I personally think it was a good thing for Franz that he stopped
posting.  He was posting things that were not in Franz's best interest
and he was/is a senior/executive person at Franz.  And he was doing
most of them without a disclaimer of any sort on them to even try to
protect Franz, he was using his work account to post.

  This misses the point of the qualification completely.  Nobody is
  interested in what you did to achieve your degree -- whatever it was
  will have become irrelevant by the time the degree is useful, if it
  ever was relevant.  In most cases the only important properties of a
  degree are to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the person holding
  it is able and willing to make personal and financial sacrifices in
  order to obtain a higher goal and be a small part of something much
  greater than himself, to follow bizarre rituals and orders to do
  amazingly meaningless tasks for several years because he is told it
  will lead to the higher goal, to submit his entire image of self-
  worth to the judgment of an authority who not only gets paid for
  crushing it, but will keep the money regardless of the outcome, for
  which he accepts all blame, and, finally, to realize and come to
  terms with the realization that he is not the smartest person on the
  planet regardless of how smart he is.  If you /pay/ for following
  orders and for being judged harshly and placed among increasingly
  smart people until you are no longer smart enough to keep moving
  upwards, imagine what the person hiring you will be /relieved/ of!

  The flip side of a degree thus granted is of course that anyone who
  has one associates learning with pain, and not just ordinary pain,
  but prolonged, excruciating pain and humiliation and sacrifice, and
  considers the prospect of learning anything new about as inspiring
  as the full set of root canals in a row without anesthesia.  Most
  degree-holders are thus one-degree ponies.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Thats what I get for not proof reading.

marc

Oleg's exact words were:

Now, is that clearer?

I even asked Oleg to produce his evidence that I did not graduate from
high school or college as he implied.  I have not seen a damn thing
from him.

Is that clear?

And now I am being called a troll by a putz.

Is that clear?

Now it is entirely possible that individuals do not fit the profile,
but the insult is based on the profile not the exceptions.

Is this clear?

That is not how natural language works. It is not how it is produced, it
is not how it is understood. It /is/ how a logic engine would understand
NL if it were capapble of parsing the rest of the information, but there
ya go, logic engines do not understand as people do (and any AI
researcher can explain that that is why logic engines cannot parse NL).

It's no good falling back on mathematical interpretation of a speech act
("he said 'if'!") when valid human interpretations prove uncomfortable.
Oleg damned all attackers as non-HS trolls with his words.

But plz count me among those who place little value in formal education.

:)

--

        Kenny Tilton:

        But plz count me among those who place little value in formal
        education.

One nice thing about formal education is that it sustains
universities.  Universities are great environments in which to gather,
exchange ideas, and learn, especially outside of the formal tracks of
getting creds.  They often have awesome libraries with open stacks.
Late at night, lisp hackers can be found.  Strange music can be heard,
both at performances and below rehearsal-room windows.  Good
bookstores and coffeeshops find their niche.  Sex flourishes.  Bands
form.  PDP-11s get preserved and recycled.  Classroom art studios
smell good.  Galleries happen.  Politics is discussed.  Liquid
nitrogen can be "procured".  Cycles can be bumbed.  Frisbee can be
played.  Repertory cinemas make money.  Immigrant communities open
great, affordable restaurants.  Oral history flourishes.  Flyers are
everywhere.  Children are honored members of the community.
Economically oppressed communities are reached out to -- and a few
people, at least, respond.  Everyone knows a little bit about
everything.  Unions do good work.  Not only is your informal erdos
number as low as you like (given your displacement in time), but your
informal Anyone number (for all Anyone's in intellectual history) is
as low as you like.  The history of your region is available in
extraordinary detail.  Power struggles are optional.  Some of the
graffiti is profound and lasts for decades.  There's always _someone_
who can use your latest Emacs hack.  Most of the people around you
are, in their own way, improving.  Sometimes there are parties.
Drugs, sobriety, and law achieve some approximation of a healthy
balance.  Anyone can sit in on just about any "invited talk".  Some
totally brilliant people have offices and if you visit them, they just
might give you copies of some good papers to read.  Pride!  My god, so
much justified pride in doing a good job.  Almost everybody is "poor"
(but getting by).  The dissidents have tenure and a mature calmness.
Anyone without severe learning disabilities can get a degree, given
enough time and freedom from economic oppression.  Over time,
transient members of the community give long-standing members an
incredible snapshot of human development.  Elevator's can be hacked
("Close the fucking door").  Cheese coops can be formed.  Samizdat can
find its audience.  Every city should have at least one great
university and the common criticism of esoteric disciplines that the
departments mostly (formally) serve to create their own next-gen
faculty is no criticism at all.  Of course, all the universities have
gone to hell since the mid-80s.

Cred fetishes: no.  Formal institutes of education: yes.

--tim

There is no reason to believe that Erik will forget his ideas about
what it means to hold a degree at some point in the future when he
requires surgery, and that, for instance, he will place more trust in
a degree than he does now.

The institution where the operation will be performed already performs
screening for degrees, so it would be superfluous and irrational to
demand to be treated by someone who has one. Whoever will perform the
surgery will represent himself or herself as having a degree, having
already represented himself or herself that way to the institution.

  I would ask for an expert with a valid license to practice surgery,
  not someone who merely has a degree.

  I feel a profound pity for you and everyone else who attach their
  personal identity, self-worth, and pride to their academic degree.
  It means, more than anything else, that acquiring the degree was
  not a rite of passage into a group, but a rite of passage out of a
  group, and this means that your future contributions will not be
  made relative to your new group, but relative to your old.  This
  explains your ridiculously insecure attitude towards high school
  dropouts.  The secret to feeling great about yourself is not to be
  found in searching for people who are less than you and then show
  yourself superior to them, but in searching for people who are more
  than you and then show yourself worthy of their company.  What I,
  for one, vehemently detest, is people who make it their purpose to
  show that nobody is better than they are.  Some of them are here.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

The whole issue is so commonsense that I feel ridiculous writing about it.

BTW, in USA and probably other countries, you have the option of being
treated by medical and dental students supervised by licensed doctors. It's
very cheap and you usually get what you pay for (I had a dental student as
a roommate a while back)

Thanks for a great elaboration! Now even Mr. Spitzer should be able to
understand [1]. I found it ironic that he made nearly half a dozen mistakes
in the very first sentence of his angry outburst, including one that
completely alters the meaning of the message. ;-)

Cheers,
Oleg

--------------------------------------------------------
Come see,
real flowers
of this pain-filled world.

Statistically, this is more likely.

--------------------------------------------------------
Come see,
real flowers
of this pain-filled world.

WARNING! Completely off-topic.

A post for those who have the wrong idea of what it is to be nice.  This
drama is not only played out in c.l.l.

Excerpt from http://www.humankindness.org/winter98.html

Many people go to church on Sunday and then pass by a beggar on their
way home without stopping to help in any way. They choose a church
which will comfort them in a self-centered lifestyle rather than
challenge them to be true Christians. Being a true Christian is a
terrifying prospect. Being a true Buddhist, Jew or anything else is a
terrifying prospect. All the religions stress that we must die as
self-centered little idiots in order to discover new life as selfless,
loving, generous, fearless souls.

Die to my own plans and dreams? Die to my countless preferences and
aversions? Die to my pride and greed? Yes, yes, and yes. Die.

Father Murray Rogers, the beloved elder on our board of directors, had
a powerful experience along these lines many years ago. Father Murray
is a Christian who has been involved in the interfaith dialogue for
over fifty years. As part of his interfaith experience, he went to
Japan to spend time in a Zen Buddhist temple for a few months. The
Temple was a serenely beautiful place, extremely neat and orderly,
extremely quiet, like most Zen temples.

Richard, thanks most awfully for another document for my file
"Heathfield, Richard, pro se lawsuit, regarding, actionable libel,
under English and American, law."

You were urged to do so because we were collectively tired of your
repetitious and abusive responses to my concerns about the Data
Quality Act, which is of high technical and social revelance to
comp.programming.  In a subordinate fashion, the rest of the group was
also wearied by my detailed responses to all your points.

Your responses constituted a libelous attempt to damage my
professional, and therefore financial, standing, by making claims so
overbroad (as in the above, where you cast doubt on anything I say) as
to be provably false.

I have decided not to let you get away with this conduct this time.
Therefore, I sent the post that appears in comp.programming about the
Total Information Awareness program to Peter Neumann, the moderator of
comp.risks.

He said it was overlong, and so broad in some political claims as to
lie outside the charter of comp.risks.  He asked me to write a smaller
article focusing on the technical objections and their immediate
political implications.  I did so and he released the article, which
is being considered for publication in a journal on these issues.

In consequence, Richard, I decided to not present you with another
opportunity to engage in libel and disruption, and won't be responding
to any comments on the comp.programming post.

You are instead encouraged to send any criticisms as to the revelance
or correctness of my views as expressed to Peter or to me by email.
Contrary to what gswork implied, these posts, if acceptable and only
if, will appear as line comments in the same style as an unmoderated
group.

What is of general interest is the supposed liberal "bias" of
comp.risks that several neoconservative people have remarked upon.

What is said to be a liberal bias is merely the enforcement by a
virtuous human being, of common decency and fairness, which was absent
in your conduct last year.

Edward G. Nilges
304 Lakeside Drive
Valparaiso, IN  46383
spinoza1...@yahoo.com
http://members.screenz.com/edNilges

[On the subject of Lisp.  I have not used Lisp recently.  But ANY
language that memorializes the register structure of a vintage machine
certainly is suspect as a useful tool.]

[Professor McCarthy deserves credit for inventing the linked list.
However, it is far less important than the concept of the stack, which
was independently invented by Dijsktra and by Turing.  Furthermore, OO
languages destroy most of the need for linked lists.]

[I do so need to be on topic, you chaps.]

  But suppose you live in the real world, how would you argue then?

  If you have a degree, the experience did not teach you the three
  things that I believe any employer value most highly in graduates
  -- discipline, humility, and delayed gratification -- all of these
  make them suitable as part of something greater than themselves.
  If you hire people, you want them to do what you tell them and to
  help you reach /your/ goals, not theirs.  They will not work for
  you unless they can reach some of their goals, too, of course, so
  the balancing act that this entails needs some tuning.  Someone who
  has gone through a serious amount of effort in order to complete an
  education on somebody else's terms, has demonstrated that he is not
  only able to subjugate his personal desires to the demands from his
  superiors, he has been able to obtain good results while doing it.

  If you took time out of your life to read what I wrote before you
  succumbed to the urge to respond, you would see that I ended the
  paragraph you did not understand with the following words, which
  you deleted, probably thinking you had already understood the point
  and did not need the punch line:

    If you /pay/ for following orders and for being judged harshly and
    placed among increasingly smart people until you are no longer
    smart enough to keep moving upwards, imagine what the person
    hiring you will be /relieved/ of!

  Do you grasp what this means, "Oleg"?  Do you think that perhaps
  the point was to demonstrate the /values/ of a degree to those
  hiring degree-holders?  Perhaps you have now demonstrated that your
  degree, if any, is completely worthless to any employer because you
  failed to get the /real/ message?  You do not have a degree, if you
  have one, because of what you know.  That is immaterial.  You got
  your degree, if any, because you could follow a scheme much larger
  than yourself and still fit in.  /This/ is valuable to an employer;
  you will get on-the-job training for your real work, anyway.  There
  are other ways to acquire these basic skills and character traits,
  but nothing really beats having an institution with a solid track
  record for weeding out the mistakes approve it.

  It appears that you think what I wrote was a slight towards those
  who hold degrees.  Now, why the fuck would I do that?  Perhaps you
  are just a wee bit too sensitive on this topic and have shown the
  whole world that you get your exercise from jumping to conclusions?

| The whole issue is so commonsense that I feel ridiculous writing
| about it.

  Good, I feel ridiculous reading your stupid retorts to arguments I
  have never made, but are you sure you know why you feel ridiculous?
  The argument you make is so trivial as to be laughable, but it is
  quite suspicious that you have to invent an imaginary land devoid
  of relevance to the real world in order to make such a commonplace
  observation.  Clearly, it is not easy for you to demonstrate its
  validity in the real world, or you would have done that, right?

  That you manage to believe that somebody disagrees with your point
  speaks volumes about you, but says absolutely nothing about either
  the argument that nobody has made or the people you try to make it
  appear as though have made an argument you fight so hard to counter
  for your very own personal reasons.

  When you feel ridiculous countering some obviously wrong claim,
  perhaps it is time for you to dismount your high horse and try to
  read what people /actually/ write instead of being laughed off it
  because you failed to get the point.  You do not want to be a high-
  horse dropout, do you?

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

:)

--

--------------------------------------------------------
Come see,
real flowers
of this pain-filled world.

[snipped]

You are obviously just trolling, as usual. You wrote: