I agree that something like this is needed. I could not think of a good name but something like Community Source might work. I had even started writing a proposal for it with a view towards creating a site to extoll the idea....
The benefits of Open Source or Free software to its users are undeniable.
If the software has a bug, or the software does not do something
you want it to do, you can change it. There are many advantages,
and they have been explained at length by various people.
If you are going to be using software, you are definitely better off if
you have access to the source code.
Trust
The fundamental difference between open source software and closed
source software is the level of trust required. For a business
to use closed source software, the level of trust required is enormous.
It is not simply a question of whether the money spent purchasing the
software is a good investment. The time invested using the software
is far more significant. Almost inevitably your own business information
becomes tied up in a format that is specific to the software you are using.
In order to buy software from a closed source company, you
have to take the following on trust:
They have not left gaping security holes in the code.
They will fix bugs in a timely manner.
They will eventually add the features you want.
They are not using your computing resources to do things which are
not in your interest.
They will not increase the price unreasonably once you depend on them.
They will not go bust.
In fact, when you consider all the things that people
are expected to take on trust when they purchase closed source
software, it is amazing that anybody ever does so. The truth of
the matter is that very few organisations properly considered these
factors before they bought the software. They bought the software
because they needed it and although there are terrible dangers involved in
relying on closed source software, there is often no alternative.
Companies and other organisations are only just starting to wake up
to the dangers of closed source software.
Business Models
Having access to the source code makes good sense to the users.
However the business case for the software vendor is
far less convincing. In fact, the dangers of closed source
from the user's perspective can be considered opportunities
from the vendor's perspective.
The open source foundation proposes "4 ways to win" which is
reproduced here:
Four Ways To Win
Now for a higher-level, investor's point of view. There are at least four
known business models for making money with open
source:
Support Sellers (otherwise known as "Give Away the Recipe, Open A Restaurant"):
In this model, you (effectively) give away the software product, but
sell distribution, branding, and after-sale service. This is what
(for example) Red Hat does.
Loss Leader: In this model, you give away open-source as a loss-leader and market
positioner for closed software. This is what Netscape is doing.
Widget Frosting : In this model, a hardware company (for which software is a necessary
adjunct but strictly a cost rather than profit center) goes
open-source in order to get better drivers and interface tools
cheaper. Silicon Graphics, for example, supports and ships
Samba.
Accessorizing: Selling accessories books, compatible hardware, complete systems
with open-source software pre-installed. It's easy to trivialize this
(open-source T-shirts, coffee mugs, Linux penguin dolls) but at least the books
and hardware underly some clear successes: O'Reilly Associates, SSC, and
VA Research are among
them.
In fact, the number of companies that have had success with any of these models
is miniscule. This is hardly surprising, they are simply not very good business models
for software companies.
Taking each in turn...
Selling Support
The better documented and more reliable the product is, the less support
it needs. A business model where the more perfect your product, the less
money you can make has got something fundamentally wrong with it.
Loss Leader
The very fact that this can be advanced as a viable business model
for OpenSource shows desperation. What it comes down to is an admission
that the best way to make money from software is by selling it.
Widget Frosting
This makes perfect sense if you are a hardware company, or when the
software is a side issue. However, its no use at all for a business
whose main product is software.
Accessorizing
Selling accessories is fine, but there is no pressing need to actually
develop the software when one is in the accessories business.
There are of course other business models for Open Source. For instance, the one adopted
by the Perl foundation and several others is begging. This is not
a business model that many companies would find appealing though.
The basic problem is that for a business whose primary function is to make
software, then the primary reward has to come from selling the
software. We need a business model that actually works and we have one, it's called
capitalism. It works like this:
make something that people want and sell it to them.
This model works for software too, and there is no
reason why this model cannot work even when source code
is available. Closed source vendors are relying on something
a little closer to the business model of a heroin pusher. It starts
off like capitalism, but there is the added feature that the user
gets addicted and has to carry on buying the same thing even
if he does not really want to. The more he uses the same vendor,
the more reliant he is upon it.
The Solution
Community software is software where the vendor can be paid a fair
price for the software he creates, but where the buyer does not
end up in a similar position to a junkie.
Community Source is software that guarantees the following:
The right to see what the software is doing, ie access to unobfuscated source code.
The right to add enhancements.
The right to fix bugs.
The right to sell his enhancements to other companies. This does not mean the right to the sell
software without the original vendor receiving any money. The buyer still needs a license from the original vendor, but he does not have to rely on a single vendor for upgrades and enhancements.
The right to buy enhanced versions from 3rd parties.
Together these provide a guarantee that the buyers investment in the software is protected.
The benefit to the software vendor is that he can sell to larger companies without them being scared of buying from an outfit which might go bust or be unable to properly support them. It is better for the client than software escrow since the client knows that if the original vendor does not maintain the software well, then someone else can do so.
Make files are much better once you get used to them. They are so much more terse you can follow what is going on. XML is a disastrous choice - it makes something which should be simple fucking awkward.
The cross platform abilities are kinda useful but not that hot. If you're doing anything non-standard you end up needing exec and then you have to deal with the same cross-platform problems as you would with make.
The superior dependency management in make means that well written make files are much faster as well as being much smaller and easier to understand.
> The goal isn't to reduce the overall volume of fuel consumped, but to reduce the energy consumed
There are lots of goals, but one of the more important is to reduce carbon emissions.
Diesel engines run fine on vegtable oils, which is fully sustainable and cuts net emissions to zero [since the plants get their carbon straight out of atmosphere anyway].
In fact, one can happily run diesel engines on hemp oil. Imagine what a traffic jam would smell like if this was more commonplace.
> True, but... I assume in this model anyone, anywhere could see the source codebase... with any of its bugs and exploits
This is a particuarly stupid form of the security through obscurity argument.
One may as well argue that the source code for a proprietary system should not be checked for bugs because the person doing so could find something and sell on the information to a terrorist. One has to assume that there are more good guys than bad guys in the world, and the larger the number of people looking at the code, the greater the chance that any problems are found and fixed rather than found and exploited. This would be true even if there were many potential problems that do not need some evil person deliberately trying to exploit it.
> A better way to fight terror would surly be to remove guns from America society
While I agree with most of what you are saying, there is no basis whatsoever for linking gun ownership with terrorism. Sep 11 was achieved with box cutters and Bali isnt in US and they have stricter gun laws anyway. It seems a little hypocritical to accuse people of using terrorism to justify unrelated legislation and then doing exactly the same thing yourself in the very next sentance.
Very few people appreciate the subtlty. Like when they really do have a grudge, and they are also pretending they have a grudge, so they end up pretending to pretend to try to hurt each other, when really they are really trying to hurt each other. It makes my brain hurt just thinking about it.
Also, its totally gay. Ohh, I think I'll go watch musclebound semi-naked sweaty guys grappling with each other that people find so appealing. How heterosexual is that ?
You mention a selection of studies that seem to discount the possibility. However, when large sums of money are involved, it is always possible to find plenty of studies that discount possibility of a link. For instance, many 'scientists' have shown that there is no proven link between tobacco and cancer, or that there is no such thing as global warming, or at least if there is such a thing, it is not linked to carbon emmissions.
Where did you get this data from ? It seems to be very selective. A quick search in google turns up a more mixed bag of results. There is Dr. Wakefield's stuff for instance.
I have personal reasons for being skeptical of the skeptics. My brother received whooping cough vaccine and is autistic. According to my mother, he was a normal baby before the vaccine, but not afterwards. There was a scare at the time, and the link between whooping cough vaccine and autism is 'unfounded'. However, this use of terms like unfounded has a special meaning. They mean the change in autism rates which coincided with use of the vaccine had not been proven statistically to be caused by the vaccine. The evidence of individual parents who could see the problems with their babies exactly coincided with use of the vaccine is completely discarded since it is not 'scientific'. The parents are accused of trying to pin the blame on someone other than their own faulty genes.
Poor sap. Until you use all 5 ears and a good 5.1 system, you will never appreciate music the way it is meant to be heard.
Re:Recycle Bins - don't you just hate them?
on
Undelete In Linux
·
· Score: 2
It's not as simple as that. I believe that false sense of security created by recycle mechanisms are counter productive. It's like building extra roads to avoid conjestion. People just drive more until conjestion is just as bad as it always was. The more foolproof you try to make something, the more foolish people become.
It's perfectly straightforard to replace rm with something that moves files to a recycle directory. People don't generally do this because it doesn't really help. At the end of the day, either you want to delete it or you don't. It's not about superiority, it's about human nature. When you firmly believe that deleting something will really delete it, you adjust. Now, some people have got used to having a recycle bin. For them it may be prefereable to alias rm 'mv !:* ~/trash' or whatever. It depends what you're used to. I sincerely doubt this means they will lose less data accidentally. A regular automated backup policy is usually a better option.
> However, they are useful for demonstrating some principles that creationists are fond of denying. Such as the fact that completely random mutations in the genotype, when filtered by a biased selection process, can result in evolutionary "progress". They can also show the importance of the component processes, e.g. take your favorite GA and run it with mutations turned off and see what happens, or run it with random selection rather than fitness selection and see what happens. You will find that GAs make a very good case that random mutations filtered by natural selection are a plausible explanation for change in an otherwise unguided system, such as the earth's biological system.
I was solving practical problems with GAs [scheduling problems for a billion dollar/year factory]. I was working on this stuff full time for 2 years. I succeeded. I think I understand GAs at least as well as you do, thanks. In fact, I think I have an understand of what GAs can and cannot do that is pretty much impossible to aquire without actually experimenting with these things.
It is very very difficult to analyze this stuff mathematically, one needs experimental computer science [along the same lines proposed by Wolfram in a New Kind of Science] to gain a feel for it. Your warm fuzzy feeling of "natural selection can produce design improvements" will evaporate when you properly understand what you can and cannot achieve like this.
I *have* gained a feel for it. And, I'm telling you there is something abosolutely fundamental missing in our understanding of evolution. I don't know what it is, and I'm not saying it's "God" but whatever it is, it is pretty damn central to the whole. It will take a few decades for this to filter through and be proved conclusively, but I promise you, it'll happen.
Don't think that because you read a review where someone discredited a couple of points you have really gained anything. Make your own criticisms. I disagree with Spetner on several points as well. However, it is well worth reading.
Evolution also refers to two things, one is a fact, the other a theory.
The idea that life did not suddenly appear fully fledged, but that simpler forms appeared and gradually more complex forms developed from the simple forms is indesputable except by total weirdos.
However, the idea that this evolution was driven simply by random mutations coupled with natural selection *is* just a theory.
I don't know who you mean by "we" when you say "we're sure of the big picture" if you mean that we're sure that this is how it works. I used to believe in the neo darwinist theories [NGT] completely, but two years full time work with genetic algorithms changed by mind. GAs work, but not as well as they would need to for life to have evolved in the time frames involved. It does not add up. GAs work I recommend "Not by Chance" by Dr. Lee Spetner who explains why not in a more authorative manner than I could manage.
It could be that life formation is extraordinarily unlikely and occurred on a single planet in our system [eg mars]. Once firmly established on that planet a glancing blow from a largish asteroid could release dust containing the basic compounds [DNA, or perhaps simpler stepping stone molecules] from the planets gravitational pull.
This is all conjecture anyway. We have no proof that life exists on these other planets. New Scientist these days is a tremendously speculative publication.
For a good discussion about life's probability's, read Not By Chance by Dr. Lee Spetner.
> By your token, because I buy a book, I should therefore own all the contents of the book. This is the reason that copyright law exists--to protect the people who create things.
No, it's not. Copyright is there to ensure that a stream of new material is created and eventually reaches the end consumer. It is there for the benefit of society, not the benefit of creators alone. It is definitely *not* there to protect the artistic integrity of whatever the creator produces. If people are aware they are getting the censored version, and they prefer that, the creator can go fuck himself if he believes he has any right to force people to consume the whole thing or none of it. Do you want to make it illegal for people to walk out of movie theaters early too ?
I know its a troll but wtf, its sunday. Its only illegal drug profits that go towards terrorism [unless you include taxes which support a fair bit, but thats another issue]. Solution is obvious: legalize all drugs.
> Oh boy another wonderful/. creationist-vs-evolutionist debate!
This isn't an evolutionist/creationist debate. It's a debate about whether science has explained life adequately.
> No matter how many creationists point out their supposed "holes" in the mainstream scientific theories on the origins of life, they always fail to produce the one thing that would end the debate forever: ONE IOTA of SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that GOD EXISTS and that HE CREATED LIFE.
I can't even imagine what kind of evidence you would be talking about. The main evidence pointed at by the pro-god lobby is life itself. That evidence doesnt end the argument, it provides something for scientists to find an alternative explanation for.
Life exists, it didnt appear overnight, it evolved. The question is, how did it evolve. Was it brought about by random chance, did the necessary molecules combine by chance and then once a self replicating molecule existed, did it grow in complexity until we ended up with what we have by scientifically explained [or even explainable] mechanisms. Now, I guess you would consider the notion that evolution was guided by something as a creationist argument. It's not obvious that believing that it all came about by random processes [and yes thanks, I do understand natural selection, mutation, crossover etc] is less extraordinary a hypothesis than the notion of a form of guided evolution.
It's not as clear cut as you might think. I recommend you read "Not by chance" by Dr. Lee Spetner. He is not some wooly thinking bible bashing hick, he has a Phd in physics from MIT and has worked in biophysics for decades.
None of this proves in existence of god of course. However, those who believe that science has come anywhere close to explaining life are as deluded as those who take the bible literally.
Since the terrorists accomplished so much with so little, they are obviously not stupid [insane - sure, but not stupid]. The next atrocity will be carried out by a bunch of people with good old whitebread names. Anybody called Mohammed Al'whatever is under too much suspicion these days to fart in public. The next big thing will be carried out by a bunch of people with names [possibly changed by deedpole] like Joe White, Billy Bob Bobbit etc.
In the short run, [say, next 30 years or so], you have a point.
Property itself is an invention of society. IP is a more recent invention. Property rights are enforced for the good of society.
Property is an essential part of capitalism, one cannot have a functioning capitalist society without strong property rights.
The concept of IP [copyrights, patents, trademarks] is enforced to bring IP into capitalist framework. It works fairly well, however the fact that IP can be copied for free makes a big difference to the optimal balance that can be achieved.
Capitalism is successful principally because it is a good mechanism for optimal distribution and use of scarce resources. If the resources aren't intrinsically scarce, introducing artificial scarcity [through IP laws] might not be the best option.
As the world advances virtually the entire output of society becomes IP. With nanotech and replicators the IP content of material goods will be even more significant component. In such a world, allowing everybody access to all IP would make everybody massively richer.
Then one is left with the problem of incentive. Without IP laws what incentive is there for people to create new stuff. However, in post scarcity society, one would function in a gift economy anyway. Once basic needs are taken care of people do stuff for sense of worth and status, creative types are not just going to sit on their asses even if IP is abolished.
For the moment this just seems a bit far out, but in a 100 years it will be obvious [probably]. It helps to understand that this is a desirable direction to move in, even though we're not quite ready for it yet.
What killed Java on the client was the fact that it was shit.
First there was AWT - ugly damn toolkit. Then after people had moved heaven and earth trying to produce vaguely useable applications with AWT, they came out with SWING. This had a huge learning curve, it produced extremely verbose code, it was painfully slow, and in it's earlier versions it was infested with bugs.
Thousands of developer years went into producing java applications. These applications were, almost without exception, shit. The few that actually made it out to the public "felt" like java applications. With a ten fold increase in RAM and processor speed, these java applications were almost useable, but still felt slower than equivalent C programs on one's old box.
If anything, MS encouraged java by coming out with libraries[MFC] and languages[VB] that were so bad they made java look worthwhile. Their malevolent business practices were amply compensated for by their technical incompetence.
Slashdot Mirror
The benefits of Open Source or Free software to its users are undeniable. If the software has a bug, or the software does not do something you want it to do, you can change it. There are many advantages, and they have been explained at length by various people. If you are going to be using software, you are definitely better off if you have access to the source code.
Trust
The fundamental difference between open source software and closed source software is the level of trust required. For a business to use closed source software, the level of trust required is enormous. It is not simply a question of whether the money spent purchasing the software is a good investment. The time invested using the software is far more significant. Almost inevitably your own business information becomes tied up in a format that is specific to the software you are using. In order to buy software from a closed source company, you have to take the following on trust:
- They have not left gaping security holes in the code.
- They will fix bugs in a timely manner.
- They will eventually add the features you want.
- They are not using your computing resources to do things which are
not in your interest.
- They will not increase the price unreasonably once you depend on them.
- They will not go bust.
In fact, when you consider all the things that people are expected to take on trust when they purchase closed source software, it is amazing that anybody ever does so. The truth of the matter is that very few organisations properly considered these factors before they bought the software. They bought the software because they needed it and although there are terrible dangers involved in relying on closed source software, there is often no alternative. Companies and other organisations are only just starting to wake up to the dangers of closed source software.Business Models Having access to the source code makes good sense to the users. However the business case for the software vendor is far less convincing. In fact, the dangers of closed source from the user's perspective can be considered opportunities from the vendor's perspective.
The open source foundation proposes "4 ways to win" which is reproduced here: Four Ways To Win
Now for a higher-level, investor's point of view. There are at least four known business models for making money with open source:
In fact, the number of companies that have had success with any of these models is miniscule. This is hardly surprising, they are simply not very good business models for software companies.
Taking each in turn... Selling Support The better documented and more reliable the product is, the less support it needs. A business model where the more perfect your product, the less money you can make has got something fundamentally wrong with it. Loss Leader The very fact that this can be advanced as a viable business model for OpenSource shows desperation. What it comes down to is an admission that the best way to make money from software is by selling it. Widget Frosting This makes perfect sense if you are a hardware company, or when the software is a side issue. However, its no use at all for a business whose main product is software. Accessorizing Selling accessories is fine, but there is no pressing need to actually develop the software when one is in the accessories business.
There are of course other business models for Open Source. For instance, the one adopted by the Perl foundation and several others is begging. This is not a business model that many companies would find appealing though.
The basic problem is that for a business whose primary function is to make software, then the primary reward has to come from selling the software. We need a business model that actually works and we have one, it's called capitalism. It works like this: make something that people want and sell it to them. This model works for software too, and there is no reason why this model cannot work even when source code is available. Closed source vendors are relying on something a little closer to the business model of a heroin pusher. It starts off like capitalism, but there is the added feature that the user gets addicted and has to carry on buying the same thing even if he does not really want to. The more he uses the same vendor, the more reliant he is upon it.
The Solution Community software is software where the vendor can be paid a fair price for the software he creates, but where the buyer does not end up in a similar position to a junkie.
Community Source is software that guarantees the following:
- The right to see what the software is doing, ie access to unobfuscated source code.
- The right to add enhancements.
- The right to fix bugs.
- The right to sell his enhancements to other companies. This does not mean the right to the sell
software without the original vendor receiving any money. The buyer still needs a license from the original vendor, but he does not have to rely on a single vendor for upgrades and enhancements.
- The right to buy enhanced versions from 3rd parties.
Together these provide a guarantee that the buyers investment in the software is protected. The benefit to the software vendor is that he can sell to larger companies without them being scared of buying from an outfit which might go bust or be unable to properly support them. It is better for the client than software escrow since the client knows that if the original vendor does not maintain the software well, then someone else can do so.It is more a strategic rather than an economic benefit. Having a well armed and dependent ally in the middle east is useful to America.
> We support Israel because of the holocaust.
Partially true, but why not support Armenia too, Rawanda or whatever.
> The arab nations in the middle east attacked Israel repeatedly without provocation.... it's easy to be sympathetic to Israel.
Well, it is if you have a one sided viewpoint. Read Chomsky, I'm not saying he's right, but there are other sides to it http://www.zmag.org
Whoever modded this as a troll is a fuckwit, it's art.
Exactly right.
The XML mess is far worse than the tab issue.
Make files are much better once you get used to them. They are so much more terse you can follow what is going on. XML is a disastrous choice - it makes something which should be simple fucking awkward.
The cross platform abilities are kinda useful but not that hot. If you're doing anything non-standard you end up needing exec and then you have to deal with the same cross-platform problems as you would with make.
The superior dependency management in make means that well written make files are much faster as well as being much smaller and easier to understand.
> The goal isn't to reduce the overall volume of fuel consumped, but to reduce the energy consumed
There are lots of goals, but one of the more important is to reduce carbon emissions.
Diesel engines run fine on vegtable oils, which is fully sustainable and cuts net emissions to zero [since the plants get their carbon straight out of atmosphere anyway].
In fact, one can happily run diesel engines on hemp oil. Imagine what a traffic jam would smell like if this was more commonplace.
> True, but... I assume in this model anyone, anywhere could see the source codebase... with any of its bugs and exploits
This is a particuarly stupid form of the security through obscurity argument.
One may as well argue that the source code for a proprietary system should not be checked for bugs because the person doing so could find something and sell on the information to a terrorist. One has to assume that there are more good guys than bad guys in the world, and the larger the number of people looking at the code, the greater the chance that any problems are found and fixed rather than found and exploited. This would be true even if there were many potential problems that do not need some evil person deliberately trying to exploit it.
> to me it was a bugger challenge.
Really ? Wow, that would be some incentive. I sure wouldnt want to play tetris knowing that would happen to me if I screwed up.
> A better way to fight terror would surly be to remove guns from America society
While I agree with most of what you are saying, there is no basis whatsoever for linking gun ownership with terrorism. Sep 11 was achieved with box cutters and Bali isnt in US and they have stricter gun laws anyway. It seems a little hypocritical to accuse people of using terrorism to justify unrelated legislation and then doing exactly the same thing yourself in the very next sentance.
Very few people appreciate the subtlty. Like when they really do have a grudge, and they are also pretending they have a grudge, so they end up pretending to pretend to try to hurt each other, when really they are really trying to hurt each other. It makes my brain hurt just thinking about it.
Also, its totally gay. Ohh, I think I'll go watch musclebound semi-naked sweaty guys grappling with each other that people find so appealing. How heterosexual is that ?
You mention a selection of studies that seem to discount the possibility. However, when large sums of money are involved, it is always possible to find plenty of studies that discount possibility of a link. For instance, many 'scientists' have shown that there is no proven link between tobacco and cancer, or that there is no such thing as global warming, or at least if there is such a thing, it is not linked to carbon emmissions.
Where did you get this data from ? It seems to be very selective. A quick search in google turns up a more mixed bag of results. There is Dr. Wakefield's stuff for instance.
I have personal reasons for being skeptical of the skeptics. My brother received whooping cough vaccine and is autistic. According to my mother, he was a normal baby before the vaccine, but not afterwards. There was a scare at the time, and the link between whooping cough vaccine and autism is 'unfounded'. However, this use of terms like unfounded has a special meaning. They mean the change in autism rates which coincided with use of the vaccine had not been proven statistically to be caused by the vaccine. The evidence of individual parents who could see the problems with their babies exactly coincided with use of the vaccine is completely discarded since it is not 'scientific'. The parents are accused of trying to pin the blame on someone other than their own faulty genes.
Poor sap. Until you use all 5 ears and a good 5.1 system, you will never appreciate music the way it is meant to be heard.
It's not as simple as that. I believe that false sense of security created by recycle mechanisms are counter productive. It's like building extra roads to avoid conjestion. People just drive more until conjestion is just as bad as it always was. The more foolproof you try to make something, the more foolish people become.
It's perfectly straightforard to replace rm with something that moves files to a recycle directory. People don't generally do this because it doesn't really help. At the end of the day, either you want to delete it or you don't. It's not about superiority, it's about human nature.
When you firmly believe that deleting something will really delete it, you adjust. Now, some people have got used to having a recycle bin. For them it may be prefereable to alias rm 'mv !:* ~/trash' or whatever. It depends what you're used to. I sincerely doubt this means they will lose less data accidentally. A regular automated backup policy is usually a better option.
> However, they are useful for demonstrating some principles that creationists are fond of denying. Such as the fact that completely random mutations in the genotype, when filtered by a biased selection process, can result in evolutionary "progress". They can also show the importance of the component processes, e.g. take your favorite GA and run it with mutations turned off and see what happens, or run it with random selection rather than fitness selection and see what happens. You will find that GAs make a very good case that random mutations filtered by natural selection are a plausible explanation for change in an otherwise unguided system, such as the earth's biological system.
I was solving practical problems with GAs [scheduling problems for a billion dollar/year factory]. I was working on this stuff full time for 2 years. I succeeded. I think I understand GAs at least as well as you do, thanks. In fact, I think I have an understand of what GAs can and cannot do that is pretty much impossible to aquire without actually experimenting with these things.
It is very very difficult to analyze this stuff mathematically, one needs experimental computer science [along the same lines proposed by Wolfram in a New Kind of Science] to gain a feel for it. Your warm fuzzy feeling of "natural selection can produce design improvements" will evaporate when you properly understand what you can and cannot achieve like this.
I *have* gained a feel for it. And, I'm telling you there is something abosolutely fundamental missing in our understanding of evolution. I don't know what it is, and I'm not saying it's "God" but whatever it is, it is pretty damn central to the whole. It will take a few decades for this to filter through and be proved conclusively, but I promise you, it'll happen.
Don't think that because you read a review where someone discredited a couple of points you have really gained anything. Make your own criticisms. I disagree with Spetner on several points as well. However, it is well worth reading.
You are exploiting confusion too.
Evolution also refers to two things, one is a fact, the other a theory.
The idea that life did not suddenly appear fully fledged, but that simpler forms appeared and gradually more complex forms developed from the simple forms is indesputable except by total weirdos.
However, the idea that this evolution was driven simply by random mutations coupled with natural selection *is* just a theory.
I don't know who you mean by "we" when you say "we're sure of the big picture" if you mean that we're sure that this is how it works. I used to believe in the neo darwinist theories [NGT] completely, but two years full time work with genetic algorithms changed by mind. GAs work, but not as well as they would need to for life to have evolved in the time frames involved. It does not add up. GAs work I recommend "Not by Chance" by Dr. Lee Spetner who explains why not in a more authorative manner than I could manage.
It doesnt go against it, but it's not using it. The changes are being made without any known guiding principle.
It could be that life formation is extraordinarily unlikely and occurred on a single planet in our system [eg mars]. Once firmly established on that planet a glancing blow from a largish asteroid could release dust containing the basic compounds [DNA, or perhaps simpler stepping stone molecules] from the planets gravitational pull.
This is all conjecture anyway. We have no proof that life exists on these other planets. New Scientist these days is a tremendously speculative publication.
For a good discussion about life's probability's, read Not By Chance by Dr. Lee Spetner.
> By your token, because I buy a book, I should therefore own all the contents of the book. This is the reason that copyright law exists--to protect the people who create things.
No, it's not. Copyright is there to ensure that a stream of new material is created and eventually reaches the end consumer. It is there for the benefit of society, not the benefit of creators alone. It is definitely *not* there to protect the artistic integrity of whatever the creator produces. If people are aware they are getting the censored version, and they prefer that, the creator can go fuck himself if he believes he has any right to force people to consume the whole thing or none of it. Do you want to make it illegal for people to walk out of movie theaters early too ?
I know its a troll but wtf, its sunday. Its only illegal drug profits that go towards terrorism [unless you include taxes which support a fair bit, but thats another issue]. Solution is obvious: legalize all drugs.
nuf
> Oh boy another wonderful /. creationist-vs-evolutionist debate!
This isn't an evolutionist/creationist debate. It's a debate about whether science has explained life adequately.
> No matter how many creationists point out their supposed "holes" in the mainstream scientific theories on the origins of life, they always fail to produce the one thing that would end the debate forever: ONE IOTA of SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that GOD EXISTS and that HE CREATED LIFE.
I can't even imagine what kind of evidence you would be talking about. The main evidence pointed at by the pro-god lobby is life itself. That evidence doesnt end the argument, it provides something for scientists to find an alternative explanation for.
Life exists, it didnt appear overnight, it evolved. The question is, how did it evolve. Was it brought about by random chance, did the necessary molecules combine by chance and then once a self replicating molecule existed, did it grow in complexity until we ended up with what we have by scientifically explained [or even explainable] mechanisms. Now, I guess you would consider the notion that evolution was guided by something as a creationist argument. It's not obvious that believing that it all came about by random processes [and yes thanks, I do understand natural selection, mutation, crossover etc] is less extraordinary a hypothesis than the notion of a form of guided evolution.
It's not as clear cut as you might think. I recommend you read "Not by chance" by Dr. Lee Spetner. He is not some wooly thinking bible bashing hick, he has a Phd in physics from MIT and has worked in biophysics for decades.
There is a better book to look at:
http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho36.htm
None of this proves in existence of god of course. However, those who believe that science has come anywhere close to explaining life are as deluded as those who take the bible literally.
> thats one of the many reasons i am an athiest
Had the result been different, would that have given you cause to doubt your atheism, or is your faith in atheism stronger than that ?
Since the terrorists accomplished so much with so little, they are obviously not stupid [insane - sure, but not stupid]. The next atrocity will be carried out by a bunch of people with good old whitebread names. Anybody called Mohammed Al'whatever is under too much suspicion these days to fart in public. The next big thing will be carried out by a bunch of people with names [possibly changed by deedpole] like Joe White, Billy Bob Bobbit etc.
In the short run, [say, next 30 years or so], you have a point.
Property itself is an invention of society. IP is a more recent invention. Property rights are enforced for the good of society.
Property is an essential part of capitalism, one cannot have a functioning capitalist society without strong property rights.
The concept of IP [copyrights, patents, trademarks] is enforced to bring IP into capitalist framework. It works fairly well, however the fact that IP can be copied for free makes a big difference to the optimal balance that can be achieved.
Capitalism is successful principally because it is a good mechanism for optimal distribution and use of scarce resources. If the resources aren't intrinsically scarce, introducing artificial scarcity [through IP laws] might not be the best option.
As the world advances virtually the entire output of society becomes IP. With nanotech and replicators the IP content of material goods will be even more significant component. In such a world, allowing everybody access to all IP would make everybody massively richer.
Then one is left with the problem of incentive. Without IP laws what incentive is there for people to create new stuff. However, in post scarcity society, one would function in a gift economy anyway. Once basic needs are taken care of people do stuff for sense of worth and status, creative types are not just going to sit on their asses even if IP is abolished.
For the moment this just seems a bit far out, but in a 100 years it will be obvious [probably]. It helps to understand that this is a desirable direction to move in, even though we're not quite ready for it yet.
What killed Java on the client was the fact that it was shit.
First there was AWT - ugly damn toolkit. Then after people had moved heaven and earth trying to produce vaguely useable applications with AWT, they came out with SWING. This had a huge learning curve, it produced extremely verbose code, it was painfully slow, and in it's earlier versions it was infested with bugs.
Thousands of developer years went into producing java applications. These applications were, almost without exception, shit. The few that actually made it out to the public "felt" like java applications. With a ten fold increase in RAM and processor speed, these java applications were almost useable, but still felt slower than equivalent C programs on one's old box.
If anything, MS encouraged java by coming out with libraries[MFC] and languages[VB] that were so bad they made java look worthwhile. Their malevolent business practices were amply compensated for by their technical incompetence.
A plague on both your houses...