"Youtube is more a number 2 in terms of content being dumped out by the commenters"
I don't doubt that it's #2, or maybe 3. But question the numbers of "active users".
What's an "active user"? Somebody who comments? Somebody who uses their Google ID to log in to other sites?
I have little doubt that I am classed as an "active user", even though I don't think I've used my Google account for anything BUT to log in to other sites.
It's simple: get a proxy (A) in a different country, or (B) that doesn't keep records of your traffic, or (C) both, and good luck with that subpoena!
I should also note that even Tor exit nodes are not necessarily public. Private traffic goes through them. Monitoring them merely because somebody might be downloading is almost certainly illegal. And issuing a subpoena for a Tor exit node is also pretty useless; if you are hosting a Tor exit node, do you keep records? Almost certainly not. And nobody can make you.
So the only recourse there would be to get a warrant to monitor, because some particular person is using that exit node to download. But wait! Exit nodes are effectively random. So good luck with that, too.
Sooner or later the RIAA and MPAA will lose. There is no question about it. What amazes me is that they have put up such a strong fight, this long.
"As historians we should endeavour to look past our own biases and provide an accurate image of history, not play favourites with specific products."
Except that the question was not about historical ancestry. OP's question was about what was influential, which is (often) a different thing, and at least indirecly implies popularity. For example: much of PARC's work was definitely influential. Hover Tank 3-D was not, particularly.
"That being said, though, these were all circa 1991. Zork and Colossal Cave Adventure are from 1979 and 1976 respectively."
Yes, but my point was that Zork and Collossal Cave were not graphical. And while it may have had progenitors, Wolfenstein was the one that went on to become a popular hit and re-define the gaming genre.
"Ultimately, you are right - it is a losing position to argue that a word means something other than what common usage has chosen for it to mean."
I am not sure I agree. At least in some circumstances. It depends on the context.
For example: dictionaries generally describe common usage. But the common usage of words like "paranoia" and "schizophrenia", for a couple of examples, only slightly resemble the technical meanings of the terms. So a dictionary might be of no help deciding who is correct, if one person is using the technical meaning and another person is using the common meaning. In such disputes, an encyclopedia or textbook may be the more appropriate authority.
Other areas where this happens frequently are hard science and law. Even a simple word like "contract" has a technical (legal) meaning that differs from what many people mean when they say "contract".
This has been a persistent problem with, for another example, the perception of what is meant by the wording of the U.S. Constitution. The founders themselves wrote that it should be interpreted according to the original intent of the writers, not according to common usage which changes over time.
---
"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." -- James Wilson
"Not really. The overall temperature difference is the same."
Yes, really. If the heat island effect is actually significant -- not to mention as strong as this article makes it out to be -- then it invalidates some pretty major assumptions in some models.
Not only would it affect the heat distribution, TFA suggests that ciities are the source of some of the measured heat increase, as opposed to, for example, CO2.
If the models are invalid, they are invalid. It isn't enough to be okay with making decent short-term projections based on false assumptions. They the farther out the projection, odds are the farther they would be off.
... But this directly contradicts those greenhouse-gas warming models that assume that the "heat island" effect is of little or no significance. To the best of my knowledge, that is the majority of them.
Not sure if this really qualifies as "early" (although some people in the office were still using DOS-based 123), but I would nominate Wolfenstein 3D. First of its genre. I still have a demo version on 3.5" diskette, but I have nothing to put the disk in. Come to think of it, my main operating system isn't MS anymore, so it probably doesn't matter.
"CS is not about software development, it is a branch of mathematics."
That depends entirely on what college or university you are attending. The definition is still pretty much dependent on the school. Although it has been getting somewhat more consistent.
However: at least in the U.S., computer engineering is definitely NOT a software discipline. It is engineering of the computers themselves, that is to say, hardware (though firmware is involved, naturally).
But even so, if you take another look at the article in OP's last link, it was updated yesterday. Their "reason to be skeptical" was a case of jumping the gun; it no longer exists.
"So do you carry the tablet absolutely everywhere you go?"
Do you carry a briefcase absolutely everywhere you go? Or maybe a purse? To be honest, usually I carry a small backpack. Tablet in backpack + bluetooth headset sounds good to me.
"Carrying around a lot of cash sucks. If a retailer wants to penalize me for that, then I'll go somewhere else."
Technically, you aren't being penalized. They are just passing the charges that the credit card companies charge the store for each transaction on to you. Of course, they did that anyway via higher prices, so likely you will end up paying the slightly higher prices you already pay AND the card charge.
But all this really begs the big question: who the hell wants a "cashless" economy anyway? The moment you give up the ability to use cash, you have cemented your loss of freedom. Believe it. Carrying that cash might be a pain in the ass, but it's one of the prices you pay for having a free society.
I caution strongly against any concept of "cashless" utopia. It would be the opposite. It's a pretty nasty place, and finding our way back could be difficult.
"You have stores like Walmart that sell cheaper versions of similar products for less; but typically not the same products."
Actually, most of the "cheaper" brands such as sold in Wal-Mart, and under house names like Western Family and Kroger, are in fact the same products. They've just been "rebranded" with a different label.
There are exceptions, but that is the most common practice. Those "generic" products aren't entirely new companies competing with the established brands; they ARE the established brands.
Give me a tablet with a keyboard bluetooth headset, and I'm good.
Granted, there are times when you don't have your headset on and will end up talking to the tablet, but that's not such a big deal.
I don't see the motivation for having a wristwatch, or smaller phone, to communicate with my phone. It would seem to defeat the purpose of having a mobile phone in the first place. Hell, you can get an actual phone in a wristwatch today, if that's the way you want to go. But I still want my tablet.
"I see people making this type of confusion every day in my job when I review security policies and architectures."
I can play the Wikipedia game too.
As Wikipedia says: "Ciphertext indistinguishability is a property of many encryption schemes." It does NOT say it is a requirement in order to qualify as "encryption". It's merely a feature common to MANY styles of encryption. For a given purpose, there exist good forms of encryption and bad forms of encryption. But they are all still encryption.
One-way hash function are a form of encryption, and a properly-hashed plaintext is commonly (and rightfully) said to be "encrypted".
I can produce a hundred dictionaries and technical texts that agree with this. For just one example of many, see Schneier's "Applied Cryptography".
Perhaps you require indistinguishability for YOUR purposes. But some other uses have no such requirement. That does not make them "not encryption". You are trying to narrow the whole field of encryption to a rather small subset of your own choosing.
"Nope. Wrong. Hashing is not AT ALL like encryption."
Sorry, but you are wrong. Hashing IS a form of encryption.
You, too, try to make an artificial distinction between what YOU call "good encryption" and other forms, which -- despite your protests to the contrary -- are still encryption.
Encryption is merely an algorithmic means to hide information. That is all. Some methods are better than others; and some are more suitable for particular tasks than others.
Further, encryption does not have to work both ways. Getting your information back is decryption.
"I will not buy netgear because of requiring a internet connection to configure it. I should be able to configure it before I hook it up to any network."
I am pretty sure it was Cisco that did that to their LinkSys products, not Netgear.
I could be wrong. Maybe Netgear did it too. But I've had Netgear routers before and never had to connect to the internet to configure them.
Slashdot Mirror
"Youtube is more a number 2 in terms of content being dumped out by the commenters"
I don't doubt that it's #2, or maybe 3. But question the numbers of "active users".
What's an "active user"? Somebody who comments? Somebody who uses their Google ID to log in to other sites?
I have little doubt that I am classed as an "active user", even though I don't think I've used my Google account for anything BUT to log in to other sites.
It's simple: get a proxy (A) in a different country, or (B) that doesn't keep records of your traffic, or (C) both, and good luck with that subpoena!
I should also note that even Tor exit nodes are not necessarily public. Private traffic goes through them. Monitoring them merely because somebody might be downloading is almost certainly illegal. And issuing a subpoena for a Tor exit node is also pretty useless; if you are hosting a Tor exit node, do you keep records? Almost certainly not. And nobody can make you.
So the only recourse there would be to get a warrant to monitor, because some particular person is using that exit node to download. But wait! Exit nodes are effectively random. So good luck with that, too.
Sooner or later the RIAA and MPAA will lose. There is no question about it. What amazes me is that they have put up such a strong fight, this long.
"As historians we should endeavour to look past our own biases and provide an accurate image of history, not play favourites with specific products."
Except that the question was not about historical ancestry. OP's question was about what was influential, which is (often) a different thing, and at least indirecly implies popularity. For example: much of PARC's work was definitely influential. Hover Tank 3-D was not, particularly.
"That being said, though, these were all circa 1991. Zork and Colossal Cave Adventure are from 1979 and 1976 respectively."
Yes, but my point was that Zork and Collossal Cave were not graphical. And while it may have had progenitors, Wolfenstein was the one that went on to become a popular hit and re-define the gaming genre.
"Ultimately, you are right - it is a losing position to argue that a word means something other than what common usage has chosen for it to mean."
I am not sure I agree. At least in some circumstances. It depends on the context.
For example: dictionaries generally describe common usage. But the common usage of words like "paranoia" and "schizophrenia", for a couple of examples, only slightly resemble the technical meanings of the terms. So a dictionary might be of no help deciding who is correct, if one person is using the technical meaning and another person is using the common meaning. In such disputes, an encyclopedia or textbook may be the more appropriate authority.
Other areas where this happens frequently are hard science and law. Even a simple word like "contract" has a technical (legal) meaning that differs from what many people mean when they say "contract".
This has been a persistent problem with, for another example, the perception of what is meant by the wording of the U.S. Constitution. The founders themselves wrote that it should be interpreted according to the original intent of the writers, not according to common usage which changes over time.
---
"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." -- James Wilson
I should have written "cause" rather than "source". I don't think anybody is seriously suggesting that CO2 actively generates heat on its own.
"Not really. The overall temperature difference is the same."
Yes, really. If the heat island effect is actually significant -- not to mention as strong as this article makes it out to be -- then it invalidates some pretty major assumptions in some models.
Not only would it affect the heat distribution, TFA suggests that ciities are the source of some of the measured heat increase, as opposed to, for example, CO2.
If the models are invalid, they are invalid. It isn't enough to be okay with making decent short-term projections based on false assumptions. They the farther out the projection, odds are the farther they would be off.
"Citation please. How do you know that the vast majority of CO2 production is not man-made?"
Nice try. But I don't need a citation for "to the best of my knowledge".
... But this directly contradicts those greenhouse-gas warming models that assume that the "heat island" effect is of little or no significance. To the best of my knowledge, that is the majority of them.
Not sure if this really qualifies as "early" (although some people in the office were still using DOS-based 123), but I would nominate Wolfenstein 3D. First of its genre. I still have a demo version on 3.5" diskette, but I have nothing to put the disk in. Come to think of it, my main operating system isn't MS anymore, so it probably doesn't matter.
"CS is not about software development, it is a branch of mathematics."
That depends entirely on what college or university you are attending. The definition is still pretty much dependent on the school. Although it has been getting somewhat more consistent.
However: at least in the U.S., computer engineering is definitely NOT a software discipline. It is engineering of the computers themselves, that is to say, hardware (though firmware is involved, naturally).
"DENIERS, BUUUUUUUURN THEM!"
I know this was tongue-in-cheek.
But even so, if you take another look at the article in OP's last link, it was updated yesterday. Their "reason to be skeptical" was a case of jumping the gun; it no longer exists.
I propose "Jane's Law":
In any discussion of societal values, sooner or later someone will invoke Arken's Law or Godwin's Law, or both.
Kind of puts things in a slightly different light, I think. People who call "stereotype!" can be stereotypes.
(And yes, I realize that is recursive.)
On second thought, you don't need to try harder. You made "Rude and Insulting Person of the Week" the first time around.
"It doesn't "beg the question". It "raises the question". Try harder to sound smart."
According to my dictionary, it DOES beg the question. Quote: "To assume the truth of the very point raised..."
To baldly state that "carrying cash around sucks" both raises the question and assumes its truth.
Try harder to sound like an asshole.
"So do you carry the tablet absolutely everywhere you go?"
Do you carry a briefcase absolutely everywhere you go? Or maybe a purse? To be honest, usually I carry a small backpack. Tablet in backpack + bluetooth headset sounds good to me.
"You're trying to tell me that your tab w/a headset is as convenient as whipping out my handset? You're dreamin' pal."
And you're trying to tell me that your handset can conveniently do spreadsheets and word processing? You're dreaming, pal.
I didn't say it was "as convenient"... that depends on your needs. What I stated was that *I* was good with that particular compromise.
"How revolutionary."
Haha. I also like the subtle little plug: "... browsers, like Chrome."
Chrome. Not Safari, or Firefox, or Opera, or Konquerer.
"Carrying around a lot of cash sucks. If a retailer wants to penalize me for that, then I'll go somewhere else."
Technically, you aren't being penalized. They are just passing the charges that the credit card companies charge the store for each transaction on to you. Of course, they did that anyway via higher prices, so likely you will end up paying the slightly higher prices you already pay AND the card charge.
But all this really begs the big question: who the hell wants a "cashless" economy anyway? The moment you give up the ability to use cash, you have cemented your loss of freedom. Believe it. Carrying that cash might be a pain in the ass, but it's one of the prices you pay for having a free society.
I caution strongly against any concept of "cashless" utopia. It would be the opposite. It's a pretty nasty place, and finding our way back could be difficult.
"You have stores like Walmart that sell cheaper versions of similar products for less; but typically not the same products."
Actually, most of the "cheaper" brands such as sold in Wal-Mart, and under house names like Western Family and Kroger, are in fact the same products. They've just been "rebranded" with a different label.
There are exceptions, but that is the most common practice. Those "generic" products aren't entirely new companies competing with the established brands; they ARE the established brands.
That should have read "keyboard AND bluetooth headset".
There are times when it would not be practical to use the keyboard, either. But it's still useable. That's what I like about tablets.
Give me a tablet with a keyboard bluetooth headset, and I'm good.
Granted, there are times when you don't have your headset on and will end up talking to the tablet, but that's not such a big deal.
I don't see the motivation for having a wristwatch, or smaller phone, to communicate with my phone. It would seem to defeat the purpose of having a mobile phone in the first place. Hell, you can get an actual phone in a wristwatch today, if that's the way you want to go. But I still want my tablet.
"I see people making this type of confusion every day in my job when I review security policies and architectures."
I can play the Wikipedia game too. As Wikipedia says: "Ciphertext indistinguishability is a property of many encryption schemes." It does NOT say it is a requirement in order to qualify as "encryption". It's merely a feature common to MANY styles of encryption. For a given purpose, there exist good forms of encryption and bad forms of encryption. But they are all still encryption.
One-way hash function are a form of encryption, and a properly-hashed plaintext is commonly (and rightfully) said to be "encrypted".
I can produce a hundred dictionaries and technical texts that agree with this. For just one example of many, see Schneier's "Applied Cryptography".
Perhaps you require indistinguishability for YOUR purposes. But some other uses have no such requirement. That does not make them "not encryption". You are trying to narrow the whole field of encryption to a rather small subset of your own choosing.
"Nope. Wrong. Hashing is not AT ALL like encryption."
Sorry, but you are wrong. Hashing IS a form of encryption.
You, too, try to make an artificial distinction between what YOU call "good encryption" and other forms, which -- despite your protests to the contrary -- are still encryption.
Encryption is merely an algorithmic means to hide information. That is all. Some methods are better than others; and some are more suitable for particular tasks than others.
Further, encryption does not have to work both ways. Getting your information back is decryption.
"I will not buy netgear because of requiring a internet connection to configure it. I should be able to configure it before I hook it up to any network."
I am pretty sure it was Cisco that did that to their LinkSys products, not Netgear.
I could be wrong. Maybe Netgear did it too. But I've had Netgear routers before and never had to connect to the internet to configure them.