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James Gosling On The Sun/Microsoft Settlement
greg_barton writes "James Gosling has responded to the two previous commentaries cited on Slashdot about the Java Dilemma. Some interesting excerpts: "In Rick Ross's 'Where Is Java In This Settlement?' he worries that Sun may have sold out the Java community. We didn't. We have not sold our soul to the Dark Side." and "There's a long thread of discussion on Slashdot 'Two Takes on the Java Dilemma' that is pretty entertaining, from a wow, what are they smoking! point of view. There are voices of reason, and conspiracy nuts.""
Offtopic perhaps...but how often does M$ actually see a lawsuit through it's course in the legal system? It seems that they can buy anything through settlements.
Any Doctor who applies the laws of thermodynamics as in the context of the article clearly has their doctorate in something other than physics. The analogy is more hyperbolic than amusing. I guess this is a hallmark of influence and seniority: concepts such as "energy" and "virus" are used in a cavalier fashion instead of with accuracy.
From:
What is Science?
Richard P. Feynman
the Physics Teacher, September, 1969, pp. 313-320
There is a first-grade science book which, in the first lesson of the first grade, begins in an unfortunate. manner to teach science, because it starts off on the wrong idea of what science is. There is a picture of a dog, a windable toy dog, and a hand comes to the winder, and then the dog is able to move. Under the last picture, it says "What makes it move?" Later on, there is a picture of a real dog and the question "What makes it move?" Then there is a picture of a motor bike and the question "What makes it move?" and so on.
I thought at first they were getting ready to tell what science was going to be about: physics, biology, chemistry. But that wasn't it. The answer was in the teachers edition of the book; the answer I was trying, to learn is that "energy makes it move." Now energy is a very subtle concept. It is very, very difficult to get right. What I mean by that it is not easy to understand energy well enough to use it right, so that you can deduce something correctly, using the energy idea. It is beyond the first grade. It would be equally well to say that "God makes it move," or "spirit makes it move," or "movability makes it move." (In fact one could equally well say "energy makes it stop.")
Look at it this way: That's only the definition of energy. It should be reversed. We might say when something can move that it has energy in it, but not "what makes it move is energy." This is a very subtle difference. It's the same with this inertia proposition. Perhaps I can make the difference a little clearer this way: if you ask a child what makes the toy dog move, you should think about what an ordinary human being would answer. The answer is that you wound up the spring; it tries to unwind and pushes the gear around. What a good way to begin a science course. Take apart the toy; see how it works. See the cleverness of the gears; see the ratchets. Learn something about the toy the way the toy is put together, the ingenuity of people devising the ratchets and other things. That's good. The question is fine. The answer is a little unfortunate, because what they were trying to do is teach a definition of what is energy. But nothing whatever is learned.
Suppose a student would say, 'I don't think energy makes it move." Where does the discussion go from there?
I finally figured out a way to test whether you have taught an idea or you have only taught a definition. Test it this way: You say, "Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language." Without using the word "energy," tell me what you know now about the dog's motion." You cannot. So you learned nothing except the definition. You learned nothing about science. That may be all right. You may not want to learn something about science right away. You have to learn definitions. But for the very first lesson is that not possibly destructive?
I think, for lesson number one, to learn a mystic formula for answering questions is very bad. The book has some others-"gravity makes it fall;" "the soles of your shoes wear out because of friction." Shoe leather wears out because it rubs against the sidewalk and the little notches and bumps on the sidewalk grab pieces and pull them off. To simply say it is because of friction, is sad, because it's not science.
How appropriate!
I just replaced 5 netra t1s with 3 AMD 2200+s/linux today!