Numerous studies have found that homeschooled students on average outperform their peers on standardized tests.[52][53]
Maybe you should "require" yourself to read a basic Wikipedia article before trying to "require" citations from them.
Funny, it's likely you didn't read these studies either. One link [52] brings you to an abstract with no error figure. Absolutely useless (bordering on what I would call 'not even wrong'). The other alleged cite [53] brings you to an article that you need to pay for.
So from the Wiki article and any free resources it points to there's little in the way of actual evidence to be weighed on the academic merits of homeschooling. There may be actual merits elsewhere recorded elsewhere but you're going to have to figure out some way to eliminate selection bias.
i) Is your code written at your workplace your intellectual property?
ii) Does your job description mention the filing of patents?
This gives us four permutations with about three outcomes.
if (i) == "yes" {
You can do what you want with your code. } else {
Your employer can do what they want with your code. However your participation in the process can be limited by (ii)
If (ii) == "no" then {
You can say "My job is writing code, not filing patents".
}
else {
You can't say anything - think twice before you apply for this kind of job again.
}
I don't know who is represented by the vague term "truly religious" but it seems weird to me that a modern Christian would have trouble dealing with the fact that virtually all manuscripts have some differences. Even if you believe that these people have never read the bible in anything but English. The NKJV, RSV, NIV all have footnotes/marginal notes like "X is not contained in the oldest most reliable manuscripts".
The other weird thing is the assertion (presumably by non-Christians) that the text can't possibly (or can't reasonably) closely approximate the original. Textual criticism is used for just about any ancient book to approximate it's original text. To single out the bible seems ignorant.
I will admit that there are people who do other forms of biblical criticism which are braindead but interestingly enough these hit on both sides of the "It's the truth" line.
In fact considering the wealth of text that there is to work with. It seems also rather weird to claim that the bible is even 'bad' in it's textual support.
I mean sure, disagree with it's content all you want (including things like relying on Alexandrian text types for things like the NIV) but your comments on the text seem pretty uneducated.
Sorry I wasn't criticizing you. I think my comment started out as a comment on yours but then it kind of mutated into something independent.
Another thing that crossed my mind is the implication that the distinction between correlation and causation doesn't matter. Which is clearly weird. I mean sure, in very specific senses it might not matter why people behave one way or why language evolves in one way but clearly there are places where the reasoning always flows the other way. Again in medicine, it actually matters WHY people are dying not just that they are.:-)
This might help some kinds of science. I.e. meta-analysis on drug interactions. Assuming the data is being collected (hopefully). Available (it isn't). Normalized (nope). Can be set to a useful set of criteria - such as hospitalizations incurred within X months of prescriptions being written for drug Y or drug Z vs drug Y & Z. (debatable based on the drug/condition in question).
But without introducing any other new theory (the article implies we don't need any). How does this help me release a NEW drug without doing Phase III clinical trials? (Which are part of the scientific method IMHO).
You can run any software that is written for Windows and it will work! That's what makes Windows wonderful.
No. Clearly you haven't installed much windows software or know much about how the API works, what parts of it work under which OS's. Just for example you can't run any windows software that uses DX5 specific calls under NT4. Just like there is no DX10 support for XP. Even outside of DirectX. It's trivial to find software that will install or run under one version of windows but not another.
Until there is a bullet-proof installation method - Linux will remain out of the SMB world.
Windows doesn't have a bullet-proof install method. It's not bad but please lets not play pretend.
Still is....at no point do you define what constitutes an expert. It sounds like you may be struggling to say something like "by that I mean professionals". In which case it probably becomes a difference between "any" and "all".
There's no reason to believe that your sample of either group is going to be anything close to representative.
Still true, clearly your experience is anecdotal...and in fact...not as expansive as I would have expected. I mean it's obvious your experiences are emotionally charged but that doesn't make them generally valid.
The only thing that bears the markings of supporting a general statement. Was your mention of a survey (Which could have used a [Citation Needed] tag) about Nobel Laureates which, as you pointed out isn't germane to the point.
Nobody consults Wikipedia when their life is on the line.
Based on the experience retold to me by a number of doctors where people demand emergency appointments, diagnostics, etc.. on the basis of internet (including Wikipedia) self-diagnosis. Evidence would suggest that people do exactly what you think nobody does (or at least they consult the Wiki to determine *if* their life is on the line but that distinction seems to be splitting hairs. )
If you're a medical doctor or expert in your field, stop fighting new technology that increases general knowledge and relax.
Two problems: a) That isn't all it does - Wiki is capable of spreading disinformation and b) Your implied statement is a ridiculously inadequate criteria for telling people not to oppose something.
For example something that increases general knowledge but kills ten thousand babies is at least worth ethical debate;-). The point being is that the question you've conveniently assumed is "Does it do significantly more good than harm?".
I think that the Wiki flag wavers should at least admit that's pretty difficult to determine objectively and that fact should keep us from jumping to the answer "yes" and berating people who oppose it.
Does Wikipedia contribute to people making ridiculous self-diagnoses - most assuredly. Do some of these result in needless diagnostics? Yes. Do some of these expose people to needless risk. Yes. By the same token it's possible that the Wiki saves lives in the same fashion but again it's hard to determine exactly to what extent ( curiously absent from the experiences of doctors I've talked to but that could be attributable to bias ).
Since we don't really know these answers it seems a little premature to tell the experts not to oppose something.
Sign in the lobby of a local hospital: "The internet is not a substitute for medical diagnosis".
When Wikipedia has been vetted by credible institutions as more accurate (at least outside pop-culture) then the "credible expert" Encylopedia Britannica, the trust may be unwitting but is it really unfounded.
Well if you are talking about the study in Nature. It's a single study of a small portion of articles comprising a segment of topics. Which had at least a few number of criticisms of it's methodology which makes it interesting but hardly authoritative enough to support your statement. If you have other studies you should link to them.
Honestly, I find that individual experts make far more mistakes that Wiki, which is to a good degree peer reviewed.
Well...that's a load. Short criticism: "experts" here is poorly defined. There's no reason to believe that your sample of either group is going to be anything close to representative. Peer review is the idea that it's scrutinized by a large group of people who *ARE* experts. Since you can't tell people who are experts from those who are not on the Wiki. There's no way to validate that claim of yours either.
At least Wiki lets you go into the history and see all the editors, everythign else they've edited, what the differing opinions were, and a discussion on the topic at hand. I can't do that with my encylopedia.
Which is unclear if that's actually a good thing for the stated purposes or not. For example seeing lots of opinions - no matter how uninformed - could dilute the confidence in the well informed opinion.
I use EVDO - I get ~ 1Mb/s while in motion (working on a train). Last I checked there was only one provider around here with a flat rate plan. Although Telus's EVDO network is fine for surfing and email it's got a bunch of ridiculous port blocks. For example you can't use RDP and I've had zero luck getting VPN to work on either the client device or using it as a tethered modem. So I end up "rolling my own" VPN by tunneling RDP over SSH.
So in this case your utility function would have to value mobility over a more restricted network and 1Mb speeds at five-years ago's prices.
Ironically...it was your post here - which was the direct result of your game being put up on Pirate Bay - that made me look at it. Interesting kind of combination between Sokoban and a dungeon crawl. Not really my cup of tea but believe it or not I was prepared to fork over $19.99 if I had liked it.
Really, the only reason you'd have to pirate the game is to take away a sale from a bunch of guys who wanted to make the sort of game they don't really make any more. It's a dick move.
No I suspect there are at least a half-dozen other reasons to download the game that don't actually involve the explicit intent of taking a sale away from you. Some people are just completists and want anything new or just to add to their collection (see the copy of MegaGames Pack 4 on Pirate bay).
It's a shame that the Pirate Bay are being set up as these renegade folk heroes, but I guess that's what happens when a smaller villain tweaks the nose of a larger one.
I don't really consider the hosting of torrent files as a villainous act. Funny how the true villains are none other than the people who download your content illegally but they get no mention in your text. I think people should be held accountable to their actions and if we take the content providers comparison of infringement to theft seriously. Then taking down the Pirate Bay to increase sales is like going after those guys who make those bulky jackets that some shoplifters ware.
He does have a point about the Unix/Linux/open source ecosystem.
Not a very well argued one.
Face it, Linux is pretty much like Unix, which dates from the 1970s.
Seems like an implied "old is bad" argument.
The Berkeley stuff from the 1980s (notably BIND and Sendmail) is still in use, buried under layers of cruft and still breaking.
*yawn* Representativity of your sample is absent and questionable at best.
C programs are still crashing all the time. C++ didn't help much.
At best difficult to determine the utility of your statement ("Crashing more than what? Closed source C/C++ programs?"). Even if it could be determined it's likely indemonstrable.
X-Windows, which was never very good, has survived all its successors.
Prejudicial argument. Appeals to unstated (and possibly arbitrary) standard of goodness.
I thought the future of operating systems would be more like Multics, with rings of protection, on cheaper hardware. Or like Tandem, a transaction processing system where the mean time between system failures was measured in decades. Or like UCLA Locus, where distributed processing really worked. But no. It's just minor variations on UNIX, forever.
Well, in short "Who cares what you thought?"
There are plenty of reasons that the market moved the way it did. Tandem simply applied at a lower level what people do today on a higher level.
That's what Lanier is pointing out. We have roughly the same problems at the bottom we had thirty years ago.
I doubt it. If so he's doing it in an way almost as obtuse as your own arguments. Larnier appears to be talking about some kind of 'originality' or 'creativity' you need a pretty big shoehorn to turn that into "Fault tolerance" (Especially since the so-called 'original' code includes the iPhone. Perhaps you can tell me how it implements the features of Multics, Locus and Tandem?).
"Is this person in a position to authoritatively make the stated claims."
Two things which are the linchpins of Jaron's argument appear to be:
1) Jaron is in some way the person who gets to decide what is creative technology and what isn't: This gets implied over and over when he compares things like the iPhone and page-rank algorithms to Linux. Why does he get to call one creative and the other not? At best 'creative' seems difficult to define.
2) Jaron's sampling of these two types of code is representative: Assuming that by 'Linux' he's simply referring to the OS/Kernel not the hundreds (if not thousands) of programs included in an average distro (If he does mean these then it makes it highly unlikely that he has examined enough of them to have an authoritative opinion so we need not pay any more attention to him). Even so I would argue that the Linux kernel is pretty large and to say there is no creative code in there (or none on par with the iPhone) seems a lot of work and if he has investigated the code to that extent he seems to have spent less-than-zero time demonstrating it. The only other exception would be that 'creative code' can be judged solely on something entirely absent from the Kernel. I.e. graphical bells and whistles. Even so one only needs to look to projects like Beryl/Compiz Fusion to see the OSS crowd producing UI that gives apple a run for it's money. Furthermore even if, on every level the Linux kernel could be considered 'less creative' than an iPhone. Is either representative of the body of open/closed source software? Again this seems difficult to determine given the size of both software bodies.
At best Jaron's authority on these subjects is unclear and at worst he's talking though his ass.
I'm surprised at the complaints about patching. For your average implementation there are single rollup patches that cover just about everything. We run several qmail based systems where I work. We find them stable and relatively easy to work with.
The only times we take them down is when those 'on-high' want to implement some weird business rule for email. I don't really like DJB's coding style but it is clean and consistent.
I think what they meant is they're fluent with the USE of technology.
But what does that actually mean? Showing mastery (which seems to be the usage here) with the USE of technology. Does that include things like connecting to a wireless network and knowing to backup your data?
If so then, after working for a university which has no technical programs. I'd say that students are just as bad as people in the 50 year old set. If it means knowing how to use google and facebook then sure they are fluent but that seems far too specialized a set of skills to consider as 'technology'.
As other readers have noted, there appears to be zero evidence that students today actually understand how computers work any better than any prior generation.
Did you read Cringley's articles about ISPs? He mentioned how in Japan they offer 100Mb for $30/mo (in a land where rent is easily twice my mortgage and I couldn't afford to play golf!).
Although it's worth taking his writing with a grain of salt. Contends that the problems get fixed by changing (or forcing legal changes) for ISP pricing.
Yeah, and I may be pulling this out of my ass but...IIRC there was some scut about Telcos getting worried about excessive dialup usage interfering with local calls which prompted them to start offering incentives to move to DSL.
Given what you said about switches...and my near ignorance of POTS;-) This, at least seems feasible to me since I'm guessing that your switch is in the CO, same place your DSLAM is (or used to be anyway). So your DSL traffic doesn't hit the switch.
Complete off topic note, some of the new features Telcos are asking for also don't jibe with infrastructure problems. Many DSLAM's support line aggregation for up to 8 lines, as well many DSLAMs can support VDSL cards which are backwards compatible with ADSL. I see Telcos demanding that provisioning software supports BOTH. Just to clarify here, were talking about deploying hardware that can deliver anywhere from 80Mbps to 800Mbps delivery to a single client. I mean even if we assume that they are deploying VDSL simply for distance theres no reason to be pushy about 8x line aggregation if theres an infrastructure problem.
Yes, obviously, the article is about throttling BT. Comcast's throttling of BT bandwidth is an indicator that their customers are putting more strain on the existing local infrastructure than they expected - more than it can handle.
Depends on what you mean by 'local infrastructure'. For example, if by 'more strain on the existing local infrastructure than they expected' you mean its causing significant performance loss for a larger body of users for a specific ISP. That could be true but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the internet needing a new backbone.
Another thing, if this really was Internet infrastructure problem (and not just ISP price modeling) then can you confirm that this kind of behavior is happening on more expensive loops? I use a 100Mb Internet connection at work, along with Gb fiber to related groups. This bandwidth is shared by hundreds of users and I really don't see any hint of these problems.
It isn't really a model that works anymore, is it? At some point, the size of the junk expanded to fit the size of the pipe.
Again it depends on what you mean by 'model'. If by 'model' you mean 'oversubscription in the ratio that it's being implemented in the areas that people are complaining about' then sure that doesn't 'work' as in it doesn't deliver satisfaction to the users but my ISP doesn't throttle (But you bet your ass they oversubscribe) and I'm pretty happy. If instead you meant 'oversubscription as a whole' then you're dead wrong. Unless all the local users are using their DSL to capacity always then theres always going to be a ratio at which oversubscription works - i.e. provides both extra profit for the company and negligible reduction in service for the majority of users.
IPTV = Internet Protocol Television While the blurb surrounding the article is muddy, I included that because IPTV is very relevant to the concept of expanding bandwidth needs.
But NOT necessarily to the bandwidth of the Internet. Which is what the original post was about. For example it would seem reasonable to me for a Cable provider to roll-out IPTV still sourcing their video the same way (satellite feeds, etc). So all they have to do is deliver the video to their clients, even though this video is running over IP it would be silly to send it over the Internet. In my cable system I would expect it would go over the HFC network and be delivered to some set-top box.
It's an interesting question but I don't see how any of the above forces you to wonder it. Whatever.
Funny how you dodged the real point. When someone says 'all these articles make me think about re-engineering the internet' and yet one of them likely has nothing to do with the Internet and another isn't even necessarily related to internet congestion but rather the sales model that exists in North American ISPs. It's about that time you start doubting chicken little.
Given the recent flurry of articles concerning ISP over subscription
That article seems to be about throttling BT bandwith. Thats not the same thing as over-subscription. Oversubscribing a network is when the service you are providing (say 5Mb DSL), multiplied by the number of clients is greater than the pipe you are feeding it. Let me give you a little hint, consumer DSL has been oversubscribed virtually from it's inception. I used to work at a company who developed provisioning automation software and when we first talked with vendors about our DSL offerings (this was back in the day when CLECs were popping up everywhere) they laughed that our product didn't support over-subscribing.
Why do they do this? Not sure but I'd lay a bet that their cost-model for DSL implementation was based on data from dial-up usage which was a far different behavior pattern than people use today. It could even be that they simply applied a model similar to POTS which is also designed for over-subscription. Ever get a fast busy signal instead of the usual slow one? In my hometown it was uncommon about 20 years ago (and today unheard of) but that's an all-circuits-busy signal.
Point here is that over-subscription isn't something new, neither is it a sign of the collapsing internet. It's just the model that telcos adopted because of some assumption about usage patterns. It is a reason to feel ripped-off though, since it's part of the reason you will virtually never get 6Mbps out of your 6Mb DSL line.
increasing bandwidth needs
This article really seems like it's about Cable infrastructure supporting IPTV. This, to me seems to be about the capacity of the cable network - NOT the internet, specifically about upstream traffic. I'm not an expert here and I don't think I'm willing to pay for the original article but I would expect there's a variety of technologies in play amongst cable providers. So how many cable providers this affects is the worthwhile question to ask.
I'm forced to wonder, what is the solution? How much would a properly upgraded internet backbone cost?
It's an interesting question but I don't see how any of the above forces you to wonder it.
>>From Geist's figures: 179 camcorder versions out of 1,400 releases in 3 years. Or, approximately >>60 a year.
>The flaw in that logic is assuming all movies are equal in terms of revenue.
If the argument being rebutted was about revenue then you would have a point. The truth is that it was about the proportion of piracy alleged to Canada. So you're engaging in something with about the same validity as rebutting last weeks weather with this weeks sports scores.
Where the uninformed wax on about something that can't be known with a useful degree of certainty. The whole "market share" argument is difficult if not impossible to demonstrate. Sure if you gave Linux, etc.. the same exposure to hackers (which in the case of servers I would argue that Linux has had this) you might have people might be complaining in the same way that people complain about MS. However that is both a) A red herring - it's not how much people complain but how much more secure they would be and b) It's a sub-moronic argument. You can just as easily say "In that case it might be so much better than there would be no real market for people like Ben Rothke". Hard to demonstrate one way or the other isn't it?
Ugh and this is from a CISSP? How does someone become a senior security consultant without knowing squat about logic?
I manage a part of a university IT department. I am dumbfounded about exactly how dense students are about computers - these are non-cs/engineering students btw - students were shocked that I could tell (even when the clicked the little 'encryption' checkbox) that they were using BitTorrent. That I had their username and if I cared - which I don't - I could have a whole lot of information about what they were doing.
Our problem is the opposite - students are too stupid (or simply embrace a kind of self-interest that is rather short sighted) to update their virus protection software, or patch their OS or set their passwords to something that isn't easy to guess. So we do need something to enforce these kinds of policies - We have looked at Cisco's product (for the first two) and aside from being ridiculously expensive it's a pain. The fact that there is no standardized way of querying antivirus software over a network is also annoying. In the end we may end up writing some client software of our own and combining it with packet fence.
In short I'm familiar with the problem that this Uni is trying to solve but I don't really view students like this as the problem.
i) Even granting the room for some hyperbole. It's both unlikely to be true and a little scary that you consider your mental stability way ahead of 99% of humans.
ii) Way to make a strawman there. Sure the teacher was stupid, the cops were stupid. There is plenty of stupid to go around in this event. There even a big helping for yourself ( Likely from the 99% you are supposedly more mentally stable than - how humbling for you! ) nobody has proposed an outright ban on unconventional dress, writing, art speech, etc... at worst we have a ban on handing unconventional writing in as homework (yes, the teacher got exactly what they asked for but I addressed that in the "teacher was stupid" comment). The person can write angry work to their hearts content without using it for assignments. So you have provide absolutely no basis for relating this event and an increase in tragedy no matter how much that appeals to some sense of symmetry.
When did slashdot become the forum for self-indulgent crap?
Please, the nature article doesn't actually disprove the notion that Wikipedia is generally unreliable. The sample was way too small and too narrow for that. Now if you limited your statements to the articles tested then your statement would have some strength. As it stands.....
One of my favorite stories about maintaining a Wiki article was encountering a cite to a reputable textbook which when looked up appeared to never have existed. One of the Wiki's funny weaknesses is that when you start dealing with information that's only available to a small portion of the world it is easy to insert a cite that is difficult to check. IIRC This one had been in the Wiki for over a year.
The Wiki is an interesting thing. I don't see a good reason for blocking it in schools or pretending that it's an inalienable right for that matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Numerous studies have found that homeschooled students on average outperform their peers on standardized tests.[52][53]
Maybe you should "require" yourself to read a basic Wikipedia article before trying to "require" citations from them.
Funny, it's likely you didn't read these studies either. One link [52] brings you to an abstract with no error figure. Absolutely useless (bordering on what I would call 'not even wrong'). The other alleged cite [53] brings you to an article that you need to pay for.
So from the Wiki article and any free resources it points to there's little in the way of actual evidence to be weighed on the academic merits of homeschooling. There may be actual merits elsewhere recorded elsewhere but you're going to have to figure out some way to eliminate selection bias.
To me there are simply two questions:
i) Is your code written at your workplace your intellectual property?
ii) Does your job description mention the filing of patents?
This gives us four permutations with about three outcomes.
if (i) == "yes" {
You can do what you want with your code.
}
else {
Your employer can do what they want with your code. However your participation in the process can be limited by (ii)
If (ii) == "no" then {
You can say "My job is writing code, not filing patents".
}
else {
You can't say anything - think twice before you apply for this kind of job again.
}
I don't know who is represented by the vague term "truly religious" but it seems weird to me that a modern Christian would have trouble dealing with the fact that virtually all manuscripts have some differences. Even if you believe that these people have never read the bible in anything but English. The NKJV, RSV, NIV all have footnotes/marginal notes like "X is not contained in the oldest most reliable manuscripts".
The other weird thing is the assertion (presumably by non-Christians) that the text can't possibly (or can't reasonably) closely approximate the original. Textual criticism is used for just about any ancient book to approximate it's original text. To single out the bible seems ignorant.
I will admit that there are people who do other forms of biblical criticism which are braindead but interestingly enough these hit on both sides of the "It's the truth" line.
In fact considering the wealth of text that there is to work with. It seems also rather weird to claim that the bible is even 'bad' in it's textual support.
I mean sure, disagree with it's content all you want (including things like relying on Alexandrian text types for things like the NIV) but your comments on the text seem pretty uneducated.
Sorry I wasn't criticizing you. I think my comment started out as a comment on yours but then it kind of mutated into something independent.
Another thing that crossed my mind is the implication that the distinction between correlation and causation doesn't matter. Which is clearly weird. I mean sure, in very specific senses it might not matter why people behave one way or why language evolves in one way but clearly there are places where the reasoning always flows the other way. Again in medicine, it actually matters WHY people are dying not just that they are. :-)
Meh.
This might help some kinds of science. I.e. meta-analysis on drug interactions. Assuming the data is being collected (hopefully). Available (it isn't). Normalized (nope). Can be set to a useful set of criteria - such as hospitalizations incurred within X months of prescriptions being written for drug Y or drug Z vs drug Y & Z. (debatable based on the drug/condition in question).
But without introducing any other new theory (the article implies we don't need any). How does this help me release a NEW drug without doing Phase III clinical trials? (Which are part of the scientific method IMHO).
You can run any software that is written for Windows and it will work! That's what makes Windows wonderful.
No. Clearly you haven't installed much windows software or know much about how the API works, what parts of it work under which OS's. Just for example you can't run any windows software that uses DX5 specific calls under NT4. Just like there is no DX10 support for XP. Even outside of DirectX. It's trivial to find software that will install or run under one version of windows but not another.
Until there is a bullet-proof installation method - Linux will remain out of the SMB world.
Windows doesn't have a bullet-proof install method. It's not bad but please lets not play pretend.
Now by the users join date I'll assume that this person is from /. baiting them but it's still kind of funny.
Join Date: 09.05.2008
Posts: 1
Subject: When will I get sued?
So hypothetically...
If I were using this game illegally...how long before you guys sue me. Just wondering since you seem to be pretty eager to do this kind of thing.
Thorina.
I reiterate the point:
Short criticism: "experts" here is poorly defined
Still is....at no point do you define what constitutes an expert. It sounds like you may be struggling to say something like "by that I mean professionals". In which case it probably becomes a difference between "any" and "all".
There's no reason to believe that your sample of either group is going to be anything close to representative.
Still true, clearly your experience is anecdotal...and in fact...not as expansive as I would have expected. I mean it's obvious your experiences are emotionally charged but that doesn't make them generally valid.
The only thing that bears the markings of supporting a general statement. Was your mention of a survey (Which could have used a [Citation Needed] tag) about Nobel Laureates which, as you pointed out isn't germane to the point.
So respond to the points or get out of the pool.
Nobody consults Wikipedia when their life is on the line.
;-). The point being is that the question you've conveniently assumed is "Does it do significantly more good than harm?".
Based on the experience retold to me by a number of doctors where people demand emergency appointments, diagnostics, etc.. on the basis of internet (including Wikipedia) self-diagnosis. Evidence would suggest that people do exactly what you think nobody does (or at least they consult the Wiki to determine *if* their life is on the line but that distinction seems to be splitting hairs. )
If you're a medical doctor or expert in your field, stop fighting new technology that increases general knowledge and relax.
Two problems: a) That isn't all it does - Wiki is capable of spreading disinformation and b) Your implied statement is a ridiculously inadequate criteria for telling people not to oppose something.
For example something that increases general knowledge but kills ten thousand babies is at least worth ethical debate
I think that the Wiki flag wavers should at least admit that's pretty difficult to determine objectively and that fact should keep us from jumping to the answer "yes" and berating people who oppose it.
Does Wikipedia contribute to people making ridiculous self-diagnoses - most assuredly. Do some of these result in needless diagnostics? Yes. Do some of these expose people to needless risk. Yes. By the same token it's possible that the Wiki saves lives in the same fashion but again it's hard to determine exactly to what extent ( curiously absent from the experiences of doctors I've talked to but that could be attributable to bias ).
Since we don't really know these answers it seems a little premature to tell the experts not to oppose something.
Sign in the lobby of a local hospital: "The internet is not a substitute for medical diagnosis".
When Wikipedia has been vetted by credible institutions as more accurate (at least outside pop-culture) then the "credible expert" Encylopedia Britannica, the trust may be unwitting but is it really unfounded.
Well if you are talking about the study in Nature. It's a single study of a small portion of articles comprising a segment of topics. Which had at least a few number of criticisms of it's methodology which makes it interesting but hardly authoritative enough to support your statement.
If you have other studies you should link to them.
Honestly, I find that individual experts make far more mistakes that Wiki, which is to a good degree peer reviewed.
Well...that's a load. Short criticism: "experts" here is poorly defined. There's no reason to believe that your sample of either group is going to be anything close to representative. Peer review is the idea that it's scrutinized by a large group of people who *ARE* experts. Since you can't tell people who are experts from those who are not on the Wiki. There's no way to validate that claim of yours either.
At least Wiki lets you go into the history and see all the editors, everythign else they've edited, what the differing opinions were, and a discussion on the topic at hand. I can't do that with my encylopedia.
Which is unclear if that's actually a good thing for the stated purposes or not. For example seeing lots of opinions - no matter how uninformed - could dilute the confidence in the well informed opinion.
I use EVDO - I get ~ 1Mb/s while in motion (working on a train). Last I checked there was only one provider around here with a flat rate plan. Although Telus's EVDO network is fine for surfing and email it's got a bunch of ridiculous port blocks. For example you can't use RDP and I've had zero luck getting VPN to work on either the client device or using it as a tethered modem. So I end up "rolling my own" VPN by tunneling RDP over SSH.
So in this case your utility function would have to value mobility over a more restricted network and 1Mb speeds at five-years ago's prices.
Ironically...it was your post here - which was the direct result of your game being put up on Pirate Bay - that made me look at it. Interesting kind of combination between Sokoban and a dungeon crawl. Not really my cup of tea but believe it or not I was prepared to fork over $19.99 if I had liked it.
Really, the only reason you'd have to pirate the game is to take away a sale from a bunch of guys who wanted to make the sort of game they don't really make any more. It's a dick move.
No I suspect there are at least a half-dozen other reasons to download the game that don't actually involve the explicit intent of taking a sale away from you. Some people are just completists and want anything new or just to add to their collection (see the copy of MegaGames Pack 4 on Pirate bay).
It's a shame that the Pirate Bay are being set up as these renegade folk heroes, but I guess that's what happens when a smaller villain tweaks the nose of a larger one.
I don't really consider the hosting of torrent files as a villainous act. Funny how the true villains are none other than the people who download your content illegally but they get no mention in your text. I think people should be held accountable to their actions and if we take the content providers comparison of infringement to theft seriously. Then taking down the Pirate Bay to increase sales is like going after those guys who make those bulky jackets that some shoplifters ware.
He does have a point about the Unix/Linux/open source ecosystem.
Not a very well argued one.
Face it, Linux is pretty much like Unix, which dates from the 1970s.
Seems like an implied "old is bad" argument.
The Berkeley stuff from the 1980s (notably BIND and Sendmail) is still in use, buried under layers of cruft and still breaking.
*yawn* Representativity of your sample is absent and questionable at best.
C programs are still crashing all the time. C++ didn't help much.
At best difficult to determine the utility of your statement ("Crashing more than what? Closed source C/C++ programs?"). Even if it could be determined it's likely indemonstrable.
X-Windows, which was never very good, has survived all its successors.
Prejudicial argument. Appeals to unstated (and possibly arbitrary) standard of goodness.
I thought the future of operating systems would be more like Multics, with rings of protection, on cheaper hardware. Or like Tandem, a transaction processing system where the mean time between system failures was measured in decades. Or like UCLA Locus, where distributed processing really worked. But no. It's just minor variations on UNIX, forever.
Well, in short "Who cares what you thought?"
There are plenty of reasons that the market moved the way it did. Tandem simply applied at a lower level what people do today on a higher level.
That's what Lanier is pointing out. We have roughly the same problems at the bottom we had thirty years ago.
I doubt it. If so he's doing it in an way almost as obtuse as your own arguments. Larnier appears to be talking about some kind of 'originality' or 'creativity' you need a pretty big shoehorn to turn that into "Fault tolerance" (Especially since the so-called 'original' code includes the iPhone. Perhaps you can tell me how it implements the features of Multics, Locus and Tandem?).
Parent really shouldn't have been modded up.
"Is this person in a position to authoritatively make the stated claims."
Two things which are the linchpins of Jaron's argument appear to be:
1) Jaron is in some way the person who gets to decide what is creative technology and what isn't: This gets implied over and over when he compares things like the iPhone and page-rank algorithms to Linux. Why does he get to call one creative and the other not? At best 'creative' seems difficult to define.
2) Jaron's sampling of these two types of code is representative: Assuming that by 'Linux' he's simply referring to the OS/Kernel not the hundreds (if not thousands) of programs included in an average distro (If he does mean these then it makes it highly unlikely that he has examined enough of them to have an authoritative opinion so we need not pay any more attention to him). Even so I would argue that the Linux kernel is pretty large and to say there is no creative code in there (or none on par with the iPhone) seems a lot of work and if he has investigated the code to that extent he seems to have spent less-than-zero time demonstrating it. The only other exception would be that 'creative code' can be judged solely on something entirely absent from the Kernel. I.e. graphical bells and whistles. Even so one only needs to look to projects like Beryl/Compiz Fusion to see the OSS crowd producing UI that gives apple a run for it's money. Furthermore even if, on every level the Linux kernel could be considered 'less creative' than an iPhone. Is either representative of the body of open/closed source software? Again this seems difficult to determine given the size of both software bodies.
At best Jaron's authority on these subjects is unclear and at worst he's talking though his ass.
...but it's not the problem you might think.
I'm surprised at the complaints about patching. For your average implementation there are single rollup patches that cover just about everything. We run several qmail based systems where I work. We find them stable and relatively easy to work with.
The only times we take them down is when those 'on-high' want to implement some weird business rule for email. I don't really like DJB's coding style but it is clean and consistent.
I think what they meant is they're fluent with the USE of technology.
But what does that actually mean? Showing mastery (which seems to be the usage here) with the USE of technology. Does that include things like connecting to a wireless network and knowing to backup your data?
If so then, after working for a university which has no technical programs. I'd say that students are just as bad as people in the 50 year old set. If it means knowing how to use google and facebook then sure they are fluent but that seems far too specialized a set of skills to consider as 'technology'.
As other readers have noted, there appears to be zero evidence that students today actually understand how computers work any better than any prior generation.
No prob.
0 70810_002683.html
Did you read Cringley's articles about ISPs? He mentioned how in Japan they offer 100Mb for $30/mo (in a land where rent is easily twice my mortgage and I couldn't afford to play golf!).
Although it's worth taking his writing with a grain of salt. Contends that the problems get fixed by changing (or forcing legal changes) for ISP pricing.
Check it out.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20
Yeah, and I may be pulling this out of my ass but...IIRC there was some scut about Telcos getting worried about excessive dialup usage interfering with local calls which prompted them to start offering incentives to move to DSL.
;-) This, at least seems feasible to me since I'm guessing that your switch is in the CO, same place your DSLAM is (or used to be anyway). So your DSL traffic doesn't hit the switch.
Given what you said about switches...and my near ignorance of POTS
Complete off topic note, some of the new features Telcos are asking for also don't jibe with infrastructure problems. Many DSLAM's support line aggregation for up to 8 lines, as well many DSLAMs can support VDSL cards which are backwards compatible with ADSL. I see Telcos demanding that provisioning software supports BOTH. Just to clarify here, were talking about deploying hardware that can deliver anywhere from 80Mbps to 800Mbps delivery to a single client. I mean even if we assume that they are deploying VDSL simply for distance theres no reason to be pushy about 8x line aggregation if theres an infrastructure problem.
Next time...post as Plain old text...:)
Yes, obviously, the article is about throttling BT. Comcast's throttling of BT bandwidth is an indicator that their customers are putting more strain on the existing local infrastructure than they expected - more than it can handle.
Depends on what you mean by 'local infrastructure'. For example, if by 'more strain on the existing local infrastructure than they expected' you mean its causing significant performance loss for a larger body of users for a specific ISP. That could be true but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the internet needing a new backbone.
Another thing, if this really was Internet infrastructure problem (and not just ISP price modeling) then can you confirm that this kind of behavior is happening on more expensive loops? I use a 100Mb Internet connection at work, along with Gb fiber to related groups. This bandwidth is shared by hundreds of users and I really don't see any hint of these problems.
It isn't really a model that works anymore, is it? At some point, the size of the junk expanded to fit the size of the pipe.
Again it depends on what you mean by 'model'. If by 'model' you mean 'oversubscription in the ratio that it's being implemented in the areas that people are complaining about' then sure that doesn't 'work' as in it doesn't deliver satisfaction to the users but my ISP doesn't throttle (But you bet your ass they oversubscribe) and I'm pretty happy. If instead you meant 'oversubscription as a whole' then you're dead wrong. Unless all the local users are using their DSL to capacity always then theres always going to be a ratio at which oversubscription works - i.e. provides both extra profit for the company and negligible reduction in service for the majority of users.
IPTV = Internet Protocol Television While the blurb surrounding the article is muddy, I included that because IPTV is very relevant to the concept of expanding bandwidth needs.
But NOT necessarily to the bandwidth of the Internet. Which is what the original post was about. For example it would seem reasonable to me for a Cable provider to roll-out IPTV still sourcing their video the same way (satellite feeds, etc). So all they have to do is deliver the video to their clients, even though this video is running over IP it would be silly to send it over the Internet. In my cable system I would expect it would go over the HFC network and be delivered to some set-top box.
It's an interesting question but I don't see how any of the above forces you to wonder it.
Whatever.
Funny how you dodged the real point. When someone says 'all these articles make me think about re-engineering the internet' and yet one of them likely has nothing to do with the Internet and another isn't even necessarily related to internet congestion but rather the sales model that exists in North American ISPs. It's about that time you start doubting chicken little.
Given the recent flurry of articles concerning ISP over subscription
That article seems to be about throttling BT bandwith. Thats not the same thing as over-subscription. Oversubscribing a network is when the service you are providing (say 5Mb DSL), multiplied by the number of clients is greater than the pipe you are feeding it. Let me give you a little hint, consumer DSL has been oversubscribed virtually from it's inception. I used to work at a company who developed provisioning automation software and when we first talked with vendors about our DSL offerings (this was back in the day when CLECs were popping up everywhere) they laughed that our product didn't support over-subscribing.
Why do they do this? Not sure but I'd lay a bet that their cost-model for DSL implementation was based on data from dial-up usage which was a far different behavior pattern than people use today. It could even be that they simply applied a model similar to POTS which is also designed for over-subscription. Ever get a fast busy signal instead of the usual slow one? In my hometown it was uncommon about 20 years ago (and today unheard of) but that's an all-circuits-busy signal.
Point here is that over-subscription isn't something new, neither is it a sign of the collapsing internet. It's just the model that telcos adopted because of some assumption about usage patterns. It is a reason to feel ripped-off though, since it's part of the reason you will virtually never get 6Mbps out of your 6Mb DSL line.
increasing bandwidth needs
This article really seems like it's about Cable infrastructure supporting IPTV. This, to me seems to be about the capacity of the cable network - NOT the internet, specifically about upstream traffic. I'm not an expert here and I don't think I'm willing to pay for the original article but I would expect there's a variety of technologies in play amongst cable providers. So how many cable providers this affects is the worthwhile question to ask.
I'm forced to wonder, what is the solution? How much would a properly upgraded internet backbone cost?
It's an interesting question but I don't see how any of the above forces you to wonder it.
>>From Geist's figures: 179 camcorder versions out of 1,400 releases in 3 years. Or, approximately
>>60 a year.
>The flaw in that logic is assuming all movies are equal in terms of revenue.
If the argument being rebutted was about revenue then you would have a point. The truth is that it was about the proportion of piracy alleged to Canada. So you're engaging in something with about the same validity as rebutting last weeks weather with this weeks sports scores.
Where the uninformed wax on about something that can't be known with a useful degree of certainty. The whole "market share" argument is difficult if not impossible to demonstrate. Sure if you gave Linux, etc.. the same exposure to hackers (which in the case of servers I would argue that Linux has had this) you might have people might be complaining in the same way that people complain about MS. However that is both a) A red herring - it's not how much people complain but how much more secure they would be and b) It's a sub-moronic argument. You can just as easily say "In that case it might be so much better than there would be no real market for people like Ben Rothke". Hard to demonstrate one way or the other isn't it?
Ugh and this is from a CISSP? How does someone become a senior security consultant without knowing squat about logic?
I manage a part of a university IT department. I am dumbfounded about exactly how dense students are about computers - these are non-cs/engineering students btw - students were shocked that I could tell (even when the clicked the little 'encryption' checkbox) that they were using BitTorrent. That I had their username and if I cared - which I don't - I could have a whole lot of information about what they were doing.
Our problem is the opposite - students are too stupid (or simply embrace a kind of self-interest that is rather short sighted) to update their virus protection software, or patch their OS or set their passwords to something that isn't easy to guess. So we do need something to enforce these kinds of policies - We have looked at Cisco's product (for the first two) and aside from being ridiculously expensive it's a pain. The fact that there is no standardized way of querying antivirus software over a network is also annoying. In the end we may end up writing some client software of our own and combining it with packet fence.
In short I'm familiar with the problem that this Uni is trying to solve but I don't really view students like this as the problem.
Why do things like this get modded up?
i) Even granting the room for some hyperbole. It's both unlikely to be true and a little scary that you consider your mental stability way ahead of 99% of humans.
ii) Way to make a strawman there. Sure the teacher was stupid, the cops were stupid. There is plenty of stupid to go around in this event. There even a big helping for yourself ( Likely from the 99% you are supposedly more mentally stable than - how humbling for you! ) nobody has proposed an outright ban on unconventional dress, writing, art speech, etc... at worst we have a ban on handing unconventional writing in as homework (yes, the teacher got exactly what they asked for but I addressed that in the "teacher was stupid" comment). The person can write angry work to their hearts content without using it for assignments. So you have provide absolutely no basis for relating this event and an increase in tragedy no matter how much that appeals to some sense of symmetry.
When did slashdot become the forum for self-indulgent crap?
Please, the nature article doesn't actually disprove the notion that Wikipedia is generally unreliable. The sample was way too small and too narrow for that. Now if you limited your statements to the articles tested then your statement would have some strength. As it stands.....
One of my favorite stories about maintaining a Wiki article was encountering a cite to a reputable textbook which when looked up appeared to never have existed. One of the Wiki's funny weaknesses is that when you start dealing with information that's only available to a small portion of the world it is easy to insert a cite that is difficult to check. IIRC This one had been in the Wiki for over a year.
The Wiki is an interesting thing. I don't see a good reason for blocking it in schools or pretending that it's an inalienable right for that matter.