The basic argument against computational intelligence (IIRC) is based on Goedel's Incompleteness Theorm. Penrose suggests that because humans can always solve halting problems (will a given program terminate) and turing machines can't, that the human brain is doing more than mere computation.
If that's 'the basic argument against computational intelligence', it's extremely flawed. Humans can't always solve halting problems. When they can, they do so by a process of logical induction; it is circular logic to assume that computers will never be capable of following that logic or of generating it themselves.
This seems to be a favorite tactic among those who argue against artificial intelligence: "I can create, in reality or in thought experiment, a computer which cannot do X; I now claim that all computers past and future are incapable of X."
Turing machines are especially good for constructing such fallacies: though any computing machine is representable as a Turing machine, any given Turing machine can be presented with a problem beyond its individual capacities. Therefore, the fallacy of division can be applied to get the false conclusion that there are certain problems beyond the capacity of *any* Turing machine.
If anyone recalls the dumb terminal days of the '70's, they should readily recognize the iMac as a straight rip-off of the ADDS Viewpoint and older Data General terminals. The form factor is nearly identical and if I was DG or ADDS, I'd be crawling up Apple's backside.
The only innovation in the iMac's "trade dress" is the use of the translucent plastics. The shape has been around the computer industry for 25 years.
A central point is being missed; namely that Apple's design doesn't have to be innovative or original in order for their claim in this matter to be valid.
This is not a case over patents, where the matter under patent must be original and non-obvious. Nor is it a case over copyrights, where the creator is the first owner of the copyright.
This is a case about trade dress, where I'd guess that a lot of principles of trademark law still apply. Trademark law is a Good Thing; it protects both the company and the consumer against deception.
This decision does not mean "you can't sell a computer that looks like an iMac." It means "you can't sell a computer that looks so much like an iMac that consumers may buy yours thinking they are buying an iMac."
Sure, it would be clearer what eMachines and Daewoo were attempting if they marked their products as "Appell" computers or with a bitten-fruit logo. But these are not the only ways to imitate another company's product to the point where you are damaging both the other company and the customers you trick. The court's injunction means that, in their opinion, eMachines and Daewoo went far enough in imitating the iMac that it might have fooled customers.
By the way -- who has actually seen the computers under discussion? I have; I've seen the eOne at the local Circuit City. If I wasn't computer-literate, and didn't know exactly what an iMac should look like besides 'translucent plastics in blue and white single-unit computer', then I might be fooled.
Contrary to existing material on the matter, like the Jargon File, Taylor is the first to spell out the criteria implicit in earlier treatises on the hack: 1) simplicity, 2) mastery, and 3) illicitness [as in 'against the rules', reviewers comment] (p.15). This latter criteria is in its use of the 'illicitness' term only applicable to the cracking activity. In a sense it is applicable to hacking as well. Then in the shape of 'against the rules'. We are not neccessarily talking against the rules of justice, but against what the system's rules say is possible. In that sense, calling the third criteria illicitness hints at somewhat dubious activities, but is in fact not. It is an important element in the regular hack (if such thing as a regular hack does exist), too.
Why use a term that has a defined and commonly understood meaning, if it's going to take fifty words to explain that you're not using that commonly understood meaning, but rather one you've invented? Particularly when it's one with emotional loading, such as "illicit".
I would use instead the phrase "outside the box" (despite the buzzwording it's suffered in recent years.) "The box" is the set of mental constraints under which the majority of people operate; I would suggest that it *is* one of the great pleasures of hacking (almost an aesthetic pleasure) to go exploring beyond those constraints and come back bearing treasures. Isn't one of the anticipated rewards of a great hack the jaw-drops of stupefied amazement from the first onlookers to behold the surprise? Isn't that, in fact, what often makes the truly great hack a pleasure to onlookers as well as to the hacker?
"Illicit" suggests that a hacker could be motivated just by the thought, "Wow, this is illegal!" (And again, I reject the idea that "illicit" and "illegal" are the right terms to use as long as you misuse "law" to mean "convention".) The thrill of defying authority figures might be what motivates a cracker. But to a hacker, that itself would be a mental constraint ("authority/law" == "automatically bad") within which they would not knowingly choose to be imprisoned.
I'm not disputing that Tesla may have gotten less than a fair shake. But in just a half-hour of reading the comments and the sites they link to, I've read three different (contradictory) accounts of the Tesla-caused-an-earthquake incident. None of the sites or comments offers any evidence that any of what they claim is true; they only assure you "what I say is the truth, because what you believe now isn't."
In short, it smells very urban-legendy. It's dismayingly similar, in fact, to the 'water-powered engine' UL... "It's true! They invented an auto engine that would run on ordinary tap water, no need for gasoline at all. But that of course upset the oil cartel, who arranged to have it all shushed up..." This is a classic memetic strategy for conspiracy theories: 'The truth is being surpressed by powerful forces; the absence of evidence is actually proof of this surpression and therefore of the truth of the original claim.' Here, there are actually two entities getting credit for this surpression: Edison, because Tesla was a competitor; and the U.S. government, because Tesla's inventions were too dangerous.
Meanwhile, it doesn't help the credibility of the case that so many of those promoting Tesla's genius are clearly enamored of the 'morals of the story' -- which folklore experts will recognize as a common symptom of the UL. 'The American people are nationalistic idiots.' 'The American government surpresses the truth.' 'Traditional American icons like Thomas Edison have feet of clay.' 'There's lot of stuff out there that would fill us with wonder even today, but it's been deliberately hidden from us.'
Note what I am not saying: that any specific claim about Tesla's achievements, or about any campaign to surpress them, is true or false. But if I was trying to convince someone that the version of things they believed was actually mistaken, and that I had a more accurate version of events... I'd do my utmost to provide supporting evidence. The fact that I've seen none makes me wonder.
Few people realize that [Xerox-PARC] DID make computers at one time, and actually tried to enter the consumer market. Pirates of Silicon Valley made it well known that Xerox Parc pressed the concept of the GUI, and Apple just simply lifted and expanded on the idea, but before that it was simply "Apple invented the GUI."
However, Pirates of Silicon Valley was a movie. Movies are notorious for twisting historical facts to make a better story, and in this case they decided to take a myth (which they might have even believed themselves) and play it up for the drama. So, Pirates didn't make the "theft of the GUI" myth 'well-known', since you can't 'know' something that isn't true. They just dramatized the accusation quite well.
Who says it's a myth? Bruce Horn says so. Jef Raskin says so. These are the people who were there, at PARC and at Apple, and who know what PARC did (and did not) come up with -- but two decades later, people are claiming, "Well, I saw the TV movie, so I know better what the real history is."
Bottom line: Some of the concepts that mythology claims Apple 'stole' from Xerox PARC actually predate the existence of PARC. Other concepts that mythology claims Apple 'stole' from PARC were clearly invented at Apple.
And yes, there were some concepts (not as many as people think) that were originally implemented at Xerox PARC, which were later re-implemented in the Macintosh interface. However:
If you believe that a concept is property, and that anyone who sees a good concept and re-implements it elsewhere with improvements in order to make a better system is scum, what are you doing reading Slashdot?
If Xerox PARC believed that concepts were property and that anyone who saw their concepts demonstrated could 'steal' them, why on Earth did they regularly arrange demonstrations for visitors, including the heads of other computer companies?
I hate to say it. But it seems that the opportunity to see Apple as "the bad guy" is overwhelming many people's ability to think critically, or even to remember their own beliefs about whether software concepts should be patentable.
As others have pointed out, there's no big revelation here, or sudden big security hole... All it means is that if you could access private data before and put it through a brute force search, now you have a search that's a little bit more focused.
Apparently what prompted the researchers to look for and announce this "problem" was the fact that they were already in the business of selling a "solution" for it. (That's not my cynicism speaking; that's in the article itself.) Well, I've got a solution for it too: generate a bunch of unneeded encryption keys from your other files and store them on the same volume. The encryption keys you're trying to hide no longer stand out by their randomness and you have an integrity check for the rest of your valuable data.
Actually, now I come to think of it, there are three more possible meanings (number five actually being the most common use):
5) The complete stupidity by which the American "justice" system seems to work. If a lady in Denmark got money of off suing someone for her putting her own pet in the microwave (or spilling hot coffe all over herself at McDonalds)
*sigh* Oh, this again. The "pet-in-the-microwave" and the "McDonald's coffee" story. Maybe, instead of relying on urban legends to give you your view of another country, you should check out some facts about one of the cases you've cited. (the one that has some factual basis.)
For those who don't have time to follow the links (or are afraid it might chip away at their smug knowledge that "we're smarter than those Americans") let me offer some of the salient points:
The woman who brought the case received third-degree burns. Not to point out the obvious, but if coffee is hot enough to give you third-degree burns on your skin, what you think it will do to your mouth, throat and esophagus? Why was McDonald's serving coffee hot enough to be dangerous -- and too hot to drink?
Most people only know about the case because the amount seemed too large: 2.7 million. However, it is never reported that those were punitive damages, not compensatory damages. (In other words, the jury didn't decide that the woman who'd be burned had suffered 2.7 million dollars worth of damages -- they decided, based on the evidence, that McDonald's had shown 2.7 million dollars worth of inexcusable carelessness.)
At the time of the lawsuit, McDonald's had already settled over 700 cases related to burns from its coffee, including previous cases of third-degree burns. They still refused to warn customers, or to even negotiate with the customer in this case for what she originally asked, which was just payment of her medical bills.
Perhaps you should be a little more careful next time before you go assuming that you've heard the whole story, and that the big corporation is in the right so that the so-silly American legal system will be in the wrong.... And for God's sake, when you go backing up your assertions with such utterly disproven urban legends as the pet-in-the-microwave, you're practically asking for the phrase "Danish credulity" to come into parlance.
When intelligent users cannot access the power of a system through a user interface, does it mean that the users aren't intelligent enough? Or that the interface needs improvement?
I think the better geeks are apt to answer "the interface needs improvement." Some of the geek-wannabes will take the easy way out and say, "If they don't understand my system, clearly they're not intelligent enough to be using it in the first place!" But real geeks are more likely to face the fact that a system exists to serve the users; if it doesn't, all the nifty code under the hood represents wasted time and effort.
So, let's look at the other side: when a law code becomes so big and complex that ordinary citizens (whose intelligence is, if anything, above average) cannot understand it, is it the citizens who are to blame? Or the law code?
The Supreme Court actually answered, "It's the law," in the decisions that struck down the Communications Decency Act. They noted that, not only would it have a "chilling effect" on protected free speech if citizens were unsure what was or wasn't legal for them to say on-line, but that the existence of such a situation pointed to a flawed law. The decision affirmed that a law has a responsibility to be comprehensible to the citizens who have to live by it.
I've seen some confusion on legal matters on Slashdot, usually on the subjects of patents, copyrights and trademarks. Yet I don't attribute this so much to Slashdotters being especially ignorant of the law -- not moreso, anyways, than the average citizen who is supposed to comprehend those laws well enough to obey them! I think that the wide deviation between theory and practice is at least partly to blame: patents awarded in the face of decades of "prior art"; police raids carried out in trademark cases, cases where the defendant is the one who has used the trademark for six times as long as the plaintiff has been in existence; portions of naturally-occurring human and plant genomes being declared a company's private intellectual property... If the actions of courts and lawyers would only conform to the law, us ordinary geeks might have a better chance of conforming to it ourselves!
Re:Moderate this up. People need to see this.
on
The ROX Desktop
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· Score: 1
Think about what it is, SPECIFICALLY that you don't like about the program, or Linux itself. Write this stuff down.
Think about what you DO like. Write this down as well.
It's just as well to quote that second part, since spotting the good ideas worth keeping so frequently gets overlooked in the rush to throw out the mediocre, unkewl or simply unneeded.
I see at least one element of this ROX desktop that I really like, and haven't seen elsewhere. That is the visible indicator of whether a CD-ROM or floppy or Zip is mounted or not. The idea of having to "mount" a CD or zip even after you've put it in its slot is not a natural one to Mac/Windows users, who are used to having it immediately available; if we want to convert users from those systems, we want to at least ease their transition with a visible indicator each time of what the next step is.
... and I guess there's a good chance from now on that the airport security will too. Because, honestly, if I do get suspected of smuggling contraband or carrying weapons aboard a flight, I'm choosing this over a frisk so fast it'll make your head spin.
Honestly, I'm a member of the ACLU, and so I'm not unconcerned about civil liberties such as the right to privacy. But when issues like this arise, it always seems that an ACLU rep or Jon Katz or someone else is always ready to stand up and say 'Damn you! How dare you offer us a different option than we had before! How dare you offer us a new choice that may not be to everyone's liking! We demand Utopia, dammit! It's not enough just to offer us a possible improvement, and even give us the choice of whether or not to use it; it's perfection or nothing!' I'm a realist; I compare the proposed new system to what we have now. But every time an issue like this comes up, it seems to be an issue because it gets compared to the perfect world we all wish we lived in, and comes up short against that unrealistic standard.
I've read the comments suggesting that the libertarian thing to do is to boycott all airlines that are now offering this new technology as an alternative to the frisk. It makes me wonder why it wasn't the libertarian thing to do to boycott all those airlines that were frisking in the first place. And it makes me wonder whether libertarians actually get on planes feeling much better knowing that no one on the plane has been searched for guns or bombs.
My only real problem with the system as it's described is that they automatically assign someone of the same sex to be the one looking at the contours of your naked body. I think we should have the choice of having someone of the opposite sex scoping us out. Hell, if I get on the plane suspecting that the woman at the monitor got a cheap thrill out of seeing me naked, I probably won't have stopped smiling before we touch down again. ^_^
There have been several posts claiming that Open Source software has less necessity for security, or safety. That the GPL somehow exonerates OSS in some way that the MS EULA does not. All of this is bunk.
If OSS software is really a general purpose solution then it must meet as stringent a security requirement as any other such solution. For all of those Linux evangelists out there, we can't claim security as an advantage in on sentence, and then claim less resposibility for it in the next without sounding silly.
Hmmmm.... I don't exactly see why. If an Open Source project has 10,000 developers who each put 2 hours into a project, and a commercial competitor has 1,000 developers each put 10 hours into a project, surely we can say that twice as much work has been put into the Open Source project?
Likewise, I don't see any contradiction in saying that OSS developers are not obligated to guarantee security in the way that commercial developers are obligated to do so... and yet still tend to produce software that is more secure even without that obligation.
Consider that in the case of the Melissa virus, the security hole was right there in the user interface for everyone to see: the facilities to give a macro the power to destroy data, the power to copy itself, and the power to run itself automatically. Nothing stopped that security hole from being plugged but the closed-source nature of the code and Microsoft's unwillingness to address a problem before their end users paid the price.
Slashdot Mirror
If that's 'the basic argument against computational intelligence', it's extremely flawed. Humans can't always solve halting problems. When they can, they do so by a process of logical induction; it is circular logic to assume that computers will never be capable of following that logic or of generating it themselves.
This seems to be a favorite tactic among those who argue against artificial intelligence: "I can create, in reality or in thought experiment, a computer which cannot do X; I now claim that all computers past and future are incapable of X."
Turing machines are especially good for constructing such fallacies: though any computing machine is representable as a Turing machine, any given Turing machine can be presented with a problem beyond its individual capacities. Therefore, the fallacy of division can be applied to get the false conclusion that there are certain problems beyond the capacity of *any* Turing machine.
A central point is being missed; namely that Apple's design doesn't have to be innovative or original in order for their claim in this matter to be valid.
This is not a case over patents, where the matter under patent must be original and non-obvious. Nor is it a case over copyrights, where the creator is the first owner of the copyright.
This is a case about trade dress, where I'd guess that a lot of principles of trademark law still apply. Trademark law is a Good Thing; it protects both the company and the consumer against deception.
This decision does not mean "you can't sell a computer that looks like an iMac." It means "you can't sell a computer that looks so much like an iMac that consumers may buy yours thinking they are buying an iMac."
Sure, it would be clearer what eMachines and Daewoo were attempting if they marked their products as "Appell" computers or with a bitten-fruit logo. But these are not the only ways to imitate another company's product to the point where you are damaging both the other company and the customers you trick. The court's injunction means that, in their opinion, eMachines and Daewoo went far enough in imitating the iMac that it might have fooled customers.
By the way -- who has actually seen the computers under discussion? I have; I've seen the eOne at the local Circuit City. If I wasn't computer-literate, and didn't know exactly what an iMac should look like besides 'translucent plastics in blue and white single-unit computer', then I might be fooled.
Why use a term that has a defined and commonly understood meaning, if it's going to take fifty words to explain that you're not using that commonly understood meaning, but rather one you've invented? Particularly when it's one with emotional loading, such as "illicit".
I would use instead the phrase "outside the box" (despite the buzzwording it's suffered in recent years.) "The box" is the set of mental constraints under which the majority of people operate; I would suggest that it *is* one of the great pleasures of hacking (almost an aesthetic pleasure) to go exploring beyond those constraints and come back bearing treasures. Isn't one of the anticipated rewards of a great hack the jaw-drops of stupefied amazement from the first onlookers to behold the surprise? Isn't that, in fact, what often makes the truly great hack a pleasure to onlookers as well as to the hacker?
"Illicit" suggests that a hacker could be motivated just by the thought, "Wow, this is illegal!" (And again, I reject the idea that "illicit" and "illegal" are the right terms to use as long as you misuse "law" to mean "convention".) The thrill of defying authority figures might be what motivates a cracker. But to a hacker, that itself would be a mental constraint ("authority/law" == "automatically bad") within which they would not knowingly choose to be imprisoned.
Gates's remarks were taken out of context. The original story has been updated .
I'm not disputing that Tesla may have gotten less than a fair shake. But in just a half-hour of reading the comments and the sites they link to, I've read three different (contradictory) accounts of the Tesla-caused-an-earthquake incident. None of the sites or comments offers any evidence that any of what they claim is true; they only assure you "what I say is the truth, because what you believe now isn't."
In short, it smells very urban-legendy. It's dismayingly similar, in fact, to the 'water-powered engine' UL... "It's true! They invented an auto engine that would run on ordinary tap water, no need for gasoline at all. But that of course upset the oil cartel, who arranged to have it all shushed up..." This is a classic memetic strategy for conspiracy theories: 'The truth is being surpressed by powerful forces; the absence of evidence is actually proof of this surpression and therefore of the truth of the original claim.' Here, there are actually two entities getting credit for this surpression: Edison, because Tesla was a competitor; and the U.S. government, because Tesla's inventions were too dangerous.
Meanwhile, it doesn't help the credibility of the case that so many of those promoting Tesla's genius are clearly enamored of the 'morals of the story' -- which folklore experts will recognize as a common symptom of the UL. 'The American people are nationalistic idiots.' 'The American government surpresses the truth.' 'Traditional American icons like Thomas Edison have feet of clay.' 'There's lot of stuff out there that would fill us with wonder even today, but it's been deliberately hidden from us.'
Note what I am not saying: that any specific claim about Tesla's achievements, or about any campaign to surpress them, is true or false. But if I was trying to convince someone that the version of things they believed was actually mistaken, and that I had a more accurate version of events... I'd do my utmost to provide supporting evidence. The fact that I've seen none makes me wonder.
However, Pirates of Silicon Valley was a movie. Movies are notorious for twisting historical facts to make a better story, and in this case they decided to take a myth (which they might have even believed themselves) and play it up for the drama. So, Pirates didn't make the "theft of the GUI" myth 'well-known', since you can't 'know' something that isn't true. They just dramatized the accusation quite well.
Who says it's a myth? Bruce Horn says so. Jef Raskin says so. These are the people who were there, at PARC and at Apple, and who know what PARC did (and did not) come up with -- but two decades later, people are claiming, "Well, I saw the TV movie, so I know better what the real history is."
Bottom line: Some of the concepts that mythology claims Apple 'stole' from Xerox PARC actually predate the existence of PARC. Other concepts that mythology claims Apple 'stole' from PARC were clearly invented at Apple.
And yes, there were some concepts (not as many as people think) that were originally implemented at Xerox PARC, which were later re-implemented in the Macintosh interface. However:
I hate to say it. But it seems that the opportunity to see Apple as "the bad guy" is overwhelming many people's ability to think critically, or even to remember their own beliefs about whether software concepts should be patentable.
As others have pointed out, there's no big revelation here, or sudden big security hole... All it means is that if you could access private data before and put it through a brute force search, now you have a search that's a little bit more focused.
Apparently what prompted the researchers to look for and announce this "problem" was the fact that they were already in the business of selling a "solution" for it. (That's not my cynicism speaking; that's in the article itself.) Well, I've got a solution for it too: generate a bunch of unneeded encryption keys from your other files and store them on the same volume. The encryption keys you're trying to hide no longer stand out by their randomness and you have an integrity check for the rest of your valuable data.
*sigh* Oh, this again. The "pet-in-the-microwave" and the "McDonald's coffee" story. Maybe, instead of relying on urban legends to give you your view of another country, you should check out some facts about one of the cases you've cited. (the one that has some factual basis.)
For those who don't have time to follow the links (or are afraid it might chip away at their smug knowledge that "we're smarter than those Americans") let me offer some of the salient points:
Perhaps you should be a little more careful next time before you go assuming that you've heard the whole story, and that the big corporation is in the right so that the so-silly American legal system will be in the wrong. ... And for God's sake, when you go backing up your assertions with such utterly disproven urban legends as the pet-in-the-microwave, you're practically asking for the phrase "Danish credulity" to come into parlance.
When intelligent users cannot access the power of a system through a user interface, does it mean that the users aren't intelligent enough? Or that the interface needs improvement?
I think the better geeks are apt to answer "the interface needs improvement." Some of the geek-wannabes will take the easy way out and say, "If they don't understand my system, clearly they're not intelligent enough to be using it in the first place!" But real geeks are more likely to face the fact that a system exists to serve the users; if it doesn't, all the nifty code under the hood represents wasted time and effort.
So, let's look at the other side: when a law code becomes so big and complex that ordinary citizens (whose intelligence is, if anything, above average) cannot understand it, is it the citizens who are to blame? Or the law code?
The Supreme Court actually answered, "It's the law," in the decisions that struck down the Communications Decency Act. They noted that, not only would it have a "chilling effect" on protected free speech if citizens were unsure what was or wasn't legal for them to say on-line, but that the existence of such a situation pointed to a flawed law. The decision affirmed that a law has a responsibility to be comprehensible to the citizens who have to live by it.
I've seen some confusion on legal matters on Slashdot, usually on the subjects of patents, copyrights and trademarks. Yet I don't attribute this so much to Slashdotters being especially ignorant of the law -- not moreso, anyways, than the average citizen who is supposed to comprehend those laws well enough to obey them! I think that the wide deviation between theory and practice is at least partly to blame: patents awarded in the face of decades of "prior art"; police raids carried out in trademark cases, cases where the defendant is the one who has used the trademark for six times as long as the plaintiff has been in existence; portions of naturally-occurring human and plant genomes being declared a company's private intellectual property... If the actions of courts and lawyers would only conform to the law, us ordinary geeks might have a better chance of conforming to it ourselves!
It's just as well to quote that second part, since spotting the good ideas worth keeping so frequently gets overlooked in the rush to throw out the mediocre, unkewl or simply unneeded.
I see at least one element of this ROX desktop that I really like, and haven't seen elsewhere. That is the visible indicator of whether a CD-ROM or floppy or Zip is mounted or not. The idea of having to "mount" a CD or zip even after you've put it in its slot is not a natural one to Mac/Windows users, who are used to having it immediately available; if we want to convert users from those systems, we want to at least ease their transition with a visible indicator each time of what the next step is.
Honestly, I'm a member of the ACLU, and so I'm not unconcerned about civil liberties such as the right to privacy. But when issues like this arise, it always seems that an ACLU rep or Jon Katz or someone else is always ready to stand up and say 'Damn you! How dare you offer us a different option than we had before! How dare you offer us a new choice that may not be to everyone's liking! We demand Utopia, dammit! It's not enough just to offer us a possible improvement, and even give us the choice of whether or not to use it; it's perfection or nothing!' I'm a realist; I compare the proposed new system to what we have now. But every time an issue like this comes up, it seems to be an issue because it gets compared to the perfect world we all wish we lived in, and comes up short against that unrealistic standard.
I've read the comments suggesting that the libertarian thing to do is to boycott all airlines that are now offering this new technology as an alternative to the frisk. It makes me wonder why it wasn't the libertarian thing to do to boycott all those airlines that were frisking in the first place. And it makes me wonder whether libertarians actually get on planes feeling much better knowing that no one on the plane has been searched for guns or bombs.
My only real problem with the system as it's described is that they automatically assign someone of the same sex to be the one looking at the contours of your naked body. I think we should have the choice of having someone of the opposite sex scoping us out. Hell, if I get on the plane suspecting that the woman at the monitor got a cheap thrill out of seeing me naked, I probably won't have stopped smiling before we touch down again. ^_^
Hmmmm.... I don't exactly see why. If an Open Source project has 10,000 developers who each put 2 hours into a project, and a commercial competitor has 1,000 developers each put 10 hours into a project, surely we can say that twice as much work has been put into the Open Source project?
Likewise, I don't see any contradiction in saying that OSS developers are not obligated to guarantee security in the way that commercial developers are obligated to do so... and yet still tend to produce software that is more secure even without that obligation.
Consider that in the case of the Melissa virus, the security hole was right there in the user interface for everyone to see: the facilities to give a macro the power to destroy data, the power to copy itself, and the power to run itself automatically. Nothing stopped that security hole from being plugged but the closed-source nature of the code and Microsoft's unwillingness to address a problem before their end users paid the price.