If fans of Enterprise can scrape up money to try and save a show, surely there is no problem getting a few thousand geeks to "buy" Voyager from NASA.
We already have this. It's called 'taxes'.
"Enterprise" is a commercial venture, and it's in a market which is able to sustain itself (although "Enterprise" didn't quite make it--due to being run poorly). Basic research is not self-sustaining in the same way, which is why you need to fund them via the government. These are projects that are too big for any one person to engage in, and are not lucrative enough for any large capitalism-oriented group of people to engage in, but still the sort of thing people truly want. That is the proper realm of government spending.
GWB talks about this great "Ownership Society", well, here we go! I, for one, would pay a few bucks to own a peice of history.
OK, that covers Voyager. Now, who's going to pay for Hubble? For ISS? For Huygens II? For...
Yeah, I'd pay a small amount per year to promote space exploration and basic math and science, but such efforts don't amount to much.
On the other hand, can we abandon the shuttle already, and go back to using rockets? Given that it would be cheaper, it seems stupid to do anything else.
1. The shuttle is launched via rocket. 2. Cheaper to do what? Launch a small capsule into space? Land on the Moon? 3. The shuttle was crippled by the Air Force. The original plan was cheaper and more intelligently designed. The problem was it didn't have the right cargo bay for deploying spy satellites.
Also, can we build nuclear rockets please? They are probably at least as safe and environmentally friendly
Unless it explodes. Oops!
overall as burning several tons of rocket fuel
You mean the reaction of Hydrogen + Oxygen => Water? That rocket fuel?
To be fair, there's also the SRB's to consider, but I've never heard people complain about their exhaust being a problem pollution-wise.
and would be able to lift useful payloads so that we can begin the development of space.
Define 'useful payloads'. The shuttle has a large cargo bay and is reusable. One of the main problems with the shuttle is that it's still a prototype--it's not a finished product.
There's certainly a knee-jerk reaction against the idea of nuclear rockets--but that's for good reason. Radiation kills and is extremely expensive to clean up. There also seems to be a knee-jerk reaction for nuclear fuels in order to give the big 'F-U' to the environmentalists. Do you understand the implications of nuclear rockets? Or are you from the more irrational of the two knee-jerk crowds?
Maybe it would be better if the Voyager program were funded by a private foundation. A consortium of colleges could share the expenses and study the data. Then the program wouldn't be in danger due to lack of government funding.
Because government is a more efficient means of doing this. A consortium of colleges would not have had the money to undertake the Voyager projects--at least, not without government funds. Then you have one school working on the probe, one on the launch vehicle, one on the science payload, etc? That's not efficient.
Better is to have a central agency which coordinates these things. There's nothing wrong with NASA partnering with universities (which is exactly what they do), but to leave these sorts of projects entirely to universities or private enterprise is not rational.
Its an attempt to pull at people's emotions to try to get the extra money. And don't get me wrong its not misleading or untrue that cuts would need to be made, but the programs used to illistrate the debate are always the most popular ones. Just like right here.
So, you're saying they're not really going to cut the Voyager project? That Bush really wants higher taxes so he's trying to 'scare' us with this proposed Voyager cut?
What you're saying makes no sense. This isn't a ploy, Bush truly doesn't see the value in Voyager (or science in general).
black holes were actually measured by radiotelescopes (I says measured and not "seen")
Just a small point here, but 'observed' might better fit the idea you are trying to convey. 'Measured' implies you've put some numbers of a certain precision to them (if you're going to avoid 'seen' because it implies visual confirmation...).
For example, you might 'observe' a huge x-ray burst with a radio telescope without really 'measuring' it much beyond "it was greater than the background levels".
Anyway, like I said, it's a small point. Just thought you might find it useful.
While I would hate to disagree with Stephen Hawking
Don't worry, you don't disagree with him. Ironically, you don't realize this.
he would seem to be in disagreement with most modern philosophers of science.
Yeah, in one corner, we have Stephen Hawking, in the other corner we have... Vultan (468899)?
Anyway, to the point...
A single observation can only disprove a theory if you know that observation to be definitively true
As long as you aren't too married to the word "definitely", what you said is implied in Hawking's statement. Instead of 'definitely', science deals with 'repeatably', 'reliably', and 'confidently'.
An observation that disagrees with a theory could instead disprove the theory that says you're seeing what you think you're seeing.
Duh. Do you honestly think Stephen Hawking didn't mean this?
The point is simply that science is an attempt to model reality. Whenever the model and reality are in contradiction, it's the model (science) that must give.
is faster at fixing serious security flaws than closed source
Considering this whole is already fixed, it's hard to ask for faster than that!
On the other hand...
So I'm wondering, just how long will the Mozilla foundation take to distribute a fix for this
That's another question altogether, and one that isn't done so well with Firefox. Still far better than with IE (where you see actively exploited vulnerabilities listed on MS's IE page that aren't fixed for months!). This is something the Mozilla folks need to work on, but being a major open source project, it's more likely to be worked out than closed source projects are (which is the subject of your post).
What do you think the odds are that Windows and Linux are actually both equal?
"TCO" is completely subjective--it's not a universal value. It's like trying to define the 'universal frame' in physics. There is no such thing.
Does your company require the features of Exchange? Is the cost of *not* having those features higher than the cost of the support and licensing for the Exchange server? Is your company a science/engineering centered one? In that case, Unix is more of a requirement than having a nice, simple, start menu or the ability to run word macros.
TCO is more myth than fact. As an organization, you have to look at your needs, your limitations and your strengths, and go from there. "TCO" is about as meaningful as "best in its class", for which the proper response is, "says who?"
"Show me one official instance where anyone has claimed that ripped CDs for personal use is not legal. I HATE when people on the other side exaggerate (and apparently flat-out lie) just to score points."
Even worse are people who forget the past, and doom the rest of us to repeat it...
It's hard to get more 'official' than a lawsuit, but why limit it only to 'official' instances? The RIAA originally promoted the view that mp3's were illegal. If you limit yourself to so-called 'official' incidents, you let them get by with implied assertions and innuendo. In this case, we've got 'official' statements, so it's not an issue, but in general, it's tying one of your hands behind your back while the other side is using both hands, their feet, their teeth, and are hitting you with your free hand...
6: Resulted in large permanent increases in US airline ticket prices
The major increase in ticket prices are due to the increasing cost of oil, but even limiting ourselves to the 9/11 related price increases, there's a lot of overkill there, as well as the airlines using it as an excuse to raise the prices for an already ailing market. I'll grant calling the ticket price increase 'huge' is a matter of opinion, but when taken as a portion of the hundreds of billions the parent poster claimed, I'd be hard-pressed to call it a significant factor.
9: May have increased cancer rates and other long term health costs
I took that to mean the use of depleted uranium in Iraq, as well as the conventional toll of the war (on both sides). If the poster just meant debris from the WTC, then I agree that OBL/AQ is responsible for the initial exposure, and the costs of the resulting clean up and rebuilding, but the Federal Government said the air was safe. If if wasn't, then they hold some blame for not warning people.
are directly related to the attacks and, therefore, bin Laden.
Which is why I made the distinction that, "Items 6-9 are only as large as they are in magnitude." In other words, those items would still be issues, but a significant portion of those effects are not direct results of OBL or 9/11.
Which has little to do with IT. If IT fails to preserve email, IT won't go to jail. The executives will only go to jail if they are seen as negligent or otherwise accountable for IT's failure--which is the way it should be!
There are huge IT ramifications involved here.
You mean they have to click a check-box/add a config line to an rc file?
OH MY GOD!!! SARBANES-OXLEY, SARBANES-OXLEY, SARBANES-OXLEY!!!!
Your ignorance of SOX doesn't negate that this is very much an IT issue.
My ignorance of SOX doesn't make it "very much" an IT issue either.
Everything I've seen of Sarbanes-Oxley points to it being designed to keep CEO's and other executives from putting into place policies designed to remove responsibility.
And this isn't some major impact on IT. You're gonna have to come up with something more than, "IT has to store data". I mean, isn't that exactly one of the things IT is already doing?
I know you're going to say, "but you didn't ask, 'what *huge* impact will this have on IT?' you asked 'what does this have to do with IT?'" I'll grant you that, if you want to talk semantics, but my point hasn't changed (and the context of my post should make my point fairly easy to grasp), which is that the article's submitter appears to be ideologically opposed to SOX! SOX! SOX!, and is trying to use a non-issue to get others onto his bandwagon.
There's nothing to backlash against, unless you're an ideologue who thinks the powerful shouldn't be held responsible for their actions, an executive who counts on being able to game the system, or an incompetent IT staffer who doesn't know how to store data.
Would it have killed the poster to mention what Sarbanes-Oxley is?
No kidding. Another thing that would have been useful would have been had he pointed out what the fuck this has to do with IT.
I mean, seriously, "All I hear from IT directors is Sarbanes-Oxley, Sarbanes-Oxley, Sarbanes-Oxley."? If *I* was a conservative (or corporate, if you prefer) lobbyist, and *I* wanted an issue on Slashdot that has nothing much to do with IT, *I'd* submit an article that mentions IT without any logical context, and repeat my propaganda 3x in a row, then close out with, "and that's just the IT department. How are you dealing? Did you make your compliance deadline even after the extension? Are you joining the the backlash?" (especially note the last part--are you joining the 'backlash'? No? What's wrong with you, citizen!)
Two more things that come to mind are:
1. "SOX, as they're calling it, is taxing manpower, swallowing time, and adding huge administrative headaches"
You mean the IT departments are growing (well, that's unclear as what it has to do with IT is unclear, but assuming the submitter's context makes a damn lick of sense...), and that's bad?
2. "not to mention incurring fees and salaries paid out to staff or third-party firms hired to ensure compliance"
Salaries paid out to staff--oh the humanity!
As others have pointed out already, this is good legislation that forces corporations into a more honest and open state. Exactly who would see this as a bad thing?
I think you misinterpreted the parent post. I read it to be a "what if GNOME just worked" for the hypothetical distributor.
No, it wasn't "what if GNOME just worked?" it was "what if Adobe and Microsoft wrote apps for GNOME? It would 'just work' like Mac OS X does!" His flaw is that he thinks that's what makes Mac OS X, 'just work'.
As it is, I think you just made the parent's point for him (why Apple was so successful with the Mac OS X transition and why the Windows-to-Linux transition hasn't really started yet).
No, his reasoning is flawed. Mac OS X 'just works' because it's designed to 'just work'. For Linux, 'it just works' isn't that high of a priority. Linux works great for the technical minded user, and on the corporate desktop (where you have dedicated support personnel), but it certainly does *not* 'just work'.
Windows doesn't 'just work', and it has more commercial support for apps and hardware than even Mac OS X does, which is to say, it's not just commercial 3rd party support that makes an OS 'just work'.
When people say, 'it just works,' on the Mac, they mean hardware, software, OS--pretty much whatever you want to do, it all just works.
I don't have a single piece of hardware that isn't working.
That's different from, 'it just works', that's just, 'it works'. That isn't a put-down on Linux--Linux doesn't have to 'just work' to be a great OS, but it does need to to match up against with OS X for the home desktop user. Fortunately it is moving in that direction, but there's still a lot of work to do yet.
Sure the firewall just works, but for some reason it's in the Sharing System Pref instead of Security. This is pretty counterintuitive if you ask me. ..
Except that the discussion is about why Linux isn't as usable as OS X. You make a valid point, but it has nothing to do with the discussion (unless your point is simply that Mac OS X can be improved, which goes without say).
As far as WiFi on OSX, it is dead simple
I'm glad you agree.
Also Apple has a bad habit of not putting common features in their previous releases.
I wouldn't call that a bad habit, but that certainly is a valid criticism. However, it has nothing to do with why Linux doesn't 'just work'.
Many Linux distros are already passed the half way marker, and it's only a matter of time before it matches OSX.
The problem is that the last 10% takes up 90% of the effort, as they say. Linux is just now passing Windows 2000 in usability (I'm speaking of the most usable distributions, specifically thinking of Ubuntu). The problem is that in about 2 years, when GNOME completely surpasses 2000, there's XP and (perhaps) Longhorn. By that time, not only will Tiger have been released, but 10.5.
But more to the point, Linux won't 'just work' for at least the next five years. I think it's truly ready for the desktop today, but that's wholly different from 'it just works'.
Windows, on the other hand, suffers from constantly having new features crammed in that no one wants, combined with the most lax default file system security permissions available selling on the cheapest hardware available (read: purchased by the unwashed masses). It's no surprise that Windows has the most problems!!!
Agreed, but I don't know what Windows has to do with Linux not 'just working'. I think you're mistaking me for someone who thinks Linux sucks or something. I've been using Linux since prior to kernel 1.0, and am really impressed with Ubuntu 5.04 and GNOME 2.10. I have no fear of the myriad config files and the command line, but there is just no way to say Linux 'just works' the same way Mac OS X 'just works'. And more directly to the point at hand, Linux isn't being held back because of hardware and software vendor support.
Re:What amazes me most
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Return of the Mac
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Use what the distro provides, or use Firestarter or similar.
Exactly my point. I prefer shorewall myself on Linux, but on OS X, it's extremely simple, built-in, and 'just works'. The point is that the Mac 'just works', and Linux takes much more effort to do the same task. Firestarter doesn't 'Just Work' nearly as well as the firewall in the Mac OS X System Preferences.
I'm not sure, I haven't tried, but why is that important?
Because it's one of the countless things in OS X that 'just works'.
I'm sure there are things you can do simply in GNOME/Linux that are more tricky in Mac OS X
Not many.
How do you sort email into virtual folders like in Evolution? How do you manage multiple WiFi connections with a click or two?
Mail in Tiger has these virtual folders, WiFi management under OS X is dead simple--nothing else out there even comes close.
If someone sat down with GNOME adn Linux, standardised everything, and could promise developers a large(ish) userbase that would all hew precisely to those standards - I think that distribution would quickly become as "easy" and "just works" as Mac OS X.
You are wrong. 'Just working' requires more than standards, it requires standards and processes that are designed for usability. Linux is not designed for usability. Windows has more driver support, and more major applications than Mac OS X has, but it's nowhere near as usable ('just works') as OS X is. What makes you think that's all Linux needs?
No. You need to be able to promise a captive userbase, and no Linux distribution can do that.
Wrong again. All that's required is effort put into usability. Why do you think you couldn't start 'Usix: the Linux that Just Works!' and build a Mac OS X-like Linux? That's not much different than making 'Gentoo - the Linux you compile from source' or 'Debian - the free GNU/Linux with superb package management', etc.
The problem with Linux, from an 'It Just Works' prespective (which is the perspective we are talking about here) is that 'Just Working' isn't a priority, and that has *nothing* to do with lacking a 'captive user base' (whatever that means).
Some of these are also the names of standard logical fallacies, which it appears your Consumer Behaviour class is teaching you to exploit. These include:
The problem is, you can't have a logicall fallacy when talking about subjectivity[*].
- Appeal to authority: Most of the top dogs...
Authority doesn't make something objectively true. But, logically, the domain over which authority has, well, authority, it *does* apply.
- Appeal to popularity: Last year's conference was full of...
Same basic idea.
[*] I posit that there *is* an ultimate underlying logic to everything, including subjectivity. But when people refer to 'logic' formally, they tend to mean small 'if A then B' and 'not A equals B, and B equals C or D, then A does not equal C or D' and so on. So, in the 'logic' of subjectivity, authority and popularity are not inherently fallacious.
Or put simply: The popularity or authority of a mathematician won't make what she says true just because she says it or that a lot of people believe her, but her subjective preferences of mathematical style are up to you to value or not.
What? You never mentioned 'academia'. (Clue: Macs are prominent in academia)
Personally, I don't take notice of the kind of computer someone is using. I take notice with what they use it for. Someone can pull out a 286 orange-screen CGA bricktop for all I care.
If you are at a conference that you respect, and you see a a trend, it's worthwhile to look into it--maybe there's something to it, maybe not. If you go to 'Dork-a-Palooza' or whatever your thing is, and everyone's got 286 CGA luggables, are you telling me you won't think maybe it's something you would want to look into yourself?
If they got it to do something insanely cool, like squeeze significant performance out of it, that's worth seeing.
What idiocy is this? ASOTV's example is one of choice, yours is an example of skill. Your example isn't relevant to the question of choosing your primary computer platform.
No practical use? Gee... all these kids I hire for their exceptional assembly programming skills, who honed their skills taking apart Speak and Spells, obviously don't belong in crafting 64-bit chips, correct?
Of what practical use is programming an Altair or having an obsolete CPU's registers memorized? Knowing these things doesn't make you an 'exceptional assembly programmer'.
And how the hell did you get from ASOTV's post to Speak and Spell hackers not being allowed to design 64-bit cpus? It's so non sequitur that it boggles the mind that you thought it was pertinent to the discussion!
You just don't understand the points the people you are replying to have made. They are looking at people they respect, and studying choices they've made. Are you truly so retarded that you don't think this makes sense?
Re:What amazes me most
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Return of the Mac
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Presuming you also have hardware coming with distribution X drivers, dsitribution X would be quite reasonable competition for OS X - it would certainly have the "it just works" factor.
GNOME is great, but it certainly does not 'just work', and it's not lack of hardware support, or lack of Photoshop and Office, that are the reason for this.
When people say, 'it just works', they aren't referring solely to the hardware (although that is part of it), but the software (OS) as well. How do you set up the firewall in GNOME? How do you format and partition a hard drive? How do you integrate your digital camera with your screensaver? These are just a few random examples--all possible under GNOME, but not even remotely as well designed as under OS X.
I'm guessing you aren't very familiar with Mac OS X. GNOME is great, and I use it daily, but it's not just lack of hardware vendors' and application vendors' support that's keeping it from 'just working'.
By what mechanism does sending an email or hosting an ActiveX control compromise recent versions of Windows?
You are a man walking in a minefield, who says he's absolutely safe, because where he's standing right now, there is no mine.
"But right now!" you yell, "I'm just as safe as you!" The problem is, that your safety is an illusion, and history has shown that you have only so many steps until you hit the next mine.
History has also shown that no mine has ever exploded for the Mac OS X user.
You are ignoring history. Most of the services that Mac OS X has (which are almost all turned off by default) are almost all open source services. This means they are more likely to be secure--due to the nature of their development. Mac OS X does not allow web sites to do as much with the local system as Windows+IE does. So in IE, all it takes is one mistake, and it's game over. On OS X, there's nothing there for the same sort of mistake to be made.
It's possible to harden Windows (primarily, by not using Outlook or IE, and by using a hardware firewall). You also need to never open email attachments (at least, unless you are certain they are safe), and watch where you download software from. Mac OS X does not need such measures.
And so we don't go through this again, it's absolutely certain that some of this is due to market share, but not all of it. Mac OS X is harder to exploit.
Think of it from the virus/worm writer's perspective. Let's say you want to infect Mac OS X. What are you going to do? Find a flaw in Rendezvous, perhaps. But how does it spread? Rendezvous is limited to a subnet. So maybe you want to exploit Safari. OK, you can maybe find a buffer-overrun, but again, how will it spread? And buffer-overruns are harder to find than ways of tricking ActiveX to do what it was designed to do, which is provide ways for web site to run small Windows programs inside of IE. It's easier to trick a user into running these, because they have to constantly click 'yes' for every website they hit. On Mac OS X, you only have to click 'Open' (note the verb vs. the ambiguous 'yes') when you first open uncertain filetypes from Safari. Additionally you have the Unix nature of OS X, which means no one runs as 'root'. On Windows, you make life hard if you are not an Administrator, on the Mac, it's easy. So it's harder to make a worm that is a pain to uninstall.
These things are all real differences. And they all point to Windows being hit first, hardest, and most successfully. Market share is but one aspect of this.
I don't think you need to get so defensive. No way is everyone going to agree with you. But even if you do get it wrong, we're still happy to have this system at all.
That said, one nice thing about DarwinPorts and Fink (on the Mac, of course) is you can 'uninstall' them by rm -rf'ing their base directory (you're still left with some files in/etc/ and/Applications/, but nothing that'll cause you problems).
Given all the feedback you're apparently receiving on this, you should see that this is a feature people really, really want. One problem is that we have no idea how well you've engineered this system, so we can't be sure you won't overwrite files managed by apt or rpm, or that if we install gaim (for example) via AutoPackage (which presumably installs libgaim), that if via dselect, we install something that needs the distribution's version of libgaim, that there won't be problems.
In other words, it's a wildcard, and history has shown that this is the place where things tend to go wrong--if they do, we want to be sure that it won't be too difficult to recover from.
Personally, I tried it out with SuperTux, and it worked great. I installed it in ~/.local/ which avoids any of the above concerns, but for this to really take off, it needs to stay as far away from the distribution as possible.
I can imagine this would be done with a configuration file for each distribution (and program logic to cater to the quirks of each distribution--I really think this is the way to go, as there will certainly be volunteers from the main distros to help out!). It's harder for you, but makes for a more easily accepted project.
Also, if this takes off, I can imagine distributions will add support for it natively.
The only thing left for Linux would be app bundles. Then you'll have the distributions for most of the system, AutoPackage for packages that are cutting edge, or otherwise haven't quite made it into the distributions, and app bundles for the one-off app downloads.
Slashdot Mirror
If fans of Enterprise can scrape up money to try and save a show, surely there is no
problem getting a few thousand geeks to "buy" Voyager from NASA.
We already have this. It's called 'taxes'.
"Enterprise" is a commercial venture, and it's in a market which is able to sustain itself (although "Enterprise" didn't quite make it--due to being run poorly). Basic research is not self-sustaining in the same way, which is why you need to fund them via the government. These are projects that are too big for any one person to engage in, and are not lucrative enough for any large capitalism-oriented group of people to engage in, but still the sort of thing people truly want. That is the proper realm of government spending.
GWB talks about this great "Ownership Society", well, here we go!
I, for one, would pay a few bucks to own a peice of history.
OK, that covers Voyager. Now, who's going to pay for Hubble? For ISS? For Huygens II? For...
Yeah, I'd pay a small amount per year to promote space exploration and basic math and science, but such efforts don't amount to much.
On the other hand, can we abandon the shuttle already, and go back to using rockets? Given that it would be cheaper, it seems stupid to do anything else.
1. The shuttle is launched via rocket.
2. Cheaper to do what? Launch a small capsule into space? Land on the Moon?
3. The shuttle was crippled by the Air Force. The original plan was cheaper and more intelligently designed. The problem was it didn't have the right cargo bay for deploying spy satellites.
Also, can we build nuclear rockets please? They are probably at least as safe and environmentally friendly
Unless it explodes. Oops!
overall as burning several tons of rocket fuel
You mean the reaction of Hydrogen + Oxygen => Water? That rocket fuel?
To be fair, there's also the SRB's to consider, but I've never heard people complain about their exhaust being a problem pollution-wise.
and would be able to lift useful payloads so that we can begin the development of space.
Define 'useful payloads'. The shuttle has a large cargo bay and is reusable. One of the main problems with the shuttle is that it's still a prototype--it's not a finished product.
There's certainly a knee-jerk reaction against the idea of nuclear rockets--but that's for good reason. Radiation kills and is extremely expensive to clean up. There also seems to be a knee-jerk reaction for nuclear fuels in order to give the big 'F-U' to the environmentalists. Do you understand the implications of nuclear rockets? Or are you from the more irrational of the two knee-jerk crowds?
Maybe it would be better if the Voyager program were funded by a private foundation. A consortium of colleges could share the expenses and study the data. Then the program wouldn't be in danger due to lack of government funding.
Because government is a more efficient means of doing this. A consortium of colleges would not have had the money to undertake the Voyager projects--at least, not without government funds. Then you have one school working on the probe, one on the launch vehicle, one on the science payload, etc? That's not efficient.
Better is to have a central agency which coordinates these things. There's nothing wrong with NASA partnering with universities (which is exactly what they do), but to leave these sorts of projects entirely to universities or private enterprise is not rational.
Its an attempt to pull at people's emotions to try to get the extra money. And don't get me wrong its not misleading or untrue that cuts would need to be made, but the programs used to illistrate the debate are always the most popular ones. Just like right here.
So, you're saying they're not really going to cut the Voyager project? That Bush really wants higher taxes so he's trying to 'scare' us with this proposed Voyager cut?
What you're saying makes no sense. This isn't a ploy, Bush truly doesn't see the value in Voyager (or science in general).
And, as a matter of fact, I believe that education is the last place we're going to see open source succeed.
WTF?
black holes were actually measured by radiotelescopes (I says measured and not "seen")
Just a small point here, but 'observed' might better fit the idea you are trying to convey. 'Measured' implies you've put some numbers of a certain precision to them (if you're going to avoid 'seen' because it implies visual confirmation...).
For example, you might 'observe' a huge x-ray burst with a radio telescope without really 'measuring' it much beyond "it was greater than the background levels".
Anyway, like I said, it's a small point. Just thought you might find it useful.
While I would hate to disagree with Stephen Hawking
Don't worry, you don't disagree with him. Ironically, you don't realize this.
he would seem to be in disagreement with most modern philosophers of science.
Yeah, in one corner, we have Stephen Hawking, in the other corner we have... Vultan (468899)?
Anyway, to the point...
A single observation can only disprove a theory if you know that observation to be definitively true
As long as you aren't too married to the word "definitely", what you said is implied in Hawking's statement. Instead of 'definitely', science deals with 'repeatably', 'reliably', and 'confidently'.
An observation that disagrees with a theory could instead disprove the theory that says you're seeing what you think you're seeing.
Duh. Do you honestly think Stephen Hawking didn't mean this?
The point is simply that science is an attempt to model reality. Whenever the model and reality are in contradiction, it's the model (science) that must give.
is faster at fixing serious security flaws than closed source
Considering this whole is already fixed, it's hard to ask for faster than that!
On the other hand...
So I'm wondering, just how long will the Mozilla foundation take to distribute a fix for this
That's another question altogether, and one that isn't done so well with Firefox. Still far better than with IE (where you see actively exploited vulnerabilities listed on MS's IE page that aren't fixed for months!). This is something the Mozilla folks need to work on, but being a major open source project, it's more likely to be worked out than closed source projects are (which is the subject of your post).
That's not something you see very often,
What do you think the odds are that Windows and Linux are actually both equal?
"TCO" is completely subjective--it's not a universal value. It's like trying to define the 'universal frame' in physics. There is no such thing.
Does your company require the features of Exchange? Is the cost of *not* having those features higher than the cost of the support and licensing for the Exchange server? Is your company a science/engineering centered one? In that case, Unix is more of a requirement than having a nice, simple, start menu or the ability to run word macros.
TCO is more myth than fact. As an organization, you have to look at your needs, your limitations and your strengths, and go from there. "TCO" is about as meaningful as "best in its class", for which the proper response is, "says who?"
"Show me one official instance where anyone has claimed that ripped CDs for personal use is not legal. I HATE when people on the other side exaggerate (and apparently flat-out lie) just to score points."
Even worse are people who forget the past, and doom the rest of us to repeat it...
RIAA vs Diamond
It's hard to get more 'official' than a lawsuit, but why limit it only to 'official' instances? The RIAA originally promoted the view that mp3's were illegal. If you limit yourself to so-called 'official' incidents, you let them get by with implied assertions and innuendo. In this case, we've got 'official' statements, so it's not an issue, but in general, it's tying one of your hands behind your back while the other side is using both hands, their feet, their teeth, and are hitting you with your free hand...
"(and apparently flat-out lie)"
Awaiting your apology.
6: Resulted in large permanent increases in US airline ticket prices
The major increase in ticket prices are due to the increasing cost of oil, but even limiting ourselves to the 9/11 related price increases, there's a lot of overkill there, as well as the airlines using it as an excuse to raise the prices for an already ailing market. I'll grant calling the ticket price increase 'huge' is a matter of opinion, but when taken as a portion of the hundreds of billions the parent poster claimed, I'd be hard-pressed to call it a significant factor.
9: May have increased cancer rates and other long term health costs
I took that to mean the use of depleted uranium in Iraq, as well as the conventional toll of the war (on both sides). If the poster just meant debris from the WTC, then I agree that OBL/AQ is responsible for the initial exposure, and the costs of the resulting clean up and rebuilding, but the Federal Government said the air was safe. If if wasn't, then they hold some blame for not warning people.
are directly related to the attacks and, therefore, bin Laden.
Which is why I made the distinction that, "Items 6-9 are only as large as they are in magnitude." In other words, those items would still be issues, but a significant portion of those effects are not direct results of OBL or 9/11.
the executives can go to jail
Which has little to do with IT. If IT fails to preserve email, IT won't go to jail. The executives will only go to jail if they are seen as negligent or otherwise accountable for IT's failure--which is the way it should be!
There are huge IT ramifications involved here.
You mean they have to click a check-box/add a config line to an rc file?
OH MY GOD!!! SARBANES-OXLEY, SARBANES-OXLEY, SARBANES-OXLEY!!!!
Your ignorance of SOX doesn't negate that this is very much an IT issue.
My ignorance of SOX doesn't make it "very much" an IT issue either.
Everything I've seen of Sarbanes-Oxley points to it being designed to keep CEO's and other executives from putting into place policies designed to remove responsibility.
And this isn't some major impact on IT. You're gonna have to come up with something more than, "IT has to store data". I mean, isn't that exactly one of the things IT is already doing?
I know you're going to say, "but you didn't ask, 'what *huge* impact will this have on IT?' you asked 'what does this have to do with IT?'" I'll grant you that, if you want to talk semantics, but my point hasn't changed (and the context of my post should make my point fairly easy to grasp), which is that the article's submitter appears to be ideologically opposed to SOX! SOX! SOX!, and is trying to use a non-issue to get others onto his bandwagon.
There's nothing to backlash against, unless you're an ideologue who thinks the powerful shouldn't be held responsible for their actions, an executive who counts on being able to game the system, or an incompetent IT staffer who doesn't know how to store data.
It's still March 31st in almost all of the USA so where does the April 1st joke come into play?
Um, everywhere else?
And in answer to your next question: Ulysses S. Grant.
Would it have killed the poster to mention what Sarbanes-Oxley is?
No kidding. Another thing that would have been useful would have been had he pointed out what the fuck this has to do with IT.
I mean, seriously, "All I hear from IT directors is Sarbanes-Oxley, Sarbanes-Oxley, Sarbanes-Oxley."? If *I* was a conservative (or corporate, if you prefer) lobbyist, and *I* wanted an issue on Slashdot that has nothing much to do with IT, *I'd* submit an article that mentions IT without any logical context, and repeat my propaganda 3x in a row, then close out with, "and that's just the IT department. How are you dealing? Did you make your compliance deadline even after the extension? Are you joining the the backlash?" (especially note the last part--are you joining the 'backlash'? No? What's wrong with you, citizen!)
Two more things that come to mind are:
1. "SOX, as they're calling it, is taxing manpower, swallowing time, and adding huge administrative headaches"
You mean the IT departments are growing (well, that's unclear as what it has to do with IT is unclear, but assuming the submitter's context makes a damn lick of sense...), and that's bad?
2. "not to mention incurring fees and salaries paid out to staff or third-party firms hired to ensure compliance"
Salaries paid out to staff--oh the humanity!
As others have pointed out already, this is good legislation that forces corporations into a more honest and open state. Exactly who would see this as a bad thing?
Items 6-9 are only as large as they are in magnitude because of the war in Iraq, which has nothing to do with bin Laden.
I think you misinterpreted the parent post. I read it to be a "what if GNOME just worked" for the hypothetical distributor.
No, it wasn't "what if GNOME just worked?" it was "what if Adobe and Microsoft wrote apps for GNOME? It would 'just work' like Mac OS X does!" His flaw is that he thinks that's what makes Mac OS X, 'just work'.
As it is, I think you just made the parent's point for him (why Apple was so successful with the Mac OS X transition and why the Windows-to-Linux transition hasn't really started yet).
No, his reasoning is flawed. Mac OS X 'just works' because it's designed to 'just work'. For Linux, 'it just works' isn't that high of a priority. Linux works great for the technical minded user, and on the corporate desktop (where you have dedicated support personnel), but it certainly does *not* 'just work'.
Windows doesn't 'just work', and it has more commercial support for apps and hardware than even Mac OS X does, which is to say, it's not just commercial 3rd party support that makes an OS 'just work'.
Depends, it "just works" for me.
When people say, 'it just works,' on the Mac, they mean hardware, software, OS--pretty much whatever you want to do, it all just works.
I don't have a single piece of hardware that isn't working.
That's different from, 'it just works', that's just, 'it works'. That isn't a put-down on Linux--Linux doesn't have to 'just work' to be a great OS, but it does need to to match up against with OS X for the home desktop user. Fortunately it is moving in that direction, but there's still a lot of work to do yet.
Sure the firewall just works, but for some reason it's in the Sharing System Pref instead of Security. This is pretty counterintuitive if you ask me. . .
Except that the discussion is about why Linux isn't as usable as OS X. You make a valid point, but it has nothing to do with the discussion (unless your point is simply that Mac OS X can be improved, which goes without say).
As far as WiFi on OSX, it is dead simple
I'm glad you agree.
Also Apple has a bad habit of not putting common features in their previous releases.
I wouldn't call that a bad habit, but that certainly is a valid criticism. However, it has nothing to do with why Linux doesn't 'just work'.
Many Linux distros are already passed the half way marker, and it's only a matter of time before it matches OSX.
The problem is that the last 10% takes up 90% of the effort, as they say. Linux is just now passing Windows 2000 in usability (I'm speaking of the most usable distributions, specifically thinking of Ubuntu). The problem is that in about 2 years, when GNOME completely surpasses 2000, there's XP and (perhaps) Longhorn. By that time, not only will Tiger have been released, but 10.5.
But more to the point, Linux won't 'just work' for at least the next five years. I think it's truly ready for the desktop today, but that's wholly different from 'it just works'.
Windows, on the other hand, suffers from constantly having new features crammed in that no one wants, combined with the most lax default file system security permissions available selling on the cheapest hardware available (read: purchased by the unwashed masses). It's no surprise that Windows has the most problems!!!
Agreed, but I don't know what Windows has to do with Linux not 'just working'. I think you're mistaking me for someone who thinks Linux sucks or something. I've been using Linux since prior to kernel 1.0, and am really impressed with Ubuntu 5.04 and GNOME 2.10. I have no fear of the myriad config files and the command line, but there is just no way to say Linux 'just works' the same way Mac OS X 'just works'. And more directly to the point at hand, Linux isn't being held back because of hardware and software vendor support.
Use what the distro provides, or use Firestarter or similar.
Exactly my point. I prefer shorewall myself on Linux, but on OS X, it's extremely simple, built-in, and 'just works'. The point is that the Mac 'just works', and Linux takes much more effort to do the same task. Firestarter doesn't 'Just Work' nearly as well as the firewall in the Mac OS X System Preferences.
I'm not sure, I haven't tried, but why is that important?
Because it's one of the countless things in OS X that 'just works'.
I'm sure there are things you can do simply in GNOME/Linux that are more tricky in Mac OS X
Not many.
How do you sort email into virtual folders like in Evolution? How do you manage multiple WiFi connections with a click or two?
Mail in Tiger has these virtual folders, WiFi management under OS X is dead simple--nothing else out there even comes close.
If someone sat down with GNOME adn Linux, standardised everything, and could promise developers a large(ish) userbase that would all hew precisely to those standards - I think that distribution would quickly become as "easy" and "just works" as Mac OS X.
You are wrong. 'Just working' requires more than standards, it requires standards and processes that are designed for usability. Linux is not designed for usability. Windows has more driver support, and more major applications than Mac OS X has, but it's nowhere near as usable ('just works') as OS X is. What makes you think that's all Linux needs?
No. You need to be able to promise a captive userbase, and no Linux distribution can do that.
Wrong again. All that's required is effort put into usability. Why do you think you couldn't start 'Usix: the Linux that Just Works!' and build a Mac OS X-like Linux? That's not much different than making 'Gentoo - the Linux you compile from source' or 'Debian - the free GNU/Linux with superb package management', etc.
The problem with Linux, from an 'It Just Works' prespective (which is the perspective we are talking about here) is that 'Just Working' isn't a priority, and that has *nothing* to do with lacking a 'captive user base' (whatever that means).
"Marketing Principle" = "Logical Fallacy"
Except that that is a logical fallacy. The fallacy is believing that marketing and formal logic are applicable to each other.
It makes a strange and liberating kind of sense.
It certainly does.
Some of these are also the names of standard logical fallacies, which it appears your Consumer Behaviour class is teaching you to exploit. These include:
The problem is, you can't have a logicall fallacy when talking about subjectivity[*].
- Appeal to authority: Most of the top dogs...
Authority doesn't make something objectively true. But, logically, the domain over which authority has, well, authority, it *does* apply.
- Appeal to popularity: Last year's conference was full of...
Same basic idea.
[*] I posit that there *is* an ultimate underlying logic to everything, including subjectivity. But when people refer to 'logic' formally, they tend to mean small 'if A then B' and 'not A equals B, and B equals C or D, then A does not equal C or D' and so on. So, in the 'logic' of subjectivity, authority and popularity are not inherently fallacious.
Or put simply: The popularity or authority of a mathematician won't make what she says true just because she says it or that a lot of people believe her, but her subjective preferences of mathematical style are up to you to value or not.
I'm talking about academia and the like.
What? You never mentioned 'academia'. (Clue: Macs are prominent in academia)
Personally, I don't take notice of the kind of computer someone is using. I take notice with what they use it for. Someone can pull out a 286 orange-screen CGA bricktop for all I care.
If you are at a conference that you respect, and you see a a trend, it's worthwhile to look into it--maybe there's something to it, maybe not. If you go to 'Dork-a-Palooza' or whatever your thing is, and everyone's got 286 CGA luggables, are you telling me you won't think maybe it's something you would want to look into yourself?
If they got it to do something insanely cool, like squeeze significant performance out of it, that's worth seeing.
What idiocy is this? ASOTV's example is one of choice, yours is an example of skill. Your example isn't relevant to the question of choosing your primary computer platform.
No practical use? Gee... all these kids I hire for their exceptional assembly programming skills, who honed their skills taking apart Speak and Spells, obviously don't belong in crafting 64-bit chips, correct?
Of what practical use is programming an Altair or having an obsolete CPU's registers memorized? Knowing these things doesn't make you an 'exceptional assembly programmer'.
And how the hell did you get from ASOTV's post to Speak and Spell hackers not being allowed to design 64-bit cpus? It's so non sequitur that it boggles the mind that you thought it was pertinent to the discussion!
You just don't understand the points the people you are replying to have made. They are looking at people they respect, and studying choices they've made. Are you truly so retarded that you don't think this makes sense?
Presuming you also have hardware coming with distribution X drivers, dsitribution X would be quite reasonable competition for OS X - it would certainly have the "it just works" factor.
GNOME is great, but it certainly does not 'just work', and it's not lack of hardware support, or lack of Photoshop and Office, that are the reason for this.
When people say, 'it just works', they aren't referring solely to the hardware (although that is part of it), but the software (OS) as well. How do you set up the firewall in GNOME? How do you format and partition a hard drive? How do you integrate your digital camera with your screensaver? These are just a few random examples--all possible under GNOME, but not even remotely as well designed as under OS X.
I'm guessing you aren't very familiar with Mac OS X. GNOME is great, and I use it daily, but it's not just lack of hardware vendors' and application vendors' support that's keeping it from 'just working'.
By what mechanism does sending an email or hosting an ActiveX control compromise recent versions of Windows?
You are a man walking in a minefield, who says he's absolutely safe, because where he's standing right now, there is no mine.
"But right now!" you yell, "I'm just as safe as you!" The problem is, that your safety is an illusion, and history has shown that you have only so many steps until you hit the next mine.
History has also shown that no mine has ever exploded for the Mac OS X user.
You are ignoring history. Most of the services that Mac OS X has (which are almost all turned off by default) are almost all open source services. This means they are more likely to be secure--due to the nature of their development. Mac OS X does not allow web sites to do as much with the local system as Windows+IE does. So in IE, all it takes is one mistake, and it's game over. On OS X, there's nothing there for the same sort of mistake to be made.
It's possible to harden Windows (primarily, by not using Outlook or IE, and by using a hardware firewall). You also need to never open email attachments (at least, unless you are certain they are safe), and watch where you download software from. Mac OS X does not need such measures.
And so we don't go through this again, it's absolutely certain that some of this is due to market share, but not all of it. Mac OS X is harder to exploit.
Think of it from the virus/worm writer's perspective. Let's say you want to infect Mac OS X. What are you going to do? Find a flaw in Rendezvous, perhaps. But how does it spread? Rendezvous is limited to a subnet. So maybe you want to exploit Safari. OK, you can maybe find a buffer-overrun, but again, how will it spread? And buffer-overruns are harder to find than ways of tricking ActiveX to do what it was designed to do, which is provide ways for web site to run small Windows programs inside of IE. It's easier to trick a user into running these, because they have to constantly click 'yes' for every website they hit. On Mac OS X, you only have to click 'Open' (note the verb vs. the ambiguous 'yes') when you first open uncertain filetypes from Safari. Additionally you have the Unix nature of OS X, which means no one runs as 'root'. On Windows, you make life hard if you are not an Administrator, on the Mac, it's easy. So it's harder to make a worm that is a pain to uninstall.
These things are all real differences. And they all point to Windows being hit first, hardest, and most successfully. Market share is but one aspect of this.
I don't think you need to get so defensive. No way is everyone going to agree with you. But even if you do get it wrong, we're still happy to have this system at all.
/etc/ and /Applications/, but nothing that'll cause you problems).
That said, one nice thing about DarwinPorts and Fink (on the Mac, of course) is you can 'uninstall' them by rm -rf'ing their base directory (you're still left with some files in
Given all the feedback you're apparently receiving on this, you should see that this is a feature people really, really want. One problem is that we have no idea how well you've engineered this system, so we can't be sure you won't overwrite files managed by apt or rpm, or that if we install gaim (for example) via AutoPackage (which presumably installs libgaim), that if via dselect, we install something that needs the distribution's version of libgaim, that there won't be problems.
In other words, it's a wildcard, and history has shown that this is the place where things tend to go wrong--if they do, we want to be sure that it won't be too difficult to recover from.
Personally, I tried it out with SuperTux, and it worked great. I installed it in ~/.local/ which avoids any of the above concerns, but for this to really take off, it needs to stay as far away from the distribution as possible.
I can imagine this would be done with a configuration file for each distribution (and program logic to cater to the quirks of each distribution--I really think this is the way to go, as there will certainly be volunteers from the main distros to help out!). It's harder for you, but makes for a more easily accepted project.
Also, if this takes off, I can imagine distributions will add support for it natively.
The only thing left for Linux would be app bundles. Then you'll have the distributions for most of the system, AutoPackage for packages that are cutting edge, or otherwise haven't quite made it into the distributions, and app bundles for the one-off app downloads.