Thomas Kuhn in his famous book, _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_, talked almost exclusively about concepts and hardly at all about tools. His idea of a scientific revolution is based on a single example, the revolution in theoretical physics that occurred in the 1920s with the advent of quantum mechanics. [...]
Kuhn's book was so brilliantly written that it became an instant classic. It misled a whole generation of students and historians of science into believing that all scientific revolutions are concept-driven. [...]
In the last 500 years, in addition to the quantum-mechanical revolution that Kuhn took as his model, we have had six major concept-driven revolutions, associated with the names of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Maxwell, Freud, and Einstein. During the same period there have been about twenty tool-driven revolutions [...].
Two prime examples of tool-drive revolutions are the Galilean revolution resulting from the use of the telescope in astronomy, and the Crick-Watson revolution resulting from the use of X-ray diffraction to determine the structure of big molecules in biology.
The effect of a concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of a tool-drive revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained.
... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
the IT person or the consultant is the one who installs the product [...] the person calling has no idea they are using a free product [...] and no idea if they have paid for support.
This may be part of your problem.
The customer did pay: they paid the consultant.
The consultant is long gone, the SW doesn't work, and now they can't get support?
They feel ripped off.
The author is trying to create a problem where there isn't one.
Software is speech.
Software is speech because it is text.
The kind of text that comes off of printing presses.
If freedom of the press means anything, it means the freedom to print
#include <stdio.h>
void main()
{
printf( "Hello, world\n");
}
Translation to x86 assembly and thence to machine code is inessential and does not affect the legal principle.
Neither does recording the resulting bits on machine-readable media.
the Linux Foundation will obtain a Microsoft Key and sign a small pre-bootloader which will, in turn, chain load (without any form of signature check) a predesignated boot loader which will, in turn, boot Linux (or any other operating system).
The purpose of Secure Boot is to prevent people from booting non-Microsoft operating systems. Why on earth would Microsoft sign such a bootloader?
The process of obtaining a Microsoft signature will take a while, [...]
Anyone want to open an over/under line on when this happens? I'll put $100 on the first patch Tuesday following the heat death of the universe.
Dogbert: No one should ever wear fur! Dilbert: Don't you think that's kind of hypocritical? You wear fur every day. Dogbert: Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Dogbert (walking away): Wait a minute...
Unless that's a BIG aircraft shelter, they probably didn't get 30K HP out of the engine. My guess is they bolted it to a static test stand, where it generated exactly 0 HP.
Compare (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
All-male groups tend to be marked by putdowns and other practices that remind everybody that there is NOT enough respect to go around,because this awareness motivates each man to try harder to earn respect. This, incidentally, has probably been a major source of friction as women have moved into the workplace, and organizations have had to shift toward policies that everyone is entitled to respect. The men hadn’t originally built them to respect everybody.
I wonder if Google appreciates that it will now have to confront people who are angry about their search rankings by saying, "I'm sorry, we just don't like you very much" instead of "I'm sorry, our equations put you where you belong." And oy, the libel headaches they're going to face.
Actually, they get it both ways.
If it is protected speech, then the gov't can't shut them down.
But when someone sues them for libel (or the like), they can equally claim that their search results are their opinion, which they are entitled to express, and not facts, which could be subject to dispute.
As it happens, there has already been a case just like that.
In their response, Google said something along the lines of
If plaintiff believes that there is some objective attribute of a web page called "page rank", then he is free to build his own search engine and report that attribute as he sees fit.
Ernie Ball ran a company (they make guitar strings). One day the BSA shows up, armed marshals in tow, to do an audit. They find a few systems out of compliance, and the lawyers negotiate a settlement. These thing happen, right? Cost of doing business, right?
But then the BSA thought, hey, this guy has name recognition. He's connected to music; the kids know who he his. We'll make an example of him.
And they did. They ran ads that named him as a pirate; they got his case on the evening news.
Mr. Ball took exception to this. So he went to his IT people and told them that he wanted Microsoft out of his company in 6 months. So they switched to RedHat. More into at http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
My take-away from this is that Microsoft is running on inertia. Not theirs: their customers'. Microsoft persists because their customers don't have a compelling reason to switch. But given a reason, switching to Linux is no big deal.
At any point in time, most of the world is 6 months from Linux, and Microsoft is 6 months from oblivion.
It's not quite circular.
- a Java program is a program that satisfies the Java language specification
- the Java language is the set of all Java programs.
The technical definition of the Java language is "the set of all Java programs". This is an infinite set. Therefore, it cannot be fixed in a tangible medium. Therefore, it it is ineligible for copyright protection.
It isn't evil; it's just bundling, and there is a reason for it. Simple example (from the newspaper days)
Alice values the fashion section at $0.20 and the sports section at $0.10. Bob values the sports section at $0.20 and the fashion section at $0.10.
If the publisher prices both sections at $0.10, he sells 4 sections and makes $0.40. If the publisher prices both sections at $0.20, he sells 2 sections and makes $0.40. But if the publisher bundles the two sections together and prices the bundle at $0.30, he sells 2 bundles and makes $0.60.
1851: Anderssen–Kieseritzky, London The Immortal Game Kieseritzky neglects his development and Anderssen sacrifices his queen and both rooks for a win.
It would be interesting to see what score Rybka assigns to various positions in a game like this one. In particular, is white ever down by more than 5.12 points?
My company runs exchange, so I have to run Outlook. Search on Outlook is slow and clumsy. I only use it under duress (i.e. when I absolutely can not find what I am looking for any other way.) And when I do use it, I only find what I am seeking maybe half the time.
My personal email is in files in directories, and I search it with find/grep. This is simple, fast, and usually successful.
Slashdot Mirror
Thomas Kuhn in his famous book, _The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions_, talked almost exclusively about concepts and hardly at
all about tools. His idea of a scientific revolution is based on a
single example, the revolution in theoretical physics that occurred in
the 1920s with the advent of quantum mechanics. [...]
Kuhn's book was so brilliantly written that it became an
instant classic. It misled a whole generation of students and
historians of science into believing that all scientific revolutions
are concept-driven. [...]
In the last 500 years, in addition to the quantum-mechanical
revolution that Kuhn took as his model, we have had six major
concept-driven revolutions, associated with the names of Copernicus,
Newton, Darwin, Maxwell, Freud, and Einstein. During the same period
there have been about twenty tool-driven revolutions [...].
Two prime examples of tool-drive revolutions are the Galilean
revolution resulting from the use of the telescope in astronomy, and
the Crick-Watson revolution resulting from the use of X-ray diffraction
to determine the structure of big molecules in biology.
The effect of a concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in
new ways. The effect of a tool-drive revolution is to discover new
things that have to be explained.
-- Freeman Dyson, Imagined Worlds
it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
I think they should let the conviction stand.
It is a reminder of how far we have come...and of how far we still have to go.
—Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
the IT person or the consultant is the one who installs the product [...] the person calling has no idea they are using a free product [...] and no idea if they have paid for support.
This may be part of your problem.
The customer did pay: they paid the consultant.
The consultant is long gone, the SW doesn't work, and now they can't get support?
They feel ripped off.
The author is trying to create a problem where there isn't one.
Software is speech.
Software is speech because it is text.
The kind of text that comes off of printing presses.
If freedom of the press means anything, it means the freedom to print
#include <stdio.h>
void main()
{
printf( "Hello, world\n");
}
Translation to x86 assembly and thence to machine code is inessential and does not affect the legal principle.
Neither does recording the resulting bits on machine-readable media.
And who says the patent system doesn't foster innovation?
Here we have a new and innovative method to stop people from doing things.
The purpose of Secure Boot is to prevent people from booting non-Microsoft operating systems.
Why on earth would Microsoft sign such a bootloader?
Anyone want to open an over/under line on when this happens?
I'll put $100 on the first patch Tuesday following the heat death of the universe.
Dogbert: No one should ever wear fur!
Dilbert: Don't you think that's kind of hypocritical? You wear fur every day.
Dogbert: Oh, yeah, I guess you're right.
Dogbert (walking away): Wait a minute...
Google tells us that
((30 000 horsepower) / (27 500 pounds force)) * (10 seconds) = 1.8 kilometers
Unless that's a BIG aircraft shelter, they probably didn't get 30K HP out of the engine.
My guess is they bolted it to a static test stand, where it generated exactly 0 HP.
Compare
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
In Is There Anything Good About Men?, Roy F. Baumeister writes
Artificial Stupidity
http://www.salon.com/2003/02/26/loebner_part_one/
Long, funny, and informative article on the history of the Loebner prize.
Actually, they get it both ways.
If it is protected speech, then the gov't can't shut them down.
But when someone sues them for libel (or the like), they can equally claim that their search results are their opinion, which they are entitled to express, and not facts, which could be subject to dispute. As it happens, there has already been a case just like that. In their response, Google said something along the lines of
In that case, Google prevailed.
Ernie Ball ran a company (they make guitar strings).
One day the BSA shows up, armed marshals in tow, to do an audit.
They find a few systems out of compliance, and the lawyers negotiate a settlement.
These thing happen, right? Cost of doing business, right?
But then the BSA thought, hey, this guy has name recognition.
He's connected to music; the kids know who he his.
We'll make an example of him.
And they did.
They ran ads that named him as a pirate;
they got his case on the evening news.
Mr. Ball took exception to this.
So he went to his IT people and told them that he wanted Microsoft out of his company in 6 months.
So they switched to RedHat.
More into at http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
My take-away from this is that Microsoft is running on inertia.
Not theirs: their customers'.
Microsoft persists because their customers don't have a compelling reason to switch.
But given a reason, switching to Linux is no big deal.
At any point in time,
most of the world is 6 months from Linux,
and Microsoft is 6 months from oblivion.
It's not my fault!
It's not just the tests.
Textbooks have similar problems.
Critique of a bad physics text
Prentice Hall's Science Explorer: Motion, Forces and Energy
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/textbook.html
Of all my references, circular are my favorite.
It's not quite circular.
- a Java program is a program that satisfies the Java language specification
- the Java language is the set of all Java programs.
The technical definition of the Java language is "the set of all Java programs".
This is an infinite set.
Therefore, it cannot be fixed in a tangible medium.
Therefore, it it is ineligible for copyright protection.
Learning Perl
Schwartz & Christiansen
Or just send him to http://perldoc.perl.org/
It isn't evil; it's just bundling, and there is a reason for it.
Simple example (from the newspaper days)
Alice values the fashion section at $0.20 and the sports section at $0.10.
Bob values the sports section at $0.20 and the fashion section at $0.10.
If the publisher prices both sections at $0.10, he sells 4 sections and makes $0.40.
If the publisher prices both sections at $0.20, he sells 2 sections and makes $0.40.
But if the publisher bundles the two sections together and prices the bundle at $0.30, he sells 2 bundles and makes $0.60.
1851: Anderssen–Kieseritzky, London
The Immortal Game
Kieseritzky neglects his development and Anderssen sacrifices his queen and both rooks for a win.
It would be interesting to see what score Rybka assigns to various positions in a game like this one.
In particular, is white ever down by more than 5.12 points?
I'd go with Article I, Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To [...] provide for the [...] general Welfare of the United States
How about a book on how to *use* KDE?
I was happily using KDE 3.x.
Then my distro went to KDE 4, and I couldn't make any sense out of it.
I finally gave up and switched to Gnome.
From The Onion:
April 13, 2005
DEA Seizes Half-Built Suspension Bridge From Bogotá To Miami
http://www.theonion.com/articles/dea-seizes-halfbuilt-suspension-bridge-from-bogota,9607/
My company runs exchange, so I have to run Outlook.
Search on Outlook is slow and clumsy.
I only use it under duress (i.e. when I absolutely can not find what I am looking for any other way.)
And when I do use it, I only find what I am seeking maybe half the time.
My personal email is in files in directories, and I search it with find/grep.
This is simple, fast, and usually successful.