Occam's Razor is an expression of the Principle of Parsimony -- I believe that the exact translation of the phrase William of Ockham used is "pluralities ought not be supposed without necessity". It may sound very simple, and if as you say, "it is a concept that everyone shares and is part of common sense", then we should be pleased that such a fundamental tool for scientific enquiry is firmly rooted in people's minds.
Darwin proposed evolutionary theory to explain certain observations he had made. The fossil record has allowed us to draw a reasonable model of the chain of descent, but there are gaps in it. ID supposes that these gaps require us to postulate an "intelligent designer", with some sort of ability to interfere with inheritance in some unspecified manner (and for unspecified reasons). This is clearly not "common sense" as it raises more questions than it claims to address.
My take is that it means: "Think like a start-up. (1) Identify a need that exists now. (2)Solve it. (3)Make some money (Profit!). (4)Stop."
If you're providing eg an online calendar sharing tool, your business should consist of (1) the application developers (2) the people (person) marketing & selling the tool and collecting the income. Develop it once, sell it for a year, then stop.
Any business that's in it for the long haul will inevitably build up all the admin overhead of HR, ISO-9001 teams, canteen staff, janitors, strategy co-ordinators, as well as releasing more version with increased functionality until it includes a word-processor and a newsreader.
all journalists seem to have roughly the same usage pattern - cart laptop around on plane, use it to take notes at the conference, post stories from hotel room using WiFi, and so forth.
And who is buying all these laptops? Perhaps it's business users who also seem to have roughly the same usage pattern - cart laptop around on plane, use it to take notes at the conference, post stories from hotel room using WiFi, and so forth.?
There's no software priced between $1000 and $75,000. I'll tell you why. The minute you charge more than $1000 you need to get serious corporate signoffs. You need a line item in their budget. You need purchasing managers and CEO approval and competitive bids and paperwork. So you need to send a salesperson out to the customer to do PowerPoint, with his airfare, golf course memberships, and $19.95 porn movies at the Ritz Carlton. And with all this, the cost of making one successful sale is going to average about $50,000. If you're sending salespeople out to customers and charging less than $75,000, you're losing money.
I'd have thought that the DNS services were the elements that were least related to the content, and a few simple principles such as "no blocking of domains will occur at an international level" would be enough to maintain the freedom of this layer.
I agree that the case for change is based on hypotheticals, and so is perhaps an expression of a general unease based on other issues, rather than a symptom of specific problems in the current set-up. But that still leaves the fact that an internationally important resource is *potentially* more exposed to the risk of undue influence from one nation. If this was office politics, I'd be tempted to say, "I'm sure there's no risk that you'd use your influence unreasonably, but in order to demonstrate to others the independence of this group, let's set up a cross-departmental steering group with clear responsibilities and remit". But then that's what you end up like after working in large companies for too long...
I was amused to read that list of directors, especially as ICANN has a Malaysian and a Chinese director, and it still hasn't suppressed free speech yet!
I'd forgotten Vint Cerf was the chair of ICANN -- I wonder what his take on this is?
Your link shows the ACLU maintaining the distinction between, on one hand, free speech relating to an illegal act and, on the other hand, the act itself (and the horrible outcome). I understand that their position is that once this distinction is lost, the right to free speech itself is significantly eroded. The ACLU said regarding this case "Under the First Amendment, there are no illegal ideas. Those who commit illegal acts can be punished for wrongful conduct, but the expression of even offensive ideas is protected by our constitution."
Given that this case was reported in 2000, perhaps you could let us know what the court decided?
"In my country, Brazil, we are very worried about this kind of decision-making process where they simply decide upon creating such new top-level generic domain names"
I don't have any problems with porn, but I see worrying implications in this decision. One question I would have is, what is the point of the.xxx tld? Given that there are porn sites in all tlds, what problem does adding a new tld solve?
The only point of the.xxx tld I can see is if the US government was then to legislate that all sites with pornographic content had to use the.xxx tld. Being able to put pressure on ICANN would allow it to impose a decision unilaterally on all the.coms in the world, who would then be in the position of being policed by US moral censors who believe Janet Jackson's nipple is pornographic.
Another question would be about.jobs and.biz -- why are we creating tlds that only make sense in English? Why aren't tlds for.travail, . and . [slashcode apparently eats unicode for russian and chinese characters] also being created at the same time? Surely these decisions should be made by a body that is internationally accountable?
One parting question: whose side will you be on when evolutionary biologists are banned from using the.science tld?:-)
When the solution is under the US or under the UN and free speech is the topic, I'd go for under the US.
But this comes back to one of the questions I first posed. If the US representatives are commited to protecting freedom of speech, and aren't only being reflexively territorial, they would surely be able to propose alternatives that will both protect freedom of speech, and remove the concern of some others that the US has some undefined control in the current set-up. Infrastructure and co-operation for international letters and phone-calls can be controlled by international committee (UPU and ITU respectively) without accusations of censorship, so why not DNS services too?
A well-supported international group with a robust constitution and a byzantine voting process could well be the best safeguard against "special interest" politicking!
Which principle is more important: ICANN remaining a US company; or protecting free speech on the internet?
Is every solution that guarantees free speech dependent on ICANN remaining under US control?
Which principle should be safe-guarded, and which one is negotiable?
If this is really what the debate is about, I can kind of understand the EU's concerns in specific hypothetical circumstances, though I don't understand the intransigence of the US representatives.
I suspect though that this is just a dick-size war, and we'll find out later on that it's really all posturing to show a position of strength for GATT negotiations.
GPS is another military technology that the US military was nice enough to share with civilians. Should they vote themselves the power to take that over too?
We don't need to -- we're well aware of the risks of depending on the US continuing to make the servive available, which is why we're building our own GPS network
I'm just saying that if it is being spoofed, it's more likely being done at the source rather than the more unreliable method of putting an antenna on the roof.
I don't think you understand how GPS works. Essentially every satellite broadcasts a highly accurate time signal. As these satellites are all at different distances from an observer, these signals arrive at the observer at slightly different times. The receiver has an internal table of positions of the satellites, and uses this table and the time-delays to triangulate its own position.
So, as the grandparent said, the system doesn't 'know' where you are, and so it can't send you different information depending on where you are.
Re:Names, like history, are the story of the victo
on
Martian Naming Madness
·
· Score: 1
When China settles Mars, for example, I'm sure they won't keep the English names
Maybe they'll revert to the original Barsoomian names?
It doesn't help when the application you're trying to sell them on is maintained by some 18-year-old geek with a ponytail and Cheetos dust all over his keyboard.
But this isn't an issue with F/OSS, it's a issue with small or unprofessional development teams. You only have to look at the shareware industry to find examples of poorly thought-out and unsupported hobby software. You, and the original article, have a genuine concern about such unprofessional developers, but in identifying such developers primarily with F/OSS, you're confusing the discussion.
There are plenty of F/OSS developers who treat their work in a business-like fashion: Apache, the Linux kernel, Eclipse, Firefox and others show that F/OSS is not incompatible with professional development.
Too true; he should be in the dictionary under 'irony'.
Back on topic, last month I was really pleased with my new iPod Mini. So they release something smaller *and* lighter for the same money, and I *now* find it's got better audio quality.
I'm sure Alanis Morrisette would tell me how ironic it was...
Slashdot Mirror
Wales does not have its own legal system, it falls under English law.
http://www.google.com/search?q=news.of.the.world+l ibel+damages&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start =0
Occam's Razor is an expression of the Principle of Parsimony -- I believe that the exact translation of the phrase William of Ockham used is "pluralities ought not be supposed without necessity". It may sound very simple, and if as you say, "it is a concept that everyone shares and is part of common sense", then we should be pleased that such a fundamental tool for scientific enquiry is firmly rooted in people's minds.
Darwin proposed evolutionary theory to explain certain observations he had made. The fossil record has allowed us to draw a reasonable model of the chain of descent, but there are gaps in it. ID supposes that these gaps require us to postulate an "intelligent designer", with some sort of ability to interfere with inheritance in some unspecified manner (and for unspecified reasons). This is clearly not "common sense" as it raises more questions than it claims to address.
Mars is owned by Masterfoods International
I wonder if anyone has told the Mars family that they don't own their own company any more?
Good point - I've just compared Office/X with NeoOffice/J (perhaps not really fair on OOo, as NeoOffice brings Java into the equation as well).
.txt file (750kB)
.html file (730 kB)
(All on a 1GHz Powerbook, 750MB RAM)
Footprint with a blank doc:
NeoOffice/J Writer 74MB
MS Word 20 MB
Footprint after loading a 750kB html file:
Writer - 103MB
Word - 31MB
Launch time:
Word 17 seconds first time, second time was 6 seconds
Writer 47 seconds first time, second time was 17 seconds
Word Document open time:
Word - 3 seconds
Writer - 16 seconds
Opening a
Word - 3 seconds
Writer - 5 seconds
Opening a
Word - 5s
Writer - 5s
Not looking too good for OOo there...
My take is that it means: "Think like a start-up. (1) Identify a need that exists now. (2)Solve it. (3)Make some money (Profit!). (4)Stop."
If you're providing eg an online calendar sharing tool, your business should consist of (1) the application developers (2) the people (person) marketing & selling the tool and collecting the income. Develop it once, sell it for a year, then stop.
Any business that's in it for the long haul will inevitably build up all the admin overhead of HR, ISO-9001 teams, canteen staff, janitors, strategy co-ordinators, as well as releasing more version with increased functionality until it includes a word-processor and a newsreader.
all journalists seem to have roughly the same usage pattern - cart laptop around on plane, use it to take notes at the conference, post stories from hotel room using WiFi, and so forth.
And who is buying all these laptops? Perhaps it's business users who also seem to have roughly the same usage pattern - cart laptop around on plane, use it to take notes at the conference, post stories from hotel room using WiFi, and so forth.?
Do you really want Iran, North Korea and China having a say in how DNS is administered?
Thanks for trying to save us, but you're too late. A Chinese citizen is on the Board of Directors of ICANN, as is a Malayasian.
They will not use your personal information except to "ensure that its network continues to function"
So, GoogleNet needs a constant supply of personal information in order to continue to function. What are they creating in there, the Unborn God?
Joel on software has this to say (from http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubber Duckies.html):
There's no software priced between $1000 and $75,000. I'll tell you why. The minute you charge more than $1000 you need to get serious corporate signoffs. You need a line item in their budget. You need purchasing managers and CEO approval and competitive bids and paperwork. So you need to send a salesperson out to the customer to do PowerPoint, with his airfare, golf course memberships, and $19.95 porn movies at the Ritz Carlton. And with all this, the cost of making one successful sale is going to average about $50,000. If you're sending salespeople out to customers and charging less than $75,000, you're losing money.
I'd have thought that the DNS services were the elements that were least related to the content, and a few simple principles such as "no blocking of domains will occur at an international level" would be enough to maintain the freedom of this layer.
I agree that the case for change is based on hypotheticals, and so is perhaps an expression of a general unease based on other issues, rather than a symptom of specific problems in the current set-up. But that still leaves the fact that an internationally important resource is *potentially* more exposed to the risk of undue influence from one nation. If this was office politics, I'd be tempted to say, "I'm sure there's no risk that you'd use your influence unreasonably, but in order to demonstrate to others the independence of this group, let's set up a cross-departmental steering group with clear responsibilities and remit". But then that's what you end up like after working in large companies for too long...
I was amused to read that list of directors, especially as ICANN has a Malaysian and a Chinese director, and it still hasn't suppressed free speech yet!
I'd forgotten Vint Cerf was the chair of ICANN -- I wonder what his take on this is?
Your link shows the ACLU maintaining the distinction between, on one hand, free speech relating to an illegal act and, on the other hand, the act itself (and the horrible outcome). I understand that their position is that once this distinction is lost, the right to free speech itself is significantly eroded. The ACLU said regarding this case "Under the First Amendment, there are no illegal ideas. Those who commit illegal acts can be punished for wrongful conduct, but the expression of even offensive ideas is protected by our constitution."
Given that this case was reported in 2000, perhaps you could let us know what the court decided?
"In my country, Brazil, we are very worried about this kind of decision-making process where they simply decide upon creating such new top-level generic domain names"
I don't have any problems with porn, but I see worrying implications in this decision. One question I would have is, what is the point of the .xxx tld? Given that there are porn sites in all tlds, what problem does adding a new tld solve?
The only point of the .xxx tld I can see is if the US government was then to legislate that all sites with pornographic content had to use the .xxx tld. Being able to put pressure on ICANN would allow it to impose a decision unilaterally on all the .coms in the world, who would then be in the position of being policed by US moral censors who believe Janet Jackson's nipple is pornographic.
Another question would be about .jobs and .biz -- why are we creating tlds that only make sense in English? Why aren't tlds for .travail, . and . [slashcode apparently eats unicode for russian and chinese characters] also being created at the same time? Surely these decisions should be made by a body that is internationally accountable?
One parting question: whose side will you be on when evolutionary biologists are banned from using the .science tld? :-)
When the solution is under the US or under the UN and free speech is the topic, I'd go for under the US.
But this comes back to one of the questions I first posed. If the US representatives are commited to protecting freedom of speech, and aren't only being reflexively territorial, they would surely be able to propose alternatives that will both protect freedom of speech, and remove the concern of some others that the US has some undefined control in the current set-up. Infrastructure and co-operation for international letters and phone-calls can be controlled by international committee (UPU and ITU respectively) without accusations of censorship, so why not DNS services too?
A well-supported international group with a robust constitution and a byzantine voting process could well be the best safeguard against "special interest" politicking!
Which principle is more important: ICANN remaining a US company; or protecting free speech on the internet?
Is every solution that guarantees free speech dependent on ICANN remaining under US control?
Which principle should be safe-guarded, and which one is negotiable?
If this is really what the debate is about, I can kind of understand the EU's concerns in specific hypothetical circumstances, though I don't understand the intransigence of the US representatives.
I suspect though that this is just a dick-size war, and we'll find out later on that it's really all posturing to show a position of strength for GATT negotiations.
GPS is another military technology that the US military was nice enough to share with civilians. Should they vote themselves the power to take that over too?
We don't need to -- we're well aware of the risks of depending on the US continuing to make the servive available, which is why we're building our own GPS network
In light of the previous thread about annoying adverts, I particularly like the feature where you can't actually see the body of the email because there are too many adverts on the page (eg see http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/mail_be ta_preview_05.jpg)
What software do people use for making these neat videos?
vnc2swf
And to bring us (nearly) back on topic, the latest version is written in python!
The destroyers weren't donated, they were exchanged for 99-year leases on a number of British territories, primarily in the Caribbean -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyers_for_Bases_ Agreement
Google for "What is SAP"
First result
I'm just saying that if it is being spoofed, it's more likely being done at the source rather than the more unreliable method of putting an antenna on the roof.
I don't think you understand how GPS works. Essentially every satellite broadcasts a highly accurate time signal. As these satellites are all at different distances from an observer, these signals arrive at the observer at slightly different times. The receiver has an internal table of positions of the satellites, and uses this table and the time-delays to triangulate its own position.
So, as the grandparent said, the system doesn't 'know' where you are, and so it can't send you different information depending on where you are.
When China settles Mars, for example, I'm sure they won't keep the English names
Maybe they'll revert to the original Barsoomian names?
It doesn't help when the application you're trying to sell them on is maintained by some 18-year-old geek with a ponytail and Cheetos dust all over his keyboard.
But this isn't an issue with F/OSS, it's a issue with small or unprofessional development teams. You only have to look at the shareware industry to find examples of poorly thought-out and unsupported hobby software. You, and the original article, have a genuine concern about such unprofessional developers, but in identifying such developers primarily with F/OSS, you're confusing the discussion.
There are plenty of F/OSS developers who treat their work in a business-like fashion: Apache, the Linux kernel, Eclipse, Firefox and others show that F/OSS is not incompatible with professional development.
Too true; he should be in the dictionary under 'irony'.
Back on topic, last month I was really pleased with my new iPod Mini. So they release something smaller *and* lighter for the same money, and I *now* find it's got better audio quality.
I'm sure Alanis Morrisette would tell me how ironic it was...
"News is what someone doesn't want published."
Does that make Larry Flynt a pioneering journalist?
(Not that I disagree with your main point.)