That last bit that you said reminded me of an idea that I had for an incredibly nerdy "pscyhological horror" film (kind of Kafka-esque). Picture this: the protagonist wakes up one morning only to discover that, despite his best efforts, the terms that he uses simply fail to refer! Confusion and angst ensues. (How one would represent this, exactly, I have no idea.)
Also, people are really using "infer" in the stead of "imply"? I haven't seen that one yet. Is the usage in situations like this: "So-and-so has a nice personality" "Oh, do you mean to infer that she's ugly?!"
I not only denounce continental drift, I demand that we put a stop to it immediately! Think of all of the destructive violence that plate tectonics creates! Will someone please think of the children?!
On a more serious note, I agree with you in part--insofar as I think you are write to criticize calling the use of the phrase in this way a mistake. The real danger, though, is ambiguity that can result from shifts in meaning that may not be apparent. The case in the summary is rather innocuous, since it is clear from context which meaning of the phrase was intended, but this is not always so obvious. Long story short--neologisms and re-baptisms are not "mistakes", but they can cause unneeded confusion.
"If these people are hiding something, and have encrypted it, this can only mean that they don't want us to find out what they know, and this strengthens our conviction that they are hiding something."
I would classify this statement as neither tautologous nor question-begging.
It's not tautologous since it may be false (i.e. it may be true that someone is hiding information, and has encrypted it, but false that they don't want others to find out what they know--maybe they're just hiding encrypted silly messages in their files as Easter eggs, in the hopes that dedicated hackers *will* find it. In that case, the conditional claim is false.)
It's also not question-begging, since the conclusion of this "argument" is that "this strengthens our conviction that they are hiding something" and this claim is not presupposed or otherwise assumed by the premises (i.e. that "they are hiding something... and have encrypted it").
Finally, I too found the use of the phrase "begs the question" in the summary to be inappropriate, since what was meant was clearly something more along the lines of "raises the question". However, it's a forgivable flaw since it is clear from context which meaning of the phrase was...err... meant, hence there is no (special) danger of confusion due to ambiguity.
The summary says that the nice thing about virtualization is that it can "...protect applications from the vagaries of the operating environments they run on." I would have thought that the really great thing about virtualization is that it can protect operating environments from the vagaries of applications which are run on them. This is especially handy when you just want to try out a new bit of software etc.
I'm not so sure about the claim that XP "just worked" (a lot of stuff works well now, but it wasn't so nice pre-SP1).
That said, I agree with your overall sentiment. I tried out Vista for a while and was really rather unimpressed. The new eye candy was pretty neat for a little while, until I realized that it was actually completely unhelpful with respect to easily switching between programs/windows (Beryl and OSX's expose are both many orders of magnitude more useful, not to mention the fact that Beryl beats the pants off Aero in the eye candy department anyway).
The real kicker for me, though, was performance. You'd think 1GB of ram would be sufficient to run *an operating system* smoothly, but my disks were definitely thrashing away quite a bit, which was rather annoying. Driver support is also a disaster. Some games (in particular Oblivion) were unplayable unless I turned off the sound. Now I know that people say that this is Creative's fault for not getting drivers out in time, but MS shares a large part of the blame here for *changing things that didn't need to be changed* (though I now note that you can buy a "compatibility driver" from Creative for $10... what a scam). Plus, even with no sound, my 7800GS wasn't doing as well as it does under XP either. Considering the fact that *the only* reason I even have a windows installation is for gaming, Vista offers absolutely no positive aspects for me. (Ok, well I will admit that I did like the fact that I could install RAID drivers from a flash drive instead of a *floppy disk* while installing the OS.)
What I find interesting here, also regarding the length of the simulation, is the confidence that they have in the proof produced by 18 years of computational grinding. That's a lot of time in which some small error could be introduced, with potentially serious (insofar as it would invalidate the proof) consequences. The "author" of this proof (Schaeffer iirc) is also quoted in NYT stating that it's not a rigorous mathematical proof but, rather, a "computational proof". What is this distinction supposed to be? Is it just that we don't have the ability to increase our confidence in the results by checking the proof for errors and, hence, we should settle for the apparently correct procedures that generated the proof in the first place?
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That's a hilarious comic--thanks for the link.
That's really interesting--thanks for the link.
I think we're in agreement.
That last bit that you said reminded me of an idea that I had for an incredibly nerdy "pscyhological horror" film (kind of Kafka-esque). Picture this: the protagonist wakes up one morning only to discover that, despite his best efforts, the terms that he uses simply fail to refer! Confusion and angst ensues. (How one would represent this, exactly, I have no idea.)
Also, people are really using "infer" in the stead of "imply"? I haven't seen that one yet. Is the usage in situations like this:
"So-and-so has a nice personality"
"Oh, do you mean to infer that she's ugly?!"
If so, then yeah I definitely see the problem.
I not only denounce continental drift, I demand that we put a stop to it immediately! Think of all of the destructive violence that plate tectonics creates! Will someone please think of the children?!
On a more serious note, I agree with you in part--insofar as I think you are write to criticize calling the use of the phrase in this way a mistake. The real danger, though, is ambiguity that can result from shifts in meaning that may not be apparent. The case in the summary is rather innocuous, since it is clear from context which meaning of the phrase was intended, but this is not always so obvious. Long story short--neologisms and re-baptisms are not "mistakes", but they can cause unneeded confusion.
"If these people are hiding something, and have encrypted it, this can only mean that they don't want us to find out what they know, and this strengthens our conviction that they are hiding something."
I would classify this statement as neither tautologous nor question-begging.
It's not tautologous since it may be false (i.e. it may be true that someone is hiding information, and has encrypted it, but false that they don't want others to find out what they know--maybe they're just hiding encrypted silly messages in their files as Easter eggs, in the hopes that dedicated hackers *will* find it. In that case, the conditional claim is false.)
It's also not question-begging, since the conclusion of this "argument" is that "this strengthens our conviction that they are hiding something" and this claim is not presupposed or otherwise assumed by the premises (i.e. that "they are hiding something... and have encrypted it").
Finally, I too found the use of the phrase "begs the question" in the summary to be inappropriate, since what was meant was clearly something more along the lines of "raises the question". However, it's a forgivable flaw since it is clear from context which meaning of the phrase was...err... meant, hence there is no (special) danger of confusion due to ambiguity.
The summary says that the nice thing about virtualization is that it can "...protect applications from the vagaries of the operating environments they run on." I would have thought that the really great thing about virtualization is that it can protect operating environments from the vagaries of applications which are run on them. This is especially handy when you just want to try out a new bit of software etc.
I'm not so sure about the claim that XP "just worked" (a lot of stuff works well now, but it wasn't so nice pre-SP1).
That said, I agree with your overall sentiment. I tried out Vista for a while and was really rather unimpressed. The new eye candy was pretty neat for a little while, until I realized that it was actually completely unhelpful with respect to easily switching between programs/windows (Beryl and OSX's expose are both many orders of magnitude more useful, not to mention the fact that Beryl beats the pants off Aero in the eye candy department anyway).
The real kicker for me, though, was performance. You'd think 1GB of ram would be sufficient to run *an operating system* smoothly, but my disks were definitely thrashing away quite a bit, which was rather annoying. Driver support is also a disaster. Some games (in particular Oblivion) were unplayable unless I turned off the sound. Now I know that people say that this is Creative's fault for not getting drivers out in time, but MS shares a large part of the blame here for *changing things that didn't need to be changed* (though I now note that you can buy a "compatibility driver" from Creative for $10... what a scam). Plus, even with no sound, my 7800GS wasn't doing as well as it does under XP either. Considering the fact that *the only* reason I even have a windows installation is for gaming, Vista offers absolutely no positive aspects for me. (Ok, well I will admit that I did like the fact that I could install RAID drivers from a flash drive instead of a *floppy disk* while installing the OS.)
Ok, rant over.
What I find interesting here, also regarding the length of the simulation, is the confidence that they have in the proof produced by 18 years of computational grinding. That's a lot of time in which some small error could be introduced, with potentially serious (insofar as it would invalidate the proof) consequences. The "author" of this proof (Schaeffer iirc) is also quoted in NYT stating that it's not a rigorous mathematical proof but, rather, a "computational proof". What is this distinction supposed to be? Is it just that we don't have the ability to increase our confidence in the results by checking the proof for errors and, hence, we should settle for the apparently correct procedures that generated the proof in the first place?