[...] More than 20% of survey responders reported they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information." [...]
"But when it comes to altering data, that is a serious matter. [...]"
or signing of names
True, those words do not appear in the article. I was assuming the scientists do have to sign the studies they do.
Your example about how the science bureaucracy can get things wrong is well-taken. This happens in any human institution. I agree that people with common sense can and should challenge their conclusions.
But again, that is not what the article is alleging. They're saying that they're being ordered to conceal or even change data, to fit foregone conclusions which benefit industry. Can you at least agree that if this was happening, it would be a problem?
I don't see any reason to believe that all of the interventions were of the innocent, correct, fact-checking variety in your example. To resist that, the scientists would have to be abnormally obstinate, more willing to look stupid in public than be corrected by their boss. And then, they would want to lie about it on a survey which also risked their job.
That's kind of what I mean by 'contempt'. You have beliefs about the scientists having a political agenda that I just don't see happening in a real world situation. They'd have to be squawking, unidimensional villains from Atlas Shrugged, clinging to their doomsaying out of some mental perversity.
On the other hand, I find it really easy to believe that ordinary scientific results are being manipulated by politics.
The scientists' incompetence or political agenda is not even at issue. The alleged problem is that are being ordered to alter data and sign their names to conclusions they don't believe in.
Consider the motivations for doing such a thing. One asks someone to sign something in order to add their credibility to the conclusions. So this is not about some more-competent scientist overruling some incompetent hippie employees. The conclusions clearly come from sources who do not have the independence or qualifications to be taken seriously.
I do admire your skepticism -- you're not intimidated by someone in a white coat. But don't extend that to contempt of them. Do you really think there's no difference in competence between the local enviro-crank group and federal scientists? Seriously.
In the places I've worked where the management was constantly overriding the technical employees, it's never been the employees' fault, and the management has never been right. When there's a pattern of overruling, invariably it was the boss who was incompetent, or some procurer was getting a kickback, or there was some other agenda.
And there's no justification for taking their word for it, especially when they have their own political agenda.
Myself, I find it a little bit easier to believe that the political administration is the side with the political agenda.
@gmail.com will not be a mark of the 'elite' for long. GMail is going for the mass market.
And the point is, it's not entirely Google culture -- it's that GMail's business model doesn't require distraction. Their model is based on ads being relevant. If other webmail providers come up with similar relevance technology, they may become as sleek and non-intrusive as GMail.
But you're right -- attitude matters. MS and Yahoo work by traditional techniques, i.e. dangling tasty candy to consumers, in order to deliver eyeballs to corporations. From the era of television.
Google, thankfully, has a different attitude. They're not trying to go against the nature of the web and make it more like TV. They're trying to draw more businesses into the internet way of doing things.
If someone visits your site using IE 5, once they leave they are tormented by very digusting kiddie porn popups, and they suddenly have kiddie porn bookmarks.
I used to be able to forward http://www.alexchiu.com/ to anyone in need of a good laugh. Can't you fix this?
This has always been an article of faith in the Free Software community as I know it. Larry Wall didn't like the GPL, so he created the Artistic License. Was he wrong? Maybe, but it was his right to choose how his handiwork was distributed.
Even if you hate what giant corporations do to music and culture, trading MP3s of copyrighted material violates an implicit agreement that the artists thought they had with their fans. Personally, whether it is illegal or legal is irrelevant to me. There's someone out there who has made choices in their life, maybe foregoing other means of employment because they thought music was a steady source of revenue for them. (Yeah, I know Metallica are probably millionaires -- but so what? Hardly anyone in the music biz reaches that level of success.)
That said, I am all in favor of Napster and Gnutella and FreeNet, for privacy reasons and because I think it will be better for our culture if we have a non-corporate channel for music. However, I am willing to wait for a new generation of artists who embrace this technology wholeheartedly.
Giving away one's work sans copyright is a revolutionary act. Trading copyrighted music is NOT a revolutionary act. It's just selfishness.
>You equate the user's conceptualization with irrationality, and the programmer's with rationality. This is wrong. The programmer is in the business of creating an environment and manipulation language for the user. All failures of the user to understand are entirely the fault of the programmer.
There is no particular association between the programmer's way of thinking and "logic", and no reason to associate the user's way of thinking and "irrationality".
You seem to suggest that a computer that responded to "affective" behaviour (i.e. swearing) would be a better interface for the naive user. I guess you really love the animated paperclip in Word. This is lazy thinking.
If you are unwilling to do you job of bringing computer power and user understanding together, maybe you shouldn't be a programmer.
Hey, surely you all have noticed RMS's avowed socialism, and that Linus is the son of former Communists? The guy used to live only KILOMETERS from the Russkies, and now he's working on AMERICAN soil on SECRET PROJECTS of which still very little is known! Their dupe, ESR, preaches libertarianism as these two masters of the protocols of Linux chuckle from deep within their subterreanean headquarters.
Okay, seriously, IME economists are really poorly equipped to comprehend something like the open source movement. Their models simply neglect to explain the existence of art. And yet the so-called new economy is essentially based on artistic activity! True, media and software can be packaged as commodities. However, the genesis of compelling stories and elegant software can never be found by analyzing balance sheets.
I noticed the authors wonder why the feeling of being in a motivated team of talented individuals could not be obtained in an ordinary closed-source software company. Please refer to Dilbert cartoons if it helps you understand.
Lately, much attention has been given towards making a Linux desktop for the average consumer. Almost without exception, these efforts are attempts to duplicate the functionality, look and feel, and task model of applications by large software vendors such as Microsoft (StarOffice, KOffice, etc.) and Adobe (the GIMP).
Tim O'Reilly and others have been drawing attention to the possibility that web-hosted applications such as MapQuest and Hotmailreduce the demand for free software.
There seems to be less incentive to open the source when it all sits in one centralized server farm controlled by one company. Or is there?
Just googled for the Pink Paper; it doesn't have an online presence per se but partners with a G&L portal site, SoNow. The Pink Paper appears to be providing news (well, little lite bites thereof.) and SoNow provides, ahem, free email and web space.
The next move is obvious. Register Outcast with sonow.com and publish it from there.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Too vague. Let's make up a scenario or two.
Or let's not, and look at a sample complaint.
I don't see any reason to believe that all -- or any -- of them are less innocent.
Because there was a survey that said so? Surveys are often slanted, but it agrees with everything else I've read on the issue.
There was nothing about altering data
[...] More than 20% of survey responders reported they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information." [...]
"But when it comes to altering data, that is a serious matter. [...]"
or signing of names
True, those words do not appear in the article. I was assuming the scientists do have to sign the studies they do.
Your example about how the science bureaucracy can get things wrong is well-taken. This happens in any human institution. I agree that people with common sense can and should challenge their conclusions.
But again, that is not what the article is alleging. They're saying that they're being ordered to conceal or even change data, to fit foregone conclusions which benefit industry. Can you at least agree that if this was happening, it would be a problem?
I don't see any reason to believe that all of the interventions were of the innocent, correct, fact-checking variety in your example. To resist that, the scientists would have to be abnormally obstinate, more willing to look stupid in public than be corrected by their boss. And then, they would want to lie about it on a survey which also risked their job.
That's kind of what I mean by 'contempt'. You have beliefs about the scientists having a political agenda that I just don't see happening in a real world situation. They'd have to be squawking, unidimensional villains from Atlas Shrugged, clinging to their doomsaying out of some mental perversity.
On the other hand, I find it really easy to believe that ordinary scientific results are being manipulated by politics.
The scientists' incompetence or political agenda is not even at issue. The alleged problem is that are being ordered to alter data and sign their names to conclusions they don't believe in.
Consider the motivations for doing such a thing. One asks someone to sign something in order to add their credibility to the conclusions. So this is not about some more-competent scientist overruling some incompetent hippie employees. The conclusions clearly come from sources who do not have the independence or qualifications to be taken seriously.
I do admire your skepticism -- you're not intimidated by someone in a white coat. But don't extend that to contempt of them. Do you really think there's no difference in competence between the local enviro-crank group and federal scientists? Seriously.
In the places I've worked where the management was constantly overriding the technical employees, it's never been the employees' fault, and the management has never been right. When there's a pattern of overruling, invariably it was the boss who was incompetent, or some procurer was getting a kickback, or there was some other agenda.
And there's no justification for taking their word for it, especially when they have their own political agenda.
Myself, I find it a little bit easier to believe that the political administration is the side with the political agenda.
Half of what you say is right. But:
@gmail.com will not be a mark of the 'elite' for long. GMail is going for the mass market.
And the point is, it's not entirely Google culture -- it's that GMail's business model doesn't require distraction. Their model is based on ads being relevant. If other webmail providers come up with similar relevance technology, they may become as sleek and non-intrusive as GMail.
But you're right -- attitude matters. MS and Yahoo work by traditional techniques, i.e. dangling tasty candy to consumers, in order to deliver eyeballs to corporations. From the era of television.
Google, thankfully, has a different attitude. They're not trying to go against the nature of the web and make it more like TV. They're trying to draw more businesses into the internet way of doing things.
If someone visits your site using IE 5, once they leave they are tormented by very digusting kiddie porn popups, and they suddenly have kiddie porn bookmarks. I used to be able to forward http://www.alexchiu.com/ to anyone in need of a good laugh. Can't you fix this?
This has always been an article of faith in the Free Software community as I know it. Larry Wall didn't like the GPL, so he created the Artistic License. Was he wrong? Maybe, but it was his right to choose how his handiwork was distributed.
Even if you hate what giant corporations do to music and culture, trading MP3s of copyrighted material violates an implicit agreement that the artists thought they had with their fans. Personally, whether it is illegal or legal is irrelevant to me. There's someone out there who has made choices in their life, maybe foregoing other means of employment because they thought music was a steady source of revenue for them. (Yeah, I know Metallica are probably millionaires -- but so what? Hardly anyone in the music biz reaches that level of success.)
That said, I am all in favor of Napster and Gnutella and FreeNet, for privacy reasons and because I think it will be better for our culture if we have a non-corporate channel for music. However, I am willing to wait for a new generation of artists who embrace this technology wholeheartedly.
Giving away one's work sans copyright is a revolutionary act. Trading copyrighted music is NOT a revolutionary act. It's just selfishness.
>You equate the user's conceptualization with irrationality, and the programmer's with rationality. This is wrong. The programmer is in the business of creating an environment and manipulation language for the user. All failures of the user to understand are entirely the fault of the programmer.
There is no particular association between the programmer's way of thinking and "logic", and no reason to associate the user's way of thinking and "irrationality".
You seem to suggest that a computer that responded to "affective" behaviour (i.e. swearing) would be a better interface for the naive user. I guess you really love the animated paperclip in Word. This is lazy thinking.
If you are unwilling to do you job of bringing computer power and user understanding together, maybe you shouldn't be a programmer.
You provide no justification for your claim that this is a "power grab", other than your personal libertarian leanings and interpretation of history.
Do you have anything to say about the matter before us?
Hey, surely you all have noticed RMS's avowed socialism, and that Linus is the son of former Communists? The guy used to live only KILOMETERS from the Russkies, and now he's working on AMERICAN soil on SECRET PROJECTS of which still very little is known! Their dupe, ESR, preaches libertarianism as these two masters of the protocols of Linux chuckle from deep within their subterreanean headquarters.
Okay, seriously, IME economists are really poorly equipped to comprehend something like the open source movement. Their models simply neglect to explain the existence of art. And yet the so-called new economy is essentially based on artistic activity! True, media and software can be packaged as commodities. However, the genesis of compelling stories and elegant software can never be found by analyzing balance sheets.
I noticed the authors wonder why the feeling of being in a motivated team of talented individuals could not be obtained in an ordinary closed-source software company. Please refer to Dilbert cartoons if it helps you understand.
He answers it at http://www.gnu.org/philosoph y/microsoft-antitrust.html.
Lately, much attention has been given towards making a Linux desktop for the average consumer. Almost without exception, these efforts are attempts to duplicate the functionality, look and feel, and task model of applications by large software vendors such as Microsoft (StarOffice, KOffice, etc.) and Adobe (the GIMP).
Is this a victory?
Tim O'Reilly and others have been drawing attention to the possibility that web-hosted applications such as MapQuest and Hotmailreduce the demand for free software.
There seems to be less incentive to open the source when it all sits in one centralized server farm controlled by one company. Or is there?
What judicial remedy would you favor against Microsoft?
Whoops, that's www.sonow.NET, not .com.
Just googled for the Pink Paper; it doesn't have an online presence per se but partners with a G&L portal site, SoNow. The Pink Paper appears to be providing news (well, little lite bites thereof.) and SoNow provides, ahem, free email and web space.
The next move is obvious. Register Outcast with sonow.com and publish it from there. :)