"If you disagree with Microsoft's actions, you are free to use another operating system or office suite or what have you".
And there you have it. As more and more users come to understand the legal facts of the matter, as expounded in this thread, they will have a strong incentive to adopt other operating systems that cost less and impose less unreasonable conditions.
In this context it is interesting to note that the difference between Windows and Linux is steadily being eroded. Indeed, in some ways Linux is distinctly superior; but the key point is that its weaknesses relative to Windows (read: buying objections) are rapidly disappearing. SuSE, to which I am in the process of migrating, is easier to install than Windows; just as efficient; more flexible; and, AFAICS, just as easy to use once you get used to it (which takes a few days). On the plus side, it's far less expensive, offers far better support, and is open and extensible.
Applications used to be a deal-breaker, but I have been using OpenOffice.org recently and it is, if anything, better than Office for my purposes. (Admittedly, I still have Office 97 which is arguably inferior to Office 2003, but why should I shell out big bucks every few years for what is essentially the same product?) Quicken used to be an issue, until Intuit suddenly withdrew from the UK market at the same time as my copy of Quicken mysteriously stopped working. So now there is really no reason why I would prefer Windows to Linux.
"Does it seem strange to anyone else that so many computers containing sensitive information are suddenly being reported stolen?"
Not in the least. There are a lot of computers being stolen, and a lot of computer users who carry around data they shouldn't. Every so often the two coincide. We probably only get to hear about a subset of the worst cases.
As I recall, Pris knocks him down easily - at which point any experienced street fighter would simply kick him in the head a few times. End of "fight". (Or she could just pick up his gun and walk away with it). What does Pris do? She races away into the distance, allowing him time to recover, sit up, and find his *long range* weapon. Then she comes springing towards him, making an ideal target. She isn't a "pleasure" model - she's a "suicidal cannon fodder" model.
Maybe the observed phenomenon is simply a by-product of affluence. The USA is still, on average, the world's richest nation. If you look at the ways in which people become wealthy, and climb near the top of American society, I think you will find that very few of them have anything to do with scientific thinking.Instead, they have to do with manipulating people (usually en masse).
Scientific thinking is very useful, but the discovery has been made that you can be a PHB and hire dozens of Alices and Dilberts to work for you. Or even a shareholder in the company. That way the benefits of scientific thinking reach many, many people who are quite incapable of it (or disinclined, or both).
How often have you heard a politician or a PHB holding forth about how wonderful "our" technology is? Ever wondered if that person could wire an electric plug or tune a car engine, let alone build (or even explain) a PC or a mobile phone? When the benefits of technology are widely distributed, many deeply ignorant people get the illusion that they are somehow technically advanced - just because they have learned to use the stuff.
It's not enough to show that you can get rich by building on a scientific education. You have to compare the likelihood of doing so with that of playing sport, singing, dancing, talking amusingly, selling, marketing, or sitting in meetings. As society gets richer, there is more leisure and more people are able to specialise in these roles. More of the money gravitates to the amusement industry, and technology gets by with fewer and fewer people and less and less investment (relatively). Farming was the first example of a technology that used to dominate people's lives, and now occupies a tiny minority.
The less people know about computers, the more inanely enthusiastic they seem to be about using them to solve the world's problems. Unfortunately, the class of politicians is almost a perfect subset of the class of computer ignoramuses. We have a guy over here called Tony Blair who is one of the worst offenders in this regard. Confessedly barely able to use a keyboard himself, he repeatedly hires dubious defence contractors to buy, install and program vast stacks of PCs loaded with Microsoft software - then seemingly expects good things to happen automatically.
Back in the 1970s, at the height of the Cold War, I thought about writing a novel of the near future in which the USA and the USSR gradually changed places. The USA would be concentrating so hard on the Commmunist Menace that it would become a locked-down totalitarian dictatorship (as in 1984, plus electronics). Meanwhile, the USSR would somehow become a free-enterprise society with so few laws that people could do almost anything they wanted. Yet the Americans would go on ranting about the Communist Menace.
Obviously, the plot for such a book would have been hard to design in detail. How on earth was Russia going to become an anarchist's paradise? Yet it has been done: notably by that talented writer James P Hogan in "The Multiplex Man". Not one of his best novels, true; but well worth reading just for his ideas about government.
The American end of the plot seems to be coming to pass, though. It's probably no exaggeration to say that all the legal and organizational preconditions have been met to turn the USA into a totalitarian state virtually overnight. Whether it could really be done depends on what you think of the American people - would they stand for it, or would they explode in violent revolution? Considering the firepower available to the federal government, a revolution would be very bloody and might well fail. Consider the last time some Americans made a concerted effort to get out from under Washington's thumb. I could be wrong, but I suspect more Americans were killed and maimed in that conflict than in any foreign war. Certainly more in proportion to the population of the time.
If we fall into the habit of believing that government is there to wipe our noses and do everything for us, we can't complain if it eventually turns us into adult infants. Will Rogers wasn't joking (for once) when said, "Be happy you don't get all the government you're paying for".
This is the sort of question whose main value is that it can't be answered as it stands; instead you have to look more closely at the assumptions behind it. (A latter-day computer koan?)
The two categories that immediately stand out a mile are end-users and developers. The required skills, and the amount of time required to become proficient, are poles apart. The whole emphasis of generations of computer designers has been to lower the barriers to entry for end-users - continually making it easier, bringing the user interface closer to the user and further from the binary machine. Dumbing down, if you want to look at it that way. End-user proficiency is what the great majority of requirements for "IT literacy" mean; in fact, the very use of "IT" is almost a guarantee of non-expertise. Here in Europe there are government-backed training and tests such as the European Computing Driving Licence (ECDL).The first thing you notice about ECDL is that it doesn't even attempt to explain how computers work; and the second is that it could be renamed "European Microsoft Product Driving Licence".
To be a proficient software developer takes a lot more, of course - it's a subject that has been thrashed out many times. Personally, I am a traditionalist and would be happier knowing that most, if not all, professional developers have a solid computer science grounding and can at least find their way around Knuth. But it has to be admitted that the decades-long project to lower the barriers to entry for developers, too, has been quite successful. There is far more demand for Webmasters, Web developers, Visual Basic programmers, etc. than could be met from the ranks of those with in-depth CS backgrounds.
This could turn into a book, so to cut it short, maybe I could see four main categories:
1. Microsoft end-user; something like ECDL (or equivalent) is adequate.
2. End-user (not limited to Microsoft); needs to learn a lot more than ECDL, as there are a number of useful platforms other than Windows. And it's harder to learn all you need to know about mainframes, AS/400, Linux, etc. than Windows.
3. Lightweight developer (we'd perhaps have to devise a more flattering job title); able to build small Web sites, write scripts and simple VB programs, Word macros, and straightforward spreadsheets. (Spreadsheets where getting the right answers matters, that is; any general end-user can write a spreadsheet and hope).
4. Professional developers (or, as I would call them software engineers). They had better know their computer science, and preferably be able to pick up new platforms, languages, etc., as required. Ideally they would also have the appropriate personalities and human skills - just like astronauts or sports stars, they really need to get along well as part of a team.
"Not real sure where your from, however you sound like a European. The very same people who pillaged, robbed, raped, tortured and subjugated the entire world, because of your greed, lust for power etc. If you gave South America, India, Asia, America etc. back half the riches you stole from them we would all be better off. Next you'll holler about the American Indian, yet you forget we bought the land from you or defeated you in battle over it, after you pillaged, robbed, raped, tortured and subjugated them. Indians didn't invent scalping, the French, English and Spanish did".
I think I see. Everything bad that was ever done in the Western hemisphere was done by Europeans. Then, when the American colonists rebelled and set up their own country, they miraculously became decent, honest, virtuous, non-violent democrats. (Even though the day before they had themselves been murderous Europeans). And ever since everyone born in the USA has been nice, and done only good things.
Boy, I think I'll have one of those Declarations of Independence. Talk about "born again"! 8-)
There is a limited upside to all these demented laws. At last we have a reasonably objective, reliable way of evaluating the intelligence and competence of lawmakers.
People are emotional, allusive, and easily swayed. Computers are perfectly logical, and completely deaf to overtones, intentions, "what I really meant", etc. etc.
Thus, the ability of a group of elected representatives to write fair and meaningful laws dealing with computers is an accurate reflection of their competence to understand and legislate for the natural (i.e. "real") world. If a politician thinks that "hackers" can really "break into" a computer, or that any particular kind of software is essentially "bad", he is putting up an illuminated sign ten feet tall that says "I can't think straight; or else, I am too lazy to learn a few simple facts (or both)".
Thank goodness things are better in the USA... where a corporate felon can be charged, brought to trial, found guilty, and then let off with no effective punishment at all. Between judgement and sentencing, there just happened to be a presidential election which was won by a candidate whom the corporate felon had supported with financial contributions. Surprisingly enough, the new prosecutors took a much more lenient view of the culprit's offences.
In the USA, the rule of law always prevails. (Unless you're an "enemy alien", a foreigner, an important US corporation, a sports celebrity, or a political contributor).
"Look, the idea of keeping the government in check by due process of law and constitutional guardrails is that, if it is bad, it doesn't do extreme damage, like turn into a dictatorship. When it's good, then of course it's hindered in its ability to serve citizens quickly and efficiently, but that's the price to pay".
Precisely. The Founding Fathers (like most other intelligent people who have ever thought the matter over) overwhelmingly felt that "the less government, the better". In other words, government is a necessary evil. So if a government is "hindered in its ability to serve citizens quickly and efficiently", that shouldn't be of too much concern, as the citizens should depend on the government for as few things as possible. It is certainly not as bad as the alternative of too much government.
Unfortunately, with the passage of time all governments appear to extend their roles through a form of "mission creep". They start out lean and mean, but while they occasionally acquire new functions, they never discard old ones.
The worst imaginable scenario is one in which government does everything for everyone. The scope for corruption and inefficiency would be mind-boggling, if only because there would be no competition and no alternatives.
"The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans".
Who said that? Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister of Great Britain in the 1870s. By "secret societies" he meant exactly the same thing as we mean when we talk about "terrorist networks" such as Al Qaeda. Yet Disraeli and his great rival Gladstone did not set about tearing down all the guarantees of liberty in the British constitution - on the contrary, they valued them highly.
9/11 was a terrible blow, and perhaps the greatest terrorist attack ever. Its effect was very much amplified by the USA's previous immunity to attack (by anyone except Americans themselves). But the butcher's bill was two orders of magnitude lower than those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and no higher than the total inflicted by the IRA on British civilians (admittedly over several decades). Thousands of times more civilians were killed in WW2, and again in Vietnam. And probably about a hundred times more civilians have been killed in Iraq (or died due to the war) since 2003.
There is nothing in the least unprecedented about the present terrorist threat, and we should remember our ancestors - people like Lincoln, Grant, both Roosevelts, and Churchill - and ask ourselves how they would have reacted to it.
With the gradual advent of the Semantic Web, it should become possible to discriminate between different types of material. In its simplest form, metadata will let you distinguish between the meanings of individual words or phrases, so you can search for "crystal" and specify whether you are interested in rock crystal, crystal glassware, people called Crystal, Crystal Reports, etc.
We could also label content according to its level of "hardness" and objectivity. It would be nice to be able to discriminate between (for example) dictionaries and encylopedias, technical papers, marketing collateral, and opinion. The further you move towards the "opinion" end of the spectrum, the mushier the process of discriminating gets. Most of us would agree that we trust the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Oxford English Dictionary, or articles in Nature or Scientific American. But opinion, in its very essence, is more controversial. I can think of some people whose opinion I respect and value highly. Others may be very interesting, provocative and knowledgeable - but not necessarily always as sound. At the other extreme, we have masses of blogs and other groups with strikingly low signal-to-noise ratios.
So why not instrument Google and other search engines to prioritize the highest-value material, and index the rest on a "best efforts" basis? There could also be specialist engines for certain special types of material, to give some sort of coverage. Think how nice it would be to search Google Groups for "Java" without being buried in job-related postings. Why not have a separate job search engine - or at least a separate Google option?
"...instead of jumping back and forth between left wing/right wing opposits in each election (as we currently do)..."
As Gore Vidal has observed, the United States is governed by a single party with two right wings. Anything resembling socialism as practiced in Europe and elsewhere would probably be stamped out by violence ("godless communism", etc.) That's why the Democrats have been unable to make any progress against the current administration: you couldn't fit a cigarette paper between their beliefs. (And to preempt ad hominem attacks, I am a lifelong conservative).
To be fair, the same process is happening worldwide. Politicians are slow on the uptake, but not so slow that they did not eventually notice the vastly greater attractiveness (from their point of view) of business governance. So citizens in the Land of the Free are controlled for most of their waking lives by corporations run on Stalinist lines. (OK, if you step out of line you don't get a bullet in the back of the head; you just get fired; but you are ejected from that particular corporate universe just as thoroughly as a dead man is removed from the political universe. And there is no trace of democracy).
Politicans realised that it's a mug's game pushing ideologies, so they all transformed themselves into managers. It is much easier to get into power and stay there by giving the voters what they want. That's why all parties these days promise much the same - they all use the same opinion polls and focus groups to form their policies. Hence also the lack of interest in voting - why bother, when there is so little real choice?
"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic". - Benjamin Franklin
As usual, Franklin put his finger on the fatal flaw. You say "The real challenge is to convince people in the West that tightening the purse strings is a good thing". But enough voters believe - inasmuch as they could be bothered to engage in anything resembling thought - that they gain more from government spending than they lose in tax. If that seems impossible, maybe they fatalistically assume that they are caught in the "the tragedy of the commons" - even if they themselves do not believe they gain from government spending, they think enough other voters believe that to make resistance futile.
An aggravating factor is that globalization is coming home to roost. For over a century Western politicians have preached the merits of free global trade - because their countries were net beneficiaries. Now the Western nations are net losers through globalization, and that trend is accelerating. The politicians can't do a U-turn without looking like incredible hypocrites. OK, that wouldn't stop them for a moment, but anyway it's too late. Tariff barriers would just make things worse in the medium to long term.
As people in the Western nations are gradually squeezed in a vice of dropping salaries and rising debt, they are bound to grasp at any expedient to stay afloat. Government handouts are as good a straw as any for a drowning householder.
"Microsoft was never punished because the telco couldn't admit that it wasn't true".
Very good point, and one worth remembering. (Although how could Microsoft have been punished for being "economical with the truth", when it was never punished after being found guilty of serious crimes?)
Back around 1991, a salesman told me he could make no headway selling software development tools against IBM. Seems the IBM salesmen had got this huge insurance company to issue a press release quoting its managing director as saying it was committed to IBM's AD/Cycle. Although there was no sign of AD/Cycle ever materializing, and the insurance company's software continued to be written by an army of COBOL programmers with notepads, there was no way it would ever admit that AD/Cycle was not working for it. Until IBM formally withdrew the AD/Cycle program, all the companies that had been suckered into issuing those press releases were effectively locked out of buying tools from anyone else. Neat.
Could you get (never mind hold) a job in academia? They are actually harder than many jobs in industry and commerce, let alone government. Not to mention less well paid.
But perhaps you believe that people's worth should be measured by the size of their income.
"What do we do with 48 tons of nuclear waste generated per year per plant"?
Well, where did the uranium or other original fuel come from in the first place? It was dug up from underground, right? How much harm was it doing us before we dug it up?
That should provide a clue. We simply put it back underground - naturally, choosing the safest places to do so. Bear in mind, as others have pointed out, that nuclear waste includes some highly radioactive material, and some that will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years - but the long-lived stuff is low-level, and the high-level stuff isn't (relatively) long-lived.
Besides, that 48 tons of waste isn't as big as it might sound. It's mostly heavy stuff. Now, 48 tons of water will fit in a cubic space less than 12 feet on a side; in other words, you could load it all on a single big container truck. 48 tons of nuclear waste takes up less space than that, because it is denser.
Lastly, you have to compare apples with apples. In this universe, you are never going to get huge amounts of energy for nothing. How much waste does a coal-fired, gas-fired, or oil-fired power station emit in a year? In Britain at least, it was impossible to build nuclear power stations on the land previously occupied by coal-fired stations. The reason was that the ground was too radioactive. The tiny amounts of radioactivity in those millions of tons of coal ash built up to a residual level that was illegal for a nuclear plant - but nobody ever even thought of measuring it when the plant was coal-fired. If we insist on having far more stringent safety standards for nuclear than for other forms of energy, of course it is going to be very difficult and expensive.
Note that I am not complaining about high levels of safety. But the nuclear industry has been bedevilled by a combination of unrealistically high standards and unacceptably slipshod delivery. We insist on containment structures with very big margins of safety - which are then built by contractors who have been known to leave bubbles inside big enough to accommodate a small vehicle. We regulate every part of the process to the nth degree, resulting in controls and procedures that are too complex for staff to cope with in emergency. But all of these precautions are vitiated (occasionally) by cynical, greedy management and lazy, incompetent workers.
It would be better to specify realistic safety levels, but make absolutely sure they are always adhered to without exception.
"Corporate speak is the opposite of language. Language is used between people to discuss ideas and express their emotions to each other. Corporate speak is used for precisely the opposite, to cloud ideas behind a vineer of self assumed intellect".
Mmmm, a logical position to adopt, but (I fear) slightly too idealistic. The way I see it, language can be used in two broad ways. The first, and by far the most common, is the way we all learn to speak. This form of language has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, and is extremely sophisticated at many levels. Unfortunately for idealists, one of its prime uses is to manipulate other people - if necessary by lying, deceiving, concealing facts, or just by selecting some and putting a particular complexion on others. Corporate speak is just an extreme version of this. Ever since Plato, noble thinkers have condemned this kind of speech as "making the worse cause appear the better", and called for decent people to tell the truth all the time.
Ain't never going to happen as long as people are people the way we know them. Who hasn't ever told a lie? Politicians lie and deceive - we know that. So do businesspeople. Show me a company that never lies, cheats, or misleads, and I will show you a company that is either bankrupt or on the road there. And some of the most successful companies are also the biggest, most systematic liars and cheats. (No names, no lawsuits). But it doesn't stop there. Who has never lied or cheated in the pursuit of seduction? Not for nothing is it said "All's fair in love and war". Even at home and in the office, most of us lie and manipulate quite steadily.
The other type of language, which is enormously valuable and likely to be highly esteemed by/.ers, aims at precise, accurate, objective, truthful communication. 2 + 2 = 4 whoever you are. A given C program, given certain inputs, should deliver predictable outputs. An exponentially rising population will always run out of food at some point. Etc. Without this kind of language, our technical civilization would not exist.
Trouble is, manipulative (instinctive) language almost always trumps exact language. That's why Dilbert is funny: the engineers know far more than the PHB, and can do things he could never hope to. But he is in charge of them, because he is manipulative and knows how to "abuse" language. There is a kind of Gresham's Law here: people who are honest, objective and truthful handicap themselves hopelessly when they compete against those who use all the resources of language to further their cause.
Re:It's true. The french name is really irritating
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"...even though you're most likely one of those froggies".
British, actually, old man.
Re:It's true. The french name is really irritating
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'...I do have a hard time fighting down the loathing I have for the french and it really hits me extra hard when I look at the box they have on the commercial Eiffelstudio page which clearly looks like "La Tour Eiffel", the Eiffel Tower'.
One last (mild) remark, and then I shall drop this. Apparently you detest the sight of the Eiffel Tower; do you feel the same way about the Statue of Liberty?
Re:It's true. The french name is really irritating
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Wow. After my initial post, I really didn't want to look at any replies. I was sure I would be buried by a torrent of abuse and unjustified rebuttals. Instead, I got two well-written replies full of sensible, factual, reasoned criticism (and a short one with a logical comment). It really reinforces my faith in Slashdot!
gd23ka, you did home in on several of the weaker points in my rant. Truth to tell, there are precious few nations or peoples that haven't, at some stage at least, believed they were "the chosen people". Tentatively, I think the Portuguese might be an exception - I know they set up a colonial empire, but they have always been fairly level-headed and modest. What I was trying to express was my sense of irony that an American would find French people annoyingly arrogant. (Pots and kettles). "Karl Martell" - a very neat way of reminding me that France and Germany had not even begun to emerge as nations back then. (This is a problem Americans don't face, as their nation only dates back 230 years). "Valor and scum" is fair comment, but a universal one - show me a war hero, and half the time I'll show you a latent violent criminal.
As for AC, I have to disagree. "Ironic you bring up Nappy, who was heroic in attempting to enslave europe, while the Resistance was heroic in attempting to prevent enslaving europe". I suspect you will not see it this way, but to my eyes Napoleon's role was analogous to that of Bush, and the French Resistance analogous to the Iraqi Resistance. Heroism is heroism, regardless of the justice of the cause. Incidentally, all the generals on both sides of the American Civil War idolised Napoleon. Perhaps you think they were all wrong?
"You should also look up "Lend Lease" - the USA was actively involved with fighting the Nazis long before Dec. 7, 1941, even sinking Nazi warships". I know about Lend Lease - for example, 50 obsolete WWI destroyers, which US sailors would never have been asked to take to sea, were "given" to Britain in return for 99-year leases on British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland. I also know that Britain paid back the last of its war debt to the USA last year. And before you ask, here's a US source: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/documents/docpages/do cument_page71.htm. Where you can also read: 'In the 1940 Presidential election campaign, Roosevelt promised to keep America out of the war. He stated, "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again; your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."'
Re:It's true. The french name is really irritating
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"...one of the most inspired, unexpected, and vigorous surprise attacks in history..."
Oh, I see. You are saying that after declaring war, the French should have been expecting to be attacked. Well, they were. And the attack came in, just as expected: through the Netherlands and Belgium, just as in WW1. Then the "inspired, unexpected, and vigorous surprise attack" arrived - a left hook through the Ardennes, country that nobody had thought passable for armoured vehicles. Moreover, it was pressed home with tremendous energy and speed, although even the German high command kept telling the lead elements to stop and wait for their infantry to catch up. The Ardennes attack was almost entirely the brainchild of von Manstein, although Hitler was quick to grab the credit when it succeeded. I think most experts would agree that any army in the world, as of 1940, would have been defeated in the place of the French and British. Most of them, for a start, were simply too weak to have any chance of resisting. The British and French weren't too weak, but they were outmanoeuvred. German strategy and tactics were generally superior to those of all their enemies throughout WW2. For instance, to win the critical battle of El Alamein, Montgomery needed something like a 10-1 superiority in tanks and not much less in infantry.
My point was that France at least declared war on Germany. The failure to invade right away was probably a serious strategic blunder. But at least the French government had the moral strength to declare war, rather than gazing in the opposite direction, filing its nails and pretending nothing was happening.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you disagree with Microsoft's actions, you are free to use another operating system or office suite or what have you".
And there you have it. As more and more users come to understand the legal facts of the matter, as expounded in this thread, they will have a strong incentive to adopt other operating systems that cost less and impose less unreasonable conditions.
In this context it is interesting to note that the difference between Windows and Linux is steadily being eroded. Indeed, in some ways Linux is distinctly superior; but the key point is that its weaknesses relative to Windows (read: buying objections) are rapidly disappearing. SuSE, to which I am in the process of migrating, is easier to install than Windows; just as efficient; more flexible; and, AFAICS, just as easy to use once you get used to it (which takes a few days). On the plus side, it's far less expensive, offers far better support, and is open and extensible.
Applications used to be a deal-breaker, but I have been using OpenOffice.org recently and it is, if anything, better than Office for my purposes. (Admittedly, I still have Office 97 which is arguably inferior to Office 2003, but why should I shell out big bucks every few years for what is essentially the same product?) Quicken used to be an issue, until Intuit suddenly withdrew from the UK market at the same time as my copy of Quicken mysteriously stopped working. So now there is really no reason why I would prefer Windows to Linux.
"Does it seem strange to anyone else that so many computers containing sensitive information are suddenly being reported stolen?"
Not in the least. There are a lot of computers being stolen, and a lot of computer users who carry around data they shouldn't. Every so often the two coincide. We probably only get to hear about a subset of the worst cases.
I like the idea of "large-seat clients".
"Mr Big, I presume?"
As I recall, Pris knocks him down easily - at which point any experienced street fighter would simply kick him in the head a few times. End of "fight". (Or she could just pick up his gun and walk away with it). What does Pris do? She races away into the distance, allowing him time to recover, sit up, and find his *long range* weapon. Then she comes springing towards him, making an ideal target. She isn't a "pleasure" model - she's a "suicidal cannon fodder" model.
Maybe the observed phenomenon is simply a by-product of affluence. The USA is still, on average, the world's richest nation. If you look at the ways in which people become wealthy, and climb near the top of American society, I think you will find that very few of them have anything to do with scientific thinking.Instead, they have to do with manipulating people (usually en masse).
Scientific thinking is very useful, but the discovery has been made that you can be a PHB and hire dozens of Alices and Dilberts to work for you. Or even a shareholder in the company. That way the benefits of scientific thinking reach many, many people who are quite incapable of it (or disinclined, or both).
How often have you heard a politician or a PHB holding forth about how wonderful "our" technology is? Ever wondered if that person could wire an electric plug or tune a car engine, let alone build (or even explain) a PC or a mobile phone? When the benefits of technology are widely distributed, many deeply ignorant people get the illusion that they are somehow technically advanced - just because they have learned to use the stuff.
It's not enough to show that you can get rich by building on a scientific education. You have to compare the likelihood of doing so with that of playing sport, singing, dancing, talking amusingly, selling, marketing, or sitting in meetings. As society gets richer, there is more leisure and more people are able to specialise in these roles. More of the money gravitates to the amusement industry, and technology gets by with fewer and fewer people and less and less investment (relatively). Farming was the first example of a technology that used to dominate people's lives, and now occupies a tiny minority.
The less people know about computers, the more inanely enthusiastic they seem to be about using them to solve the world's problems. Unfortunately, the class of politicians is almost a perfect subset of the class of computer ignoramuses. We have a guy over here called Tony Blair who is one of the worst offenders in this regard. Confessedly barely able to use a keyboard himself, he repeatedly hires dubious defence contractors to buy, install and program vast stacks of PCs loaded with Microsoft software - then seemingly expects good things to happen automatically.
Back in the 1970s, at the height of the Cold War, I thought about writing a novel of the near future in which the USA and the USSR gradually changed places. The USA would be concentrating so hard on the Commmunist Menace that it would become a locked-down totalitarian dictatorship (as in 1984, plus electronics). Meanwhile, the USSR would somehow become a free-enterprise society with so few laws that people could do almost anything they wanted. Yet the Americans would go on ranting about the Communist Menace.
Obviously, the plot for such a book would have been hard to design in detail. How on earth was Russia going to become an anarchist's paradise? Yet it has been done: notably by that talented writer James P Hogan in "The Multiplex Man". Not one of his best novels, true; but well worth reading just for his ideas about government.
The American end of the plot seems to be coming to pass, though. It's probably no exaggeration to say that all the legal and organizational preconditions have been met to turn the USA into a totalitarian state virtually overnight. Whether it could really be done depends on what you think of the American people - would they stand for it, or would they explode in violent revolution? Considering the firepower available to the federal government, a revolution would be very bloody and might well fail. Consider the last time some Americans made a concerted effort to get out from under Washington's thumb. I could be wrong, but I suspect more Americans were killed and maimed in that conflict than in any foreign war. Certainly more in proportion to the population of the time.
If we fall into the habit of believing that government is there to wipe our noses and do everything for us, we can't complain if it eventually turns us into adult infants. Will Rogers wasn't joking (for once) when said, "Be happy you don't get all the government you're paying for".
This is the sort of question whose main value is that it can't be answered as it stands; instead you have to look more closely at the assumptions behind it. (A latter-day computer koan?)
The two categories that immediately stand out a mile are end-users and developers. The required skills, and the amount of time required to become proficient, are poles apart. The whole emphasis of generations of computer designers has been to lower the barriers to entry for end-users - continually making it easier, bringing the user interface closer to the user and further from the binary machine. Dumbing down, if you want to look at it that way. End-user proficiency is what the great majority of requirements for "IT literacy" mean; in fact, the very use of "IT" is almost a guarantee of non-expertise. Here in Europe there are government-backed training and tests such as the European Computing Driving Licence (ECDL).The first thing you notice about ECDL is that it doesn't even attempt to explain how computers work; and the second is that it could be renamed "European Microsoft Product Driving Licence".
To be a proficient software developer takes a lot more, of course - it's a subject that has been thrashed out many times. Personally, I am a traditionalist and would be happier knowing that most, if not all, professional developers have a solid computer science grounding and can at least find their way around Knuth. But it has to be admitted that the decades-long project to lower the barriers to entry for developers, too, has been quite successful. There is far more demand for Webmasters, Web developers, Visual Basic programmers, etc. than could be met from the ranks of those with in-depth CS backgrounds.
This could turn into a book, so to cut it short, maybe I could see four main categories:
1. Microsoft end-user; something like ECDL (or equivalent) is adequate.
2. End-user (not limited to Microsoft); needs to learn a lot more than ECDL, as there are a number of useful platforms other than Windows. And it's harder to learn all you need to know about mainframes, AS/400, Linux, etc. than Windows.
3. Lightweight developer (we'd perhaps have to devise a more flattering job title); able to build small Web sites, write scripts and simple VB programs, Word macros, and straightforward spreadsheets. (Spreadsheets where getting the right answers matters, that is; any general end-user can write a spreadsheet and hope).
4. Professional developers (or, as I would call them software engineers). They had better know their computer science, and preferably be able to pick up new platforms, languages, etc., as required. Ideally they would also have the appropriate personalities and human skills - just like astronauts or sports stars, they really need to get along well as part of a team.
"Not real sure where your from, however you sound like a European. The very same people who pillaged, robbed, raped, tortured and subjugated the entire world, because of your greed, lust for power etc. If you gave South America, India, Asia, America etc. back half the riches you stole from them we would all be better off. Next you'll holler about the American Indian, yet you forget we bought the land from you or defeated you in battle over it, after you pillaged, robbed, raped, tortured and subjugated them. Indians didn't invent scalping, the French, English and Spanish did".
I think I see. Everything bad that was ever done in the Western hemisphere was done by Europeans. Then, when the American colonists rebelled and set up their own country, they miraculously became decent, honest, virtuous, non-violent democrats. (Even though the day before they had themselves been murderous Europeans). And ever since everyone born in the USA has been nice, and done only good things.
Boy, I think I'll have one of those Declarations of Independence. Talk about "born again"! 8-)
There is a limited upside to all these demented laws. At last we have a reasonably objective, reliable way of evaluating the intelligence and competence of lawmakers.
People are emotional, allusive, and easily swayed. Computers are perfectly logical, and completely deaf to overtones, intentions, "what I really meant", etc. etc.
Thus, the ability of a group of elected representatives to write fair and meaningful laws dealing with computers is an accurate reflection of their competence to understand and legislate for the natural (i.e. "real") world. If a politician thinks that "hackers" can really "break into" a computer, or that any particular kind of software is essentially "bad", he is putting up an illuminated sign ten feet tall that says "I can't think straight; or else, I am too lazy to learn a few simple facts (or both)".
Thank goodness things are better in the USA... where a corporate felon can be charged, brought to trial, found guilty, and then let off with no effective punishment at all. Between judgement and sentencing, there just happened to be a presidential election which was won by a candidate whom the corporate felon had supported with financial contributions. Surprisingly enough, the new prosecutors took a much more lenient view of the culprit's offences.
In the USA, the rule of law always prevails. (Unless you're an "enemy alien", a foreigner, an important US corporation, a sports celebrity, or a political contributor).
"Look, the idea of keeping the government in check by due process of law and constitutional guardrails is that, if it is bad, it doesn't do extreme damage, like turn into a dictatorship. When it's good, then of course it's hindered in its ability to serve citizens quickly and efficiently, but that's the price to pay".
Precisely. The Founding Fathers (like most other intelligent people who have ever thought the matter over) overwhelmingly felt that "the less government, the better". In other words, government is a necessary evil. So if a government is "hindered in its ability to serve citizens quickly and efficiently", that shouldn't be of too much concern, as the citizens should depend on the government for as few things as possible. It is certainly not as bad as the alternative of too much government.
Unfortunately, with the passage of time all governments appear to extend their roles through a form of "mission creep". They start out lean and mean, but while they occasionally acquire new functions, they never discard old ones.
The worst imaginable scenario is one in which government does everything for everyone. The scope for corruption and inefficiency would be mind-boggling, if only because there would be no competition and no alternatives.
"The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans".
Who said that? Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister of Great Britain in the 1870s. By "secret societies" he meant exactly the same thing as we mean when we talk about "terrorist networks" such as Al Qaeda. Yet Disraeli and his great rival Gladstone did not set about tearing down all the guarantees of liberty in the British constitution - on the contrary, they valued them highly.
9/11 was a terrible blow, and perhaps the greatest terrorist attack ever. Its effect was very much amplified by the USA's previous immunity to attack (by anyone except Americans themselves). But the butcher's bill was two orders of magnitude lower than those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and no higher than the total inflicted by the IRA on British civilians (admittedly over several decades). Thousands of times more civilians were killed in WW2, and again in Vietnam. And probably about a hundred times more civilians have been killed in Iraq (or died due to the war) since 2003.
There is nothing in the least unprecedented about the present terrorist threat, and we should remember our ancestors - people like Lincoln, Grant, both Roosevelts, and Churchill - and ask ourselves how they would have reacted to it.
"Oh God!! I was't really prepared to wade through a flame war over distros this morning."
Then don't.
With the gradual advent of the Semantic Web, it should become possible to discriminate between different types of material. In its simplest form, metadata will let you distinguish between the meanings of individual words or phrases, so you can search for "crystal" and specify whether you are interested in rock crystal, crystal glassware, people called Crystal, Crystal Reports, etc.
We could also label content according to its level of "hardness" and objectivity. It would be nice to be able to discriminate between (for example) dictionaries and encylopedias, technical papers, marketing collateral, and opinion. The further you move towards the "opinion" end of the spectrum, the mushier the process of discriminating gets. Most of us would agree that we trust the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Oxford English Dictionary, or articles in Nature or Scientific American. But opinion, in its very essence, is more controversial. I can think of some people whose opinion I respect and value highly. Others may be very interesting, provocative and knowledgeable - but not necessarily always as sound. At the other extreme, we have masses of blogs and other groups with strikingly low signal-to-noise ratios.
So why not instrument Google and other search engines to prioritize the highest-value material, and index the rest on a "best efforts" basis? There could also be specialist engines for certain special types of material, to give some sort of coverage. Think how nice it would be to search Google Groups for "Java" without being buried in job-related postings. Why not have a separate job search engine - or at least a separate Google option?
" ...instead of jumping back and forth between left wing /right wing opposits in each election (as we currently do)..."
As Gore Vidal has observed, the United States is governed by a single party with two right wings. Anything resembling socialism as practiced in Europe and elsewhere would probably be stamped out by violence ("godless communism", etc.) That's why the Democrats have been unable to make any progress against the current administration: you couldn't fit a cigarette paper between their beliefs. (And to preempt ad hominem attacks, I am a lifelong conservative).
To be fair, the same process is happening worldwide. Politicians are slow on the uptake, but not so slow that they did not eventually notice the vastly greater attractiveness (from their point of view) of business governance. So citizens in the Land of the Free are controlled for most of their waking lives by corporations run on Stalinist lines. (OK, if you step out of line you don't get a bullet in the back of the head; you just get fired; but you are ejected from that particular corporate universe just as thoroughly as a dead man is removed from the political universe. And there is no trace of democracy).
Politicans realised that it's a mug's game pushing ideologies, so they all transformed themselves into managers. It is much easier to get into power and stay there by giving the voters what they want. That's why all parties these days promise much the same - they all use the same opinion polls and focus groups to form their policies. Hence also the lack of interest in voting - why bother, when there is so little real choice?
"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic".
- Benjamin Franklin
As usual, Franklin put his finger on the fatal flaw. You say "The real challenge is to convince people in the West that tightening the purse strings is a good thing". But enough voters believe - inasmuch as they could be bothered to engage in anything resembling thought - that they gain more from government spending than they lose in tax. If that seems impossible, maybe they fatalistically assume that they are caught in the "the tragedy of the commons" - even if they themselves do not believe they gain from government spending, they think enough other voters believe that to make resistance futile.
An aggravating factor is that globalization is coming home to roost. For over a century Western politicians have preached the merits of free global trade - because their countries were net beneficiaries. Now the Western nations are net losers through globalization, and that trend is accelerating. The politicians can't do a U-turn without looking like incredible hypocrites. OK, that wouldn't stop them for a moment, but anyway it's too late. Tariff barriers would just make things worse in the medium to long term.
As people in the Western nations are gradually squeezed in a vice of dropping salaries and rising debt, they are bound to grasp at any expedient to stay afloat. Government handouts are as good a straw as any for a drowning householder.
"Microsoft was never punished because the telco couldn't admit that it wasn't true".
Very good point, and one worth remembering. (Although how could Microsoft have been punished for being "economical with the truth", when it was never punished after being found guilty of serious crimes?)
Back around 1991, a salesman told me he could make no headway selling software development tools against IBM. Seems the IBM salesmen had got this huge insurance company to issue a press release quoting its managing director as saying it was committed to IBM's AD/Cycle. Although there was no sign of AD/Cycle ever materializing, and the insurance company's software continued to be written by an army of COBOL programmers with notepads, there was no way it would ever admit that AD/Cycle was not working for it. Until IBM formally withdrew the AD/Cycle program, all the companies that had been suckered into issuing those press releases were effectively locked out of buying tools from anyone else. Neat.
Could you get (never mind hold) a job in academia? They are actually harder than many jobs in industry and commerce, let alone government. Not to mention less well paid.
But perhaps you believe that people's worth should be measured by the size of their income.
"What do we do with 48 tons of nuclear waste generated per year per plant"?
Well, where did the uranium or other original fuel come from in the first place? It was dug up from underground, right? How much harm was it doing us before we dug it up?
That should provide a clue. We simply put it back underground - naturally, choosing the safest places to do so. Bear in mind, as others have pointed out, that nuclear waste includes some highly radioactive material, and some that will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years - but the long-lived stuff is low-level, and the high-level stuff isn't (relatively) long-lived.
Besides, that 48 tons of waste isn't as big as it might sound. It's mostly heavy stuff. Now, 48 tons of water will fit in a cubic space less than 12 feet on a side; in other words, you could load it all on a single big container truck. 48 tons of nuclear waste takes up less space than that, because it is denser.
Lastly, you have to compare apples with apples. In this universe, you are never going to get huge amounts of energy for nothing. How much waste does a coal-fired, gas-fired, or oil-fired power station emit in a year? In Britain at least, it was impossible to build nuclear power stations on the land previously occupied by coal-fired stations. The reason was that the ground was too radioactive. The tiny amounts of radioactivity in those millions of tons of coal ash built up to a residual level that was illegal for a nuclear plant - but nobody ever even thought of measuring it when the plant was coal-fired. If we insist on having far more stringent safety standards for nuclear than for other forms of energy, of course it is going to be very difficult and expensive.
Note that I am not complaining about high levels of safety. But the nuclear industry has been bedevilled by a combination of unrealistically high standards and unacceptably slipshod delivery. We insist on containment structures with very big margins of safety - which are then built by contractors who have been known to leave bubbles inside big enough to accommodate a small vehicle. We regulate every part of the process to the nth degree, resulting in controls and procedures that are too complex for staff to cope with in emergency. But all of these precautions are vitiated (occasionally) by cynical, greedy management and lazy, incompetent workers.
It would be better to specify realistic safety levels, but make absolutely sure they are always adhered to without exception.
"Corporate speak is the opposite of language. Language is used between people to discuss ideas and express their emotions to each other. Corporate speak is used for precisely the opposite, to cloud ideas behind a vineer of self assumed intellect".
/.ers, aims at precise, accurate, objective, truthful communication. 2 + 2 = 4 whoever you are. A given C program, given certain inputs, should deliver predictable outputs. An exponentially rising population will always run out of food at some point. Etc. Without this kind of language, our technical civilization would not exist.
Mmmm, a logical position to adopt, but (I fear) slightly too idealistic. The way I see it, language can be used in two broad ways. The first, and by far the most common, is the way we all learn to speak. This form of language has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, and is extremely sophisticated at many levels. Unfortunately for idealists, one of its prime uses is to manipulate other people - if necessary by lying, deceiving, concealing facts, or just by selecting some and putting a particular complexion on others. Corporate speak is just an extreme version of this. Ever since Plato, noble thinkers have condemned this kind of speech as "making the worse cause appear the better", and called for decent people to tell the truth all the time.
Ain't never going to happen as long as people are people the way we know them. Who hasn't ever told a lie? Politicians lie and deceive - we know that. So do businesspeople. Show me a company that never lies, cheats, or misleads, and I will show you a company that is either bankrupt or on the road there. And some of the most successful companies are also the biggest, most systematic liars and cheats. (No names, no lawsuits). But it doesn't stop there. Who has never lied or cheated in the pursuit of seduction? Not for nothing is it said "All's fair in love and war". Even at home and in the office, most of us lie and manipulate quite steadily.
The other type of language, which is enormously valuable and likely to be highly esteemed by
Trouble is, manipulative (instinctive) language almost always trumps exact language. That's why Dilbert is funny: the engineers know far more than the PHB, and can do things he could never hope to. But he is in charge of them, because he is manipulative and knows how to "abuse" language. There is a kind of Gresham's Law here: people who are honest, objective and truthful handicap themselves hopelessly when they compete against those who use all the resources of language to further their cause.
"...even though you're most likely one of those froggies".
British, actually, old man.
'...I do have a hard time fighting down the loathing I have for the french and it really hits me extra hard when I look at the box they have on the commercial Eiffelstudio page which clearly looks like "La Tour Eiffel", the Eiffel Tower'.
One last (mild) remark, and then I shall drop this. Apparently you detest the sight of the Eiffel Tower; do you feel the same way about the Statue of Liberty?
Wow. After my initial post, I really didn't want to look at any replies. I was sure I would be buried by a torrent of abuse and unjustified rebuttals. Instead, I got two well-written replies full of sensible, factual, reasoned criticism (and a short one with a logical comment). It really reinforces my faith in Slashdot!
o cument_page71.htm. Where you can also read: 'In the 1940 Presidential election campaign, Roosevelt promised to keep America out of the war. He stated, "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again; your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."'
gd23ka, you did home in on several of the weaker points in my rant. Truth to tell, there are precious few nations or peoples that haven't, at some stage at least, believed they were "the chosen people". Tentatively, I think the Portuguese might be an exception - I know they set up a colonial empire, but they have always been fairly level-headed and modest. What I was trying to express was my sense of irony that an American would find French people annoyingly arrogant. (Pots and kettles). "Karl Martell" - a very neat way of reminding me that France and Germany had not even begun to emerge as nations back then. (This is a problem Americans don't face, as their nation only dates back 230 years). "Valor and scum" is fair comment, but a universal one - show me a war hero, and half the time I'll show you a latent violent criminal.
As for AC, I have to disagree. "Ironic you bring up Nappy, who was heroic in attempting to enslave europe, while the Resistance was heroic in attempting to prevent enslaving europe". I suspect you will not see it this way, but to my eyes Napoleon's role was analogous to that of Bush, and the French Resistance analogous to the Iraqi Resistance. Heroism is heroism, regardless of the justice of the cause. Incidentally, all the generals on both sides of the American Civil War idolised Napoleon. Perhaps you think they were all wrong?
"You should also look up "Lend Lease" - the USA was actively involved with fighting the Nazis long before Dec. 7, 1941, even sinking Nazi warships". I know about Lend Lease - for example, 50 obsolete WWI destroyers, which US sailors would never have been asked to take to sea, were "given" to Britain in return for 99-year leases on British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland. I also know that Britain paid back the last of its war debt to the USA last year. And before you ask, here's a US source: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/documents/docpages/d
"...one of the most inspired, unexpected, and vigorous surprise attacks in history..."
Oh, I see. You are saying that after declaring war, the French should have been expecting to be attacked. Well, they were. And the attack came in, just as expected: through the Netherlands and Belgium, just as in WW1. Then the "inspired, unexpected, and vigorous surprise attack" arrived - a left hook through the Ardennes, country that nobody had thought passable for armoured vehicles. Moreover, it was pressed home with tremendous energy and speed, although even the German high command kept telling the lead elements to stop and wait for their infantry to catch up. The Ardennes attack was almost entirely the brainchild of von Manstein, although Hitler was quick to grab the credit when it succeeded. I think most experts would agree that any army in the world, as of 1940, would have been defeated in the place of the French and British. Most of them, for a start, were simply too weak to have any chance of resisting. The British and French weren't too weak, but they were outmanoeuvred. German strategy and tactics were generally superior to those of all their enemies throughout WW2. For instance, to win the critical battle of El Alamein, Montgomery needed something like a 10-1 superiority in tanks and not much less in infantry.
My point was that France at least declared war on Germany. The failure to invade right away was probably a serious strategic blunder. But at least the French government had the moral strength to declare war, rather than gazing in the opposite direction, filing its nails and pretending nothing was happening.