Re:Social or physical sciences?
on
Science Debate 2008
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You appear to believe that things have a single cause. This is either never or rarely true.
I do not know of a single sane and honest scientist that believes that humanity did not *contribute* to the current global warming. Any argument is WRT the degree of contribution. As measurements and models have gotten more sensitive, the degree of contribution has been appearing more significant as a major factor.
I'll admit that there are still uncertainties, but the major ones are WRT "How rapidly will the sea levels rise?" Recently glaciologists have been seeing results, not currently included in the models, that seem to imply that a rise of 30 feet in a few decades time from now is not totally out of the question.
It's quite true that there is no certainty that this is the correct interpretation. Further measurements are needed, and these need to be included in the models. Then the models need to be run with a range of plausible parameters. But it would be wise to start making preparations. Some reasonable preparations include to cease increasing the rate of CO2 accumulation, but others would include studying how to build and maintain dikes, and investigating where they might reasonably be installed. Large investments should probably wait upon the results, but initial studies should have already begun. But the lack of 100% certainty is a hoax. One never gets certainty. Certainty is a limiting case, that doesn't even apply to the Sun rising tomorrow. That one might get 99.999999%, or possibly another 9 or two. This is *close* to certainty. And that's the best one can EVER do.
OK. I'm not s software usability consultant. But I still don't see what's wrong with that dialog. I disappears when the connection is made, and it lets people know that the system isn't just hung.
I can see that argument appearing on/., but I can't see anyone taking it seriously. And I have a hard time even imagining it appearing outside the technical media.
Also, when the time-out hit, they should produce a dialog saying (approx.) "Standard IPV6 connection timed out. Trying IPV4 connection." That would inform both the knowledgeable and the naive, at their appropriate levels of detail, would get the connection made, and would answer the (hypothetical) argument.
From what I heard (several years old) the code that a sufficiently large customer can get MS to show them is not something that can be compiled. So you really have no way to check that what they show you matches what they deliver.
Perhaps this has changed, but that's not the way I'd bet.
If Archologies were designed with optimal consideration...then yes, they could be ideal places to live. But note that you would have a VERY intrusive government, so you'd better establish from the beginning that the government is totally transparent. (Read "Oath of Fealty" for an idea of just how much governmental intrusion you would have. I can't think of a way around it that's consistent with human nature.)
N.B.: We'd BETTER practice on archologies before we start trying for orbital habitats. Archologies people can move away from.
You could go with super-conductors...but helium is running out, and that's a rather large outlay for something with a short useful life. (If high temperature, i.e. liquid Nitrogen) ever pan out, that would change things a lot.)
Your presumption is that they are attempting to safeguard people. Why do you believe that? It looks much more like "Let's see how scared we can get people to accept being". It's an old trick, long used by many religions. Get people frightened of something that they can't check, and use that fear to manipulate their actions.
Actually, Vista may be the last standing. I'm not saying it's the most secure, but it's the most unknown. And if you were a Black Hat who had developed a route into Vista, I'm sure there are more profitable ways of exploiting your ingenuity.
The cables may not have been physically cut, but the connections were cut.
Five times is a bit more than three time. Rather likely to be "enemy action" I'd say.
Test: Are those connections that were removed for servicing back up yet? If so, then this is probably unwarranted fear mongering. If not... not.
2nd Test: Since another cable has been cut, will the cables that were taken down for servicing be rushed back into service? Prediction: If enemy action, then reasons will appear suggesting that they *can't* be put back into service quickly. Otherwise not. (N.B.: Evaluate this second test tomorrow.) --- intermediate result: If no report appears on the status of the cables, this implies that "enemy action" is in a stealth mode, after having been noticed. Unfortunately, this could by CYA showing up as a false positive.
Do you *realize* how little any one person contributes?
Isaac Newton said "If I have seen further than those before me, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants". And he was right. Newton couldn't have done his work if it hadn't been for Kepler and Copernicus before him.
I don't put myself in the same class as Newton. If you do, then I suspect you should spend a bit of time with a shrink. (Not proven. You might be Einstein's successor. But that's not the way to bet.)
And as for the people who actually manage to accumulate large wads of cash...my feeling for most of them is that they did it by, essentially, stealing other people's energies. This doesn't make me feel all fuzzy and charitable towards them, so to that extent you are correct. But I don't hate them for being super-wealthy, but rather for what they did to become so. (I've encountered enough greedy bastards to not have any expectation that they got their wealth honestly, but in any particular case that *IS* open to proof. Kaiser seems to be an example of someone who "did well by doing good". The founders of Google are probably also in that camp, but I haven't looked at them carefully. (And it's true that the tales of Kaiser that I have heard might be hagiography.)
But you're right. My default assumption, by sheer weight of accumulated case histories, is that anyone who gets really rich did so by ripping off other people, and deserves *NO* applause, but rather condemnation. In any particular case, if I care enough, I'll research the particular individual. Not everyone trying to get rich is willing to bury people alive to save a few dollars. But our current president's family has that reputation. So I count him as someone who stole and murdered his way into wealth. (It was really his father [grandfather?], but he has to have known about it, and he has repeatedly demonstrated the same mental set, so I see no reason to let him off the hook. His wealth is based on killing other people and stealing their property. He continues to act daily in a way that proves his guilt.)
The lawyers generally work for firms, and won't have SCOX on their resumes unless they decide to. Even Darl's brother seems not to be an employee.
The people left are secretaries, a FEW software people (I think) and possibly some janitors. And Darl. (I haven't checked their web site, so this is just what I've pieced together en passant. Don't rely on it for anything important.)
OK. You worship money and don't understand the motives of FOSS.
I understand your points, but I don't CARE about them. To me the original point of Linux was to escape the MS EULA. Others had other reasons. (Linus said "Just for Fun".)
Money, dominance, etc. are only some reasons for doing things. Others have other reasons.
While it's true that FOSS will probably never create multi-billionaires (unless there's SEVERE inflation), that's a *good* thing. You need to cover the bills, and a bit more, but if you need more than that, either you or the society you live in are very sick. (Software patents may a "sick society" a plausible argument, admittedly.)
I think you mean "WITH ex post facto laws". Ex post facto laws are laws that make something that someone has already done a crime after they have done it, even though it wasn't a crime at the time they did it.
They may once have had a good reputation, but I don't remember the time. The one time I bought their Linux distro it was because of their reputed ability to interconnect with Novell Netware. Turned out that was an unsupported feature that was broken in the current release, and which they had no intention of fixing. So I switched to Red Hat, which also didn't support it, but which *did* have a working connection to Netware (3rd party).
Everything you say is correct...within limits. I don't see any way to improve the efficiency of the markets (even WITH government regulation). Requiring that information be provided helps, but the government regulators are often "persuaded" to alter definitions into forms that are pleasing to the entrenched power structure. (Note how the term "Organic" has been altered in the last few years.)
That said, monopoly of a market is an intrinsic evil. It may be more efficient at a particular price range to have a monopoly, but it is, in an of itself, a barrier to entry. (Not a high one, admittedly.) It's also the threat that with a change of management (or an economic downturn) it will BECOME an abusive monopoly. An oligopoly is also a threat, but less of one, and one that's potentially disruptable.
It's also true that you can define markets narrowly enough that monopolies are essentially harmless. Your example of trademarked laptops (Thinkpad Laptops) is an example. Trademarks are a legitimate monopoly. I doubt that patents are. I think patents should have licensing compelled, but how one could set the license fees is dubious. There probably *is* no legitimate way. Copyright is probably intrinsically legitimate, but not the ridiculously extended form that we have now, and certainly not when the manufacturer takes technical measures to prevent copying. Copyright should be either/or. If you take technical measures to prevent copying, then you don't qualify for copyright protection. (The argument for copyright is that after a certain number of years [which used to be a reasonable number] the item would become public domain. If that is prevented, then copyright protections shouldn't apply.)
I don't know of ANY legitimate monopolies outside of trademarks. I see reasons for patents, but the current implementation, and all similar implementations, are so inherently flawed that I cannot support them. And Copyright is in the first place grotesquely extended and in the second place shouldn't apply to works that have been copyprotected. (By legitimate here I mean yielding net social good.)
It may be easy to gather evidence, but they don't appear to bother. The comment about darts and phone books may not be entirely hype. Sometimes there doesn't seem to be any other explanation as to how they select their victims.
Once you assume that most people won't dare to defend themselves, and that the costs of losing are small to you, then you don't end up being careful that you are only targeting those actually violating your rights. It's less efficient. (Of course, one who was ethical wouldn't start by considering whether the proposed target could mount a defense, but would rather FIRST consider whether he was actually guilty. This does not appear to be the modus operandi.)
Those same markets also rely on the absence of monopolies. I don't see any way to ensure that without governments regulating commerce.
N.B.: I'm not talking about *abusive* monopolies, merely monopolies are sufficient to cause the markets to cease working as price regulators. Ideally the government would break up any company that achieved more than, say, 33.33% of the marketplace in a non-punitive way. In a way such that the owners of the companies would consider that a goal to be reached. Like an amoeba grows until it can divide...then both halves start growing again. Of course, in order for this to work It would be necessary to allow small companies to cooperate on large projects. But cooperation is a reasonable think to encourage.
Note, however, that the above proposal would open the gates to "monopoly by collusion" where two or more companies at below 33% of the market together constitute an effective monopoly by agreements to work together to manipulate prices. So you still need government oversight of the market.
P.S.: I think of myself as a libertarian, and I'm registered Libertarian. But I sure don't vote that way. I've never seen a lousier group of candidates.
Obama may well be the best of the surviving Democrats. He appears to be better than Hillary Clinton. This doesn't mean that I think very highly of him. It actually seems that the past several elections have been tests to see how long people will continue to vote for the perceived lesser of two evils. The last candidate I was even moderately in favor of was Johnson...and he got us into Viet Nam...
Any evidence that those statistics have any relationship to reality?
Considering the source, I wouldn't be surprised if they made them up....or asked people attending a MS hosted convention. (I don't trust Fortune magazine, and I don't recognize marketing companies. NetApplications could be anyone upto and including an alias for MS.)
I generally assume that if Bush says something, it's a lie. This seems to be true even when he gets no advantage out of lying. (Perhaps he feels the need to constantly practice?)
I'll admit that this approach doesn't give me a perfect batting record, but it's pretty good. He seems to have a real aversion to the truth. (Of course, you can't just assume that the opposite of what he says is the truth. He's not THAT unskilled a liar.)
No. What would be cool is to make bacteria that REQUIRE these new bases for their essential machinery to operate correctly. (IOW, make sure that the new bases are the only code that synthesizes for some required protein, and also make sure that they can't synthesize the bases.)
This would allow potentially dangerous things to be built...like polyethylene eating bacteria. It could live quite well within the digestive reactors turning used baggies into, O, methane or even butane or propane. (Polymerizing the output into a liquid hydrocarbon would be a separate step, one requiring energy input, and the bacteria to do that wouldn't need to be so carefully protected from escaping.)
My original source for this kind of information was Information Weekly (now, I think, InfoWeek). Since then I have occasionally encountered other stories from other sources.
Check into how they shut down a city in South Carolina. (I want to say Charleston, but I can't believe that's right. My memory is probably playing tricks.) Check into how they shut down school districts in Washington State the weak before school started.
I don't know whether these cases were exceptional or not, I didn't hear what the results of the aggression were. But these weren't organizations that were going to destroy the records and flee the country. Maneuvering to shut them down (and the timing) is a pure exercise in evil. These agencies could be as guilty as anything and there wouldn't be any excuse for their tactics. And being totally clean wouldn't protect them from horrendous damage.
Slashdot Mirror
You appear to believe that things have a single cause. This is either never or rarely true.
I do not know of a single sane and honest scientist that believes that humanity did not *contribute* to the current global warming. Any argument is WRT the degree of contribution. As measurements and models have gotten more sensitive, the degree of contribution has been appearing more significant as a major factor.
I'll admit that there are still uncertainties, but the major ones are WRT "How rapidly will the sea levels rise?" Recently glaciologists have been seeing results, not currently included in the models, that seem to imply that a rise of 30 feet in a few decades time from now is not totally out of the question.
It's quite true that there is no certainty that this is the correct interpretation. Further measurements are needed, and these need to be included in the models. Then the models need to be run with a range of plausible parameters. But it would be wise to start making preparations. Some reasonable preparations include to cease increasing the rate of CO2 accumulation, but others would include studying how to build and maintain dikes, and investigating where they might reasonably be installed. Large investments should probably wait upon the results, but initial studies should have already begun. But the lack of 100% certainty is a hoax. One never gets certainty. Certainty is a limiting case, that doesn't even apply to the Sun rising tomorrow. That one might get 99.999999%, or possibly another 9 or two. This is *close* to certainty. And that's the best one can EVER do.
OK. I'm not s software usability consultant. But I still don't see what's wrong with that dialog. I disappears when the connection is made, and it lets people know that the system isn't just hung.
I can see that argument appearing on /., but I can't see anyone taking it seriously. And I have a hard time even imagining it appearing outside the technical media.
Also, when the time-out hit, they should produce a dialog saying (approx.) "Standard IPV6 connection timed out. Trying IPV4 connection." That would inform both the knowledgeable and the naive, at their appropriate levels of detail, would get the connection made, and would answer the (hypothetical) argument.
From what I heard (several years old) the code that a sufficiently large customer can get MS to show them is not something that can be compiled. So you really have no way to check that what they show you matches what they deliver.
Perhaps this has changed, but that's not the way I'd bet.
If Archologies were designed with optimal consideration...then yes, they could be ideal places to live. But note that you would have a VERY intrusive government, so you'd better establish from the beginning that the government is totally transparent. (Read "Oath of Fealty" for an idea of just how much governmental intrusion you would have. I can't think of a way around it that's consistent with human nature.)
N.B.: We'd BETTER practice on archologies before we start trying for orbital habitats. Archologies people can move away from.
High tension wires.
You could go with super-conductors...but helium is running out, and that's a rather large outlay for something with a short useful life. (If high temperature, i.e. liquid Nitrogen) ever pan out, that would change things a lot.)
Your presumption is that they are attempting to safeguard people. Why do you believe that? It looks much more like "Let's see how scared we can get people to accept being". It's an old trick, long used by many religions. Get people frightened of something that they can't check, and use that fear to manipulate their actions.
Actually, Vista may be the last standing. I'm not saying it's the most secure, but it's the most unknown. And if you were a Black Hat who had developed a route into Vista, I'm sure there are more profitable ways of exploiting your ingenuity.
Sorry, it was BSD Unix that was installed on the toaster. (I forget which flavor.)
The cables may not have been physically cut, but the connections were cut.
... not.
Five times is a bit more than three time. Rather likely to be "enemy action" I'd say.
Test: Are those connections that were removed for servicing back up yet? If so, then this is probably unwarranted fear mongering. If not
2nd Test: Since another cable has been cut, will the cables that were taken down for servicing be rushed back into service? Prediction: If enemy action, then reasons will appear suggesting that they *can't* be put back into service quickly. Otherwise not. (N.B.: Evaluate this second test tomorrow.)
--- intermediate result: If no report appears on the status of the cables, this implies that "enemy action" is in a stealth mode, after having been noticed. Unfortunately, this could by CYA showing up as a false positive.
Do you *realize* how little any one person contributes?
Isaac Newton said "If I have seen further than those before me, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants". And he was right. Newton couldn't have done his work if it hadn't been for Kepler and Copernicus before him.
I don't put myself in the same class as Newton. If you do, then I suspect you should spend a bit of time with a shrink. (Not proven. You might be Einstein's successor. But that's not the way to bet.)
And as for the people who actually manage to accumulate large wads of cash...my feeling for most of them is that they did it by, essentially, stealing other people's energies. This doesn't make me feel all fuzzy and charitable towards them, so to that extent you are correct. But I don't hate them for being super-wealthy, but rather for what they did to become so. (I've encountered enough greedy bastards to not have any expectation that they got their wealth honestly, but in any particular case that *IS* open to proof. Kaiser seems to be an example of someone who "did well by doing good". The founders of Google are probably also in that camp, but I haven't looked at them carefully. (And it's true that the tales of Kaiser that I have heard might be hagiography.)
But you're right. My default assumption, by sheer weight of accumulated case histories, is that anyone who gets really rich did so by ripping off other people, and deserves *NO* applause, but rather condemnation. In any particular case, if I care enough, I'll research the particular individual. Not everyone trying to get rich is willing to bury people alive to save a few dollars. But our current president's family has that reputation. So I count him as someone who stole and murdered his way into wealth. (It was really his father [grandfather?], but he has to have known about it, and he has repeatedly demonstrated the same mental set, so I see no reason to let him off the hook. His wealth is based on killing other people and stealing their property. He continues to act daily in a way that proves his guilt.)
Do they outsource their janitorial work?
The lawyers generally work for firms, and won't have SCOX on their resumes unless they decide to. Even Darl's brother seems not to be an employee.
The people left are secretaries, a FEW software people (I think) and possibly some janitors. And Darl. (I haven't checked their web site, so this is just what I've pieced together en passant. Don't rely on it for anything important.)
OK. You worship money and don't understand the motives of FOSS.
I understand your points, but I don't CARE about them. To me the original point of Linux was to escape the MS EULA. Others had other reasons. (Linus said "Just for Fun".)
Money, dominance, etc. are only some reasons for doing things. Others have other reasons.
While it's true that FOSS will probably never create multi-billionaires (unless there's SEVERE inflation), that's a *good* thing. You need to cover the bills, and a bit more, but if you need more than that, either you or the society you live in are very sick. (Software patents may a "sick society" a plausible argument, admittedly.)
That's what he gets for being honest.
Sigh!
I think you mean "WITH ex post facto laws". Ex post facto laws are laws that make something that someone has already done a crime after they have done it, even though it wasn't a crime at the time they did it.
They may once have had a good reputation, but I don't remember the time. The one time I bought their Linux distro it was because of their reputed ability to interconnect with Novell Netware. Turned out that was an unsupported feature that was broken in the current release, and which they had no intention of fixing. So I switched to Red Hat, which also didn't support it, but which *did* have a working connection to Netware (3rd party).
Everything you say is correct...within limits. I don't see any way to improve the efficiency of the markets (even WITH government regulation). Requiring that information be provided helps, but the government regulators are often "persuaded" to alter definitions into forms that are pleasing to the entrenched power structure. (Note how the term "Organic" has been altered in the last few years.)
That said, monopoly of a market is an intrinsic evil. It may be more efficient at a particular price range to have a monopoly, but it is, in an of itself, a barrier to entry. (Not a high one, admittedly.) It's also the threat that with a change of management (or an economic downturn) it will BECOME an abusive monopoly. An oligopoly is also a threat, but less of one, and one that's potentially disruptable.
It's also true that you can define markets narrowly enough that monopolies are essentially harmless. Your example of trademarked laptops (Thinkpad Laptops) is an example. Trademarks are a legitimate monopoly. I doubt that patents are. I think patents should have licensing compelled, but how one could set the license fees is dubious. There probably *is* no legitimate way. Copyright is probably intrinsically legitimate, but not the ridiculously extended form that we have now, and certainly not when the manufacturer takes technical measures to prevent copying. Copyright should be either/or. If you take technical measures to prevent copying, then you don't qualify for copyright protection. (The argument for copyright is that after a certain number of years [which used to be a reasonable number] the item would become public domain. If that is prevented, then copyright protections shouldn't apply.)
I don't know of ANY legitimate monopolies outside of trademarks. I see reasons for patents, but the current implementation, and all similar implementations, are so inherently flawed that I cannot support them. And Copyright is in the first place grotesquely extended and in the second place shouldn't apply to works that have been copyprotected. (By legitimate here I mean yielding net social good.)
It may be easy to gather evidence, but they don't appear to bother. The comment about darts and phone books may not be entirely hype. Sometimes there doesn't seem to be any other explanation as to how they select their victims.
Once you assume that most people won't dare to defend themselves, and that the costs of losing are small to you, then you don't end up being careful that you are only targeting those actually violating your rights. It's less efficient. (Of course, one who was ethical wouldn't start by considering whether the proposed target could mount a defense, but would rather FIRST consider whether he was actually guilty. This does not appear to be the modus operandi.)
Those same markets also rely on the absence of monopolies. I don't see any way to ensure that without governments regulating commerce.
N.B.: I'm not talking about *abusive* monopolies, merely monopolies are sufficient to cause the markets to cease working as price regulators. Ideally the government would break up any company that achieved more than, say, 33.33% of the marketplace in a non-punitive way. In a way such that the owners of the companies would consider that a goal to be reached. Like an amoeba grows until it can divide...then both halves start growing again. Of course, in order for this to work It would be necessary to allow small companies to cooperate on large projects. But cooperation is a reasonable think to encourage.
Note, however, that the above proposal would open the gates to "monopoly by collusion" where two or more companies at below 33% of the market together constitute an effective monopoly by agreements to work together to manipulate prices. So you still need government oversight of the market.
P.S.: I think of myself as a libertarian, and I'm registered Libertarian. But I sure don't vote that way. I've never seen a lousier group of candidates.
Obama may well be the best of the surviving Democrats. He appears to be better than Hillary Clinton. This doesn't mean that I think very highly of him. It actually seems that the past several elections have been tests to see how long people will continue to vote for the perceived lesser of two evils. The last candidate I was even moderately in favor of was Johnson...and he got us into Viet Nam...
Any evidence that those statistics have any relationship to reality?
Considering the source, I wouldn't be surprised if they made them up....or asked people attending a MS hosted convention. (I don't trust Fortune magazine, and I don't recognize marketing companies. NetApplications could be anyone upto and including an alias for MS.)
I generally assume that if Bush says something, it's a lie. This seems to be true even when he gets no advantage out of lying. (Perhaps he feels the need to constantly practice?)
I'll admit that this approach doesn't give me a perfect batting record, but it's pretty good. He seems to have a real aversion to the truth. (Of course, you can't just assume that the opposite of what he says is the truth. He's not THAT unskilled a liar.)
I did that nearly (over?) a decade ago now. I also recommend the same to anyone that asks me.
My impetus was not this round of abusive suits, it was their blatant purchase of the DMCA, which I consider to be a much more heinous crime.
No. What would be cool is to make bacteria that REQUIRE these new bases for their essential machinery to operate correctly. (IOW, make sure that the new bases are the only code that synthesizes for some required protein, and also make sure that they can't synthesize the bases.)
This would allow potentially dangerous things to be built...like polyethylene eating bacteria. It could live quite well within the digestive reactors turning used baggies into, O, methane or even butane or propane. (Polymerizing the output into a liquid hydrocarbon would be a separate step, one requiring energy input, and the bacteria to do that wouldn't need to be so carefully protected from escaping.)
That does seem like a particularly worthless tag. Whatcouldpossiblygowrong is a tag that could be applied, with reason, to practically ANY story.
My original source for this kind of information was Information Weekly (now, I think, InfoWeek). Since then I have occasionally encountered other stories from other sources.
Check into how they shut down a city in South Carolina. (I want to say Charleston, but I can't believe that's right. My memory is probably playing tricks.)
Check into how they shut down school districts in Washington State the weak before school started.
I don't know whether these cases were exceptional or not, I didn't hear what the results of the aggression were. But these weren't organizations that were going to destroy the records and flee the country. Maneuvering to shut them down (and the timing) is a pure exercise in evil. These agencies could be as guilty as anything and there wouldn't be any excuse for their tactics. And being totally clean wouldn't protect them from horrendous damage.