Rationalize all you want, but everything is a matter of principles. That's why they're called principles. There is no situation where you can selectively set them aside and still call yourself a principled person without being a hypocrite.
Now, since you apparently want to ignore that and talk pragmatics, check out how this really works: Since MS didn't willfully infringe the patent (like any good manufacturer they didn't do a patent search so they couldn't end up with that kind of liability), at worst MS will be compelled to license this technology. This will not be terribly expensive; an upper limit on how expensive it gets is "how much would it cost to buy this company". This either makes the patent-holder stronger, so they can go on to sue others; or it makes MS stronger (boy that'll show 'em how bad these laws are); or both.
In no case will that change MS's attitude toward patents; the benefits they get from the current system far outweigh the worst-case (for them) outcome of this lawsuit.
"It is not hypocritical to want everyone to get a pass under an unjust law....except the people who are pushing for said law."
OMG, a van driving by was able to see where in my house there was motion! By some Hollywood-inspired magic they can use that to detect "illegal activity"!
The fact that you're bothering to compare this to recent wiretap activity shows that you don't know what this technology is.
The fact that you think the government spied on all calls, internet activity, etc. shows that you don't know what that technology is either.
If that were true, then why are they complaining about the FCC approval (which does enable the legitimate uses but has no effect on ilegitimate ones)?
"And where the hell have you been?"
Like I said, I've heard all the hype. "All the" illegal wiretaps going on, amounts to a relatively small amount of activity. It just happens to be highly illegal/unethical.
"The people with access to this technology will use it however they want, and they want to spy on everyone."
LOL. They're going to station an agent with wall-penetrating radar by every home? Sure, I bet.
"the ones pushing to abandon NN are also the ones dealing in information."
Excuse me? Perhaps you mean that the ones pushing for the status quo are also the ones dealing in information.
Those who oppose network neutrality also include those of us with the common sense to know that legislators and regulators shouldn't try to set technical policy.
There are other approaches to solving the problems NN wants to address, and those other approaches have the added benefit that they might actually work.
Which is worse... the analogy between telegraph and internet; or the assertion that because one particular arrangement that didn't include "network neutrality" regulation led to abuse, therefore "network neutrality" regulation is the only way to prevent abuse (or would even be sufficient to do so)?
When we try to regulate technical procedures, we fail. If we want to win, we should look instead at regulating business practices. "Without NN companies can double-charge"? Ok, regulate double-charging. "Without NN you can't be sure you get what you paid for"? Ok, regulate not delivering what the customer paid for.
If the only way to sell a "100mbps broadband to the providers of our choice, with 1mbps access to anyone else" were to market it as such, the issue would take care of itself.
I find it amusing that someone in this thread thinks the only people opposed to NN are in the information business. So go ahead, call me a shill; believe if you like that someone at a telco would suggest the type of business regulations I'm talking about. I need a good laugh.
"Mostly"? I doubt it. For as much attention as they get, the activities of intelligence agencies, or even law enforcement agencies doing clandestine investigations, are few and far between compared to the number of emergency response activites that could benefit from better sensing technology. (And, not every covert use of this technology would be an abuse, fwiw.)
What I find the most interesting is, people seem to assume that various agencies (1) will be using this to violate surveilance laws and the 4th ammendment, but at the same time (2) would have let lack of FCC approval stand in their way.
EIther you believe in your principles, or you don't. If you believe in your principles except when ignoring them hurts someone you don't like, you are a hypocrite.
The law protects everyone equally. It's not ok to steal from a bully. There is no "he needed killin'" defense (even in Texas). If it's proper to sue MS over this patent, then it's ok to sue anyone who infringes this patent.
That may be something you hadn't thought of, by the way. If this patent is as broad as many are claiming (as I've posted elsewhere I'm unconvinced, but for the sake of argument...), how confident are you that MacOS, Linux, BSD, or any other OS (or even networking product) that perhaps you do like isn't infringing it? You realize that if MS can't get this patent overturned, nothing would stop the next lawsuit from landing on... maybe Apple, maybe Red Hat, or potentially even non-commercial users of infringing products?
You do what you want, but if your principles are worth a damn you'll root for a fair playing field first, and then root for the players you like on that field second.
MS, or any large company, will rightly ignore any form of minor nuisance - including being sued for patent infringement - as long as it remains a minor nuisance. "Hey, we can either swat these flies one by one, or we can lobby for changes to the law and in the process lose the leverage we get with patents under today's system?" Guess which one they'll choose. Of course, they don't even necessarily have to win to keep the nuisance minor. They may well be able to pay the patent-holder off and be done with it.
OTOH, I have different views than many posters here about what reform should look like. I don't think software patents are bad, though I do think new guidance is needed regarding how to apply the criteria for patent validity - for all patents, but especially for those relating to software. More importantly, I think every aspect of the law that discourages patent searches should be thrown out. The law seems meant to punish those who see a patent but figure "the patent-holder is weaker than me, so I'll take my chances"; but insteaad it keeps anyone from even trying to make a good-faith effort to license the patents they need. If not for that, how would a "submarine patent" hide?
Anyway, since I don't draw distinctions that a patent is automatically "bad" because it covers software, I'll also point out that having looked over it I'm unconvinced either way as to whether it's a bad patent. To know for sure, I'd have to spend more time than I have reading more of the patent detail, probably consulting along the way with a legal expert and an expert on networking software circa the filing date. I point this out for two reasons:
1) In theory it's why we have patent examiners. It'd be interesting to know how much depth they put into their examination of patents like this one. (Before offering a snarky answer to that quesiton, see point 2.)
2) I would love to make a deal where each person who posted in this (or any)/. thread making matter-of-fact claims about a patent they hadn't studied in that depth pays me $1, and I pay each person who did the proper research before spouting off $5. I'd be able to retire.
...and you think that scenario is comperable to the scope of Windows' vulnerability to malware? Haven't been paying much attention over the past 15 years, have you?
Pure science? Perhaps pure science fiction. Oh, sure, you could write a good short story around this "trying to build a machine to produce something abhorant to nature" premise, but that's about all it's good for.
If any device capable of causing particle collisions like those the LHC will produce were doomed to self-destruct in a mind-bending causality-ignoring time travel circus, then the Earth's atmosphere could not exist. The theory's pretty much busted right there.
I suppose you can throw on another layer of pop-science gobbledygook to try and save it. Maybe it's just impossible to have an instrument record such a collision. After all, observing a phenomenon does affect it, and most people have a narrow enough understanding of what it means to observe a phenomenon that they'll probably buy the idea that upper-atmosphere collisions aren't routinely observed. Well, again, that might be good for a story, but doesn't relate to what's really going on.
Maybe something else, then. Maybe there's something distinct about what will happen in the LHC's operation that is causing disruptive effects in those events' past, and we just don't know what that difference is. Of course, information propagating back in time is a pretty exotic claim; I'd hope something really hard to explain would have to have happened before we'd be motivated to look for a theory like that. (Even if it were to happen at all, I can't say I believe it would manifest in such a bizzare macroscopic fashion.)
But the LHC setbacks aren't very hard to explain. It's an insanely complicated machine; components fail. Early computers with a fraction of the power of a modern digital watch were built from arrays of vacuum tubes - which are essentially like light bulbs, only more complex and correspondingly more delicate, being switched on and off over and over again. MTBF would be measured maybe in hours. The more you scale them up, the more components they have and the more complex they get, and the more frequently they break. Likewise, the LHC has a lot of components, and many of them are failure-prone.
With computers, semiconductors gave us a more reliable way to do the same thing. They didn't just make computers smaller; they also made it possible to make a modern CPU that doesn't fail before it has time to boot up. Maybe we'll find better ways to do high-energy physics at some point; but for now, we've got what we've got.
Plus, after some early problems, now every little glitch is getting all kinds of disproportionate attention. This outage was short - conveniently measurable in hours. Think you can list all of the scientific installations that've undergone similar outages in the past week? I bet not, because the media won't have bothered to mention them.
But ok - suppose we just keep trying to build colliders and they just keep failing in more and more ways, many of them unexpected. Surely the probabilities pile up, and eventually it's worth looking for a theory, right?
Ok, then let's return to the question of whether this time-travel story is "science". It is certainly no theory in the scientific sense It is really just part of a hypothesis. There's no clear way to test it. It hasn't been incorporated into a model of the Higgs boson or of spacetime (such that we could test its impact on those models).
If pure science doesn't get better than this, then we're in trouble.
Ok, sadly that's not true. But this headline and summary suck.
1) How is vulnerabiilty to malware not MS's fault?
2) The summary organizes the facts in such a way to read as though this were just MS denying blame and vaguely saying "malware did it"; read the links (especially the last one) and you'll see a different picture.
3) In its continued zeal to paint MS and anyone agreeing with MS in a negative light, the summary insults the blogger for appologizing after he had posted technical information he later found to be false, which incorrectly blamed specific MS actions that were not in fact at fault.
"Microsoft has an auto update, Most linux distros do not"
MS also doesn't release nearly as frequently as "every 6 months"; so apparently the auto-updates do indeed serve the purpose of releiving that need. Not seeing the problem.
If the things that change between Windows versions were pushed by auto-update, there would be a user revolt and possibly a lawsuit.
"Remember how Vista was supposed to have a whole new File System and other enhancements?"
Some specific features got cut, therefore nothing was changed? LOL Have you actually used Vista alongside XP? Have you actually used 7 alongside Vista or XP?
"So, you have muddled up the differences to support your point of view, grats you are a news shill otherwise known as a pundit."
So, you have demonstrated an inabliity to believe someone expresses views counter to your own other than for a hidden agenda, grats you are an asshat otherwise known as a troll.
The last time I took shipment of a Windows OS was 2002, and I may well not bother with Windows 7 and/or 8, either (unless I happen to buy a new computer in that timeframe).
The last time I specifically bought a Windows OS to install on hardware I already had was... never.
So... because you don't like their pricing policy, feature sets, and hardware requirements, it makes sense to criticize the frequency of their releases?
Nope, still not buying it. (Which, incidentally, is a straightforward solution if you find a Windows release that doesn't run on your hardware and doesn't provide anything you want.)
I have no idea the validity of her work, but I do find it interesting that you've juxtaposed derision of her work as that of an outsider with a reference elevating Einstein - who did much of his formative work as a scientific outsider.
Ah. So if you give the product away, frequent releases make sense; but if you profit off the product, that allows us to believe that frequent releases are just a ploy to make money (even though nobody actually buys the upgrades that frequently), so you should be criticized if you release frequently (even though you probably also have the same reasons to release frequently as anyone else).
"The fact that the internet opens the door for more people to express ideas doesn't mean its ok to have some censorship"
I never said that the open-ness of the internet was what made censorship ok; shall I accuse you of arguing a straw man, or is the rhetorical gamesmanship to be one way in this discussion?
I disagree with the use of the term "censor" to describe a private company controlling the use of its communication network; but whether you want to label it censorship or not, it is ok because it is their tool. It would be ok for them to say you can't use it at all, and if they say you can use it then it is ok for them to set the terms under which you can use it. Or do you imagine just because I build something useful that means I'm obligated to let you use it?
But you're deflecting attention from the key point - even with this so-called censorship, our rights are just as in tact as they ever were, and in fact we enjoy greater ability to reach people than we ever had before. The latter point about greater ability to reach people is just icing on the cake, though, because reaching people is not and never was part of the right to free speech.
"You're arguing a strawman"
No, I'm not. Go look up what that term means and try again.
"As a platform, it should be all, or nothing"
Nonsense. You forget that the person owning the platform has rights too, including the first ammendment right to experss and propagate views of his choosing. Again, what makes you think that just because I help someone else spread his views, that means I should also be obligated to help you spread yours?
You've argued that cost may be a limiting factor, but implied that nothing else should. So you're ok with only some letters to the editor being printed; but if the limiting factor there were merely cost/space, then they'd have to print the first however-many-submissions-would-fit that were received. They don't. Are you ok with the fact tht they're chosen based on the editor's views? Are you ok with the existance of conservative publications that specifically exclude liberal viewpoitns, or liberal publications that specifically exclude conservative viewpoints, even though they could print a balanced perspective in the same space for the same cost?
Google has as much right to define the use of their platform as a magazine publisher has to define the use of theirs. If you want to express an idea they don't want to propagate, it's your responsibility to find someone who will help you get that idea out; or did you forget that rights come with responsibilities?
"In the second amendment"
Show me where the rights in the Bill of Rights are described as inalienable. Better yet, look up inalienable and once you know what it means show me any period in American history where the right to bear arms was treated as inalienable.
"As soon as the agreement becomes commercial, a landlords abiility to interfere with the rights of another citizen end"
If you come into a business I own, our relationship is commercial. Do you pretend to have the right to bring a weapon into my place of business without my permission?
"We already say its illegal for a landlord to not rent based on religious beliefs"
"Owning a gun" is not a protected class under any civil rights law I'm aware of. Good luck with that.
Answer: it didn't. We never stepped "forward" to this fantasy land where communication was completely unfettered and anyone could broadcast and get to an audience. You just thought we did, and now that you see we don't you imagine we took a step back.
The means of distributing information are more free than they've ever been before. The only new precident being set is that you can do more than you ever could before. Yeah, the big bad corporations who are giving you that capability are not giving you the additional things that you also want, so it makes perfect sense to cry about them being the bad guys.
Until the means of propagating information become free as in beer throughout the supply chain - which is nowhere close to reality today - they can never be part of your right to expression. Yet, here someone's paid those expenses to create a tool they'll let you use as long as you comply with certain terms - a tool you wouldn't otherwise have at all. Say thank you and move on.
Instead of comparing present-day reality to what you wish were true, you should try comparing it to what you'd have without Google.
Color of light can cause differences in how light is perceived, particularly if you buy old/cheap CFL's. This used to be a major issue to me. Now I use CFL's in most of my house, and in most places there is no perceivable difference; in part because the newer bulbs are more natural, and in part because different is not the same as inferior.
You refer to incandescants as "full-spectrum"; this is misleading, as if there were one magically "correct" color that light should be. In fact, there are many types of incandescant with different light characteristics, just as there are with modern CFL.
I don't know what your comment about buying clothes has to do with anything. Large stores have had consumers shopping under flourescant light for decades. A small shop with incandescant lights is an exception, not the rule. Store light quality is typically at least as poor as even the cheap CFL's, and until recently they had the added "bonus" of perceivable flicker.
You talk about how "likely" you think it is that the dimming of bulbs befoer failure would change the equation, but you offer no numbers at all. None of the CFL's I've used has dimmed yet, and they've already lasted much longer than an incandescant. Long enough to save me money over the bulb's lifetime, and that's a key point. TFA claims it was previously unknown whether CFL's had lower lifecycle energy costs, but that's only true if you either (1) have not compared the lifecycle costs to the consumer, or (2) assume (incorrectly) that someone is subsidizing the up-front energy costs of CFL's.
You meantion negative health effects; citation needed.
You mention power factor, but you're clearly counting on your readers not knowing what that means. It's also clear from how you used it that you don't know what it means. (A power factor of.5 does not mean that the grid delivers twice as much energy, as you imply. If you think it does, please feel free to explain where that extra energy goes. You have heard of thermodynamics, right? That said, there would be a slight loss of system efficiency due to power factor, if not for the fact that power companies can and do balance the power factor out as it otherwise would cost them money.)
As for where you can't use CFL's:
Start with outdoor lights. I use CFL's in several. Some are even in my garage rafters, where they get hotter than if they were truly outside. They've all survived a St. Louis summer; not one has overheated. They've also survivied a St. Louis winter; I still got light out of them.
Even if all of the special-purpose applications where you claim CFL's won't work, were really applications where CFL's won't work, that would accuont for a tiny fraction of the lighting needs of the average consumer; if that's "by far, the biggest problem" you can come up with, then you're basically admitting there's no significant problem to speak of.
How you access your software is a distinct issue from software interoperability.
You think in the future of the Cloud there will only be one word processor? Not if the Cloud were to take off as the platform of the future there wouldn't. Look at the direction we're already heading. Someone complains about the lack of control in the Cloud, people say "use a pay service whose terms you like better".
Well, do you think there's just going to be one pay service? Or that it will give you access to everything for one flat rate? Maybe that will be the near-future model, while people are still getting their footing in this allegedly-new world.
If there's money to be made, the big players will each have a Cloud. They'll each support some set of software; why would you assume that it would all be the same, or even interoperable?
Sure, as long as you're using software that's part of a "free" service, anyone else can jump in and use the same software; but that's not the Cloud of the future, because there you have no leverage to control your content. (Sure, in this case Google's only limiting your ability to share the document; surely you don't think that's the only thing they could decide to do? Trust them to never decide to do more if you want; I don't.)
Even within a single cloud, are software companies forever going to give up on charging upgrade fees? do you really think they can't deliver incompatible versions of their software to those who don't pay for the latest and greatest, just because they're delivering it through the Cloud?
I'm not sure why you think I care about a solution for "sharing" homework (which when I went to school went by the shorter name "cheating")... but are you kidding me?
With the state of software today, if you can't get a wiki going then you sure as hell don't know enough to be relying on the cloud.
Perspective, chief. Before the Internet nobody but those with lots of money could ever transmit their ideas broadly. Before, say, the 1900's, nobody could, period. Now, sometimes you can, but if you rely on a free service to do it then they might set some restrictions; that doesn't sound like erosion of rights to me so much as it sounds like progress.
Google may provide tools that can enhance the effectiveness you enjoy when you exercise your rights, but that doesn't mean they're "abridging" your rights if they don't provide you with those tools.
Have you committed every resource at your disposal to helping other be heard, even when you disagree with them? Does that mean you're "abridging" their rights? Sure, you have less money than Google so you'd be doing less good than Google can do, but we all do what we can, no? No. Of course not. It's one individual's job not to infringe another's rights, but it's not one individual's job to bolster another's rights.
As for the right to bear arms - where is that listed as inalienable? The only rights I'm aware of having been given that distinction are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I've never seen anything that suggests you should be able to carry a weapon anywhere you want at any time you want.
What makes the space you rent to sleep in any different from any other property you don't own? Do you believe the 2nd ammendment intends that you can bring a weapon into my home whether I want you to or not? (That's actually the kind of behavior that can lose you those inalienable rights.)
You're right that the economics are more complex than I've presented due to various forms of subsidy, and those may tilt the field in terms of viable retail price. OTOH, alternate means of food production may also benefit from public subsidy; I guess time will tell. I think the possible outcomes remain the same, though perhaps scenario 2 is more likely than I give credit.
I agree there's something shady about the "happy cows" thing; if it's important enough that people might take it as a selling point, then it's important enough that you shouldn't be able to make the claim without basis. (That said, there is something disingenuous about this being raised by a group whose policy would be to complain about milk from cows even if the cows were "happier". There's a subtle distinction between sticking up for informed consumer choice, vs. sticking up for the cows.)
However, I think the situation with real vs. artificial meat is a little simpler. I don't think the FDA considers organic food "safer" or "better" in any respect than regular food, and I'm pretty sure organic food can't be labeled as "safer" or "better" - but it can be labeled as organic, and if consumers individually believe that organic food is better, they seek it out.
Likewise, standards for artificial meat could be as simple as "if your meat was made without killing an animal, you can say so"; whether this is more ethical or somehow better is up to the consumer to decide. (For that matter, some consumers may decide it's worse.) Livestock farmers can't really complain about that, as long as the label is held to what is factual - how the meat was produced - rather than debatable - whether that method is "better".
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Rationalize all you want, but everything is a matter of principles. That's why they're called principles. There is no situation where you can selectively set them aside and still call yourself a principled person without being a hypocrite.
Now, since you apparently want to ignore that and talk pragmatics, check out how this really works: Since MS didn't willfully infringe the patent (like any good manufacturer they didn't do a patent search so they couldn't end up with that kind of liability), at worst MS will be compelled to license this technology. This will not be terribly expensive; an upper limit on how expensive it gets is "how much would it cost to buy this company". This either makes the patent-holder stronger, so they can go on to sue others; or it makes MS stronger (boy that'll show 'em how bad these laws are); or both.
In no case will that change MS's attitude toward patents; the benefits they get from the current system far outweigh the worst-case (for them) outcome of this lawsuit.
"It is not hypocritical to want everyone to get a pass under an unjust law....except the people who are pushing for said law."
Yes, it is.
OMG, a van driving by was able to see where in my house there was motion! By some Hollywood-inspired magic they can use that to detect "illegal activity"!
The fact that you're bothering to compare this to recent wiretap activity shows that you don't know what this technology is.
The fact that you think the government spied on all calls, internet activity, etc. shows that you don't know what that technology is either.
"People think 1, but not 2."
If that were true, then why are they complaining about the FCC approval (which does enable the legitimate uses but has no effect on ilegitimate ones)?
"And where the hell have you been?"
Like I said, I've heard all the hype. "All the" illegal wiretaps going on, amounts to a relatively small amount of activity. It just happens to be highly illegal/unethical.
"The people with access to this technology will use it however they want, and they want to spy on everyone."
LOL. They're going to station an agent with wall-penetrating radar by every home? Sure, I bet.
"the ones pushing to abandon NN are also the ones dealing in information."
Excuse me? Perhaps you mean that the ones pushing for the status quo are also the ones dealing in information.
Those who oppose network neutrality also include those of us with the common sense to know that legislators and regulators shouldn't try to set technical policy.
There are other approaches to solving the problems NN wants to address, and those other approaches have the added benefit that they might actually work.
Which is worse... the analogy between telegraph and internet; or the assertion that because one particular arrangement that didn't include "network neutrality" regulation led to abuse, therefore "network neutrality" regulation is the only way to prevent abuse (or would even be sufficient to do so)?
When we try to regulate technical procedures, we fail. If we want to win, we should look instead at regulating business practices. "Without NN companies can double-charge"? Ok, regulate double-charging. "Without NN you can't be sure you get what you paid for"? Ok, regulate not delivering what the customer paid for.
If the only way to sell a "100mbps broadband to the providers of our choice, with 1mbps access to anyone else" were to market it as such, the issue would take care of itself.
I find it amusing that someone in this thread thinks the only people opposed to NN are in the information business. So go ahead, call me a shill; believe if you like that someone at a telco would suggest the type of business regulations I'm talking about. I need a good laugh.
"Mostly"? I doubt it. For as much attention as they get, the activities of intelligence agencies, or even law enforcement agencies doing clandestine investigations, are few and far between compared to the number of emergency response activites that could benefit from better sensing technology. (And, not every covert use of this technology would be an abuse, fwiw.)
What I find the most interesting is, people seem to assume that various agencies (1) will be using this to violate surveilance laws and the 4th ammendment, but at the same time (2) would have let lack of FCC approval stand in their way.
EIther you believe in your principles, or you don't. If you believe in your principles except when ignoring them hurts someone you don't like, you are a hypocrite.
The law protects everyone equally. It's not ok to steal from a bully. There is no "he needed killin'" defense (even in Texas). If it's proper to sue MS over this patent, then it's ok to sue anyone who infringes this patent.
That may be something you hadn't thought of, by the way. If this patent is as broad as many are claiming (as I've posted elsewhere I'm unconvinced, but for the sake of argument...), how confident are you that MacOS, Linux, BSD, or any other OS (or even networking product) that perhaps you do like isn't infringing it? You realize that if MS can't get this patent overturned, nothing would stop the next lawsuit from landing on... maybe Apple, maybe Red Hat, or potentially even non-commercial users of infringing products?
You do what you want, but if your principles are worth a damn you'll root for a fair playing field first, and then root for the players you like on that field second.
MS, or any large company, will rightly ignore any form of minor nuisance - including being sued for patent infringement - as long as it remains a minor nuisance. "Hey, we can either swat these flies one by one, or we can lobby for changes to the law and in the process lose the leverage we get with patents under today's system?" Guess which one they'll choose. Of course, they don't even necessarily have to win to keep the nuisance minor. They may well be able to pay the patent-holder off and be done with it.
OTOH, I have different views than many posters here about what reform should look like. I don't think software patents are bad, though I do think new guidance is needed regarding how to apply the criteria for patent validity - for all patents, but especially for those relating to software. More importantly, I think every aspect of the law that discourages patent searches should be thrown out. The law seems meant to punish those who see a patent but figure "the patent-holder is weaker than me, so I'll take my chances"; but insteaad it keeps anyone from even trying to make a good-faith effort to license the patents they need. If not for that, how would a "submarine patent" hide?
Anyway, since I don't draw distinctions that a patent is automatically "bad" because it covers software, I'll also point out that having looked over it I'm unconvinced either way as to whether it's a bad patent. To know for sure, I'd have to spend more time than I have reading more of the patent detail, probably consulting along the way with a legal expert and an expert on networking software circa the filing date. I point this out for two reasons:
1) In theory it's why we have patent examiners. It'd be interesting to know how much depth they put into their examination of patents like this one. (Before offering a snarky answer to that quesiton, see point 2.)
2) I would love to make a deal where each person who posted in this (or any) /. thread making matter-of-fact claims about a patent they hadn't studied in that depth pays me $1, and I pay each person who did the proper research before spouting off $5. I'd be able to retire.
...and you think that scenario is comperable to the scope of Windows' vulnerability to malware? Haven't been paying much attention over the past 15 years, have you?
Pure science? Perhaps pure science fiction. Oh, sure, you could write a good short story around this "trying to build a machine to produce something abhorant to nature" premise, but that's about all it's good for.
If any device capable of causing particle collisions like those the LHC will produce were doomed to self-destruct in a mind-bending causality-ignoring time travel circus, then the Earth's atmosphere could not exist. The theory's pretty much busted right there.
I suppose you can throw on another layer of pop-science gobbledygook to try and save it. Maybe it's just impossible to have an instrument record such a collision. After all, observing a phenomenon does affect it, and most people have a narrow enough understanding of what it means to observe a phenomenon that they'll probably buy the idea that upper-atmosphere collisions aren't routinely observed. Well, again, that might be good for a story, but doesn't relate to what's really going on.
Maybe something else, then. Maybe there's something distinct about what will happen in the LHC's operation that is causing disruptive effects in those events' past, and we just don't know what that difference is. Of course, information propagating back in time is a pretty exotic claim; I'd hope something really hard to explain would have to have happened before we'd be motivated to look for a theory like that. (Even if it were to happen at all, I can't say I believe it would manifest in such a bizzare macroscopic fashion.)
But the LHC setbacks aren't very hard to explain. It's an insanely complicated machine; components fail. Early computers with a fraction of the power of a modern digital watch were built from arrays of vacuum tubes - which are essentially like light bulbs, only more complex and correspondingly more delicate, being switched on and off over and over again. MTBF would be measured maybe in hours. The more you scale them up, the more components they have and the more complex they get, and the more frequently they break. Likewise, the LHC has a lot of components, and many of them are failure-prone.
With computers, semiconductors gave us a more reliable way to do the same thing. They didn't just make computers smaller; they also made it possible to make a modern CPU that doesn't fail before it has time to boot up. Maybe we'll find better ways to do high-energy physics at some point; but for now, we've got what we've got.
Plus, after some early problems, now every little glitch is getting all kinds of disproportionate attention. This outage was short - conveniently measurable in hours. Think you can list all of the scientific installations that've undergone similar outages in the past week? I bet not, because the media won't have bothered to mention them.
But ok - suppose we just keep trying to build colliders and they just keep failing in more and more ways, many of them unexpected. Surely the probabilities pile up, and eventually it's worth looking for a theory, right?
Ok, then let's return to the question of whether this time-travel story is "science". It is certainly no theory in the scientific sense It is really just part of a hypothesis. There's no clear way to test it. It hasn't been incorporated into a model of the Higgs boson or of spacetime (such that we could test its impact on those models).
If pure science doesn't get better than this, then we're in trouble.
Ok, sadly that's not true. But this headline and summary suck.
1) How is vulnerabiilty to malware not MS's fault?
2) The summary organizes the facts in such a way to read as though this were just MS denying blame and vaguely saying "malware did it"; read the links (especially the last one) and you'll see a different picture.
3) In its continued zeal to paint MS and anyone agreeing with MS in a negative light, the summary insults the blogger for appologizing after he had posted technical information he later found to be false, which incorrectly blamed specific MS actions that were not in fact at fault.
"Microsoft has an auto update, Most linux distros do not"
MS also doesn't release nearly as frequently as "every 6 months"; so apparently the auto-updates do indeed serve the purpose of releiving that need. Not seeing the problem.
If the things that change between Windows versions were pushed by auto-update, there would be a user revolt and possibly a lawsuit.
"Remember how Vista was supposed to have a whole new File System and other enhancements?"
Some specific features got cut, therefore nothing was changed? LOL Have you actually used Vista alongside XP? Have you actually used 7 alongside Vista or XP?
"So, you have muddled up the differences to support your point of view, grats you are a news shill otherwise known as a pundit."
So, you have demonstrated an inabliity to believe someone expresses views counter to your own other than for a hidden agenda, grats you are an asshat otherwise known as a troll.
The last time I took shipment of a Windows OS was 2002, and I may well not bother with Windows 7 and/or 8, either (unless I happen to buy a new computer in that timeframe).
The last time I specifically bought a Windows OS to install on hardware I already had was... never.
I'm not seeing the problem.
So... because you don't like their pricing policy, feature sets, and hardware requirements, it makes sense to criticize the frequency of their releases?
Nope, still not buying it. (Which, incidentally, is a straightforward solution if you find a Windows release that doesn't run on your hardware and doesn't provide anything you want.)
I have no idea the validity of her work, but I do find it interesting that you've juxtaposed derision of her work as that of an outsider with a reference elevating Einstein - who did much of his formative work as a scientific outsider.
Ah. So if you give the product away, frequent releases make sense; but if you profit off the product, that allows us to believe that frequent releases are just a ploy to make money (even though nobody actually buys the upgrades that frequently), so you should be criticized if you release frequently (even though you probably also have the same reasons to release frequently as anyone else).
Yup, that makes perfect sense.
"The fact that the internet opens the door for more people to express ideas doesn't mean its ok to have some censorship"
I never said that the open-ness of the internet was what made censorship ok; shall I accuse you of arguing a straw man, or is the rhetorical gamesmanship to be one way in this discussion?
I disagree with the use of the term "censor" to describe a private company controlling the use of its communication network; but whether you want to label it censorship or not, it is ok because it is their tool. It would be ok for them to say you can't use it at all, and if they say you can use it then it is ok for them to set the terms under which you can use it. Or do you imagine just because I build something useful that means I'm obligated to let you use it?
But you're deflecting attention from the key point - even with this so-called censorship, our rights are just as in tact as they ever were, and in fact we enjoy greater ability to reach people than we ever had before. The latter point about greater ability to reach people is just icing on the cake, though, because reaching people is not and never was part of the right to free speech.
"You're arguing a strawman"
No, I'm not. Go look up what that term means and try again.
"As a platform, it should be all, or nothing"
Nonsense. You forget that the person owning the platform has rights too, including the first ammendment right to experss and propagate views of his choosing. Again, what makes you think that just because I help someone else spread his views, that means I should also be obligated to help you spread yours?
You've argued that cost may be a limiting factor, but implied that nothing else should. So you're ok with only some letters to the editor being printed; but if the limiting factor there were merely cost/space, then they'd have to print the first however-many-submissions-would-fit that were received. They don't. Are you ok with the fact tht they're chosen based on the editor's views? Are you ok with the existance of conservative publications that specifically exclude liberal viewpoitns, or liberal publications that specifically exclude conservative viewpoints, even though they could print a balanced perspective in the same space for the same cost?
Google has as much right to define the use of their platform as a magazine publisher has to define the use of theirs. If you want to express an idea they don't want to propagate, it's your responsibility to find someone who will help you get that idea out; or did you forget that rights come with responsibilities?
"In the second amendment"
Show me where the rights in the Bill of Rights are described as inalienable. Better yet, look up inalienable and once you know what it means show me any period in American history where the right to bear arms was treated as inalienable.
"As soon as the agreement becomes commercial, a landlords abiility to interfere with the rights of another citizen end"
If you come into a business I own, our relationship is commercial. Do you pretend to have the right to bring a weapon into my place of business without my permission?
"We already say its illegal for a landlord to not rent based on religious beliefs"
"Owning a gun" is not a protected class under any civil rights law I'm aware of. Good luck with that.
Question: When did the step back occur?
Answer: it didn't. We never stepped "forward" to this fantasy land where communication was completely unfettered and anyone could broadcast and get to an audience. You just thought we did, and now that you see we don't you imagine we took a step back.
The means of distributing information are more free than they've ever been before. The only new precident being set is that you can do more than you ever could before. Yeah, the big bad corporations who are giving you that capability are not giving you the additional things that you also want, so it makes perfect sense to cry about them being the bad guys.
Until the means of propagating information become free as in beer throughout the supply chain - which is nowhere close to reality today - they can never be part of your right to expression. Yet, here someone's paid those expenses to create a tool they'll let you use as long as you comply with certain terms - a tool you wouldn't otherwise have at all. Say thank you and move on.
Instead of comparing present-day reality to what you wish were true, you should try comparing it to what you'd have without Google.
What a load of mindless FUD.
Color of light can cause differences in how light is perceived, particularly if you buy old/cheap CFL's. This used to be a major issue to me. Now I use CFL's in most of my house, and in most places there is no perceivable difference; in part because the newer bulbs are more natural, and in part because different is not the same as inferior.
You refer to incandescants as "full-spectrum"; this is misleading, as if there were one magically "correct" color that light should be. In fact, there are many types of incandescant with different light characteristics, just as there are with modern CFL.
I don't know what your comment about buying clothes has to do with anything. Large stores have had consumers shopping under flourescant light for decades. A small shop with incandescant lights is an exception, not the rule. Store light quality is typically at least as poor as even the cheap CFL's, and until recently they had the added "bonus" of perceivable flicker.
You talk about how "likely" you think it is that the dimming of bulbs befoer failure would change the equation, but you offer no numbers at all. None of the CFL's I've used has dimmed yet, and they've already lasted much longer than an incandescant. Long enough to save me money over the bulb's lifetime, and that's a key point. TFA claims it was previously unknown whether CFL's had lower lifecycle energy costs, but that's only true if you either (1) have not compared the lifecycle costs to the consumer, or (2) assume (incorrectly) that someone is subsidizing the up-front energy costs of CFL's.
You meantion negative health effects; citation needed.
You mention power factor, but you're clearly counting on your readers not knowing what that means. It's also clear from how you used it that you don't know what it means. (A power factor of .5 does not mean that the grid delivers twice as much energy, as you imply. If you think it does, please feel free to explain where that extra energy goes. You have heard of thermodynamics, right? That said, there would be a slight loss of system efficiency due to power factor, if not for the fact that power companies can and do balance the power factor out as it otherwise would cost them money.)
As for where you can't use CFL's:
Start with outdoor lights. I use CFL's in several. Some are even in my garage rafters, where they get hotter than if they were truly outside. They've all survived a St. Louis summer; not one has overheated. They've also survivied a St. Louis winter; I still got light out of them.
Even if all of the special-purpose applications where you claim CFL's won't work, were really applications where CFL's won't work, that would accuont for a tiny fraction of the lighting needs of the average consumer; if that's "by far, the biggest problem" you can come up with, then you're basically admitting there's no significant problem to speak of.
How you access your software is a distinct issue from software interoperability.
You think in the future of the Cloud there will only be one word processor? Not if the Cloud were to take off as the platform of the future there wouldn't. Look at the direction we're already heading. Someone complains about the lack of control in the Cloud, people say "use a pay service whose terms you like better".
Well, do you think there's just going to be one pay service? Or that it will give you access to everything for one flat rate? Maybe that will be the near-future model, while people are still getting their footing in this allegedly-new world.
If there's money to be made, the big players will each have a Cloud. They'll each support some set of software; why would you assume that it would all be the same, or even interoperable?
Sure, as long as you're using software that's part of a "free" service, anyone else can jump in and use the same software; but that's not the Cloud of the future, because there you have no leverage to control your content. (Sure, in this case Google's only limiting your ability to share the document; surely you don't think that's the only thing they could decide to do? Trust them to never decide to do more if you want; I don't.)
Even within a single cloud, are software companies forever going to give up on charging upgrade fees? do you really think they can't deliver incompatible versions of their software to those who don't pay for the latest and greatest, just because they're delivering it through the Cloud?
A lot of people have their head in the clouds.
I'm not sure why you think I care about a solution for "sharing" homework (which when I went to school went by the shorter name "cheating")... but are you kidding me?
With the state of software today, if you can't get a wiki going then you sure as hell don't know enough to be relying on the cloud.
Perspective, chief. Before the Internet nobody but those with lots of money could ever transmit their ideas broadly. Before, say, the 1900's, nobody could, period. Now, sometimes you can, but if you rely on a free service to do it then they might set some restrictions; that doesn't sound like erosion of rights to me so much as it sounds like progress.
Google may provide tools that can enhance the effectiveness you enjoy when you exercise your rights, but that doesn't mean they're "abridging" your rights if they don't provide you with those tools.
Have you committed every resource at your disposal to helping other be heard, even when you disagree with them? Does that mean you're "abridging" their rights? Sure, you have less money than Google so you'd be doing less good than Google can do, but we all do what we can, no? No. Of course not. It's one individual's job not to infringe another's rights, but it's not one individual's job to bolster another's rights.
As for the right to bear arms - where is that listed as inalienable? The only rights I'm aware of having been given that distinction are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I've never seen anything that suggests you should be able to carry a weapon anywhere you want at any time you want.
What makes the space you rent to sleep in any different from any other property you don't own? Do you believe the 2nd ammendment intends that you can bring a weapon into my home whether I want you to or not? (That's actually the kind of behavior that can lose you those inalienable rights.)
Oh, what you want is a wiki. Still no point ceding control the the so-called cloud.
You think that's what the vegitarian society objects to?
FAIL. Next.
You're right that the economics are more complex than I've presented due to various forms of subsidy, and those may tilt the field in terms of viable retail price. OTOH, alternate means of food production may also benefit from public subsidy; I guess time will tell. I think the possible outcomes remain the same, though perhaps scenario 2 is more likely than I give credit.
I agree there's something shady about the "happy cows" thing; if it's important enough that people might take it as a selling point, then it's important enough that you shouldn't be able to make the claim without basis. (That said, there is something disingenuous about this being raised by a group whose policy would be to complain about milk from cows even if the cows were "happier". There's a subtle distinction between sticking up for informed consumer choice, vs. sticking up for the cows.)
However, I think the situation with real vs. artificial meat is a little simpler. I don't think the FDA considers organic food "safer" or "better" in any respect than regular food, and I'm pretty sure organic food can't be labeled as "safer" or "better" - but it can be labeled as organic, and if consumers individually believe that organic food is better, they seek it out.
Likewise, standards for artificial meat could be as simple as "if your meat was made without killing an animal, you can say so"; whether this is more ethical or somehow better is up to the consumer to decide. (For that matter, some consumers may decide it's worse.) Livestock farmers can't really complain about that, as long as the label is held to what is factual - how the meat was produced - rather than debatable - whether that method is "better".