Listen, I'm a *nix and OS X geek all the way, but I think you're going about this backwards.
As far as I'm concerned, what we need are browsers that consistently and accurately render XHTML, CSS, etc. While I'm all gung-ho about Firefox, Mozilla and Safari, all I really care about is whether I can write pages and style-sheets that validate and look relatively correct.
As far as I can tell, Firefox (in particular) is responsible for IE's developers getting off their asses. If or when IE starts rendering valid pages correctly, I know I'll stop bitching. Or at least bitch less.
At least this browser war seems to be revolving around the support of standards.
PR people fear bloggers for the same reason readers like them. And that means there may be a struggle ahead. As this new kind of writing draws readers away from traditional media, we should be prepared for whatever PR mutates into to compensate. When I think how hard PR firms work to score press hits in the traditional media, I can't imagine they'll work any less hard to feed stories to bloggers, if they can figure out how.
Judging by all the front-page attention google's got on slashdot lately, I'd say the viral marketing thing seems to be doing the trick.
Which is immediately followed by: "However, this is not universally adhered to, and many of the hoaxes listed below appeared after noon. Anyone who fails to respond to the tricks played on them in the proper spirit of tolerance and amusement will also suffer bad luck."
The suppression of free speech isn't the issue. The idea is that the "right" of reporters to not reveal their sources encourages a well-functioning media, which is crucial for democracy.
That said, I think that these things can't all fall under a general rule. The Valerie Plame situation is a pretty icky one, as is the dissemination of confidential corporate information.
I kind of like your credit card analogy, though I'd change it from having "someone" publish it on a web site to having an established journalist publish it in a newspaper. I mean, it's obvious that the first is wrong, but in the latter case, if the information was somehow considered news-worthy, it's a little more complicated.
the problem with systems these days that are used by the masses, is that the grossly unintelligent are able now to get their hands on a computer and begin, "Surfing the Net". Our company even is receiving support calls from people when typing in a URL do not know the difference between a "slash" and a "dash". So the average IQ of an Internet user these days is much lower than before.
...
Is it Microsoft's fault that your girlfriend is a moron?
I'm really getting tired of this arrogant crap.
Maybe you don't care about benefitting the average person. Maybe you don't care about poor, uneducated people getting access to the internet, and thus, information. But some of us do.
Most people have 100+ concerns that are much more immediate and relevant than their computer. Is it not a worthy and humane goal to make computers as simple and accessible as possible?
Something I wish I'd known in high school: How to easily identify BS.
The most obvious sign of weird BS is flagrant use of bold and italic faces, as well as liberal use of "words in quotes".
Scanning this essay, I came across a few gems that convinced that 1) This guy should team up with Gene Ray and 2) I probably won't get much out of reading the whole thing. For example:
Discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital. It is something historically original and horrible. It was beyond the capacities of such demonic tators of yore as Nero and Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible. For all their bad intentions they just didn't have the machinery to control their subjects as thoroughly as modern despots do. Discipline is the distinctively diabolical modern mode of control, it is an innovative intrusion which must be interdicted at the earliest opportunity.
Demonic tators of yore? Hmm. Yeah. Plus, from the passage quoted in parent: "Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women." Nope, no sweeping generalizations here. Nope.
Plus it has an LCD screen, voice recorder and FM radio.
None of which are necessary for a jog. Seriously, I know we're all geeks here, but try to understand why the iPod and the iPod mini succeeded. Hint: it wasn't because of lots of extra special features.
Face it, folks. Apple has managed, with the iPod line, to embody the unix philosophy - do one thing and do it very well.
I know someone is going to point to iPod photo. But the iPod photo has not (as far as I know) been as successful as the basic models.
I used to use a Muvo. It did one thing and did it so-so. I would have been happy with it (despite only 64MB of space and no display) if it weren't so unreliable and if the batteries didn't die every day. Something tells me the iPod shuffle will be a much better product.
I now own a 20GB 4G iPod. The abundance of space is nice, but after owning 4 crappy MP3 players, what I really enjoy is the simplicity and predictability. You know, the same thing I like about grep and cat.
Because the Firefox developers followed the Mac user interface guidelines on the Mac version, when you click a link in Firefox with a one-button mouse, it performs the action most commonly expected -- open the page in the current tab. If you click AND HOLD, or if you press the control key, it brings up a contextual menu which offers you a wealth of other choices (new window, new tab, download, bookmark,...).
The irony here being that click and hold does nothing in Safari.
Oh, I'm not addressing the idea that there is some inherent connection between the word "red" and the range of wavelengths that we typically assign the word to, or whether what I call "red" may look more like purple to you. My point was simply about the problems of perception and observation.
And how do you handle the problem of qualia? You seem to be taking a physicalist line.
Thinking it is insufficient. (If you don't agree, then I'd have to ask why you're an agnostic, since most poeple thinking God exists should then put the burden of proof on the minory who don't, right?)
I do agree that thinking something doesn't make it so.
And while I used to agree with the burden argument, I'm not so sure anymore, since people often make the mistake of confusing a lack of confirmation with negation. For example, some creationists often argue that since evolution (being a scientific theory) can't be proven, it must be false. Or that's at least their implication. They completely ignore the fact that falsifiability is a strength of scientific theory. The fact is that it is impossible to prove anything to be objectively true. That shouldn't keep us from reasonably assuming that X or Y exists.
That said, I'm not arguing that we should believe any old wild claim that people make. I'm saying we should give consideration to falsifiable claims. And the idea of objective ethics may be falsifiable (I'm not entirely sure - I haven't thought about that in particular too much yet).
If someone claims that they were abducted by aliens, you may counter that the neighbors saw nothing. They may come back with a claim about technology or something. That's a lousy argument.
However, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that thinks that the murder of children for pleasure is in any way justifiable. I don't think that this is a matter of point of view. Granted, the act is ethically neutral as far as a rock is concerned. But that need not violate an objective ethics system. A rock is neutral to the existence of other rocks as well.
A lot of objective reality, as we see it, is really just us all agreeing about certain things. It is a biological chance that we perceive things as we do. Our brains or eyes could very well have seen red as green, etc. We don't see UV light or radio waves. So we can make claims all we want that our experience does correspond with reality. But in terms of metaphysics, it's just as hard to establish an objectively existing external world as it is to establish an objective "good". I happen to believe in both, though I think that the way I see ethics could also be argued to be a complex form of relativism. Maybe something along the lines of: "X is objectively good or bad insofar as rational beings are concerned." That may avoid the problems of simple relativism (which leads to no basis for judgement) and simple objectivity (which can seem pretty incoherent and irrational).
I don't, however, agree with the emotive theory of ethics - that normative claims amount to nothing more than expressing approval for something we like or find pleasant and booing at that with which we disagree (Hitler was a bad person = Boo Hitler; Martin Luther King was a good person = Yay MLK).
I consider myself a sane person. That's all the explanation I need for why I believe objective reality exists.
Heh. There are some good arguments for cognitive relativism. While I don't necessarily buy into it, I hesitate to talk about sanity when discussing metaphysics. It smacks of ad hominem. Or it's at least irrelevant. Quantum mechanics, for example, seems outright insane to me, but I pretty much buy into it. But I digress.
The problem of the external world is very tricky - not as straightforward as many would like. I'm not going to go on and on about this - I'll just make the argument that sensory experience can't really make that leap into confirmation of external reality. It is convenient and necessary to assume that our perceptions really do correspond to the external world, but many convenient things aren't strictly true.
There's a joke about metaphysics: The difference between an insane person and a philosopher is that while both realize that the floor may not actually exist in the room they're about to enter, the philosopher nevertheless enters.
A basic tenant of most religions is that God's rules are not arbitrary and that there is a point to everything.
That's it right there - if it's not arbitrary, then it must adhere to some system. And if it adheres to a system, then the existence of God is not strictly necessary.
Is Kant's Categorical Imperative compatible with God's will? And if it is, why is God necessary?
Admittedly, I'm watering all this down. But you get the idea.
Subjective things are things that exist ONLY inside the human mind, like value judgements on what is ethically correct. I think that things that are ethically wrong are wrong merely because we desire to live in a world where people don't do that sort of thing.
I'm just delving into OT conversation now, but I'm loving it, so I don't care. If you're worried about mod points, my email is obfuscated, but available.
Your last sentence there implies a lot. Is killing infants for pleasure wrong merely because we desire to live in a world where people don't kill infants for pleasure? I'm being simplistic, but I just want to get an idea of how serious you are.:)
There are several good arguments for cognitive relativism. That is, that trees, rocks, gravity, etc. are merely constructs of the human mind. What makes you think that trees exist objectively but "the good" does not?
I think that the crux of our disagreement appears to be that acknowledging the existance of God is not quite "religious" since for example, agnostics acknowledge the existence of God.
[emphasis mine]
This is a common mistake. An agnostic doesn't acknowledge the existence of God. An agnostic is neutral on the question, since (from an agnostic point of view) there's no substantial evidence either way. See this link.
For brevity (and because I think my opinion on the matter is boring), I usually tell people that I'm an atheist, when in fact I'm agnostic.:)
About your claim that ethics are subjective and have always been, I must say that you should be aware of the immense burden of proof behind that statement. Your average rationalist philosopher would take issue with such a claim (Plato, Descartes, Pascal, etc.).
An excellent point which is often glossed over these days. I'm saying this as a liberal who is not a relativist. That's bound to make some people mad. Or confused. A friend of mine wrote on this.
The point is when you hear what people say it seems there are more rebels - so you would expect less vanilla things to end up on top. However it seems people are full of hot air, and not so interesting as they would have you believe.
I think the point is that you can't derive that from the data presented.:) Even if it's true.
Not to mention, I'm not sure what you can determine about people from the search terms they use anyway.
Does it really depress you, like nearly everyone else here at/., that so many people think alike? Wait...:P
Anyway, this is still a clone -- it's a different "instance" of the original animal (even if it's made via a copy constructor.) It won't have "genetic memory" of its new owner, it will be a completely different pet. Why spend $50,000? Why not spend $100 at the pound, or a few hundred from a quality breeder, or even a "FREE KITTYS" from a farm?
The reasons need not be sentimental. Maybe the pet had a remarkable personality, was easily trained, etc. The price is steep, granted.
Besides, I'd be inclined to think of a cloned pet as the original's sibling.
I don't know. I'm sure something good can come of this.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they bought Spyglass (which was, I believe, based on Mosaic).
Listen, I'm a *nix and OS X geek all the way, but I think you're going about this backwards. As far as I'm concerned, what we need are browsers that consistently and accurately render XHTML, CSS, etc. While I'm all gung-ho about Firefox, Mozilla and Safari, all I really care about is whether I can write pages and style-sheets that validate and look relatively correct. As far as I can tell, Firefox (in particular) is responsible for IE's developers getting off their asses. If or when IE starts rendering valid pages correctly, I know I'll stop bitching. Or at least bitch less. At least this browser war seems to be revolving around the support of standards.
I don't know. I think there's some intentional irony here.
Which is immediately followed by: "However, this is not universally adhered to, and many of the hoaxes listed below appeared after noon. Anyone who fails to respond to the tricks played on them in the proper spirit of tolerance and amusement will also suffer bad luck."
Not only that -- you could grab a person's arm and make them tap dance.
The suppression of free speech isn't the issue. The idea is that the "right" of reporters to not reveal their sources encourages a well-functioning media, which is crucial for democracy.
That said, I think that these things can't all fall under a general rule. The Valerie Plame situation is a pretty icky one, as is the dissemination of confidential corporate information.
I kind of like your credit card analogy, though I'd change it from having "someone" publish it on a web site to having an established journalist publish it in a newspaper. I mean, it's obvious that the first is wrong, but in the latter case, if the information was somehow considered news-worthy, it's a little more complicated.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but don't we use viruses as vectors all the time? Like in vaccines?
I'm really getting tired of this arrogant crap.
Maybe you don't care about benefitting the average person. Maybe you don't care about poor, uneducated people getting access to the internet, and thus, information. But some of us do.
Most people have 100+ concerns that are much more immediate and relevant than their computer. Is it not a worthy and humane goal to make computers as simple and accessible as possible?
Twit.
Ok, this argument might have flown 5-10 years ago. But OS X ... "dumbed down"? That's a silly argument.
How exactly is OS X "dumbed down" compared to Windows or *NIX?
Okay, you're just making crap up. I remember how it went down.
Something I wish I'd known in high school: How to easily identify BS.
The most obvious sign of weird BS is flagrant use of bold and italic faces, as well as liberal use of "words in quotes".
Scanning this essay, I came across a few gems that convinced that 1) This guy should team up with Gene Ray and 2) I probably won't get much out of reading the whole thing. For example:
Demonic tators of yore? Hmm. Yeah. Plus, from the passage quoted in parent: "Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women." Nope, no sweeping generalizations here. Nope.
None of which are necessary for a jog. Seriously, I know we're all geeks here, but try to understand why the iPod and the iPod mini succeeded. Hint: it wasn't because of lots of extra special features.
Face it, folks. Apple has managed, with the iPod line, to embody the unix philosophy - do one thing and do it very well.
I know someone is going to point to iPod photo. But the iPod photo has not (as far as I know) been as successful as the basic models.
I used to use a Muvo. It did one thing and did it so-so. I would have been happy with it (despite only 64MB of space and no display) if it weren't so unreliable and if the batteries didn't die every day. Something tells me the iPod shuffle will be a much better product.
I now own a 20GB 4G iPod. The abundance of space is nice, but after owning 4 crappy MP3 players, what I really enjoy is the simplicity and predictability. You know, the same thing I like about grep and cat.
The irony here being that click and hold does nothing in Safari.
Oh, I'm not addressing the idea that there is some inherent connection between the word "red" and the range of wavelengths that we typically assign the word to, or whether what I call "red" may look more like purple to you. My point was simply about the problems of perception and observation.
And how do you handle the problem of qualia? You seem to be taking a physicalist line.
I do agree that thinking something doesn't make it so.
And while I used to agree with the burden argument, I'm not so sure anymore, since people often make the mistake of confusing a lack of confirmation with negation. For example, some creationists often argue that since evolution (being a scientific theory) can't be proven, it must be false. Or that's at least their implication. They completely ignore the fact that falsifiability is a strength of scientific theory. The fact is that it is impossible to prove anything to be objectively true. That shouldn't keep us from reasonably assuming that X or Y exists.
That said, I'm not arguing that we should believe any old wild claim that people make. I'm saying we should give consideration to falsifiable claims. And the idea of objective ethics may be falsifiable (I'm not entirely sure - I haven't thought about that in particular too much yet).
If someone claims that they were abducted by aliens, you may counter that the neighbors saw nothing. They may come back with a claim about technology or something. That's a lousy argument.
However, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that thinks that the murder of children for pleasure is in any way justifiable. I don't think that this is a matter of point of view. Granted, the act is ethically neutral as far as a rock is concerned. But that need not violate an objective ethics system. A rock is neutral to the existence of other rocks as well.
A lot of objective reality, as we see it, is really just us all agreeing about certain things. It is a biological chance that we perceive things as we do. Our brains or eyes could very well have seen red as green, etc. We don't see UV light or radio waves. So we can make claims all we want that our experience does correspond with reality. But in terms of metaphysics, it's just as hard to establish an objectively existing external world as it is to establish an objective "good". I happen to believe in both, though I think that the way I see ethics could also be argued to be a complex form of relativism. Maybe something along the lines of: "X is objectively good or bad insofar as rational beings are concerned." That may avoid the problems of simple relativism (which leads to no basis for judgement) and simple objectivity (which can seem pretty incoherent and irrational).
I don't, however, agree with the emotive theory of ethics - that normative claims amount to nothing more than expressing approval for something we like or find pleasant and booing at that with which we disagree (Hitler was a bad person = Boo Hitler; Martin Luther King was a good person = Yay MLK).
Heh. There are some good arguments for cognitive relativism. While I don't necessarily buy into it, I hesitate to talk about sanity when discussing metaphysics. It smacks of ad hominem. Or it's at least irrelevant. Quantum mechanics, for example, seems outright insane to me, but I pretty much buy into it. But I digress.
The problem of the external world is very tricky - not as straightforward as many would like. I'm not going to go on and on about this - I'll just make the argument that sensory experience can't really make that leap into confirmation of external reality. It is convenient and necessary to assume that our perceptions really do correspond to the external world, but many convenient things aren't strictly true.
There's a joke about metaphysics: The difference between an insane person and a philosopher is that while both realize that the floor may not actually exist in the room they're about to enter, the philosopher nevertheless enters.
I didn't say it was a good joke.
That's it right there - if it's not arbitrary, then it must adhere to some system. And if it adheres to a system, then the existence of God is not strictly necessary.
Is Kant's Categorical Imperative compatible with God's will? And if it is, why is God necessary?
Admittedly, I'm watering all this down. But you get the idea.
I'm just delving into OT conversation now, but I'm loving it, so I don't care. If you're worried about mod points, my email is obfuscated, but available.
Your last sentence there implies a lot. Is killing infants for pleasure wrong merely because we desire to live in a world where people don't kill infants for pleasure? I'm being simplistic, but I just want to get an idea of how serious you are. :)
There are several good arguments for cognitive relativism. That is, that trees, rocks, gravity, etc. are merely constructs of the human mind. What makes you think that trees exist objectively but "the good" does not?
[emphasis mine]
This is a common mistake. An agnostic doesn't acknowledge the existence of God. An agnostic is neutral on the question, since (from an agnostic point of view) there's no substantial evidence either way. See this link.
For brevity (and because I think my opinion on the matter is boring), I usually tell people that I'm an atheist, when in fact I'm agnostic. :)
An excellent point which is often glossed over these days. I'm saying this as a liberal who is not a relativist. That's bound to make some people mad. Or confused. A friend of mine wrote on this.
I think the point is that you can't derive that from the data presented. :) Even if it's true.
Not to mention, I'm not sure what you can determine about people from the search terms they use anyway.
Does it really depress you, like nearly everyone else here at /., that so many people think alike? Wait... :P
The reasons need not be sentimental. Maybe the pet had a remarkable personality, was easily trained, etc. The price is steep, granted.
Besides, I'd be inclined to think of a cloned pet as the original's sibling.
I don't know. I'm sure something good can come of this.