Amen. The time sheet program my employer chose requires the Sun Java; it would probably work with IcedTea, but the version check isn't going to let me find out. I'm not supposed to be doing my time sheet under Linux, anyway.
I think we're in a agreement. My point was that, when you're using someone else's data, you've already accepted the implicit ideas about what is/what to/how to measure. As shellbeach pointed out, any significant new insight (the hypothesis in the scientific method) is going to change or refine those premises and motivate new measurements.
One must already have a concept about what is measurable, what to measure, and how to measure it before data can be collected - thus the data collected already assumes a paradigm. Healthy humans start out with a number of measurement tools (senses) together with evolved modeling abilities (e.g., language proficiency) and refine their models. Where there is no innate model, mathematics, followed by the scientific method, appear to be the most reliable means of refinement. The innate models are likely reliable due to such reliability having an evolutionary advantage. Such models are nonetheless subject to improvement by math and science. The Wired article fails to appreciate the amount of data humans successfully model innately - petabytes don't even begin - and the amplification through scientific models expands that by many orders of magnitude.
In case anyone else is trying to see these in Firefox on Fedora 8, the instructions at the Mozilla site were incomplete and took me down several blind alleys. What worked for me:
* Download these specific Mathematica fonts: http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/windows/general/files/MathFonts_TrueType_41.exe
Don't worry about the self extraction. Create a directory (I named mine "mathematica"); cd there and run "unzip/path/to/MathFonts_TrueType_41.exe" (give the full path name). In that directory, first run "mkfontscale", then "mkfontdir".
At this point, I chose to make the fonts available by default for anyone on the system, so I copied the directory: "cd..; sudo cp -r mathematica/usr/share/fonts/mathematica" and "sudo ln -s/usr/share/fonts/mathematica/etc/X11/fontpath.d" followed by "xset fp rehash".
I'm not convinced it was necessary, but I also added this line to my $HOME/.mozilla/????????.default/prefs.js file:
A computer has a physical existence, which embodies a mathematical description of how it should behave. (We'll ignore all the states in which the computer is broken.) The computer can "discover" mathematical truths. Is it so mysterious that this physical entity has access to mathematical truth? The key is that it is itself a mathematically describable entity, just as the larger universe is mathematically describable. Remember, none of these entities can discover *all* mathematical truth.
If these are the positions of a Realist, then I am not that kind of Realist.
"any theory that axiomatizes the universe (which is to say, any set of sentences which is true of the universe and exhausts all sentences about it) must include all sentences about the natural numbers"
Why would such sentences necessarily include all sentences about the natural numbers? At present, the best evidence we have (big bang) is that the physical universe is finite. Whether space time is necessarily modeled by real (or rational?) numbers rather than (finite) integers is an open question. I do not expect that we finite beings will ever discover all of mathematics. It is now commonplace that we discover one system in which an axiom holds and another in which it does not. I am quite certain we will not discover all of them. I am quite certain we will not discover even a complete description of this universe. That does not mean we won't find some components that can be considered "True"; e.g., that within Euclidean geometry, Pi is a transcendental number.
"there must be more models of the theory than just our universe. Does the universe contain them, or not? Presumably, it does, since the class of models is a mathematical object."
Why should the physical universe contain every mathematical object? Are you speaking of "Mathematics" as a universe? That's fine, but I consider the physical universe (and its mathematical description) an infinitesmal subset of the mathematical universe.
"any Realist view of mathematics ultimately requires mathematics to exist as a completed whole" I don't agree with the tense of the word "completed" because it implies that Mathematics could proceed from an incomplete to a complete entity. Our discoveries are necessarily incomplete, and with luck, go from more incomplete to less incomplete. Analogously, my own discovery of, e.g., slashdot, goes from more incomplete to less incomplete, but that doesn't mean there isn't a "complete" representation of slashdot.
I conceive of Mathematics as existing outside of space time; among its infinite components are systems of axioms and the statements provable, disprovable, and unprovable within those systems. Some systems of axioms describe our physical universe, and they do not necessarily include any description of an infinite set.
'But there is no completed whole, since the parts "look" into each other'. You appear to be taking a constructivist position, and you don't want to apply the adjectives "complete" or "whole" to the infinite system which I name Mathematics, and which I conceive to be infinite in content.
"no language can completely describe the universe, but also [...] the depth to which we can know it is limitless." If by "can", you mean "can be physically realized in this physical universe", then we agree. It would likely take a system equally as complex as the present universe to completely describe the probability field of every fundamental particle at every point in space time (if even that is an accurate "complete" description). But I expect that we may characterize possible descriptions of our universe, and derive properties of our universe from those characterizations. Physics has so far confirmed that expectation.
I'm enjoying this conversation; please continue to describe weaknesses in my arguments. Thanks.
My statement has only the most tangential relation to Russell's paradox. I do not claim that a reasoning being contains its own model or that it does not; neither do I claim that it is necessarily one or the other (to do so would indeed invoke the paradox).
The non-stationary bowling ball's I've encountered rarely travel a uniform speed w.r.t. usual frames of reference. At best their axis of rotation may travel a near-constant speed.
I think the meaning here is clear: "invented" implies that mathematics is an artifact that would not exist if humans (or some other reasoning entitiy) did not create it; "discovered" implies the contrary: that mathematics does have an independent existence. I am thoroughly in the "discovered" camp. And what do we achieve? We acknowledge that (at least in this domain) there is Truth and not just different opinions; the ability to recognize our errors and correct them. The bible says Pi is 3? Not in this near-Euclidean neighborhood; not unless you only need one digit of accuracy.
I think the game got it right. Even if the first instance of a catapult was discovered accidentally (suppose someone forcefully hit the handle of a spoon containing an olive, and the spoon was resting on some other implement's handle) then it would nonetheless take large amounts of abstraction to build the "second" catapult - and I assert that those abstractions are different than the object of their physical embodiments: in essence they are mathematics.
Except that the change in units would need to be given explicitly, since Energy units are incommensurable with Mass units, thus with C=1(distance unit/time unit): E=M*(distance unit/time unit)^2.
I hope you're being sarcastic. Pi is defined as the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle. Either you'd have to change the definition of a circle or demand that the circumference be measured in different units than the diameter -- and those units would have a ratio of exactly (6.2831853/Pi) -- or else you'd need some weird system where the digit places in your number were in some multibase representation (in a way similar to how time is measured in years:days:hours:minutes:seconds (bases infinity,(365+1/4),24,60,60).
"Simplest"? Why not just add them together? Don't complain about units: you've introduced this compound unit of (mass * distance)/(time) and named it "momentum"; why can't I introduce a compound unit of (mass + (distance/time)) and name it "momentum"? Your theory is polluted by observation! By data! By the "given" (to translate the latin)! But leaving teleology aside...
On a deeper level, you don't address the original question: whether mathematics is "invented" or "discovered". As a (neo^n)Platonist, I assert that the human mind is a component of a mathematically describable reality. That one mathematical system should be able to encompass (or comprehend, or contain) another is no surprise at all: the only requirement is that the containing system be at least as complex as the contained (and *there* is a hint about simplicity/complexity: those metrics are likely not completely ordered). Will you assert the contrary? That reality is *not* mathematically describable?
How do you know you're *here* until you're already here?
One way to contemplate God is as the mathematical description of everything that exists, "both seen and unseen", that is, both real and abstract, including every subatomic particle in every femtometer in every femtosecond of the entire universe, but also every possible form, including every possible logical system. The mathematics is infinite, timeless, perfect, omniscient, unknowable.
I am aware of one security measure taken since 9/11 that is sound and reasonable: the door to the cockpit on passenger airlines is now strong and can only be opened from within the cockpit during operation. I agree that everything else is utter security theater. The public attitude to security has become a democracy threatening combination of ignorance, stupidity and cowardice.
I'm mad as hell about it, I think it is tyranny, but thems with the gold has made the rules: I think the following is the most likely scenario:
US software patents are for real; just ask RIM. The patent battle is not another SCO. Red Hat loses the patent battle. It teeters on bankruptcy paying out the indemnification of its customers. US vendors stop shipping large chunks of Linux. Developers enslave themselves to Microsoft's patent indemnification, because Microsoft is the only entity wealthy enough to pay off all the patent trolls. Due to network effects, Linux market share evaporates until it becomes as common as, say, QNX.
If you want to avert that scenario, you need to buy^H^H^Hmake fabulously handsome bundled campaign contributions to 60 senators and 220 or so members of the house, and let them know precisely what to do with software patents. Better include the winning presidential candidate as well.
Could you elaborate (or cite references) on the multiverse contradictions to conservation of matter/energy, Kirkoff's law, etc.?
I have stated what I understand the multiverse interpretation to say; I do not "believe" in it, but I am looking for a way to test it. If I understand correctly, the work beginning this discussion is a proof that the multiverse interpretation is mathematically consistent - not that it is the only possible understanding of reality. I like my scientific hypotheses to make testable predictions, the way natural selection predicts that bacteria will develop drug-resistant strains, and the way quantum mechanics has been rather successful in explaining brownian motion, the behavior of light waves, the "shape" of simple molecules, and many other phenomema. Perhaps this "interpretation" is subject to neither experimental confirmation nor contradiction; that would be good to know also.
In the multiverse interpretation, the past is not "concrete" - multiple different pasts can become indistinguishable. Consider a cubic nanometer of air; it consists of a large number of molecules of various superimposed positions and velocities. Given a huge budget, you could come up with arbitrarily accurate approximations of those positions (losing, in the limit, the proportional information on the molecules velocity, or vice versa). Many different possible combinations of molecular positions will be indistinguishable in the absence of those fantastically expensive observations - which, in the overwhelmingly more common case, never occur. So in a multiverse interpretation, there are multiple *pasts* as well as multiple *futures*. The further back in time you go, the larger the variety of probable pasts, just as the further forward in time one speculates, the larger the number of probable futures, for some constant measure of "probable".
#telnet mail.joe2006.com 25 Trying 69.56.129.130... Connected to mail.joe2006.com. Escape character is '^]'. 220-server1.myhostcamp.com ESMTP Exim 4.52 #1 Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:08:14 -0700 220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited, 220 and/or bulk e-mail. helo server1.myhostcamp.com Hello [65.96.230.83] mail from:anonymous@anonymous.com OK rcpt to:kos@dailykos.com [my IP address removed] is currently not permitted to relay through this server. Perhaps you have not logged into the pop/imap server in the last 30 minutes or do not have SMTP Authentication turned on in your email client.
In other words it works fine, I just don't have the credentials to use it.
POP3 server
#telnet mail.joe2006.com 110 Trying 69.56.129.130... Connected to mail.joe2006.com. Escape character is '^]'. +OK POP3 server1 [cppop 20.0] at [69.56.129.130] user joe +OK Need a password pass idontknow -ERR Username/Password Mismatch Connection closed by foreign host.
Same deal. Responded just fine, just not without a password. To me that's a working server.
"Windows is easy" - at my place of employment, because we have on staff some really top-notch Windows system admins. Their skills (and I presume, salaries) are far above average. They design the installation, take care of security, and run the infrastructure to make it all "just work". Life is still not perfect - recently some clue-deficent brought in their laptop infested with a virus that wasn't recognized by the filters that are assiduously updated every twelve hours and every boot. But good sysadmins will prevent many problems. The same is true for Linux: a good sysadmin takes care of all these problems before they get inflicted on their colleagues. If you don't have a sysadmin, then you do the job for yourself. It appears that it's easier to do a mediocre job sysadmining Windows than it is for Unix, but to do a really good job is difficult regardless of platform - although perhaps a little easier under Unix. At least, after 20+ years of Unix sysadmin, it feels that way to me:-).
My firewall appliance records cable internet outages almost daily. The only time in 19 years I've lost POTS was in the middle of a hurricane, and it came back in less than a day. On the other hand, the DSL speed available to me is close to a tenth what is available from the cable. From where I live, this convergence talk looks like unicorns trotting around the marketing department. (There was a Dilbert cartoon...)
That's approximately 65,000*40==2,600,000 records, most of which are vote records, but which also contain error indications. Unfortunately, becuase these are computers, that doesn't at all mean that there are 70,000 miscounted votes. Even *one* unexplained event is enough to call a machine's tally into doubt. No? What about this event:
There is no such thing as "mindless admin work" unless you are in a dysfunctional organization or you haven't got the mind to make the work into a research project. Read the presentations of a recent LISA (Large Installation Systems Administration) conference http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceed ings/lisa04/tech/, and you cannot call that work "mindless". Although Usenix has a historically Unix slant, there is no reason that creative engineering principles can't be applied to other OSs as well.
I agree almost completely, but I must point out that, as important and heroic the sacrifice of soldiers has been, our freedom derives first and foremost from the mutual respect of our fellow citizens. I may think that Bush is a treasonous war criminal, and you may think that Ted Kennedy is a murderous alcoholic, but we both respect the system and the law. If Republicans thought that membership in the Democratic party was an offense sufficient to forfeit civil rights, no army could protect me; likewise the reverse.
It doesn't even take a near majority of a society to destroy its freedom: the situation in Iraq illustrates that even less than 10% of a population can destroy its civil liberties -- and that no group of soldiers can prevent it.
Then the absurd thing is that Scotty, who hasn't used a keyboard in decades, is instantly an 80wpm typist. And is completely familiar with the centuries old molecular modeling software. Ah, to be a superhero.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen. The time sheet program my employer chose requires the Sun Java; it would probably work with IcedTea, but the version check isn't going to let me find out. I'm not supposed to be doing my time sheet under Linux, anyway.
I think we're in a agreement. My point was that, when you're using someone else's data, you've already accepted the implicit ideas about what is/what to/how to measure. As shellbeach pointed out, any significant new insight (the hypothesis in the scientific method) is going to change or refine those premises and motivate new measurements.
One must already have a concept about what is measurable, what to measure, and how to measure it before data can be collected - thus the data collected already assumes a paradigm. Healthy humans start out with a number of measurement tools (senses) together with evolved modeling abilities (e.g., language proficiency) and refine their models. Where there is no innate model, mathematics, followed by the scientific method, appear to be the most reliable means of refinement. The innate models are likely reliable due to such reliability having an evolutionary advantage. Such models are nonetheless subject to improvement by math and science. The Wired article fails to appreciate the amount of data humans successfully model innately - petabytes don't even begin - and the amplification through scientific models expands that by many orders of magnitude.
In case anyone else is trying to see these in Firefox on Fedora 8, the instructions at the Mozilla site were incomplete and took me down several blind alleys. What worked for me:
/path/to/MathFonts_TrueType_41.exe" (give the full path name). In that directory, first run "mkfontscale", then "mkfontdir".
..; sudo cp -r mathematica /usr/share/fonts/mathematica" and "sudo ln -s /usr/share/fonts/mathematica /etc/X11/fontpath.d"
* Download these specific Mathematica fonts:
http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/windows/general/files/MathFonts_TrueType_41.exe
Don't worry about the self extraction. Create a directory (I named mine "mathematica"); cd there and run "unzip
At this point, I chose to make the fonts available by default for anyone on the system, so I copied the directory: "cd
followed by "xset fp rehash".
I'm not convinced it was necessary, but I also added this line to my $HOME/.mozilla/????????.default/prefs.js file:
user_pref("font.mathfont-family", "Math1, Math2, Math4, Symbol");
A computer has a physical existence, which embodies a mathematical description of how it should behave. (We'll ignore all the states in which the computer is broken.) The computer can "discover" mathematical truths. Is it so mysterious that this physical entity has access to mathematical truth? The key is that it is itself a mathematically describable entity, just as the larger universe is mathematically describable. Remember, none of these entities can discover *all* mathematical truth.
If these are the positions of a Realist, then I am not that kind of Realist.
"any theory that axiomatizes the universe (which is to say, any set of sentences which is true of the universe and exhausts all sentences about it) must include all sentences about the natural numbers"
Why would such sentences necessarily include all sentences about the natural numbers? At present, the best evidence we have (big bang) is that the physical universe is finite. Whether space time is necessarily modeled by real (or rational?) numbers rather than (finite) integers is an open question. I do not expect that we finite beings will ever discover all of mathematics. It is now commonplace that we discover one system in which an axiom holds and another in which it does not. I am quite certain we will not discover all of them. I am quite certain we will not discover even a complete description of this universe. That does not mean we won't find some components that can be considered "True"; e.g., that within Euclidean geometry, Pi is a transcendental number.
"there must be more models of the theory than just our universe. Does the universe contain them, or not? Presumably, it does, since the class of models is a mathematical object."
Why should the physical universe contain every mathematical object? Are you speaking of "Mathematics" as a universe? That's fine, but I consider the physical universe (and its mathematical description) an infinitesmal subset of the mathematical universe.
"any Realist view of mathematics ultimately requires mathematics to exist as a completed whole" I don't agree with the tense of the word "completed" because it implies that Mathematics could proceed from an incomplete to a complete entity. Our discoveries are necessarily incomplete, and with luck, go from more incomplete to less incomplete. Analogously, my own discovery of, e.g., slashdot, goes from more incomplete to less incomplete, but that doesn't mean there isn't a "complete" representation of slashdot.
I conceive of Mathematics as existing outside of space time; among its infinite components are systems of axioms and the statements provable, disprovable, and unprovable within those systems. Some systems of axioms describe our physical universe, and they do not necessarily include any description of an infinite set.
'But there is no completed whole, since the parts "look" into each other'. You appear to be taking a constructivist position, and you don't want to apply the adjectives "complete" or "whole" to the infinite system which I name Mathematics, and which I conceive to be infinite in content.
"no language can completely describe the universe, but also [...] the depth to which we can know it is limitless." If by "can", you mean "can be physically realized in this physical universe", then we agree. It would likely take a system equally as complex as the present universe to completely describe the probability field of every fundamental particle at every point in space time (if even that is an accurate "complete" description). But I expect that we may characterize possible descriptions of our universe, and derive properties of our universe from those characterizations. Physics has so far confirmed that expectation.
I'm enjoying this conversation; please continue to describe weaknesses in my arguments. Thanks.
My statement has only the most tangential relation to Russell's paradox. I do not claim that a reasoning being contains its own model or that it does not; neither do I claim that it is necessarily one or the other (to do so would indeed invoke the paradox).
The non-stationary bowling ball's I've encountered rarely travel a uniform speed w.r.t. usual frames of reference. At best their axis of rotation may travel a near-constant speed.
I think the meaning here is clear: "invented" implies that mathematics is an artifact that would not exist if humans (or some other reasoning entitiy) did not create it; "discovered" implies the contrary: that mathematics does have an independent existence. I am thoroughly in the "discovered" camp. And what do we achieve? We acknowledge that (at least in this domain) there is Truth and not just different opinions; the ability to recognize our errors and correct them. The bible says Pi is 3? Not in this near-Euclidean neighborhood; not unless you only need one digit of accuracy.
I think the game got it right. Even if the first instance of a catapult was discovered accidentally (suppose someone forcefully hit the handle of a spoon containing an olive, and the spoon was resting on some other implement's handle) then it would nonetheless take large amounts of abstraction to build the "second" catapult - and I assert that those abstractions are different than the object of their physical embodiments: in essence they are mathematics.
Except that the change in units would need to be given explicitly, since Energy units are incommensurable with Mass units, thus with C=1(distance unit/time unit): E=M*(distance unit/time unit)^2.
I hope you're being sarcastic. Pi is defined as the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle. Either you'd have to change the definition of a circle or demand that the circumference be measured in different units than the diameter -- and those units would have a ratio of exactly (6.2831853/Pi) -- or else you'd need some weird system where the digit places in your number were in some multibase representation (in a way similar to how time is measured in years:days:hours:minutes:seconds (bases infinity,(365+1/4),24,60,60).
"Simplest"? Why not just add them together? Don't complain about units: you've introduced this compound unit of (mass * distance)/(time) and named it "momentum"; why can't I introduce a compound unit of (mass + (distance/time)) and name it "momentum"? Your theory is polluted by observation! By data! By the "given" (to translate the latin)! But leaving teleology aside...
On a deeper level, you don't address the original question: whether mathematics is "invented" or "discovered". As a (neo^n)Platonist, I assert that the human mind is a component of a mathematically describable reality. That one mathematical system should be able to encompass (or comprehend, or contain) another is no surprise at all: the only requirement is that the containing system be at least as complex as the contained (and *there* is a hint about simplicity/complexity: those metrics are likely not completely ordered). Will you assert the contrary? That reality is *not* mathematically describable?
How do you know you're *here* until you're already here?
One way to contemplate God is as the mathematical description of everything that exists, "both seen and unseen", that is, both real and abstract, including every subatomic particle in every femtometer in every femtosecond of the entire universe, but also every possible form, including every possible logical system. The mathematics is infinite, timeless, perfect, omniscient, unknowable.
I am aware of one security measure taken since 9/11 that is sound and reasonable: the door to the cockpit on passenger airlines is now strong and can only be opened from within the cockpit during operation. I agree that everything else is utter security theater. The public attitude to security has become a democracy threatening combination of ignorance, stupidity and cowardice.
I'm mad as hell about it, I think it is tyranny, but thems with the gold has made the rules: I think the following is the most likely scenario:
US software patents are for real; just ask RIM. The patent battle is not another SCO. Red Hat loses the patent battle. It teeters on bankruptcy paying out the indemnification of its customers. US vendors stop shipping large chunks of Linux. Developers enslave themselves to Microsoft's patent indemnification, because Microsoft is the only entity wealthy enough to pay off all the patent trolls. Due to network effects, Linux market share evaporates until it becomes as common as, say, QNX.
If you want to avert that scenario, you need to buy^H^H^Hmake fabulously handsome bundled campaign contributions to 60 senators and 220 or so members of the house, and let them know precisely what to do with software patents. Better include the winning presidential candidate as well.
Could you elaborate (or cite references) on the multiverse contradictions to conservation of matter/energy, Kirkoff's law, etc.?
I have stated what I understand the multiverse interpretation to say; I do not "believe" in it, but I am looking for a way to test it. If I understand correctly, the work beginning this discussion is a proof that the multiverse interpretation is mathematically consistent - not that it is the only possible understanding of reality. I like my scientific hypotheses to make testable predictions, the way natural selection predicts that bacteria will develop drug-resistant strains, and the way quantum mechanics has been rather successful in explaining brownian motion, the behavior of light waves, the "shape" of simple molecules, and many other phenomema. Perhaps this "interpretation" is subject to neither experimental confirmation nor contradiction; that would be good to know also.
In the multiverse interpretation, the past is not "concrete" - multiple different pasts can become indistinguishable. Consider a cubic nanometer of air; it consists of a large number of molecules of various superimposed positions and velocities. Given a huge budget, you could come up with arbitrarily accurate approximations of those positions (losing, in the limit, the proportional information on the molecules velocity, or vice versa). Many different possible combinations of molecular positions will be indistinguishable in the absence of those fantastically expensive observations - which, in the overwhelmingly more common case, never occur. So in a multiverse interpretation, there are multiple *pasts* as well as multiple *futures*. The further back in time you go, the larger the variety of probable pasts, just as the further forward in time one speculates, the larger the number of probable futures, for some constant measure of "probable".
Photoshop is now only to be used for high profile history; lesser history is to be automated.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
"Windows is easy" - at my place of employment, because we have on staff some really top-notch Windows system admins. Their skills (and I presume, salaries) are far above average. They design the installation, take care of security, and run the infrastructure to make it all "just work". Life is still not perfect - recently some clue-deficent brought in their laptop infested with a virus that wasn't recognized by the filters that are assiduously updated every twelve hours and every boot. But good sysadmins will prevent many problems. The same is true for Linux: a good sysadmin takes care of all these problems before they get inflicted on their colleagues. If you don't have a sysadmin, then you do the job for yourself. It appears that it's easier to do a mediocre job sysadmining Windows than it is for Unix, but to do a really good job is difficult regardless of platform - although perhaps a little easier under Unix. At least, after 20+ years of Unix sysadmin, it feels that way to me :-).
My firewall appliance records cable internet outages almost daily. The only time in 19 years I've lost POTS was in the middle of a hurricane, and it came back in less than a day. On the other hand, the DSL speed available to me is close to a tenth what is available from the cable. From where I live, this convergence talk looks like unicorns trotting around the marketing department. (There was a Dilbert cartoon...)
They point at the original data here:
8 .html
/Y C:\
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/662
That's approximately 65,000*40==2,600,000 records, most of which are vote records, but which also contain error indications. Unfortunately, becuase these are computers, that doesn't at all mean that there are 70,000 miscounted votes. Even *one* unexplained event is enough to call a machine's tally into doubt. No? What about this event:
deltree
There is no such thing as "mindless admin work" unless you are in a dysfunctional organization or you haven't got the mind to make the work into a research project. Read the presentations of a recent LISA (Large Installation Systems Administration) conference http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceed ings/lisa04/tech/, and you cannot call that work "mindless". Although Usenix has a historically Unix slant, there is no reason that creative engineering principles can't be applied to other OSs as well.
I agree almost completely, but I must point out that, as important and heroic the sacrifice of soldiers has been, our freedom derives first and foremost from the mutual respect of our fellow citizens. I may think that Bush is a treasonous war criminal, and you may think that Ted Kennedy is a murderous alcoholic, but we both respect the system and the law. If Republicans thought that membership in the Democratic party was an offense sufficient to forfeit civil rights, no army could protect me; likewise the reverse.
It doesn't even take a near majority of a society to destroy its freedom: the situation in Iraq illustrates that even less than 10% of a population can destroy its civil liberties -- and that no group of soldiers can prevent it.
Then the absurd thing is that Scotty, who hasn't used a keyboard in decades, is instantly an 80wpm typist. And is completely familiar with the centuries old molecular modeling software. Ah, to be a superhero.