It seems to me that if I hire you to go into harm's way, it is my responsibility to warn you of any dangers of which I am aware. I'm not familiar with the details of this case, so I am not saying that IBM should have been culpable. It's quite possible that the correct verdict was reached in this particular case.
However, in the general situation, this touches on similar issues to informed consent and implied warranty of fitness.
If I blind fold you and lead you down the street, then lead you into heavy traffic without telling you, am I not at least partly at fault for your injuries when you get hit? What if I manufacture a car, you buy one and the gas tank blows up as you're driving down the road? Am I in the clear because you failed to ask if the car was dangerous?
I believe you have the right to do pretty much anything you want so long as you do not violate the property or person of another. Putting someone in harm's way without informing them of that fact is a form of assault, as my actions may lead directly to harm to you, and you have not knowingly consented to accept the danger of the situation.
I thought I agreed with you (and even posted a comment to that end), but seeing your post has raised a question in my mind. When and where has SCO violated the GPL in regards to NMap?
Does violating the GPL in regards to one piece of software automatically justify removing your license to use any GPL'd software, or only that particular piece of software? In order for NMap to revoke their license from SCO, do they (or should they) have to show that SCO did or attempted to "...copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute..." NMap particularly and not just Linux in general?
IANAL either, but the issue seems legally troubling to me.
I don't believe, under the GPL, that USENIX has the legal power to do this. Sometimes sticking by your ideals sucks, because it means even shitty people like SCO get to use your code. Linux said something to this effect way back at the beginning.
First, USENIX has nothing to do with nmap. Two different stories.
Second, you'd be correct if the issue was simply one of an open source author saying "I don't like you, so you can't use my software. Nyaaa!!!"
However, that isn't the case here. There's a strong argument that SCO, by their actions of offering a paid license for their alleged intellectual property in Linux, has violated the GPL. That legally, ethically and morally terminates their right to the software under the GPL.
A neo-Nazi skinhead chapter of NAMBLA can use GPL'd software all day so long as they comply with the license. A combination orphanage and soup kitchen in the slums of the city that violates the GPL loses their right to use the software.
I'm not a fan of Hungarian notation but this is quite simplistic. Is InstanceCount an int, a long or a short? Or is it a pointer to one of the above? Is FirstName a C-style string (ie a char *) or is it an instance of class String? Is DateReceived an int holding a Unix-style number-of-seconds-from-some-starting-date, is it a string holding the date (and in what format?) or is it an instance of class Date?
Hungarian notation was designed for large, multi-developer projects where you're frequently working on or with code you didn't originally write and the answer to questions like the above aren't necessarily obvious or quickly answered. It's one thing to say that HN is ugly or introduces other problems of its own (a stand I agree with) but it's another to say that the problem it addresses is non-existent or is easily solved by descriptive variable names.
Our basic philosophy's are different. It's difficult to put all of the relevant arguments in a nut shell, but I'll attempt to cover the basics.
The US is (theoretically, at least) founded on the principles of freedom. You are presumed innocent unless and until the state can prove that you committed a crime. Unless they have evicence of such a crime, the police can not arrest or hold you. (For the nit-pickers, there are some exceptions but I'm trying to cover the essential theory here.) You have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This means that so long as I'm minding my own business and not committing a crime, the police have no right to stop me and demand to know what I'm doing or who I am. It's none of their business.
The essence of the dilema is the question of who serves who. Does the citizen serve the government? Or does the government serve the citizen? Your society assumes the former. We assume the latter.
Hum Tone: Requires the client to deliver a hum resonance while blowing the alcohol test prior to starting the vehicle. Deters techniques utilized to mimic human breath or to absorb alcohol.
So the billows may not work. Of course, these are designed to be regularlarly monitored, which makes sense for someone on probation following a DUI conviction. Without monitoring, they can be easily bypassed. So is everyone going to have to have their car checked once a month? Who's going to pay for that? The whole idea is simply stupid!
Sun is as much a hardware company as it is a software company.
Mandrake, Lindows, etc are new companies trying to start up with an open source model. I believe something like 75% of new restaurants go out of business in the first year. That doesn't mean that the restaurant is an unsupportable business model. Not every company that trys to link its success to the open source business model is going to succeed. That doesn't mean that none of them are going to succeed.
The question is, does going completely open source make sense for Sun? Since I've never founded or run a multi-million dollar business, my opinion is probably a bit suspect but it seems like it makes sense to me. In fact, it seems like Sun's only hope is something along those lines. Their current course is simply going to continue them along their slow slide into obscurity.
Uh, WHY is it incompatible? I've looked over the license, and it isn't apparent to me which part is causing the heartburn. Can someone familiar with the subject post a layman's version of what changed, and what the new license either requires or permits that is at odds with the GPL?
Before you despise me for the (non-existent) silver spoon in my mouth, perhaps you should take a moment to understand what I actually said and address that instead. Nothing I said denies that choices are often restricted. I merely pointed out the obvious: when forced to choose, people choose the option which they believe will give them the most of what they want.
Note that "what they want" is not always synonmous with happiness or pleasure. It certainly doesn't imply that life is a bed of roses. A mother who goes hungry in order that her children may eat wants to eat herself, but she wants to see her children fed more.
The post that I replied to was moderated as +5, insightful, for pointing out that people lie to get what they want. The whole point of my post was to show that this line of reasoning is essentially a tautology, and isn't insightful at all. You echoed this yourself in your last paragraph. Why you felt the need to take exception to my post when you apparently agree with it is a bit puzzling to me.
If you want to reduce it to that level, people do everything they do in order to get what they want. Of course, this doesn't provide much insight into motivation, nor does it take a great deal of cleverness to figure it out. It's a singularly uninteresting observation. But it is true.
I'm not sure if you're attempting to argue with the GNU philosophy, or fail to understand it. I'm not a believer in the Free Software movement, although I am a big proponent of Open Source. However, the Free Software movement IS internally and philosophically consistent.
To their way of thinking, your comments are akin to saying that I'm not free since I can't club you over the head and take your wallet. Just as personal freedom does not entail the right to kidnap another person, free software does not entail you to take someone else's code hostage.
If you want to argue with their definition of "free," there are certainly grounds to do that. But saying that freedom can not impose restrictions is incorrect. Freedom, whether personal or software, is not equivalent to anarchy.
I'm not willing to say that there are no cases where government regulation of the market is necessary, but they are few and very far between. In most cases, givernment regulation serves to create a monopoly. They must then step in and regulate the monopoly they created to prevent abuses. Without government regulation in the first place, there would be no issue.
The function of government is to protect the rights of the individual. Without that protection, there may very well be a "war zone." But in a situation where my rights are protected; where I have the right to own property and freely enter into contracts, and where there is a legal mechanism in place to enforce the mutually agreed upon contracts, little or nothing else is required of the government for a healthy, fuctioning market. It is when the government begins to meddle in the nature of the contracts that problems arise. Even market abuses are almost always worked out without govenrment intervention. For example, many people would agree that MS has abused it's market position. Most would also agree that, despite investigation and lots of lip service, the govenrment has done next to nothing to correct those abuses. (Some of us, even those who dislike MS's tactics, would say that that's a good thing.) Yet we can already see MS's dominance start to falter. The market is correcting the situation. It may not be happening as fast as some people would like, but it is happening.
In the sense that it's used here, making things "safe for capitalism" is a bad thing. When the government gets involved and uses it's might to shift or sway the market playing field, it's almost always a bad thing. Open source software exists and functions quite well in a free market. If it beats out more traditional software companies, it's because it out competed them in terms of value given per cost demanded.
Open source is not inherently communistic, nor is it a threat to capitalism. It's simply a threat to particular companies, just as new innovations are always a threat to older companies. Even if particular companies die, the market itself will hum along just fine.
GNU is open source. It's also free software. All free software is necessarily open source. (If the source isn't open, it isn't free.)
However, not all open source software is free software. For example, software which is "free for non-commercial use" may be open source but it doesn't meet the definition of "free software." It's free as in beer, but not free as in speech.
I didn't say it was a bad thing. I said I wasn't willing to pay a monthly access fee for however long I continue to use Mandrake. You, apparently, are. I wish you happiness and long life with your choice. Because, after all, that's what open source is all about - choice. Lots of choice is a good thing, including the ability to choose not to use Mandrake because they insist on charging to access their RPMs.
And it isn't a matter of waiting a couple of weeks. I've consistently been unable to find RPMs for packages which are not part of the default distribution. I'm not talking about cutting edge, hot off the press, latest editions. I'm just talking about lower profile projects which have been out for some time and are easily found for other distributions.
I'm using Mandrake but preparing to switch to Suse. Why? Because I'm not willing to pay $60 a year to join the Mandrake club, and unless you're willing to join the club it's almost impossible to find updated RPMs. KDE 3.2 came out yesterday. I can download SuSE RPMs or Red Hat RPMs from several places. Where are the Mandrake distros? They're probably available on Club Mandrake, but almost an hour of googling failed to turn them up anywhere else. Yes, I'm sure 10 will have KDE 3.2, but I don't want to run a beta or an RC for my primary desktop and there are a lot of other, lesser known packages that it won't have. In the year that I've been using Mandrake, I have repeatedly run into this program or that utility that I wanted to try out but when I go to download them, there are no Mandrake RPMs to be found. Yes, I can download the source, and I have on numerous occasions, but if I wanted to compile everything from source, I'd be running Gentoo.
I fully agree that nothing beats a shoulder check. You should always directly look at where you're going to drive before you drive there.
However, there is no value in being able to see the same spot in both the rear and side mirrors. Having your mirrors adjusted for the blind spot allows your mirrors to cover more area, not less. If you get in an accident and your mirrors are adjusted so that you can't see a vehicle sitting just off your rear fender, then you're the one guilty of negligence.
Then you have your mirrors misconfigured. Bring them in slightly. I ride a motorcycle, so I'm extremely conscious of them. I have numerous times passed a motorcycle, or had one pass me, and I never lose site of them.
If you properly adjust your mirrors, there is no blind spot.
Most people adjust their side mirrors so that it shows the rear edge of their car and the lane directly behind them. You see much the same thing in your side mirrors as you do in your rearview mirror.
Instead, lean your head to your left until it touches the window glass, then adjust the left mirror until you can just see the left rear corner of the car. Lean your head approximately the same distance to the right, until your head is near the middle of the car, and adjust your right mirror until you can just see the right rear corner of the car. When you sit up straight, you will no longer have a blind spot. Your side mirrors will no longer show you a distance view of the lane to either side, but you can easily see those positions in your rear view mirror. If you drive past another car, you will see the rear of the other car in your side view before the front drops out of sight in your peripheral vision. As you move past, you will see the rear of the car show up in your rearview mirror just before the front disappears from your side view mirror. No blind spot at all.
It will take a few days of driving for you to adjust yourself to the different view in your side mirrors; it will seem a bit awkward at first. But you really will have no blind spot.
There are actually two different issues here. One is the concept of measuring time. The second is the issue of displaying that time.
Our method of measuring time, based upon dividing the day into 24 hours and the hour into 60 minutes made up of 60 seconds, is certainly not particularly intuitive. It's something that must be learned, and requires understanding numbers and the base 10 numbering system as a prerequisite. (Contrary to the implications in several other posts, we use 12 or 24 hours and 60 minutes and seconds but those numbers are still base 10. The number "12" means 1 group of 10 and 2 ones. If we were using base 12, "9 o'clock" would be followed by "A o'clock," not 10.) Without an understanding of how we measure time, no method of displaying the current time will make sense.
Once you understand our time system, we can look at the issue of how to display that time. Digital watches are straightforward and quite intuitive. The only issues one needs to know is how to read digits and the order in which the units are displayed, and the latter at least is arguably an aspect of understanding our time system more than an aspect of understanding a digital watch.
Understanding an analog watch requires learning several concepts that are above and beyond understanding our system of time. As numerous posters have pointed out, there are distinct advantages to analog clocks or watches. A key point is that analog is more efficient than digital for many purposes. But efficiency and intuitiveness are often counter to one another. A command line is, for many purposes, more efficient than a GUI, but learning a manual full of arcane commands, switches and arguments is the opposite of intuitive. Once you learn them, they are very powerful. But there's at least a rough correlation between power and efficiency, and the steepness of the learning curve in a wide variety of disparate areas. I think it's clear that learning to read an analog watch has a higher learning curve than learning to read a digital watch. But once you've invested the effort to learn, it may indeed be easier to read an analog. That isn't a measure of the intuitivenss of the differnt representations; it's a measure of their efficiency.
...and the 12 hour clock-face is so ingrained......but we would have to have been brought up with that as kids...
The points you make are true, but they're arguments about a learned interface, not an intuitive one. If the interface were truly intuitive, it wouldn't have to become "ingrained," nor would we have to be "be brought up with it as kids."
I completely agree that an analog watch is superior in many ways. But it isn't more intuitive.
But what digital watches can't do, according to sweep-hand proponents, is display the time and context as elegantly and intuitively as an analog model
How on earth can you describe an analog watch as more intuitive than a digital watch? More elegant, certainly. But intuitive? A digital watch shows the numbers. If you can read them, you can tell the time. An analog watch uses one set of numbers (or positions, as many don't even have actual numerals on the face) for two different things. You have to learn what each hand means, and what each position means in the context of each hand. Once you learn it, it becomes straightforward and easy, but it's definitely the opposite of intuitive.
Please, don't apologize for correcting me if I make a factual error. I was going from this article, which says in part:
The epicenter of the blast was approximately eight feet from the south wall of Trade Tower Number One, near the support column K31/8.
I took that to mean it was eight feet inside Tower Number One, but now realize that it could have been in a nearby building, eight feet from the outside wall of Tower One. Regardless of the location, the intent of the bomb was to bring down Tower One, toppling it in to Tower Two.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that if I hire you to go into harm's way, it is my responsibility to warn you of any dangers of which I am aware. I'm not familiar with the details of this case, so I am not saying that IBM should have been culpable. It's quite possible that the correct verdict was reached in this particular case.
However, in the general situation, this touches on similar issues to informed consent and implied warranty of fitness.
If I blind fold you and lead you down the street, then lead you into heavy traffic without telling you, am I not at least partly at fault for your injuries when you get hit? What if I manufacture a car, you buy one and the gas tank blows up as you're driving down the road? Am I in the clear because you failed to ask if the car was dangerous?
I believe you have the right to do pretty much anything you want so long as you do not violate the property or person of another. Putting someone in harm's way without informing them of that fact is a form of assault, as my actions may lead directly to harm to you, and you have not knowingly consented to accept the danger of the situation.
I thought I agreed with you (and even posted a comment to that end), but seeing your post has raised a question in my mind. When and where has SCO violated the GPL in regards to NMap?
Does violating the GPL in regards to one piece of software automatically justify removing your license to use any GPL'd software, or only that particular piece of software? In order for NMap to revoke their license from SCO, do they (or should they) have to show that SCO did or attempted to "...copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute..." NMap particularly and not just Linux in general?
IANAL either, but the issue seems legally troubling to me.
I don't believe, under the GPL, that USENIX has the legal power to do this. Sometimes sticking by your ideals sucks, because it means even shitty people like SCO get to use your code. Linux said something to this effect way back at the beginning.
First, USENIX has nothing to do with nmap. Two different stories.
Second, you'd be correct if the issue was simply one of an open source author saying "I don't like you, so you can't use my software. Nyaaa!!!"
However, that isn't the case here. There's a strong argument that SCO, by their actions of offering a paid license for their alleged intellectual property in Linux, has violated the GPL. That legally, ethically and morally terminates their right to the software under the GPL.
A neo-Nazi skinhead chapter of NAMBLA can use GPL'd software all day so long as they comply with the license. A combination orphanage and soup kitchen in the slums of the city that violates the GPL loses their right to use the software.
Pure OOP certainly solves some of these problems but , like Hungarian notation, it introduces problems of its own.
Of course, as a programmer you often have no choice as to what language you're working with. And as a maintenance program, you have no choice at all.
I'm not a fan of Hungarian notation but this is quite simplistic. Is InstanceCount an int, a long or a short? Or is it a pointer to one of the above? Is FirstName a C-style string (ie a char *) or is it an instance of class String? Is DateReceived an int holding a Unix-style number-of-seconds-from-some-starting-date, is it a string holding the date (and in what format?) or is it an instance of class Date?
Hungarian notation was designed for large, multi-developer projects where you're frequently working on or with code you didn't originally write and the answer to questions like the above aren't necessarily obvious or quickly answered. It's one thing to say that HN is ugly or introduces other problems of its own (a stand I agree with) but it's another to say that the problem it addresses is non-existent or is easily solved by descriptive variable names.
Our basic philosophy's are different. It's difficult to put all of the relevant arguments in a nut shell, but I'll attempt to cover the basics.
The US is (theoretically, at least) founded on the principles of freedom. You are presumed innocent unless and until the state can prove that you committed a crime. Unless they have evicence of such a crime, the police can not arrest or hold you. (For the nit-pickers, there are some exceptions but I'm trying to cover the essential theory here.) You have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This means that so long as I'm minding my own business and not committing a crime, the police have no right to stop me and demand to know what I'm doing or who I am. It's none of their business.
The essence of the dilema is the question of who serves who. Does the citizen serve the government? Or does the government serve the citizen? Your society assumes the former. We assume the latter.
From here:
Hum Tone: Requires the client to deliver a hum resonance while blowing the alcohol test prior to starting the vehicle. Deters techniques utilized to mimic human breath or to absorb alcohol.
So the billows may not work. Of course, these are designed to be regularlarly monitored, which makes sense for someone on probation following a DUI conviction. Without monitoring, they can be easily bypassed. So is everyone going to have to have their car checked once a month? Who's going to pay for that? The whole idea is simply stupid!
Sun is as much a hardware company as it is a software company.
Mandrake, Lindows, etc are new companies trying to start up with an open source model. I believe something like 75% of new restaurants go out of business in the first year. That doesn't mean that the restaurant is an unsupportable business model. Not every company that trys to link its success to the open source business model is going to succeed. That doesn't mean that none of them are going to succeed.
The question is, does going completely open source make sense for Sun? Since I've never founded or run a multi-million dollar business, my opinion is probably a bit suspect but it seems like it makes sense to me. In fact, it seems like Sun's only hope is something along those lines. Their current course is simply going to continue them along their slow slide into obscurity.
Believed to be not compatible with the GPL.
Uh, WHY is it incompatible? I've looked over the license, and it isn't apparent to me which part is causing the heartburn. Can someone familiar with the subject post a layman's version of what changed, and what the new license either requires or permits that is at odds with the GPL?
Actually, it IS true. You even say so yourself.
Before you despise me for the (non-existent) silver spoon in my mouth, perhaps you should take a moment to understand what I actually said and address that instead. Nothing I said denies that choices are often restricted. I merely pointed out the obvious: when forced to choose, people choose the option which they believe will give them the most of what they want.
Note that "what they want" is not always synonmous with happiness or pleasure. It certainly doesn't imply that life is a bed of roses. A mother who goes hungry in order that her children may eat wants to eat herself, but she wants to see her children fed more.
The post that I replied to was moderated as +5, insightful, for pointing out that people lie to get what they want. The whole point of my post was to show that this line of reasoning is essentially a tautology, and isn't insightful at all. You echoed this yourself in your last paragraph. Why you felt the need to take exception to my post when you apparently agree with it is a bit puzzling to me.
If you want to reduce it to that level, people do everything they do in order to get what they want. Of course, this doesn't provide much insight into motivation, nor does it take a great deal of cleverness to figure it out. It's a singularly uninteresting observation. But it is true.
I'm not sure if you're attempting to argue with the GNU philosophy, or fail to understand it. I'm not a believer in the Free Software movement, although I am a big proponent of Open Source. However, the Free Software movement IS internally and philosophically consistent.
To their way of thinking, your comments are akin to saying that I'm not free since I can't club you over the head and take your wallet. Just as personal freedom does not entail the right to kidnap another person, free software does not entail you to take someone else's code hostage.
If you want to argue with their definition of "free," there are certainly grounds to do that. But saying that freedom can not impose restrictions is incorrect. Freedom, whether personal or software, is not equivalent to anarchy.
I'm not willing to say that there are no cases where government regulation of the market is necessary, but they are few and very far between. In most cases, givernment regulation serves to create a monopoly. They must then step in and regulate the monopoly they created to prevent abuses. Without government regulation in the first place, there would be no issue.
The function of government is to protect the rights of the individual. Without that protection, there may very well be a "war zone." But in a situation where my rights are protected; where I have the right to own property and freely enter into contracts, and where there is a legal mechanism in place to enforce the mutually agreed upon contracts, little or nothing else is required of the government for a healthy, fuctioning market. It is when the government begins to meddle in the nature of the contracts that problems arise. Even market abuses are almost always worked out without govenrment intervention. For example, many people would agree that MS has abused it's market position. Most would also agree that, despite investigation and lots of lip service, the govenrment has done next to nothing to correct those abuses. (Some of us, even those who dislike MS's tactics, would say that that's a good thing.) Yet we can already see MS's dominance start to falter. The market is correcting the situation. It may not be happening as fast as some people would like, but it is happening.
In the sense that it's used here, making things "safe for capitalism" is a bad thing. When the government gets involved and uses it's might to shift or sway the market playing field, it's almost always a bad thing. Open source software exists and functions quite well in a free market. If it beats out more traditional software companies, it's because it out competed them in terms of value given per cost demanded.
Open source is not inherently communistic, nor is it a threat to capitalism. It's simply a threat to particular companies, just as new innovations are always a threat to older companies. Even if particular companies die, the market itself will hum along just fine.
If you have skinny pipes, it will take you a couple of hours rather than a couple of days to download.
GNU is open source. It's also free software. All free software is necessarily open source. (If the source isn't open, it isn't free.)
However, not all open source software is free software. For example, software which is "free for non-commercial use" may be open source but it doesn't meet the definition of "free software." It's free as in beer, but not free as in speech.
I didn't say it was a bad thing. I said I wasn't willing to pay a monthly access fee for however long I continue to use Mandrake. You, apparently, are. I wish you happiness and long life with your choice. Because, after all, that's what open source is all about - choice. Lots of choice is a good thing, including the ability to choose not to use Mandrake because they insist on charging to access their RPMs.
And it isn't a matter of waiting a couple of weeks. I've consistently been unable to find RPMs for packages which are not part of the default distribution. I'm not talking about cutting edge, hot off the press, latest editions. I'm just talking about lower profile projects which have been out for some time and are easily found for other distributions.
I'm using Mandrake but preparing to switch to Suse. Why? Because I'm not willing to pay $60 a year to join the Mandrake club, and unless you're willing to join the club it's almost impossible to find updated RPMs. KDE 3.2 came out yesterday. I can download SuSE RPMs or Red Hat RPMs from several places. Where are the Mandrake distros? They're probably available on Club Mandrake, but almost an hour of googling failed to turn them up anywhere else. Yes, I'm sure 10 will have KDE 3.2, but I don't want to run a beta or an RC for my primary desktop and there are a lot of other, lesser known packages that it won't have. In the year that I've been using Mandrake, I have repeatedly run into this program or that utility that I wanted to try out but when I go to download them, there are no Mandrake RPMs to be found. Yes, I can download the source, and I have on numerous occasions, but if I wanted to compile everything from source, I'd be running Gentoo.
I fully agree that nothing beats a shoulder check. You should always directly look at where you're going to drive before you drive there.
However, there is no value in being able to see the same spot in both the rear and side mirrors. Having your mirrors adjusted for the blind spot allows your mirrors to cover more area, not less. If you get in an accident and your mirrors are adjusted so that you can't see a vehicle sitting just off your rear fender, then you're the one guilty of negligence.
Then you have your mirrors misconfigured. Bring them in slightly. I ride a motorcycle, so I'm extremely conscious of them. I have numerous times passed a motorcycle, or had one pass me, and I never lose site of them.
If you properly adjust your mirrors, there is no blind spot.
Most people adjust their side mirrors so that it shows the rear edge of their car and the lane directly behind them. You see much the same thing in your side mirrors as you do in your rearview mirror.
Instead, lean your head to your left until it touches the window glass, then adjust the left mirror until you can just see the left rear corner of the car. Lean your head approximately the same distance to the right, until your head is near the middle of the car, and adjust your right mirror until you can just see the right rear corner of the car. When you sit up straight, you will no longer have a blind spot. Your side mirrors will no longer show you a distance view of the lane to either side, but you can easily see those positions in your rear view mirror. If you drive past another car, you will see the rear of the other car in your side view before the front drops out of sight in your peripheral vision. As you move past, you will see the rear of the car show up in your rearview mirror just before the front disappears from your side view mirror. No blind spot at all.
It will take a few days of driving for you to adjust yourself to the different view in your side mirrors; it will seem a bit awkward at first. But you really will have no blind spot.
There are actually two different issues here. One is the concept of measuring time. The second is the issue of displaying that time.
Our method of measuring time, based upon dividing the day into 24 hours and the hour into 60 minutes made up of 60 seconds, is certainly not particularly intuitive. It's something that must be learned, and requires understanding numbers and the base 10 numbering system as a prerequisite. (Contrary to the implications in several other posts, we use 12 or 24 hours and 60 minutes and seconds but those numbers are still base 10. The number "12" means 1 group of 10 and 2 ones. If we were using base 12, "9 o'clock" would be followed by "A o'clock," not 10.) Without an understanding of how we measure time, no method of displaying the current time will make sense.
Once you understand our time system, we can look at the issue of how to display that time. Digital watches are straightforward and quite intuitive. The only issues one needs to know is how to read digits and the order in which the units are displayed, and the latter at least is arguably an aspect of understanding our time system more than an aspect of understanding a digital watch.
Understanding an analog watch requires learning several concepts that are above and beyond understanding our system of time. As numerous posters have pointed out, there are distinct advantages to analog clocks or watches. A key point is that analog is more efficient than digital for many purposes. But efficiency and intuitiveness are often counter to one another. A command line is, for many purposes, more efficient than a GUI, but learning a manual full of arcane commands, switches and arguments is the opposite of intuitive. Once you learn them, they are very powerful. But there's at least a rough correlation between power and efficiency, and the steepness of the learning curve in a wide variety of disparate areas. I think it's clear that learning to read an analog watch has a higher learning curve than learning to read a digital watch. But once you've invested the effort to learn, it may indeed be easier to read an analog. That isn't a measure of the intuitivenss of the differnt representations; it's a measure of their efficiency.
...and the 12 hour clock-face is so ingrained ... ...but we would have to have been brought up with that as kids...
The points you make are true, but they're arguments about a learned interface, not an intuitive one. If the interface were truly intuitive, it wouldn't have to become "ingrained," nor would we have to be "be brought up with it as kids."
I completely agree that an analog watch is superior in many ways. But it isn't more intuitive.
But what digital watches can't do, according to sweep-hand proponents, is display the time and context as elegantly and intuitively as an analog model
How on earth can you describe an analog watch as more intuitive than a digital watch? More elegant, certainly. But intuitive? A digital watch shows the numbers. If you can read them, you can tell the time. An analog watch uses one set of numbers (or positions, as many don't even have actual numerals on the face) for two different things. You have to learn what each hand means, and what each position means in the context of each hand. Once you learn it, it becomes straightforward and easy, but it's definitely the opposite of intuitive.
Please, don't apologize for correcting me if I make a factual error. I was going from this article, which says in part:
The epicenter of the blast was approximately eight feet from the south wall of Trade Tower Number One, near the support column K31/8.
I took that to mean it was eight feet inside Tower Number One, but now realize that it could have been in a nearby building, eight feet from the outside wall of Tower One. Regardless of the location, the intent of the bomb was to bring down Tower One, toppling it in to Tower Two.