contribute to the manual). So kindly don't present red herrings here. - but does (e.g.) a Housewife really need to learn all theoretical basics about e.g. plastics, metal, porcelain - just to cook? Strawman argument. Of course not. However, you have to learn C++ if you want to contribute to the Flightgear core development, you have to learn GLSL if you want to edit shaders, you have to learn to drive a car if you want to join traffic and so on. Real pilots learn theoretical basics of aerodynamics just to fly - and there's some consensus that this is a reasonable thing. - and does every kid need to know everything about aerodynamic-theories, FAA rules, etc. etc. just to play with the
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Web 2.0 paradigms
Am 29.02.12 11:17, schrieb thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi: Spring has come. LaTex and Wikibooks got married. Have a look: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX LaTeX is a featured book on Wikibooks because it contains substantial content, it is well-formatted, and the Wikibooks community has decided to feature it on the main page or in other places. ;-) Cheers, Yves -- Virtualization Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Web 2.0 paradigms (was: New styled
Jörg Emmerich wrote: ~20 years ago: Those wonderful PDF-files were introduced - we now could even transfer documents from one PC to another - even with different Operating Systems and/or different printer capabilities! That was also when LaTeX was developed [...] I'll skip all the other stuff because I've already made my position pretty clear in the past. Anyhow I'd like to express my disagreement on this one. I didn't check closely, but I'm pretty sure that even LaTeX, the comfortable, let's call it an extension to TeX predates PDF by almost a decade. And the underlying TeX had been invented even a lot earlier, maybe yet another decade. Cheers, Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Virtualization Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Web 2.0 paradigms
HB-GRAL wrote: Spring has come. LaTex and Wikibooks got married. Have a look: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX I guess the missing link would be an option to writing a Wiki using genuine LaTeX syntax and templates. Cheers, Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Virtualization Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Web 2.0 paradigms
~20 years ago: Those wonderful PDF-files were introduced - we now could even transfer documents from one PC to another - even with different Operating Systems and/or different printer capabilities! That was also when LaTeX was developed [...] I'll skip all the other stuff because I've already made my position pretty clear in the past. Anyhow I'd like to express my disagreement on this one. I didn't check closely, but I'm pretty sure that even LaTeX, the comfortable, let's call it an extension to TeX predates PDF by almost a decade. And the underlying TeX had been invented even a lot earlier, maybe yet another decade. TeX was released 1978, LaTeX around 1982, the thing to develop later into pdf (Camelot) was introduced 1991 and became an open standard as recent as 2008. * Thorsten -- Virtualization Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] Web 2.0 paradigms (was: New styled FGFS--Manual)
I discovered I really need a break from coding and debugging (found myself dreaming about haze rendering lately, and that's usually a warning sign), so I may have time for some philosophy (feel free to skip, it's not about FGFS in particular). I was surprised that this shift in Paradigms has such a big handicap to be considered for future developments. And if you believe you are old-fashioned, how about a 70 year old guy that started in Computer Development in 1970, and whose big boss predicted: I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. (Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943!) You may have some more laughs on http://www.pcworld.com/article/155984/the_7_worst_tech_predictions_of_all_time.html). Joerg mentions a paradigm shift here, and he writes similar phrases elsewhere: -- make use of the modern art of on-line reading/studying! e.g.: Jumping between the books to any given place inside and outside the book! As we accept that any professional can participate in the design, we should also trust our users to generate and maintain their manuals by themselves! FGFS, FGFS-wiki, Wikipedia, Linux, etc. etc. -- they all proved that it works! -- Avoid the dependency on uniquely skilled persons: -- Use common tools. Most kids today learn how to generate a Homepage and use html - while LaTeX (and similar) needs some more unique skills/environments/procedures. These are what I'd call 'Web 2.0 phrases' (if I am polite...) and something else (if I'm in a bad mood). The assertions made here are fairly close to what is typically asserted in Web 2.0 contexts: * there is a modern way of studying which involves hyperlinking and cross-referencing of information snippets * it is possible to avoid depending on experts (uniquely skilled or knowledgeable persons) due to the existence of something called 'wisdom of the crowd' or 'swarm intelligence' * there are 'digital natives' which practice the modern way of studying, generate content using swamr intelligence and have their own set of tools replacing 'old tools' In my experience, all three assertions are largely nonsense. Information processing is an unpleasant task for the mind if a certain complexity is reached. One can structure a text well which helps a lot, and (especially in philosophy) there is a tendency to express simple ideas in complicated words, and this can and should be avoided, but there is no way topics like Quantum Field Theory, Zen Buddhism or the development of languages from primitive roots will ever be simple and pleasant to study. Really understanding something is hard work, and the mind feels exhausted and tired afterwards - that's the way it is, and there is a good reason for it. Understanding a text involves reading it, memorizing it, making mental connections between its parts, thinking over it, making mental connections to other texts, re-reading it, making more mental connections - this is a process called 'learning', and as most people who ever tried to learn a language can certify that this is really hard work. Now, unless tempered by an unusual amount of wisdom, the human mind wants to know, but not to study hard, it wants to hold a respected position, but not to work for it and earn that respect the hard way, it wants to control, but not be held responsible. There are numerous examples for that to be found everywhere. I happen to be one of a handful of experts in the world with regard to J.R.R. Tolkien's invented Elvish languages (in fact, I wrote the standard introductory book to Sindarin). I've come across hundreds of people who wanted to speak Elvish, but at best 5% of those actually were willing to go through the pains of learning it. Any reader in the FGFS forum will have no problems finding users which know exactly what needs to be done in the Flightgear world, but 'unfortunately' are unable to step up and learn how to do it. And so on. This is where the Web 2.0 philosophy comes in - it caters to the less pleasant tendencies of the mind and states that all that somehow okay or even commendable. Hyperlinked information snippets give you the illusion of understanding something - you can replace making a mental connection by a click on a link. In the short run, it feels just the same just without effort, the information appears when you need it. In the long run, you just notice that the mental link isn't there (because you never needed to make it) and you haven't really understood anything. There is a reason why scientists write about their research not in any 'modern' way - if you really need to transmit a lot of information, then a well-structured text without any hyperlinks works best. As for swarm intelligence, I'm still waiting for any evidence of that. Take Tolkien's Elvish (because I know that case very well) - especially when the Lord of the Rings movies were popular, there were hundreds of sites advertizing Elvish phrases, tengwar writings, name translations; there was a
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Web 2.0 paradigms
thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: That's my two cents to the new paradigm. Hear, hear ! Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
