You have the classic difficulty of a computer expert trying to persuade decision-makers who are profoundly ignorant of how computers work (and, all too often, proud of it).
The Microsoft argument is entirely fallacious: in fact, the public availability of the source code is a strength, not a weakness. But how do you explain that quickly and clearly, to an audience that doesn't understand what you are talking about - when neither you nor they can admit that they don't understand? (Which would be the first step towards an honest and productive dialogue).
The good news is that more and more people (including, inevitably, some decision-makers) do understand something about how software works. We have companies like Amazon that couldn't earn a single red cent without their computers working as intended, and whose CEOs are quite clear about that - and consequently take the trouble to inform themselves about software.
Microsoft could be described as the company that made its fortune by exploiting the fact that most of its customers don't know anything about computers and don't want to. Fortunately, that has now become just one more reason why it is on the skids. In the long term, people will become educated about software if only because it is so important.
It's easy, and quite tempting, to react to this news with patronizing contempt - and think, "Well, at least we're fairly safe - such a bunch of bunglers couldn't do any real harm".
Unfortunately, a look back at history reveals that appalling inefficiency and incompetence have usually gone hand-in-hand with authoritarian government. But whereas we can still laugh about it, the time may come when doing so is distinctly unwise. People made fun of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini throughout their careers, and some got away with it. Others were arrested, beaten up, imprisoned, tortured, shot, or hanged with piano wire.
"have you ever wondered what it would be like if one of us, a geek, wrote a techno-thriller?"
I may have, decades ago, before I discovered Greg Egan, Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross, Gregory Benford, Robert Forward, Fred Hoyle, Robert Heinlein, Christopher Anvil... (continue until you get tired).
Or doesn't science fiction qualify as "techno-thriller"?
being president doesn't make it legal for him to shoot someone.
Am I the only one to see some irony in this? He can order people to go forth and kill a million or more other people, with complete impunity - but if he personally kills even one person, he breaks the law.
"Could this really turn out to be a working solution?"
You'll find out a few years down the line, when your computer finishes booting with its cache disabled. Modern CPUs have caches for good reasons: without them they don't run very fast.
...young people are killing each other more and more.
Why do you think that is? All this discussion of ways and means of killing one another is very much secondary. The key question is, why do people want to kill one another at all? Human beings are ingenious, and will always find a way to do what they want.
Universal education was supposed to make us all more enlightened, tolerant, and humane. How come the opposite seems to be happening?
Those of us who take the trouble to find out about these matters discover that US politicians really are "special people". They belong to one of two parties, and if they secure the backing of one of those parties they have a chance of getting into office. Otherwise, not.
Consider the many clever, influential, talented, people who tried and failed. Such as Ralph Nader, one of the most respected men in the entire world, whose two campaigns never even got off the ground.
Obama did get a lot of money from small donations. But if he hadn't first got approval from the Democratic Party bosses, that wouldn't have done him the slightest good. Ross Perot had so much money of his own that he didn't need any donations. But lacking party support, he too sank without trace.
Try reading the pertinent parts (mostly the early parts) of John McArthur's book "You Can't be President" for a more detailed explanation.
Haha! This happens because every government reflects its people in one way or another.
Yes, I am very much afraid you are right about that. Which also explains why the UK Conservative Party does not offer any useful alternatives to Labour Party policies - the same applies to the Democrats and Republicans in the USA. (As Gore Vidal memorably put it, the USA is ruled by one party with two right wings).
The leading political parties no longer offer significantly different policies because they have adopted marketing techniques that show them what the people want (or will put up with, which is good enough). None of them have the guts to offer policies just because they believe in them - which is probably quite rational, as they would get stomped in every election.
Why do the people have such low standards and such rotten ideas? Because of our lousy educational systems. Which are perpetuated by the incumbent political parties...
That the teacher is ignorant is amply demonstrated by her own words.
"I called a confrence with the student..." Apart from the typo, teachers do not have "conferences" with students. They simply talk with them.
"...the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods". I am pretty sure she meant "verge on falsehoods", but couldn't quite find the right word.
"I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people..." Again, not very good English.
None of these are "hanging offences", but as a professional editor I recognize the symptoms of a rather weak grasp of English. Such a person should not be teaching others.
Not a helpful response. It is obvious the article uses "VM" to mean "page file" or whatever the Windows jargon for that is.
I immediately understood the question, which is a simple and natural one. "Why does Windows appear to use only 2GB of the 4GB RAM available before starting to page on a large scale?" Why start using VM mapped to disk, when there is plenty of much faster RAM (apparently) going begging?
It's typical of Slashdot that this small, and quite transparent, misuse of terminology touched off hundreds of replies arguing about tech support and how stupid users are. A good tech support person would ignore the incorrect term, answer the intended question, and only then (if it could be done tactfully) explain the difference and the importance of using exact language when asking technical questions.
And what has this tired rant have to do with chmistry and the RSC? How many half decent chemists come from public school? AFAIK... none. Public schools produce bankers, bureaucrats and politicians.
That turns out not to be the case. A very quick scan turns up Alan Turing, Freeman Dyson *, Stephen Hawking, and at least five Nobel Prize winning chemists (Sir Martin Evans, Sir Harold Kroto, Michael Smith, Frederick Sanger, and Peter D Mitchell). I suspect a lot more distinguished scientists, some of them chemists, also went to public schools.
While it is true that the culture of the typical public school did not favour science in the past, that has been changing in the last few decades. In any case, as Dyson points out (from memory, in "Disturbing the Universe"), mathematicians and, quite possibly, scientists, thrive on neglect and disapproval. He was quite worried that official encouragement might deter young boys and girls from taking up those subjects.
* Hands up all you Americans who didn't know Dyson was English...
Which is why the NuLabour government is doing its best to get rid of private schools. There is a marked and increasing difference in standards, and levelling down is so much easier than levelling up.
Note that in the UK, "public school" means a particular type of private (independent, non-state) school. The name was adopted before there was any state-run education in the modern sense, so it was logical in its day.
The irony is that most (all, AFAIK) of those schools have charitable status - they are "not-for-profit", so that the fees they charge merely pay their costs. No one is getting rich from running those schools. Moreover, the fine of about $100,000 per school could only be paid by increasing the fees!
Obviously, the purported motive of the fines - to stop the schools colluding to distort trade, reduce competition, and raise prices - was not applicable in the case of the public schools. What could be more ridiculous than fining a bunch of charities for not being competitive enough, when none of them makes a profit?
It's even stranger when you reflect that the body doing the fining - the UK government - forces all children who do not attend independent schools to go into its own state education system, which offers no competition at all. Moreover, competition law does not seem to apply to transport (where big companies enjoy state-granted monopolies), TV (where Sky has a monopoly in satellite and Virgin in cable), or banking (in which, as we have recently noticed, there has hardly been any regulation at all).
It seems pretty obvious that the motive for the investigation and subsequent fines could only have been to damage the public schools' reputation and financial status. As it had to be passed on to the parents, it was really a fine on them for daring to avoid the state education system. In itself, this attack has apparently not forced any of the schools to close (yet), but the government and its supporters live in hope.
And the rate at which change is happening is unprecedented.
I'm not really arguing with you, but 'unprecedented' is relative what slice of time you look at and who's graph you pay attention to.
If you look at temperature records provided by proxy sources (ice cores, tree rings etc...) over hundreds of thousands of years - on many of the graphs you'll find - it's pretty clear that the last millennium has been nothing unusual.
If you look short term though, (past few hundred years) it looks pretty damning.
Funnily enough, this choice is similar to what happened in banking in the past 10-20 years. Banks had risk management departments, and the requirements were strengthened by government legislation. But the bosses discovered they could wriggle out of the straitjacket imposed by their risk management computer systems just by lengthening the baseline period used. Thus, if you looked at the past 1-5 years, it would be obvious that risk was excessive; but extend that period to 15 years, and average out the risk over that longer time - and hey presto, acceptable risk! (Until the floor falls out from under you, that is).
The real "ticking time-bomb" is executives' incomprehension of the IT systems on which their business, as often as not, depends utterly.
"Dilbert" has this (like so many other things) dead right. IT employees don't need to take positive action to sabotage systems or destroy data. They could just as effectively - maybe even more effectively - keep their thoughts to themselves and refrain from informing management when its cherished schemes are impractical. After all, most of the time there is no gratitude, still less any more concrete form of appreciation.
Yes, I bought a Thinkpad with Ubuntu preinstalled from Linux Emporium here in the UK. It never came close to working with encrypted wireless, although the network was fine with wired Ethernet.
After endless back-and-forth with tech support, I got pissed off one day and overwrote the whole thing with OpenSuSE 11. Moments later I was running connected through WPA2.
The USA has not been in a state of war since 1941-5, when first Japan physically attacked it and then Germany declared war on it. Thus, much against its will, it was forced to fight the dictatorships.
Korea and Vietnam were police actions. Afghanistan was hot pursuit, or some such toss-off. Iraq was... well, not a war, whatever it was. The other two dozen or so nations that America has invaded, bombed, and terrorised were never at war with it either. It may seem odd that you can kill several million people without declaring war, but that's the modern world for you.
As for the "War on Unfounded Mild Apprehension"... well, only Dubya and his crew could have come up with that.
By the way, have you yet registered that if you accept that "America is in a state of war" today, you have just kissed goodbye to ALL your precious liberties? Because the President can do anything to anyone, at his sole discretion, when the USA is at war.
One of the cornerstones of justice in developed countries has, until recently, been the concept of evidence being required, and to be presented in open court. However that concept seems to be falling out of fashion, to be replaced with a new idea of: "Fuck you. You're guilty. 'Cos we say so."
And, moreover (especially in the USA, where it was pioneered): "If you plead Not Guilty, thereby wasting our valuable time and annoying us, we will hit you with charges that ensure you spend several thousand years in prison". Thus getting a majority of accused persons to plea-bargain and submit to punishment and a criminal record, without ever taking the trouble to determine whether they are actually guilty or not.
Then again, if you are rich (like OJ Simpson, for example) you can go to court with a reasonable expectation of being acquitted however strong the evidence against you.
I was born in a (relatively mild) dictatorship, and have lived in two others. And nothing I have seen recently contradicts the rule I learned before I was 10 years old. "Any country that has a Ministry of Justice is one in which you are most unlikely to get justice".
So the complaint is that Chinese competitors may be younger than they seem? I would have thought that makes their performances even more amazing.
Is the idea that competing in the Olympics is like drinking alcohol, smoking, driving, or joining the army - too dangerous for young people? I thought sport was healthy and character-building.
"...many people believe that snapshots and family photos need no longer stand as a definitive record of what was, but instead, of what they wish it was..."
What a boon for Hillary Clinton! When will it be extended to cover YouTube, media archives, and history books?
Slashdot Mirror
You have the classic difficulty of a computer expert trying to persuade decision-makers who are profoundly ignorant of how computers work (and, all too often, proud of it).
The Microsoft argument is entirely fallacious: in fact, the public availability of the source code is a strength, not a weakness. But how do you explain that quickly and clearly, to an audience that doesn't understand what you are talking about - when neither you nor they can admit that they don't understand? (Which would be the first step towards an honest and productive dialogue).
The good news is that more and more people (including, inevitably, some decision-makers) do understand something about how software works. We have companies like Amazon that couldn't earn a single red cent without their computers working as intended, and whose CEOs are quite clear about that - and consequently take the trouble to inform themselves about software.
Microsoft could be described as the company that made its fortune by exploiting the fact that most of its customers don't know anything about computers and don't want to. Fortunately, that has now become just one more reason why it is on the skids. In the long term, people will become educated about software if only because it is so important.
the uk has a FOIA? srsly, when did this happen?
I can't disclose that. It's a state secret.
Actually, the first ID cards were issued last year (2008).
It's easy, and quite tempting, to react to this news with patronizing contempt - and think, "Well, at least we're fairly safe - such a bunch of bunglers couldn't do any real harm".
Unfortunately, a look back at history reveals that appalling inefficiency and incompetence have usually gone hand-in-hand with authoritarian government. But whereas we can still laugh about it, the time may come when doing so is distinctly unwise. People made fun of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini throughout their careers, and some got away with it. Others were arrested, beaten up, imprisoned, tortured, shot, or hanged with piano wire.
"have you ever wondered what it would be like if one of us, a geek, wrote a techno-thriller?"
I may have, decades ago, before I discovered Greg Egan, Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross, Gregory Benford, Robert Forward, Fred Hoyle, Robert Heinlein, Christopher Anvil... (continue until you get tired).
Or doesn't science fiction qualify as "techno-thriller"?
Cant the UK govt legally steal it via some regulation that allows it?
Yes, it's called "taxation".
being president doesn't make it legal for him to shoot someone.
Am I the only one to see some irony in this? He can order people to go forth and kill a million or more other people, with complete impunity - but if he personally kills even one person, he breaks the law.
Politics certainly is mysterious.
"Could this really turn out to be a working solution?"
You'll find out a few years down the line, when your computer finishes booting with its cache disabled. Modern CPUs have caches for good reasons: without them they don't run very fast.
No, they've devised a test that selects only sunny, optimistic extroverts and liars.
I hope that works out for them. Oh wait, it already has.
Actually, I find pointed knives critical for preparing microwave dinners. How else do you puncture the film across the top of tray?
Obviously, with scissors! (Which, of course, aren't illegal in the UK - that would be absurdly inconvenient and irrational).
...young people are killing each other more and more.
Why do you think that is? All this discussion of ways and means of killing one another is very much secondary. The key question is, why do people want to kill one another at all? Human beings are ingenious, and will always find a way to do what they want.
Universal education was supposed to make us all more enlightened, tolerant, and humane. How come the opposite seems to be happening?
Those of us who take the trouble to find out about these matters discover that US politicians really are "special people". They belong to one of two parties, and if they secure the backing of one of those parties they have a chance of getting into office. Otherwise, not.
Consider the many clever, influential, talented, people who tried and failed. Such as Ralph Nader, one of the most respected men in the entire world, whose two campaigns never even got off the ground.
Obama did get a lot of money from small donations. But if he hadn't first got approval from the Democratic Party bosses, that wouldn't have done him the slightest good. Ross Perot had so much money of his own that he didn't need any donations. But lacking party support, he too sank without trace.
Try reading the pertinent parts (mostly the early parts) of John McArthur's book "You Can't be President" for a more detailed explanation.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1933633603/kqedorg-20
Haha! This happens because every government reflects its people in one way or another.
Yes, I am very much afraid you are right about that. Which also explains why the UK Conservative Party does not offer any useful alternatives to Labour Party policies - the same applies to the Democrats and Republicans in the USA. (As Gore Vidal memorably put it, the USA is ruled by one party with two right wings).
The leading political parties no longer offer significantly different policies because they have adopted marketing techniques that show them what the people want (or will put up with, which is good enough). None of them have the guts to offer policies just because they believe in them - which is probably quite rational, as they would get stomped in every election.
Why do the people have such low standards and such rotten ideas? Because of our lousy educational systems. Which are perpetuated by the incumbent political parties...
Your critique is weak, and you sound like an arrogant prick. Professional editors with such a poor understinding of English should not be editing.
Thanks for your penetrating advice, and your charming courtesy. I shall of course immediately resign from my job.
That the teacher is ignorant is amply demonstrated by her own words.
"I called a confrence with the student..." Apart from the typo, teachers do not have "conferences" with students. They simply talk with them.
"...the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods". I am pretty sure she meant "verge on falsehoods", but couldn't quite find the right word.
"I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people..." Again, not very good English.
None of these are "hanging offences", but as a professional editor I recognize the symptoms of a rather weak grasp of English. Such a person should not be teaching others.
Not a helpful response. It is obvious the article uses "VM" to mean "page file" or whatever the Windows jargon for that is.
I immediately understood the question, which is a simple and natural one. "Why does Windows appear to use only 2GB of the 4GB RAM available before starting to page on a large scale?" Why start using VM mapped to disk, when there is plenty of much faster RAM (apparently) going begging?
It's typical of Slashdot that this small, and quite transparent, misuse of terminology touched off hundreds of replies arguing about tech support and how stupid users are. A good tech support person would ignore the incorrect term, answer the intended question, and only then (if it could be done tactfully) explain the difference and the importance of using exact language when asking technical questions.
And what has this tired rant have to do with chmistry and the RSC? How many half decent chemists come from public school? AFAIK... none. Public schools produce bankers, bureaucrats and politicians.
That turns out not to be the case. A very quick scan turns up Alan Turing, Freeman Dyson *, Stephen Hawking, and at least five Nobel Prize winning chemists (Sir Martin Evans, Sir Harold Kroto, Michael Smith, Frederick Sanger, and Peter D Mitchell). I suspect a lot more distinguished scientists, some of them chemists, also went to public schools.
While it is true that the culture of the typical public school did not favour science in the past, that has been changing in the last few decades. In any case, as Dyson points out (from memory, in "Disturbing the Universe"), mathematicians and, quite possibly, scientists, thrive on neglect and disapproval. He was quite worried that official encouragement might deter young boys and girls from taking up those subjects.
* Hands up all you Americans who didn't know Dyson was English...
Standards are not falling in private schools
Which is why the NuLabour government is doing its best to get rid of private schools. There is a marked and increasing difference in standards, and levelling down is so much easier than levelling up.
A while ago, the UK government's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) fined 50 leading private schools a total of GBP3.5 million (about $5.25 million) for exchanging information about the fees they were charging. See, for instance, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1511429/50-public-schools-fined-for-fixing-their-fees.html
Note that in the UK, "public school" means a particular type of private (independent, non-state) school. The name was adopted before there was any state-run education in the modern sense, so it was logical in its day.
The irony is that most (all, AFAIK) of those schools have charitable status - they are "not-for-profit", so that the fees they charge merely pay their costs. No one is getting rich from running those schools. Moreover, the fine of about $100,000 per school could only be paid by increasing the fees!
Obviously, the purported motive of the fines - to stop the schools colluding to distort trade, reduce competition, and raise prices - was not applicable in the case of the public schools. What could be more ridiculous than fining a bunch of charities for not being competitive enough, when none of them makes a profit?
It's even stranger when you reflect that the body doing the fining - the UK government - forces all children who do not attend independent schools to go into its own state education system, which offers no competition at all. Moreover, competition law does not seem to apply to transport (where big companies enjoy state-granted monopolies), TV (where Sky has a monopoly in satellite and Virgin in cable), or banking (in which, as we have recently noticed, there has hardly been any regulation at all).
It seems pretty obvious that the motive for the investigation and subsequent fines could only have been to damage the public schools' reputation and financial status. As it had to be passed on to the parents, it was really a fine on them for daring to avoid the state education system. In itself, this attack has apparently not forced any of the schools to close (yet), but the government and its supporters live in hope.
And the rate at which change is happening is unprecedented.
I'm not really arguing with you, but 'unprecedented' is relative what slice of time you look at and who's graph you pay attention to.
If you look at temperature records provided by proxy sources (ice cores, tree rings etc...) over hundreds of thousands of years - on many of the graphs you'll find - it's pretty clear that the last millennium has been nothing unusual.
If you look short term though, (past few hundred years) it looks pretty damning.
Funnily enough, this choice is similar to what happened in banking in the past 10-20 years. Banks had risk management departments, and the requirements were strengthened by government legislation. But the bosses discovered they could wriggle out of the straitjacket imposed by their risk management computer systems just by lengthening the baseline period used. Thus, if you looked at the past 1-5 years, it would be obvious that risk was excessive; but extend that period to 15 years, and average out the risk over that longer time - and hey presto, acceptable risk! (Until the floor falls out from under you, that is).
The real "ticking time-bomb" is executives' incomprehension of the IT systems on which their business, as often as not, depends utterly.
"Dilbert" has this (like so many other things) dead right. IT employees don't need to take positive action to sabotage systems or destroy data. They could just as effectively - maybe even more effectively - keep their thoughts to themselves and refrain from informing management when its cherished schemes are impractical. After all, most of the time there is no gratitude, still less any more concrete form of appreciation.
Yes, I bought a Thinkpad with Ubuntu preinstalled from Linux Emporium here in the UK. It never came close to working with encrypted wireless, although the network was fine with wired Ethernet.
After endless back-and-forth with tech support, I got pissed off one day and overwrote the whole thing with OpenSuSE 11. Moments later I was running connected through WPA2.
The USA has not been in a state of war since 1941-5, when first Japan physically attacked it and then Germany declared war on it. Thus, much against its will, it was forced to fight the dictatorships.
Korea and Vietnam were police actions. Afghanistan was hot pursuit, or some such toss-off. Iraq was... well, not a war, whatever it was. The other two dozen or so nations that America has invaded, bombed, and terrorised were never at war with it either. It may seem odd that you can kill several million people without declaring war, but that's the modern world for you.
As for the "War on Unfounded Mild Apprehension"... well, only Dubya and his crew could have come up with that.
By the way, have you yet registered that if you accept that "America is in a state of war" today, you have just kissed goodbye to ALL your precious liberties? Because the President can do anything to anyone, at his sole discretion, when the USA is at war.
One of the cornerstones of justice in developed countries has, until recently, been the concept of evidence being required, and to be presented in open court. However that concept seems to be falling out of fashion, to be replaced with a new idea of: "Fuck you. You're guilty. 'Cos we say so."
And, moreover (especially in the USA, where it was pioneered): "If you plead Not Guilty, thereby wasting our valuable time and annoying us, we will hit you with charges that ensure you spend several thousand years in prison". Thus getting a majority of accused persons to plea-bargain and submit to punishment and a criminal record, without ever taking the trouble to determine whether they are actually guilty or not.
Then again, if you are rich (like OJ Simpson, for example) you can go to court with a reasonable expectation of being acquitted however strong the evidence against you.
I was born in a (relatively mild) dictatorship, and have lived in two others. And nothing I have seen recently contradicts the rule I learned before I was 10 years old. "Any country that has a Ministry of Justice is one in which you are most unlikely to get justice".
So the complaint is that Chinese competitors may be younger than they seem? I would have thought that makes their performances even more amazing.
Is the idea that competing in the Olympics is like drinking alcohol, smoking, driving, or joining the army - too dangerous for young people? I thought sport was healthy and character-building.
"...many people believe that snapshots and family photos need no longer stand as a definitive record of what was, but instead, of what they wish it was..."
What a boon for Hillary Clinton! When will it be extended to cover YouTube, media archives, and history books?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/21/AR2008032102989.html