On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 08:17:54PM +0000, Miller, Mike (OS Dev) wrote: > Thank you, Carlo. Thanks Mike ;). This is a reply also to the others who replied to this thread (I read all of them that were sent after this one, too); there is definitely no need to thank me unless you actually used my software and/or HOWTO and found it helpful, heheh. Also, reading all those replies I feel that I have to straighten something out: I am NOT mad or even demotivated because I get so little "thank you" mails. And I'm certainly not in this business to get pats on my shoulder. I believe that my philosophy matches the comment of Tomas. Let me elaborate: 1) I'm no different than most humans in that I would like, that when I die I can look back at my life and say: I made a difference. Most people (the masses) think that getting a child is the answer to that, they hope that their son or daughter won't make the same mistakes; even do something great-- so that their own life won't have been meaningless. Note that I do not have offspring and never will have. I'll have to get my self-esteem from my work. 2) I believe in the theory that the universe, and the existance of life might be a chance of 1 in <a very large number>, but we're here to think about that anyway because we are thinking about it. It DOES make it rather important to me to get the most out of this evolution though, and it seems unacceptable to me that humanity will become extinct before we explored every corner of the universe. The current situation is a VERY critical stage: the energy we have, the minerals and raw material we need to run our current civilisation of technology is a once-in-an-evolution chance. If we can't break free from this planet THIS time, before the next World War, or before we run out of minerals/materials and energy (no doubt leading to a world war anyway), it will be too late. In fact, I think we're not going to make it, UNLESS we can bootstrap artificial intelligence, soon. 3) I believe that next step in evolution (if at all, thus) is what is called the 'Singularity' (you already know what that is: A.I's making A.I's, giving rise to an exponential growth of technological advancement). Whether or not humanity survives that doesn't even really interest me. As long as something we created will expore the universe, then it wasn't all for nothing (and who knows, in the end a civiliation of A.I. that grows exponentially smarter towards the end of time might become what now we call God; ascent to a high level of existance and recreate the Big Bang in such a way that we exist(ed) at all (in which case I wouldn't have to worry that this will happen, but ok). 4) Contrary to most believers in the Singularity, I don't believe it will happen during my time. However, I DO embrace the idea of exponential growth: The *ONLY* work that is really significant is work that *amplifies* the development. If I can put in a factor of 1.000001, then that might JUST be enough to get us there, because 1.000001 to the power N will be JUST large enough to prevent the extinction of mankind before we can leave this planet. Thus: _productivity_ increasing software has my interest (as opposed to, say 3D game engines). Software that leads to FASTER development of the next generation of development software. Well, ... to make a long story short, as you see, I'm not driven by "thank you" mails, but by, well, "something else" ;) Regards, -- Carlo Wood <carlo@xxxxxxxxxx> _______________________________________________ Ext3-users mailing list Ext3-users@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ext3-users
