Using the term "evolutionary rate" is pretty misleading: whats happening is that the genomes are changing faster That *is* evolution.
but almost all of that change isn't from any selective pressure. Its mostly "neutral drift", things changing randomly in a way that does not impact the fitness of the organism. That's natural selection. You imply that natural selection is absent, which it is not.
The site you linked to has poorly named. "Rebel", sure, if that's what you want, but "science"? No.
These things which this site (your site?) pretend to debunk are highly accurate. So accurate, in fact, they allow us to make extremely precise predictions about the future. In fact, these notions have allowed us to predict further things which didn't seem to follow from "common sense logic" (which your site misuses severely), but turned out to be very true (ie, useful) indeed.
Your site (or that site, whatever) is useful in only one way, and that is it encourages people to think. It's sort of like a question, "what if water flowed uphill?" Useful in pondering how things really work, but beyond that, it's rubbish. Worse, if one is in a solipsistic mood, it's far to easy to think, "yeah, why *doesn't* water flow uphill? I mean, it sort of does when waves crash ashore, or water flows over a rock. And don't get me started on clouds! This whole 'water flowing downhill' nonsense is bunk!" which, if one isn't careful, sends one off into the land of crackpottery, through a series of reasonable logical steps.
From what I've read on that site, the argument is basically, "science says X, but if X is true, what about Y? Doesn't Y follow from X? But Y doesn't make sense, therefore X is not true". The problem with that argument is that X really, really works. That Y appears to follow, and Y doesn't seem right, might be true, but mysteries like Y are what science is all about. Understanding if they are true or not, and if not, yet they should follow from X, how do you fix X?
What you *don't* do is just throw out X because Y *appears* to contradict it, because X is exceptionally useful. If you want to throw out X because of Y, you've got to come up with a Z that works *at least* as accurately as X does for everything not-Y, and *also* explains Y. Until you do that, you're not a "Rebel Scientist", you are a crackpot. In fact, that's the thing that separates geniuses like Newton and Einstein from the multitude of dime-a-dozen crackpots--they did the work, formulated testable theories and *demonstrated* the accuracy of those theories.
Do the work, create a theory then demonstrate that it accurately reflects reality. That's science. What you've got is just a hand-waving mockery of science, and only marginally better than more prominent "faith based" (ie, imaginary) cosmologies.
And, to preempt any nonsense about how I'm just irrationally defending a false notion of reality out of fear or ignorance, be certain of this: I am not wedded to the existence of time, space, or space-time (aside from the fact that, by all appearances, that's the stuff I seem to live in), if they are shown to not exist, if some theory were to come along which worked *better* than Newtonian/classical physics, SR and GR and QM, I'd support it in a heartbeat, even if it contracted just about everything those other theories contained.
Interestingly, unless you also developed analogs to those theories, even if space, time and space-time were proven to not exist, those theories would all still be used, because, even the things they reference do not exist, they all work.
If this technology can be implemented successfully, the inventors should win the Nobel prize, the Pulitzer price, and possibly a special Academy Award. Whereas those against this type of technology are prime candidates for the Darwin Award.
If a policy's bad, telling people they don't have to live in an area run by that government isn't a particularly practical solution That's not in question. What I'm objecting to is the blanket statement about taxes in general, which is what Colin Smith (the OP) was getting at.
He didn't seem to think municipal WiFi is bad, but that being forced to pay for it (taxes) is, regardless of the quality or merits of the project.
Whenever a corporation does something evil (to their customer, or to their employees) the standard libertarian response is, "no one's forcing you to (shop|work) there," so this should be an argument they'd understand.
yes, they did [fail] unless you consider near-Bankruptcy success They were never near bankruptcy, and even if they were, that does not mean they failed (although I'd agree that that would have been a good sign of potential failure). They were definitely on a trajectory for failure in the mid-90s, but they were nowhere near *actual* failure. Ever.
"OS X is every bit as crash prone and unreliable as Windows" (It's crash prone, but not "every bit as crash prone") Give it time[a]. Defects per line of code[b] in their software are probably[c] sitting around average for the OS industry. This is statistically provable[d]. Ok, this was so absolutely non sequitur, I had to add what I wrote to provide context.
[a] What does time have to do with it? Are all the crashes just building up in preparation for a crash deluge? [b] Defects do not necessarily mean crashes. [c] Unfounded assertion. [d] It's statistically provable that there's an average?
You are just engaging in the fallacy I already warned you about. Specifically that "OS X crashes, Windows crashes, therefore OS X and Windows both crash equally often".
Ok, I want a hypercard app I wrote 15 years ago to run on OS X. I'm sorry. I didn't realize that by "every few years" you meant, "every 15 years".
"those people who blame Microsoft for vendor lock-in" (straw man, no one claims this) - It's not a strawman; I'm addressing a common argument. Please expand. In what way do people complain about MS being responsible for vendor lock-in for which MS is not responsible for vender lock-in?
Maybe not to you, but I prefer building custom systems. That's cool, and a valid complaint. I don't share it (at least, not to any significant extent).
a variation on the Not Invernted Here Syndrome. This is a strange argument that comes up a lot. Strange mostly for the fact that the overwhelming majority of technology in today's Macs are open standards or third party standards, from the hardware (Intel chips; Intel, Nvidia, ATI graphics; SATA hard drives; DIMMs/SO-DIMMS; USB; WiFi; etc) to the OS (BSD user space, Objective-C, XML, etc) to the software (AAC, MP3, H.264, etc). The only thing really closed about Apple is their locking of the OS to Apple hardware. In the realm of standards and interoperability, MS is far more guilty of NIH, constantly inventing their own standards for things which already exist. (the worst offender of all here, in the land of consumer products, is Sony, but they're outside the scope of this discussion.)
Apple was once very NIH-prone. This era pretty much ended with the original iMac, and has been continuing to this day.
[a]I never said anything was wrong with that; just that it's [b]stupid to use it as a selling point, when it's [c]primarily due to their low market share. [b] contradicts [a] and [c] is an unproved assertion.
To expand, if there's nothing wrong with the fact that there are no viruses for OS X, why is it stupid to promote that fact? As for assertion [c], OS X has a larger market share than Linux, yet there exist actual Linux viruses.
Funny, I could have sworn that's [viruses] what the article was about. The article is about a worm *threat* from a worm that *doesn't exist* beyond the (claimed) system of a security researcher. Ignoring the conflation of virus and worm, I covered this when I excepted "proofs-of-concept".
A worm is a virus that propagates over a network No, it's not. A worm spreads over a network, it has no requirements that it also be a virus (which inserts itself into existing files).
not much of a stretch. Really, at least read the title. "Worm Threat Forces Apple to Disable Software?" The *threat* of a worm, and Apple closed the hole. An interesting story, in and of itself, and it speaks well of both Apple and OS X's security (just like when this sort of thing happens with various open source programs), and very much *unlike* how it happens in the Windows world, where there usually exists an *actual* exploit in the wild and where the patch from MS is usually *not out yet*.
All of which has absolutely nothing to do with viruses.
...that's a steaming load, unless you're only talking about the people who regularly google "free __" and constantly download email attachments. The only serious fault in any modern OS is that idiotproofing them is nigh impossible. That's an extremely lame cop-out. Blame the user. That doesn't change the fact that, as a user, you have to be vigilant using Windows, and not terribly vigilant *at all* using OS X. All you're really doing is shifting the vigilance, from software to the user. In the end, it's still the same thing.
Are you telling me you don't run antivirus or antispyware software on your Windows computer? Or are you just super-vigilant about what you click on? For me, on my Mac, I don't run antivirus or antispyware, and, aside from phishing emails[*], I don't put much thought into what I click on. The reason being is that my risk is *infinitesimal* compared to the risks doing the same thing under Windows.
[*]phishing emails don't pose a risk in being opened under OS X (but they can under Windows, if they point to a site attempting to deploy spyware), I just don't click them mainly because I don't want to validate my email address with the spammer/phisher.
A pretend army that happens to have mod points. Interesting... Mod points *are* pretend, or at least more pretend than the things they are modding.
He's specifically referring to (I gather) the "pretend war" that is going on over the modding of the comments, which are the "real war". This is especially interesting since modders can not (directly) participate in the discussion.
In a way, it's a lot like some sort of imaginary battle in the heavens in which gods are fighting to help their human followers on the battlefield.
I'm just going to collect a few of your more inane tidbits together here:
"Apple failed" (they did not)
"OS X is every bit as crash prone and unreliable as Windows" (It's crash prone, but not "every bit as crash prone")
"not so with Apple, which radically changes their OS every few years" (Two points here: 1. if this is true, it belies your following statement 2. it's not true)
"There is no inherently superior security in OS X" (the overall design and implementation of OS X is more secure than the overall design and implementation of XP. Vista is a vast improvement over XP, but it remains to be seen how this works out)
"those people who blame Microsoft for vendor lock-in" (straw man, no one claims this)
"OS X is the ultimate in vendor lock-in" (OS X is an extremely open system. The only "lock-in" is with their hardware, which really isn't that big of a deal.) For someone who claims to be fighting against religious zeal, you sure come across fanatically angry. You make the basic fallacy that, "Windows is flawed, OS X is flawed, therefore Windows and OS X are equally flawed," which is complete nonsense.
There are people who get fanatical about Macs, but you're lumping a whole lot of rational people in with them, and fully deserve flaimbait or troll modding for it.
the minute you take a bite of the precious worm-ridden Apple, mods put you to sleep for a year No, stupid shit like, "eat crow" gets modded down. Eat crow for what? A security flaw existed? It was patched? WTF? A lot of anti-Apple sentiment gets modded up, as well, though generally the more rational stuff, like people complaining about vendor lock-in (like you did above) or various other things that actually make sense.
Not to mention the fact that both you, and the OP are both (at present) modded positively, which makes your cries of being oppressed a bit silly.
I think it has more to do with the 'Macs don't get viruses.' ads we see every now and then And they fucking don't. What's wrong with that? Macs DON'T GET VIRUSES. There were some for OS 9, but there are none (beyond a few "proofs-of-concept") for OS X. NONE.
That doesn't mean viruses are impossible, nor that they will never come, just that they haven't yet.
Linux/*BSD get their fair share of worms, but also have legions of nerdy fanboys to fix vulnerabilities, and no one important foolishly calls them impenetrable. No one calls OS X impenetrable either. Strange how you jump from viruses to worms, btw.
OS X is very much like Linux, and very much unlike Windows, where with the former, you know the potential almost certainly exists for your machine to be hacked into, but it's just not something you have to worry much about, while with the latter, if you aren't taking proactive measures to protect your system, you are taking a huge risk.
Ironically, that RIGHT THERE is exactly the sort of thing the GP was talking about. Noone's the victim in these matters, but everyone's an aggressor. Get it right. That doesn't even make any sense. MS is the one on the offensive--trying to pass a standard. The question is whether that standard is poisoned (which is a highly pertinent question, given Microsoft's history with such things). The rest of us are just reacting--specifically trying to make sure this doesn't become just another in a long list of detrimental standards from Redmond.
Those of us who react negatively to MS are not the initiators, we are not looking to pick a fight. We are just defending freedom, openness and interoperability. If MS starts acting responsibly, like IBM or Apple do, you'll find anti-MS sentiment evaporating, just like anti-IBM and anti-Apple sentiment has.
It takes a very special type of relativism to call *us* the aggressors, if that's really what you think to call us.
The same BS that goes on in the ODF vs OOXML debates (the reality is that 90% of that debate is politics BS, not technical merits). Not being able to implement a document format in an Open Source project *is* a technical merit.
It's Microsoft who's to blame for pushing politics into technical merits. How dare you blame the victim.
I prefer my standards, interfaces and formats open and freely implementable. MS prefers to own them fully. Everyone who *isn't* MS would do best to join us in the "free and open" camp, and until MS themselves join us, they *fully* deserve to be criticized, and their proposals rejected out of hand.
MS has been making overtures of compromise, which deserve some credit, but can never be enough on this topic. In the context of standards, open and free are binary, there's no half-way, because all it takes is *one* legal restriction to prevent open source implementations.
Claim: "The less tax the better" Evidence: "because at it's core government is horribly inefficent" Conclusion: "so the less money going to them the better."
Even if, "at its core", government is horribly inefficient, that does not mean it's not useful, or even necessary. Of course, sometimes government is exceptionally *efficient*. Your evidence does not support your conclusion, which is just a rewording of your claim.
Then you continue: "Sure, they are required to pay for things we couldn't be trusted to pay for ourselfs like police and the military,"
This completely contradicts your conclusion above. If "the less money, the better", then you can't get better than zero. However, zero and the above are contradictory.
Finally: "but taxation to protect local manufacturers who can't compete is crappy economics."
And funneling your wealth out of the country is *good* economics? Extreme anti-protectionism protects only two classes: the multinational corporations and the extremely wealthy. If you are not in either of those two classes, you are arguing against your own best interests. Congratulations.
It's because of people like you that the US has no universal health care and most students spend half their lives paying of their loans. Taxation in general is an inefficient allocation of resources with significant deadweight losses. It's funny. You wrote that as though it's a meaningful response.
Regardless, it seems you are stuck on the assertion that taxes are a generally inefficient way to allocate resources.
Let's assume that's true. Two questions arise: - What about the situations where it *isn't* inefficient? - Is the inefficiency in the more common cases worse than the alternative?
Interestingly enough, on the topic you replied to, public healthcare in the US is actually *more* efficient than private healthcare. And, even if it weren't, even inefficient healthcare is *infinitely* more desirable than no healthcare at all.
I've had two best-selling authors tell me that they hate libraries, and consider them "theft". I wouldn't call such people "authors" so much as "book writers".
Your skills at understanding logic seem lacking, not mine. That is to be expected, as there was an article not too long ago regarding how those who don't know something have a hard time grasping that don't know. The logic in question was you saying *I* had to shut up about something (you claimed) I know nothing about. Whereas *you* (for some reason) need not heed the same advice.
The rest of your post is about two things:
A. Even if MS's claims are baseless, they can still affect you. B. Novell isn't the bad guys.
A is a side-issue and does not alter the discussion at hand (which is whether I have the right to criticize Novell unless I stop using all Novell-touched Open Source software altogether, which was your initial claim, and then whether I have the right to even criticize Novell *at all*, which was your second claim).
But to close this point altogether, I don't give a rat's ass whether Novell is taking (what is essentially) an insurance policy out for me. I never asked them to, and were they *to* ask, I'd tell them I just don't want it. But they didn't ask, and I think their actions deserve criticism. And I further think it's the height of arrogance for you to come in and tell me I have no right to criticize them.
B is more rational. you'll note I never said Novell *was* the bad guy. What I said is that they f'ed up by making a deal with the "bad guys". Novell rightfully deserves criticism for their deal. Just because they were the first doesn't excuse them, it merely makes their mistake more understandable. However, being understandable is not the same as being beyond reproach.
This is the law and this is grownup land. Wrapping your assertions in condescension does not make them true.
If you don't know the new rules of the playground, take your ball and go home Fair enough. In this situation, "taking my ball and go home" means not agreeing to play along with Novell's charade. It does not mean boycotting everything Novell has ever touched. In your analogy, it's not playing the game I find flawed, but not having to leave the whole playground over it.
This does not add any more legitimacy to the fact that MS is full of FUD. How much more do you want than them saying "No, Microsoft is wrong" ? Novell disagreed with Microsoft's assertions that this proved Linux violated their patents. Doesn't matter. They took MS's money, which allows MS to use Novell's actions to support their inane FUD against Linux. Novell has accepted tainted money, and the assertion that I must either greet such an action with open arms, or leave the entire Open Source community altogether is silly.
Go read about them. They are protecting your ass. I never asked them to, and I absolutely reject their offer. It's curious. In one moment, you claim Novell holds the position that MS's claims are flat-out wrong. In the next moment, you claim Novell is protecting me from those very things which they claim are baseless.
You might as well suggest I take out an insurance policy against djinn and poltergeists.
By the way, about me not knowing your reasons, I don't have to know your reasons. If you have them based on misinformation YOU are the one who is wrong. Your circular logic does not work here. Your grasp of logic leaves much to be desired. You claimed that my ignorance of Novell means I must shut up, but your ignorance of me is not cause for *you* to shut up? You have not supported your assertion that I am ignorant of what Novell has agreed to. In fact, quite the opposite, as you just now admit that "[you[ don't have to know [my] reasons".
OK, they made a deal with MS. What was this deal regarding? If you don't know, then shut up. OK, I criticized the MS-Novell deal. What was the basis for my criticism? If you don't know, then shut up.
Well, if you take the reasoning in your opening sentences to be valid, anyway.
If you DO know then you realize that Novell made money by indemnifying their customers. The exact opposite, actually. Novell made money by legitimizing the claim that Linux users infringe on MS patents. Otherwise, why would they need indemnification?
The money is tainted, and Novell shouldn't (morally) have accepted it. Business-wise it was probably a smart move. I wasn't criticizing their business-sense, but their integrity. It's a common delusion that business and morality have no intersection, but the backlash against companies like Novell (mild backlash, unless this deal causes problems down the road) and SCO (severe backlash) are proof that the two are related.
They promised to give up nothing regarding the openness of their software. They did not compromise their software and have not injected MS code to poison the Linux base. True, but not the reason for my criticism.
Novell really f'ed up by making that deal with MS, and they deserve to be criticized for it.
Otherwise, stop using Gnome, KDE, SAMBA, the kernel and a shitload of other products that Novell contributes PILES of money and development to or be considered a hypocrite. That doesn't make any sense for three completely different reasons.
1. Hypocrisy isn't defined as using something you criticize. Or do you only use, consume, purchase, support, etc, things which you have absolutely *no* criticisms or reservations about? 2. Even if one were to decide to boycott Novell over this, why must that extend to open source projects that are freely obtained from parties who have no affiliation with Novell whatsoever? 3. goombah88 heavily implied he doesn't use Linux. So even if what you claim as hypocrisy *is* hypocrisy (it isn't), he wouldn't be guilty of it anyway!
I applaud Ubuntu (Canonical), RedHat, and all the others who had the integrity and good sense to decline MS's offer. I similarly am highly disappointed that Novell did not do the same. But I don't hold that mark against them as sufficient cause to refuse to do business with them, let alone the even more ludicrous response of boycotting everything, even open source projects, which Novell has contributed to in any way.
Maybe you should take your own advice:
If you want to be a troll, be a smarter one.
That's just about the absolute *worst* advice you could give. Someone is interested enough in astronomy to consider a telescope costing a few hundred dollars, but is having trouble justifying the cost, and you tell them to buy a $15k[*] scope?
Your condescending "Meades are toys" translates to "stay away from astronomy". If someone is interested in the sky, there's nothing better than for them to buy an inexpensive telescope or a nice pair of binoculars. That's an investment even the most casual of interested parties can feel comfortable with. Maybe their interest will fade, but they'll at least have had some exposure, which is better than the none they'll get if they don't buy a telescope at all.
On the other hand, they might become quite enthusiastic, and find their trusty old Meade is no longer sufficient. In that case, they may very well decide to move beyond their "toy" telescope (which is nothing of the kind) and make the massive investment in a higher quality scope. But the time for that is much later.
Public participation in science is low enough as it is. Suggesting a $15k - $50k+ initial investment, and ridiculing more reasonably priced tools which are *vastly superior* to anything Galileo had ever used is most certainly not the way to go about correcting that. In fact, it seems quite obvious that it will have the exact opposite effect.
[*] $15k is the cheapest scope. They don't list the prices of the most expensive ones, but the highest price they list is $54k! And they suggest a finder scope that's just shy of $3k! For the finder scope! That really seemed like sound advice to you?
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying you can enforce freedom. "Freedom is not free" means (depending on the context and the philosophical bent of the speaker) either that one must fight for one's freedom or that freedom comes with responsibility. While related, they do not directly answer whether one can or cannot enforce freedom.
And to think, this is the high point of your post!
It's absolutely clear you have no idea what the GPL is, what its purpose is, and how Free Software relates to Open Source software. A few corrections as follows:
to wit, GPLv3's switch away from the "freedom of use" model to a more restrictive model, dictating what you may *not* do with GPLv3 code.
The GPL *always* stated ("dictated" as you put it--hrm... such a loaded term, was it subconscious, or did you use it on purpose?) what you may *not* do with GPL'd code.
These restrictions represent a departure from the professed "freedom" of FOSS
The FSF does not promote "FOSS". They don't care about Open Source software *at all*. The freedom (why the "quotes" in your post? again, telling) the FSF is promoting is the freedom to use, copy, share and modify software. The GPLv3 does not move away from this, but moves ever closer.
towards the straightjacket that lies at the end of all socialistic moral codes like Stallman's.
Ayn Rand was wrong. Try thinking for yourself instead.
For example, "the straightjacket that lies at the end of Stallman's moral code"? Are you saying that the ultimate end of the GPL is to enslave its users? Does that phrase pass even the mildest examination? If you think it does, I suggest a diet of less dogma and more free thought.
From an ideological standpoint, this was going to happen sooner or later; while FOSS may look socialistic on its surface, the fact remains that it is capitalistic, through and through
The world is not black and white. FS is not OSS, and both are whatever you want it to be. They're not purely capitalist, or socialistic. The simplest proof is that socialism is a political system, capitalism is an economic system, and software licenses are legal constructs. While there are relations between the three and one can have an effect on the other, it's an unavoidable fact that they are all different things.
that is, it still operates on the same basic principles of individual rights as does copyright
Capitalism does not operate on the "principles of individual rights". For example, capitalism is quite amenable to slavery. The clue for why this is is because political systems and economic systems are also different things.
in particular the author's right to set terms for the use of his work and to accept/reject such terms as set by others for theirs.
Strange, that's *exactly* what the FSF is doing with GPLv3. One minute you called this a dictatorially imposed straightjacket, then next it's individual rights-based capitalism.
You're all over the map, and exceptionally self-contradictory. It should be fairly clear this is because your assumptions are wrong--primarily, your assumptions about politics vs economics vs legal contracts. If you falsely assume they are perfectly interchangeable entities, it's inevitable you will arise at contradictions.
The move towards restrictions born of Stallman's ideas of how software "should" be licensed, is a reflection of the totalitarianism inherent in his anti-capitalistic philosophical outlook. That contradiction was going to explode sooner or later.
Yup, back to anti-capitalistic totalitarianism. Your claims are so curious. How can you hold views with such force that are so easily disproved? In this case, for example, consider the fact that Stallman's license is entirely voluntary. You don't h
Absolutely not. You can never tell a person: "I am forcing you to use your liberties! You are legally required to go out and protest!" The best you can ever do is provide them with the opportunity to protest, and hope that they choose to use their liberties soundly. That's not we're talking about here, though, is it? The FSF is not telling people they *have* to exercise their freedoms.
That's also not what "enforce freedom" means. Your example is just a subset. By disproving that subset does not disprove the rest of it.
This is what I am referring to when I say that enforced freedom is an oxymoron. Freedom has no enforcement measure, because I can not force someone to use their rights in a certain way. But you can force people to honor your freedom. You can also force others to not infringe on the freedom of others.
Both cases qualify as "enforcing freedom", and they both more accurately describe the GPL (v3 or otherwise) than your straw man examples do.
Slashdot Mirror
The site you linked to has poorly named. "Rebel", sure, if that's what you want, but "science"? No.
These things which this site (your site?) pretend to debunk are highly accurate. So accurate, in fact, they allow us to make extremely precise predictions about the future. In fact, these notions have allowed us to predict further things which didn't seem to follow from "common sense logic" (which your site misuses severely), but turned out to be very true (ie, useful) indeed.
Your site (or that site, whatever) is useful in only one way, and that is it encourages people to think. It's sort of like a question, "what if water flowed uphill?" Useful in pondering how things really work, but beyond that, it's rubbish. Worse, if one is in a solipsistic mood, it's far to easy to think, "yeah, why *doesn't* water flow uphill? I mean, it sort of does when waves crash ashore, or water flows over a rock. And don't get me started on clouds! This whole 'water flowing downhill' nonsense is bunk!" which, if one isn't careful, sends one off into the land of crackpottery, through a series of reasonable logical steps.
From what I've read on that site, the argument is basically, "science says X, but if X is true, what about Y? Doesn't Y follow from X? But Y doesn't make sense, therefore X is not true". The problem with that argument is that X really, really works. That Y appears to follow, and Y doesn't seem right, might be true, but mysteries like Y are what science is all about. Understanding if they are true or not, and if not, yet they should follow from X, how do you fix X?
What you *don't* do is just throw out X because Y *appears* to contradict it, because X is exceptionally useful. If you want to throw out X because of Y, you've got to come up with a Z that works *at least* as accurately as X does for everything not-Y, and *also* explains Y. Until you do that, you're not a "Rebel Scientist", you are a crackpot. In fact, that's the thing that separates geniuses like Newton and Einstein from the multitude of dime-a-dozen crackpots--they did the work, formulated testable theories and *demonstrated* the accuracy of those theories.
Do the work, create a theory then demonstrate that it accurately reflects reality. That's science. What you've got is just a hand-waving mockery of science, and only marginally better than more prominent "faith based" (ie, imaginary) cosmologies.
And, to preempt any nonsense about how I'm just irrationally defending a false notion of reality out of fear or ignorance, be certain of this: I am not wedded to the existence of time, space, or space-time (aside from the fact that, by all appearances, that's the stuff I seem to live in), if they are shown to not exist, if some theory were to come along which worked *better* than Newtonian/classical physics, SR and GR and QM, I'd support it in a heartbeat, even if it contracted just about everything those other theories contained.
Interestingly, unless you also developed analogs to those theories, even if space, time and space-time were proven to not exist, those theories would all still be used, because, even the things they reference do not exist, they all work.
He didn't seem to think municipal WiFi is bad, but that being forced to pay for it (taxes) is, regardless of the quality or merits of the project.
Whenever a corporation does something evil (to their customer, or to their employees) the standard libertarian response is, "no one's forcing you to (shop|work) there," so this should be an argument they'd understand.
[a] What does time have to do with it? Are all the crashes just building up in preparation for a crash deluge?
[b] Defects do not necessarily mean crashes.
[c] Unfounded assertion.
[d] It's statistically provable that there's an average?
You are just engaging in the fallacy I already warned you about. Specifically that "OS X crashes, Windows crashes, therefore OS X and Windows both crash equally often". Ok, I want a hypercard app I wrote 15 years ago to run on OS X. I'm sorry. I didn't realize that by "every few years" you meant, "every 15 years". "those people who blame Microsoft for vendor lock-in" (straw man, no one claims this) - It's not a strawman; I'm addressing a common argument. Please expand. In what way do people complain about MS being responsible for vendor lock-in for which MS is not responsible for vender lock-in? Maybe not to you, but I prefer building custom systems. That's cool, and a valid complaint. I don't share it (at least, not to any significant extent). a variation on the Not Invernted Here Syndrome. This is a strange argument that comes up a lot. Strange mostly for the fact that the overwhelming majority of technology in today's Macs are open standards or third party standards, from the hardware (Intel chips; Intel, Nvidia, ATI graphics; SATA hard drives; DIMMs/SO-DIMMS; USB; WiFi; etc) to the OS (BSD user space, Objective-C, XML, etc) to the software (AAC, MP3, H.264, etc). The only thing really closed about Apple is their locking of the OS to Apple hardware. In the realm of standards and interoperability, MS is far more guilty of NIH, constantly inventing their own standards for things which already exist. (the worst offender of all here, in the land of consumer products, is Sony, but they're outside the scope of this discussion.)
Apple was once very NIH-prone. This era pretty much ended with the original iMac, and has been continuing to this day.
To expand, if there's nothing wrong with the fact that there are no viruses for OS X, why is it stupid to promote that fact? As for assertion [c], OS X has a larger market share than Linux, yet there exist actual Linux viruses. Funny, I could have sworn that's [viruses] what the article was about. The article is about a worm *threat* from a worm that *doesn't exist* beyond the (claimed) system of a security researcher. Ignoring the conflation of virus and worm, I covered this when I excepted "proofs-of-concept". A worm is a virus that propagates over a network No, it's not. A worm spreads over a network, it has no requirements that it also be a virus (which inserts itself into existing files). not much of a stretch. Really, at least read the title. "Worm Threat Forces Apple to Disable Software?" The *threat* of a worm, and Apple closed the hole. An interesting story, in and of itself, and it speaks well of both Apple and OS X's security (just like when this sort of thing happens with various open source programs), and very much *unlike* how it happens in the Windows world, where there usually exists an *actual* exploit in the wild and where the patch from MS is usually *not out yet*.
All of which has absolutely nothing to do with viruses.
...that's a steaming load, unless you're only talking about the people who regularly google "free __" and constantly download email attachments. The only serious fault in any modern OS is that idiotproofing them is nigh impossible. That's an extremely lame cop-out. Blame the user. That doesn't change the fact that, as a user, you have to be vigilant using Windows, and not terribly vigilant *at all* using OS X. All you're really doing is shifting the vigilance, from software to the user. In the end, it's still the same thing.Are you telling me you don't run antivirus or antispyware software on your Windows computer? Or are you just super-vigilant about what you click on? For me, on my Mac, I don't run antivirus or antispyware, and, aside from phishing emails[*], I don't put much thought into what I click on. The reason being is that my risk is *infinitesimal* compared to the risks doing the same thing under Windows.
[*]phishing emails don't pose a risk in being opened under OS X (but they can under Windows, if they point to a site attempting to deploy spyware), I just don't click them mainly because I don't want to validate my email address with the spammer/phisher.
He's specifically referring to (I gather) the "pretend war" that is going on over the modding of the comments, which are the "real war". This is especially interesting since modders can not (directly) participate in the discussion.
In a way, it's a lot like some sort of imaginary battle in the heavens in which gods are fighting to help their human followers on the battlefield.
"OS X is every bit as crash prone and unreliable as Windows" (It's crash prone, but not "every bit as crash prone")
"not so with Apple, which radically changes their OS every few years" (Two points here: 1. if this is true, it belies your following statement 2. it's not true)
"There is no inherently superior security in OS X" (the overall design and implementation of OS X is more secure than the overall design and implementation of XP. Vista is a vast improvement over XP, but it remains to be seen how this works out)
"those people who blame Microsoft for vendor lock-in" (straw man, no one claims this)
"OS X is the ultimate in vendor lock-in" (OS X is an extremely open system. The only "lock-in" is with their hardware, which really isn't that big of a deal.) For someone who claims to be fighting against religious zeal, you sure come across fanatically angry. You make the basic fallacy that, "Windows is flawed, OS X is flawed, therefore Windows and OS X are equally flawed," which is complete nonsense.
There are people who get fanatical about Macs, but you're lumping a whole lot of rational people in with them, and fully deserve flaimbait or troll modding for it. the minute you take a bite of the precious worm-ridden Apple, mods put you to sleep for a year No, stupid shit like, "eat crow" gets modded down. Eat crow for what? A security flaw existed? It was patched? WTF? A lot of anti-Apple sentiment gets modded up, as well, though generally the more rational stuff, like people complaining about vendor lock-in (like you did above) or various other things that actually make sense.
Not to mention the fact that both you, and the OP are both (at present) modded positively, which makes your cries of being oppressed a bit silly.
That doesn't mean viruses are impossible, nor that they will never come, just that they haven't yet. Linux/*BSD get their fair share of worms, but also have legions of nerdy fanboys to fix vulnerabilities, and no one important foolishly calls them impenetrable. No one calls OS X impenetrable either. Strange how you jump from viruses to worms, btw.
OS X is very much like Linux, and very much unlike Windows, where with the former, you know the potential almost certainly exists for your machine to be hacked into, but it's just not something you have to worry much about, while with the latter, if you aren't taking proactive measures to protect your system, you are taking a huge risk.
Those of us who react negatively to MS are not the initiators, we are not looking to pick a fight. We are just defending freedom, openness and interoperability. If MS starts acting responsibly, like IBM or Apple do, you'll find anti-MS sentiment evaporating, just like anti-IBM and anti-Apple sentiment has.
It takes a very special type of relativism to call *us* the aggressors, if that's really what you think to call us.
It's Microsoft who's to blame for pushing politics into technical merits. How dare you blame the victim.
I prefer my standards, interfaces and formats open and freely implementable. MS prefers to own them fully. Everyone who *isn't* MS would do best to join us in the "free and open" camp, and until MS themselves join us, they *fully* deserve to be criticized, and their proposals rejected out of hand.
MS has been making overtures of compromise, which deserve some credit, but can never be enough on this topic. In the context of standards, open and free are binary, there's no half-way, because all it takes is *one* legal restriction to prevent open source implementations.
Let's look at what you said more closely:
Claim: "The less tax the better"
Evidence: "because at it's core government is horribly inefficent"
Conclusion: "so the less money going to them the better."
Even if, "at its core", government is horribly inefficient, that does not mean it's not useful, or even necessary. Of course, sometimes government is exceptionally *efficient*. Your evidence does not support your conclusion, which is just a rewording of your claim.
Then you continue: "Sure, they are required to pay for things we couldn't be trusted to pay for ourselfs like police and the military,"
This completely contradicts your conclusion above. If "the less money, the better", then you can't get better than zero. However, zero and the above are contradictory.
Finally: "but taxation to protect local manufacturers who can't compete is crappy economics."
And funneling your wealth out of the country is *good* economics? Extreme anti-protectionism protects only two classes: the multinational corporations and the extremely wealthy. If you are not in either of those two classes, you are arguing against your own best interests. Congratulations.
Regardless, it seems you are stuck on the assertion that taxes are a generally inefficient way to allocate resources.
Let's assume that's true. Two questions arise:
- What about the situations where it *isn't* inefficient?
- Is the inefficiency in the more common cases worse than the alternative?
Interestingly enough, on the topic you replied to, public healthcare in the US is actually *more* efficient than private healthcare. And, even if it weren't, even inefficient healthcare is *infinitely* more desirable than no healthcare at all.
The rest of your post is about two things:
A. Even if MS's claims are baseless, they can still affect you.
B. Novell isn't the bad guys.
A is a side-issue and does not alter the discussion at hand (which is whether I have the right to criticize Novell unless I stop using all Novell-touched Open Source software altogether, which was your initial claim, and then whether I have the right to even criticize Novell *at all*, which was your second claim).
But to close this point altogether, I don't give a rat's ass whether Novell is taking (what is essentially) an insurance policy out for me. I never asked them to, and were they *to* ask, I'd tell them I just don't want it. But they didn't ask, and I think their actions deserve criticism. And I further think it's the height of arrogance for you to come in and tell me I have no right to criticize them.
B is more rational. you'll note I never said Novell *was* the bad guy. What I said is that they f'ed up by making a deal with the "bad guys". Novell rightfully deserves criticism for their deal. Just because they were the first doesn't excuse them, it merely makes their mistake more understandable. However, being understandable is not the same as being beyond reproach.
You might as well suggest I take out an insurance policy against djinn and poltergeists. By the way, about me not knowing your reasons, I don't have to know your reasons. If you have them based on misinformation YOU are the one who is wrong. Your circular logic does not work here. Your grasp of logic leaves much to be desired. You claimed that my ignorance of Novell means I must shut up, but your ignorance of me is not cause for *you* to shut up? You have not supported your assertion that I am ignorant of what Novell has agreed to. In fact, quite the opposite, as you just now admit that "[you[ don't have to know [my] reasons".
Well, if you take the reasoning in your opening sentences to be valid, anyway. If you DO know then you realize that Novell made money by indemnifying their customers. The exact opposite, actually. Novell made money by legitimizing the claim that Linux users infringe on MS patents. Otherwise, why would they need indemnification?
The money is tainted, and Novell shouldn't (morally) have accepted it. Business-wise it was probably a smart move. I wasn't criticizing their business-sense, but their integrity. It's a common delusion that business and morality have no intersection, but the backlash against companies like Novell (mild backlash, unless this deal causes problems down the road) and SCO (severe backlash) are proof that the two are related. They promised to give up nothing regarding the openness of their software. They did not compromise their software and have not injected MS code to poison the Linux base. True, but not the reason for my criticism.
1. Hypocrisy isn't defined as using something you criticize. Or do you only use, consume, purchase, support, etc, things which you have absolutely *no* criticisms or reservations about?
2. Even if one were to decide to boycott Novell over this, why must that extend to open source projects that are freely obtained from parties who have no affiliation with Novell whatsoever?
3. goombah88 heavily implied he doesn't use Linux. So even if what you claim as hypocrisy *is* hypocrisy (it isn't), he wouldn't be guilty of it anyway!
I applaud Ubuntu (Canonical), RedHat, and all the others who had the integrity and good sense to decline MS's offer. I similarly am highly disappointed that Novell did not do the same. But I don't hold that mark against them as sufficient cause to refuse to do business with them, let alone the even more ludicrous response of boycotting everything, even open source projects, which Novell has contributed to in any way.
Maybe you should take your own advice: If you want to be a troll, be a smarter one.
That's just about the absolute *worst* advice you could give. Someone is interested enough in astronomy to consider a telescope costing a few hundred dollars, but is having trouble justifying the cost, and you tell them to buy a $15k[*] scope?
Your condescending "Meades are toys" translates to "stay away from astronomy". If someone is interested in the sky, there's nothing better than for them to buy an inexpensive telescope or a nice pair of binoculars. That's an investment even the most casual of interested parties can feel comfortable with. Maybe their interest will fade, but they'll at least have had some exposure, which is better than the none they'll get if they don't buy a telescope at all.
On the other hand, they might become quite enthusiastic, and find their trusty old Meade is no longer sufficient. In that case, they may very well decide to move beyond their "toy" telescope (which is nothing of the kind) and make the massive investment in a higher quality scope. But the time for that is much later.
Public participation in science is low enough as it is. Suggesting a $15k - $50k+ initial investment, and ridiculing more reasonably priced tools which are *vastly superior* to anything Galileo had ever used is most certainly not the way to go about correcting that. In fact, it seems quite obvious that it will have the exact opposite effect.
[*] $15k is the cheapest scope. They don't list the prices of the most expensive ones, but the highest price they list is $54k! And they suggest a finder scope that's just shy of $3k! For the finder scope! That really seemed like sound advice to you?
You're a blithering idiot.
Such an auspicious beginning.
All you are saying is that "freedom is not free"
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying you can enforce freedom. "Freedom is not free" means (depending on the context and the philosophical bent of the speaker) either that one must fight for one's freedom or that freedom comes with responsibility. While related, they do not directly answer whether one can or cannot enforce freedom.
And to think, this is the high point of your post!
It's absolutely clear you have no idea what the GPL is, what its purpose is, and how Free Software relates to Open Source software. A few corrections as follows:
to wit, GPLv3's switch away from the "freedom of use" model to a more restrictive model, dictating what you may *not* do with GPLv3 code.
The GPL *always* stated ("dictated" as you put it--hrm... such a loaded term, was it subconscious, or did you use it on purpose?) what you may *not* do with GPL'd code.
These restrictions represent a departure from the professed "freedom" of FOSS
The FSF does not promote "FOSS". They don't care about Open Source software *at all*. The freedom (why the "quotes" in your post? again, telling) the FSF is promoting is the freedom to use, copy, share and modify software. The GPLv3 does not move away from this, but moves ever closer.
towards the straightjacket that lies at the end of all socialistic moral codes like Stallman's.
Ayn Rand was wrong. Try thinking for yourself instead.
For example, "the straightjacket that lies at the end of Stallman's moral code"? Are you saying that the ultimate end of the GPL is to enslave its users? Does that phrase pass even the mildest examination? If you think it does, I suggest a diet of less dogma and more free thought.
From an ideological standpoint, this was going to happen sooner or later; while FOSS may look socialistic on its surface, the fact remains that it is capitalistic, through and through
The world is not black and white. FS is not OSS, and both are whatever you want it to be. They're not purely capitalist, or socialistic. The simplest proof is that socialism is a political system, capitalism is an economic system, and software licenses are legal constructs. While there are relations between the three and one can have an effect on the other, it's an unavoidable fact that they are all different things.
that is, it still operates on the same basic principles of individual rights as does copyright
Capitalism does not operate on the "principles of individual rights". For example, capitalism is quite amenable to slavery. The clue for why this is is because political systems and economic systems are also different things.
in particular the author's right to set terms for the use of his work and to accept/reject such terms as set by others for theirs.
Strange, that's *exactly* what the FSF is doing with GPLv3. One minute you called this a dictatorially imposed straightjacket, then next it's individual rights-based capitalism.
You're all over the map, and exceptionally self-contradictory. It should be fairly clear this is because your assumptions are wrong--primarily, your assumptions about politics vs economics vs legal contracts. If you falsely assume they are perfectly interchangeable entities, it's inevitable you will arise at contradictions.
The move towards restrictions born of Stallman's ideas of how software "should" be licensed, is a reflection of the totalitarianism inherent in his anti-capitalistic philosophical outlook. That contradiction was going to explode sooner or later.
Yup, back to anti-capitalistic totalitarianism. Your claims are so curious. How can you hold views with such force that are so easily disproved? In this case, for example, consider the fact that Stallman's license is entirely voluntary. You don't h
That's also not what "enforce freedom" means. Your example is just a subset. By disproving that subset does not disprove the rest of it. This is what I am referring to when I say that enforced freedom is an oxymoron. Freedom has no enforcement measure, because I can not force someone to use their rights in a certain way. But you can force people to honor your freedom. You can also force others to not infringe on the freedom of others.
Both cases qualify as "enforcing freedom", and they both more accurately describe the GPL (v3 or otherwise) than your straw man examples do.