On Necessity
Oct. 25th, 2003 03:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plural[this was mostly written during my downtime]
[I even used real pen and paper]
"Necessity is the mother of all invention"
sounds simple
but to me is an understatement
necessity is the driving force of all action
all behaviour
it is the defining motivation of all life
in the animal kingdom
all actions, all behaviours
are dictated by necessity
and we humans
even at our loftiest
remain animals
however only in humanity
does necessity breed an additional layer of complexity
in our thoughts
in our reflections on our lives
we acknowledge the influence of necessity
even if we do not realize the extent which it dictates to us
this is evident in a uniquely human trait
the need to be needed
In our lives
we have friends
pets
lovers
and ultimately children
to fulfill this need
this requirement
it is our ode to necessity
the animal does not worry about its social standing
even pack animals like wolves
which have complex social structures
status is not something which a wolf contemplates
either a wolf is an alpha wolf
or it is not
if it can dominate another wolf
and rise in stature
it will
but it doesn't waste time pondering it
it merely responds to the situation and the opportunity
the animal does not wonder why it exists
what its purpose is
it simply fulfills it or dies
for a human
especially in modern times
when we are no longer forced to spend
the majority of our energies and time
working to provide the most basic necessities
of food and shelter.
To be needed give us
cause for our existence
a reason for our struggle
a reason to stick it out another day
Even so this is a relatively new development
we saw the first signs of this
only among the rich
how many famous works of philosophy
came from the peasants of greece or rome?
those who had to work for a living focused their energies on just that
and had little time or patience for existential thought
it took the rise of a middle class to raise it into the broad scope
of human existence
and finally
the industrial revolution to give it to the poor
to allow us to turn our collective minds
from feeding and clothing ourselves
to pondering our thoughts and values
Today our most important necessity is not food or shelter
but necessity itself
So strong is our need to be needed
that should you give a man the
food and shelter
comfort and wealth
he required
but without community
without the necessity of others
he is miserable
[I even used real pen and paper]
"Necessity is the mother of all invention"
sounds simple
but to me is an understatement
necessity is the driving force of all action
all behaviour
it is the defining motivation of all life
in the animal kingdom
all actions, all behaviours
are dictated by necessity
and we humans
even at our loftiest
remain animals
however only in humanity
does necessity breed an additional layer of complexity
in our thoughts
in our reflections on our lives
we acknowledge the influence of necessity
even if we do not realize the extent which it dictates to us
this is evident in a uniquely human trait
the need to be needed
In our lives
we have friends
pets
lovers
and ultimately children
to fulfill this need
this requirement
it is our ode to necessity
the animal does not worry about its social standing
even pack animals like wolves
which have complex social structures
status is not something which a wolf contemplates
either a wolf is an alpha wolf
or it is not
if it can dominate another wolf
and rise in stature
it will
but it doesn't waste time pondering it
it merely responds to the situation and the opportunity
the animal does not wonder why it exists
what its purpose is
it simply fulfills it or dies
for a human
especially in modern times
when we are no longer forced to spend
the majority of our energies and time
working to provide the most basic necessities
of food and shelter.
To be needed give us
cause for our existence
a reason for our struggle
a reason to stick it out another day
Even so this is a relatively new development
we saw the first signs of this
only among the rich
how many famous works of philosophy
came from the peasants of greece or rome?
those who had to work for a living focused their energies on just that
and had little time or patience for existential thought
it took the rise of a middle class to raise it into the broad scope
of human existence
and finally
the industrial revolution to give it to the poor
to allow us to turn our collective minds
from feeding and clothing ourselves
to pondering our thoughts and values
Today our most important necessity is not food or shelter
but necessity itself
So strong is our need to be needed
that should you give a man the
food and shelter
comfort and wealth
he required
but without community
without the necessity of others
he is miserable
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-10-25 08:31 am (UTC)sweet got it working
btw
I am not sure if this is because my user account also has network rights in addition to access to the share but I can see almost all of your files
the only directory I couldnt access was "root"
though I didnt really look to see if I was going anywhere beyond the local machine, just saw that I had access to view quite a few of your local files, and generally that is a bad thing
[it took me a lil while to find the folder with the files in it cause it automatically routes me to a default home file without any contents]
no subject
Date: 2003-10-25 08:52 am (UTC)oops.
I just pointed the share to the 'second' drives on the machines pappy, and boyle.
All of the 'other' files are recovery files...
no subject
Date: 2003-10-25 03:06 pm (UTC)I'm a little shocked.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-25 03:10 pm (UTC)heh
willdo
and another thing...
Date: 2003-10-27 03:54 pm (UTC)you can post stuff via the /home/plural/public_html directory. It's address will be (obviously) http://IPaddress/~/plural/.
Disk quotas do not exist and filespace will be limited to the HD: 20GB.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-27 05:40 pm (UTC)I'm looking at my network throughput statistics... What's your throuput?
no subject
Date: 2003-10-28 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-28 01:15 am (UTC)ntop suggests that the totall throughput for that box is running 340-380kbs...
Now that would include those who are using the http server, as well as the nsf into the box, but when I break it out by connected hosts, you stick out as being in the 280-300kbs range.
I can't imagine that anyone's cracked the box because ntop runs as route and tabulates the packets going into and out of the box.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-28 11:47 am (UTC)could be
I am just going by that stats WinSCP is giving me
no idea how accurate those are
no subject
Date: 2003-10-28 01:18 pm (UTC)Is that kilobyte, or kilobit? How do you know? would it account for the discrepency?
no subject
Date: 2003-10-28 11:12 pm (UTC)kilobit is 1000 bits
so it would account for a discrepancy of up to 24%
no subject
Date: 2003-10-28 11:13 pm (UTC)can we say horrid math there
it would account for a 2.4% discrepancy
no subject
Date: 2003-10-29 12:32 am (UTC)It's good that you caught that. because in the three years I've known you, I can't recall ever knowing you to be wrong as a matter of fact (in matters of opinion, I've disagreed, perhaps), and according to google:
1 kilobyte = 8 kilobits
two mistakes in one post... I would have been inclined to have you killed as an imposter.
I was always miserably at octal arithmetic... I could believe this is accounting for the differences.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-29 01:25 am (UTC)this why we shouldnt comment on sleep dep
8 bits is a byte
1024 bytes is a kb
1024 kb is a mb
I was thinking about how they calculate hard drive formatting as 1000 mb = 1 gb instead of the correct 1024 mb = 1 gb
though I suppose
one error in three years is not a bad track record all things considered
*Grin*
no subject
Date: 2003-10-28 11:14 pm (UTC)I have been downloading about 2gb a day roughly so your numbers sound about right
no subject
Date: 2003-10-29 01:22 am (UTC)apparently, kb/s is kilobits, and kB/s is kiloBytes.
typing the following into google:
290kb/s=
yields 290 (kilobits / second) = 36.25 kBps from their calculator.
I'm convinced we're getting the same numbers.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-29 01:26 am (UTC)