You live in a society where total isolation is impossible. There is a certain obligation, in any society, to show some consideration to other members. This includes attire and attitude. In the aftermath of the massacre, to wear similar attire as the murderers hurts and angers in the same way as partying at a funeral or wearing a swastika to a Holocaust memorial.
This is not a condemnation of your attire per se. The swastika was a harmless symbol before Nazi Germany. But the world's interpretation of symbols changes, and it is not unreasonable to be asked to show some consideration for its members. It is a matter of etiquette, and rudeness begets rudeness. That you would care only about your coat in the aftermath of the massacre might suggest a misplacement of priorities.
It is hard to trust reports like this, especially when it seems so poorly put together. So much emphasis was placed on one diary by one killer, and the conclusions seem stretched. Countless eyewitness reports are cavalierly dismissed, and major assertions are backed up by anonymous "sources".
When going against the grain, it pays to be credible. With something as poorly substantiated as this, an assertion of "the media got it all wrong!" deserves a retort of "my friend, you ARE the media".
A number of people here have taken issue with the article's claim that "While Linux can only run on a few kinds of computers, NetBSD can run on more than 22". The point being pointed out is what the OS can run on NOW, rather than what it might run on in the future.
There are a lot of promises made in the open source world, many of which remain unfulfilled. Frankly, a lot of stuff does not work and may never work. So it is not enough to say that there is active work on platform XYZ. Good intentions must become reality, preferably in this millennium. It is more appropriate to count the number of mature ports of Linux vs ???BSD.
This is the fallacy of assuming something true, then finding evidence in harmony with it. Classification of animals long predate Darwin. All you have said is that whales, like all mammals, have something in common with all mammals. Well, duh. If not, why would we classify them as mammals? All you have proven is good taxonomy: similar animals are classified together. They are bound to have similarities. Why not?
It is no point arguing that "there is no theory besides macroevolution" etc. There are NO theories besides macroevolution for this purpose. The sheer dominance of evolution means that nothing else is even considered. You assume that there has to be a materialistic explanation for your problem, and grab the only one on the shelf. You may need to consider whether there is a problem to begin with.
Once again, I am reminded of how antecedant bias can cloud reasoning, particularly with Darwin. I remember his repeatedly reasoning in Origin of the Species (paraphrased): "gee, everything is too darn orderly to be the result of special creation... this has to be evolution." Well, gee: I guess the only alternative to random, unintelligent accidents is a Creator making random, unintelligent acts of creation.
The argument really does not work. Dawkins pointed out examples of eyes in the animal kingdom, but they are entirely unrelated: none of them are thought to evolve from another. They are entirely different structures, not similar structures growing in complexity. The sheer complexity of the eye precludes this: half a lens is not better than none. There is no evidence that any evolution of the eye ever happened.
If evolution of the eye is possible, why do the many primitive eye forms in existence never evolve into more complex ones? Even Dawkins is baffled by (for example) the nautilus which in its hundreds of years of existence never evolved a lens despite having a retina that is "practically crying out for (this) particular simple change".
Your eye is still useful because it is a human eye -- defective, yes, but still a human eye in all its complexity. You can demonstrate, perhaps, evolution going backwards from fully to less functional. But going forwards, from an inferior to a superior and more complex eye, is yet to be demonstrated.
The argument from animal breeders is in fact self-refuting. For one thing, it is ironic to say that mutation caused by intelligent, deliberate design proves evolution: mutation by unintelligent, random accidents. It works better as an argument for intelligent, deliberate special creation. For another, animal breeders' experience is an argument against evolution.
Evolution assumes unlimited plasticity of mutation. What animal breeders discovered is that mutation is elastic. Oh, you can still breed dogs with all sorts of fur color or size, but they are still dogs. When they try to go too far, the offspring turn out either sterile or revert to the norm. Animal breeders have not been able to turn dogs, cats etc to another species.
Evolution by natural selection tends to be exaggerated. What is the point of arguing selection among existing variants? All this means is that we are looking at a form of selective extinction. No new species result from the observed selection. Without significant plasticity of mutation, macroevolution is not possible.
Your post betrays a problem that I mentioned in a separate post: evolution is supported more by antecedant bias than by empirical evidence. Where are the positive arguments for evolution? Don't just say "DNA" and omit the argument that explains why it proves evolution. It is as if you assumed evolution true in the absence of contrary evidence. Evolution benefits from a lack of scientific skepticism, and an ideology that pushes for its acceptance without question.
Alas, it is hard to rebut an argument so vague in details. To say that "the evidence for this is vast" or that "its breadth is staggering" without actually presenting the evidence (or even the argument) is not very convincing. It is proof by gesticulation (hand-waving).
The difficulty of arguing natural selection producing the human eye comes from its very complexity. Sure, we have optical organs in other animal species of varying effectiveness, but they are vastly different in structure from a human one. I have yet to see a path of mutation from something primitive to a human eye that is useful every step of the way.
Few people seem to have noticed that the going-ons in Kansas are entirely consistent with the country's current understanding of the separation between church and state. The understanding, it appears, is that religion has no place being "established" or promoted by the government. But that is exactly what happens when evolution is taught in schools.
As Johnson pointed out in Darwinism on Trial, the evidence for evolution is very shakey. It takes a tremendous amount of antecedant bias to regard evolutionary theories with the confidence that we do today. The popular platitudes have little substance. Survival of the fittest? On examination, the phrase is really a tautology, a way of saying the same thing twice. Something survives because it is fit. It is fit because it survives. Duh. Natural selection? Many biological structures do not lend themselves to gradual evolution in a way that enhances survival in intermediate forms. The human eye is a complex structure that is vastly different from more primitive eyes of other animals. An eye that almost works, like code that almost works, is useless. The bird feather is an intricate thing that offers no utility in intermediate forms (if any ever existed). Fossil evidence? Even Darwin did not think fossils could prove his theory. Tons of bones later, there is a poverty of evidence towards gradual macroevolution. So now we get punctuated equilibrium. First we are told that evolution happens so slow we cannot see it. Now we are told that it happens so fast we cannot see it. The constant: we cannot see it. It's deep magic.
Few theories have had so much effort thrown towards proving it true. Few theories have been so closed to question, or so little rigor. Ridicule and dogmatism suppress dissent. It is hard enough to make a strong argument for evolutionary theories. It is even harder to do so to school children. It should come to no surprise that teachers resort to teaching evolution as dogma, ignoring all nuances or problems. The problem is this: the situation reflects a bias towards secular humanism. When science is held hostage to an ideology, then a case can be made that the stuff taught at public schools is geared towards pushing a humanist religion and/or the suppression of other religions. This, according to the establishment clause, is unconstitutional.
I hope to see an improved debate arising out of this situation. Talking about creationist "science" or bashing religion or the religious only clouds the issue. Rather than to resort to dogmatism, ad hominen attacks, ridicule or caricaturing arguments against theories of evolution, perhaps we can see a debate based on the theories on their own merits.
The last sentence of the Wired article is ironic, given its context: "Money provides comfort, flexibility, and pride, but all by itself, money can deliver only a shallow kind of happiness." The irony is in what we are told as the alternatives: "sports, drinking beer, and getting laid". Right. Replace "money" above with these alternatives and you still end up with something banal. "Beer/sex/sports provides... only a shallow kind of happiness."
The vices provide momentary pleasure, but the result is banal. Whether the pleasure comes from greed or lust, there is a point in one's life where one wonders, "is that all there is?". There is a point where there is despair in mere pleasure.
Perhaps there is happiness to be found, a happiness found in love that transcend body parts, friendships that transcend business, and a God that transcends everything else. The Wired article merely sets one form of pleasure against another. Happiness is to be found elsewhere.
The article is indeed from the Wall Street Journal. The zdnet article has the WSJIE logo at the top, and the reporters are identified as WSJ reporters. Since the WSJ is given appropriate credit, I don't seem any problem with plagiarism.
In a properly run vote, the voter is not capable of committing illegal, malicious acts. You just put a check next to the choice you think best. True abuse of speech comes where a few malicious people cause harm out of proportion to their numbers. This is quite the opposite of democratic voting.
Anonymous voting -- when properly done -- is liberating. Anonymous posting abuse on the other hand allows tyranny by a malicious few.
Freedom to speak, after all, is not necessarily freedom from the consequences of that speech. In this case, the posters may have done something illegal. Is it really that bad that even in cyberspace we can take action against malicious and illegal acts?
It seems to me that putting anonymous posters above the law might not be the best solution. Maybe someone can think up a way to preserve free speech and stop abuse without making more lawyers rich. In the meantime, I see no alternative to situations like the above.
I wonder how the chart on Internet usage by race and income can be particularly meaningful. Without adjusting for other variables such as education, geographic location, family status etc, this breakdown is not useful in determining a causal relationship. Beware collinearity: two variables may seem statistically related, but do not have a causal relationship. Collinearity can come from, to take one example, the proportion of the race having one-parent families: we know from elsewhere in the report that this is a strong determinant.
Mentioning the statistical disparity between blacks and whites here seems to be deliberate race-baiting. Considering that the "Other non Hispanic" group tops all other races in all categories, why beat up on the whites?
There are certainly difficulties in the current state of journalism, especially when journalists fail to uphold the ideals of traditional journalism: balance, accuracy, objectivity, detachment and the like. When the status quo is defective, we have every right to protest. That is what I see happening on the web as a whole. This may have the effect of causing some soul-searching among the media, as the WSJ editorial demonstrates.
Nevertheless, the protest is not the solution. As I asked before, is peer review really useful when you have 200 opinionated replies spewed in a matter of hours, and quickly forgotten the next day?/. demonstrates the usual difficulty with the Internet: information overload or more accurately, opinion overload. Much that is posted is opinion or speculation that is not any more verifiable than the original article. Worse, their value is zero in situations where indepth investigation or insider information is needed, or when few readers have competence to comment. The result is a "consensus" that is hopelessly subjective. More importantly, the opinions are only useful if you care enough about the issue to dig through the posts. Most of the time, I ignore the responses due to their sheer volume.
Let me suggest this:/. still gives useful news because the traditional news media still does a passeable job. As most of/.'s articles are links to articles from traditional media, its content's value builds on the editing and self-policing of traditional media. If the traditional media goes further down the tubes, so too would/.'s content. The factual content would be worthless, and all we have left is a lot of the usual open-source-is-good type of opinion.
The only viable solution are news sources -- traditional or otherwise -- that can gain public trust by exercising editorial oversight over original content with an eye towards accuracy, objectivity and balance./. has little original content. It generates too much noise, hiding a tree in a forest. This is not to say that it is not valuable. When I seek geek-news, I look up Slashdot. I read with the assumption that the sources it links to have exercised reasonable editorial oversight.
How about truth: something objective, verifiable and valuable? The loss of the ideal -- even if not completely attainable -- of objective reporting in favor of advocacy does a disservice to both journalism and truth. When traditional news media loses its desire to be objective, they lose trust and someone else takes over. This article is only a snapshot of something that has been going on for ages. The WSJ on July 15 had an excellent editorial on the New New Journalism that gives a good historical perspective.
In the 1830s, "staid newspapers" in NYC were attached to political parties. Enter the "penny newspapers": raw, colorful and independent. They settled down and became less sensational, but retained their nonpartisanship. In the 1890s, it was the "former pennies" that were being upstaged by newer papers, but the ensuing debate strengthened restraint and accuracy.
Today the poor state of the press calls for alternatives. The Internet models now, alas, poorly serves the cause of truth. Internet journalist Matt Drudge only claims an accuracy rate of 80%, for example. Peer review only works if all facts are in front of the peers, as in source code. Poorly informed peers make for poor reviews, as has already been pointed out. An orchestrated herd of anonymous cowards can easily bias the atmosphere. And how useful is having 200 comments to a casual browser?
The simple fact is that nothing substitutes a good editor. Slashdot's articles are useful, as another poster pointed out, because they care largely links to other news sources. Slashdot is already benefitting from traditional editorial control. Its only original content -- the Slashdot Effect and followup comments -- are rather lacking in quality. We still rely on traditional journalists for much of Slashdot's useful content. What do we want to see? As the Mindich's WSJ editorial puts it,
they are less partisan, more detached, more accurate. They understand the uses and misuses of balance. They appreciate the difference between opinion--their own in particular--and truth. Unlike self-styled Web journalists, with no distance between their thumb and the "enter" key, responsible journalists have publishers, editors, ethics and professional reputations built over time. In short, responsible journalists have better filters.
It is regrettable that many journalists fall short. Nevertheless, this is something that the new Internet models do not address. They only allow us to hear what we want to hear.
An aside: I am puzzled by what the article considers bias. Is the WSJ really biased in raising the issue of legal costs and a "legal aberration"? The NYT too said that the case is unusual and that Florida courts would be flooded.
Did anybody read that article? The WSJ did not say that MS invested in Transvirtual. It did say that they were "funded by Microsoft", which is accurate: "we approached them about making Kaffe run both Sun and M$ Java and they paid for the work to happen."
It did not say that Kaffe would run only on Windows, but that "the additions from Microsoft allow programmers to write Java software that will run only on the Windows operating system" (emphasis mine). This is accurate: with J/Direct, direct calls to win32 APIs is possible. Of course, this is only possible under Windows.
In other words, the concerns raised by the article are entirely legitimate. It is possible to write software for Kaffe that will only run on Windows, and that will not work with Sun's Java.
In case there are still people here who hope Mozilla will someday "beat" MS' Internet Explorer: it can never "win" the browser war.
Consider what being open source means. Suppose the Mozilla project does release a top-notch product. What is to prevent Microsoft from grabbing chunks of proven code (say, the layout engine) and stuffing it into their own browser? After all, open source code has to be fairly modular to facilitate wide scale collaboration. Microsoft could add their own features (SSL, for example) to build a more well-rounded product. For all we know, this could be happening right now. With open source, embracing and extending the competition has never been easier.
The winner will hopefully be consumers in that good, standards-compliant browser code, shared all round, will improve our browsing experience. Web developers may also benefit. However, Mozilla will always be at best a runnersup in the browser wars.
Can't use kfm much on KDE 1.1. It seems to cause the X server (not kfm itself) to leak memory. Besides, it is hard to figure out where to get the latest kfm without going through the CVS + rebuild routine. Regular RPMing of updates would be nice.
For one thing, it is nice to have everything on one CD, especially if you need to install on more than one machine. For another, it is a lot more than just KDE (preconfigured as the default desktop). Mandrake includes the latest XFree86 3.3.3.1, the latest kernel (2.2.1), the latest RedHat fixes, a bunch of additional KDE apps and big extras such as XEmacs and Wine. If you are installing on a fresh machine, it saves a lot of hassle. You could have answered your own question by reading the Mandrake announcement.
Slashdot Mirror
You live in a society where total isolation is impossible. There is a certain obligation, in any society, to show some consideration to other members. This includes attire and attitude. In the aftermath of the massacre, to wear similar attire as the murderers hurts and angers in the same way as partying at a funeral or wearing a swastika to a Holocaust memorial.
This is not a condemnation of your attire per se. The swastika was a harmless symbol before Nazi Germany. But the world's interpretation of symbols changes, and it is not unreasonable to be asked to show some consideration for its members. It is a matter of etiquette, and rudeness begets rudeness. That you would care only about your coat in the aftermath of the massacre might suggest a misplacement of priorities.
It is hard to trust reports like this, especially when it seems so poorly put together. So much emphasis was placed on one diary by one killer, and the conclusions seem stretched. Countless eyewitness reports are cavalierly dismissed, and major assertions are backed up by anonymous "sources".
When going against the grain, it pays to be credible. With something as poorly substantiated as this, an assertion of "the media got it all wrong!" deserves a retort of "my friend, you ARE the media".
A number of people here have taken issue with the article's claim that "While Linux can only run on a few kinds of computers, NetBSD can run on more than 22". The point being pointed out is what the OS can run on NOW, rather than what it might run on in the future.
There are a lot of promises made in the open source world, many of which remain unfulfilled. Frankly, a lot of stuff does not work and may never work. So it is not enough to say that there is active work on platform XYZ. Good intentions must become reality, preferably in this millennium. It is more appropriate to count the number of mature ports of Linux vs ???BSD.
Creationism is still banned from public schools.
Evolution, however, is not. The only thing that has changed is that they have merely stopped *requiring* that evolution be taught. That's all.
This is the fallacy of assuming something true, then finding evidence in harmony with it. Classification of animals long predate Darwin. All you have said is that whales, like all mammals, have something in common with all mammals. Well, duh. If not, why would we classify them as mammals? All you have proven is good taxonomy: similar animals are classified together. They are bound to have similarities. Why not?
... this has to be evolution." Well, gee: I guess the only alternative to random, unintelligent accidents is a Creator making random, unintelligent acts of creation.
It is no point arguing that "there is no theory besides macroevolution" etc. There are NO theories besides macroevolution for this purpose. The sheer dominance of evolution means that nothing else is even considered. You assume that there has to be a materialistic explanation for your problem, and grab the only one on the shelf. You may need to consider whether there is a problem to begin with.
Once again, I am reminded of how antecedant bias can cloud reasoning, particularly with Darwin. I remember his repeatedly reasoning in Origin of the Species (paraphrased): "gee, everything is too darn orderly to be the result of special creation
The argument really does not work. Dawkins pointed out examples of eyes in the animal kingdom, but they are entirely unrelated: none of them are thought to evolve from another. They are entirely different structures, not similar structures growing in complexity. The sheer complexity of the eye precludes this: half a lens is not better than none. There is no evidence that any evolution of the eye ever happened.
If evolution of the eye is possible, why do the many primitive eye forms in existence never evolve into more complex ones? Even Dawkins is baffled by (for example) the nautilus which in its hundreds of years of existence never evolved a lens despite having a retina that is "practically crying out for (this) particular simple change".
Your eye is still useful because it is a human eye -- defective, yes, but still a human eye in all its complexity. You can demonstrate, perhaps, evolution going backwards from fully to less functional. But going forwards, from an inferior to a superior and more complex eye, is yet to be demonstrated.
The argument from animal breeders is in fact self-refuting. For one thing, it is ironic to say that mutation caused by intelligent, deliberate design proves evolution: mutation by unintelligent, random accidents. It works better as an argument for intelligent, deliberate special creation. For another, animal breeders' experience is an argument against evolution.
Evolution assumes unlimited plasticity of mutation. What animal breeders discovered is that mutation is elastic. Oh, you can still breed dogs with all sorts of fur color or size, but they are still dogs. When they try to go too far, the offspring turn out either sterile or revert to the norm. Animal breeders have not been able to turn dogs, cats etc to another species.
Evolution by natural selection tends to be exaggerated. What is the point of arguing selection among existing variants? All this means is that we are looking at a form of selective extinction. No new species result from the observed selection. Without significant plasticity of mutation, macroevolution is not possible.
Your post betrays a problem that I mentioned in a separate post: evolution is supported more by antecedant bias than by empirical evidence. Where are the positive arguments for evolution? Don't just say "DNA" and omit the argument that explains why it proves evolution. It is as if you assumed evolution true in the absence of contrary evidence. Evolution benefits from a lack of scientific skepticism, and an ideology that pushes for its acceptance without question.
Alas, it is hard to rebut an argument so vague in details. To say that "the evidence for this is vast" or that "its breadth is staggering" without actually presenting the evidence (or even the argument) is not very convincing. It is proof by gesticulation (hand-waving).
The difficulty of arguing natural selection producing the human eye comes from its very complexity. Sure, we have optical organs in other animal species of varying effectiveness, but they are vastly different in structure from a human one. I have yet to see a path of mutation from something primitive to a human eye that is useful every step of the way.
Few people seem to have noticed that the going-ons in Kansas are
entirely consistent with the country's current understanding of the
separation between church and state. The understanding, it appears, is
that religion has no place being "established" or promoted by the
government. But that is exactly what happens when evolution is taught in
schools.
As Johnson pointed out in Darwinism on Trial, the evidence for evolution
is very shakey. It takes a tremendous amount of antecedant bias to
regard evolutionary theories with the confidence that we do today. The
popular platitudes have little substance. Survival of the fittest? On
examination, the phrase is really a tautology, a way of saying the same
thing twice. Something survives because it is fit. It is fit because it
survives. Duh. Natural selection? Many biological structures do not lend
themselves to gradual evolution in a way that enhances survival in
intermediate forms. The human eye is a complex structure that is vastly
different from more primitive eyes of other animals. An eye that almost
works, like code that almost works, is useless. The bird feather is an
intricate thing that offers no utility in intermediate forms (if any
ever existed). Fossil evidence? Even Darwin did not think fossils could
prove his theory. Tons of bones later, there is a poverty of evidence
towards gradual macroevolution. So now we get punctuated
equilibrium. First we are told that evolution happens so slow we cannot
see it. Now we are told that it happens so fast we cannot see it. The
constant: we cannot see it. It's deep magic.
Few theories have had so much effort thrown towards proving it true. Few
theories have been so closed to question, or so little rigor. Ridicule
and dogmatism suppress dissent. It is hard enough to make a strong
argument for evolutionary theories. It is even harder to do so to school
children. It should come to no surprise that teachers resort to teaching
evolution as dogma, ignoring all nuances or problems. The problem is
this: the situation reflects a bias towards secular humanism. When
science is held hostage to an ideology, then a case can be made that the
stuff taught at public schools is geared towards pushing a humanist
religion and/or the suppression of other religions. This, according to
the establishment clause, is unconstitutional.
I hope to see an improved debate arising out of this situation. Talking
about creationist "science" or bashing religion or the religious only
clouds the issue. Rather than to resort to dogmatism, ad hominen
attacks, ridicule or caricaturing arguments against theories of
evolution, perhaps we can see a debate based on the theories on their
own merits.
The last sentence of the Wired article is ironic, given its context: "Money provides comfort, flexibility, and pride, but all by itself, money can deliver only a shallow kind of happiness." The irony is in what we are told as the alternatives: "sports, drinking beer, and getting laid". Right. Replace "money" above with these alternatives and you still end up with something banal. "Beer/sex/sports provides ... only a shallow kind of happiness."
The vices provide momentary pleasure, but the result is banal. Whether the pleasure comes from greed or lust, there is a point in one's life where one wonders, "is that all there is?". There is a point where there is despair in mere pleasure.
Perhaps there is happiness to be found, a happiness found in love that transcend body parts, friendships that transcend business, and a God that transcends everything else. The Wired article merely sets one form of pleasure against another. Happiness is to be found elsewhere.
The article is indeed from the Wall Street Journal. The zdnet article has the WSJIE logo at the top, and the reporters are identified as WSJ reporters. Since the WSJ is given appropriate credit, I don't seem any problem with plagiarism.
In a properly run vote, the voter is not capable of committing illegal, malicious acts. You just put a check next to the choice you think best. True abuse of speech comes where a few malicious people cause harm out of proportion to their numbers. This is quite the opposite of democratic voting.
Anonymous voting -- when properly done -- is liberating. Anonymous posting abuse on the other hand allows tyranny by a malicious few.
Freedom to speak, after all, is not necessarily freedom from the consequences of that speech. In this case, the posters may have done something illegal. Is it really that bad that even in cyberspace we can take action against malicious and illegal acts?
It seems to me that putting anonymous posters above the law might not be the best solution. Maybe someone can think up a way to preserve free speech and stop abuse without making more lawyers rich. In the meantime, I see no alternative to situations like the above.
I wonder how the chart on Internet usage by race and income can be particularly meaningful. Without adjusting for other variables such as education, geographic location, family status etc, this breakdown is not useful in determining a causal relationship. Beware collinearity: two variables may seem statistically related, but do not have a causal relationship. Collinearity can come from, to take one example, the proportion of the race having one-parent families: we know from elsewhere in the report that this is a strong determinant.
Mentioning the statistical disparity between blacks and whites here seems to be deliberate race-baiting. Considering that the "Other non Hispanic" group tops all other races in all categories, why beat up on the whites?
There are certainly difficulties in the current state of journalism, especially when journalists fail to uphold the ideals of traditional journalism: balance, accuracy, objectivity, detachment and the like. When the status quo is defective, we have every right to protest. That is what I see happening on the web as a whole. This may have the effect of causing some soul-searching among the media, as the WSJ editorial demonstrates.
/. demonstrates the usual difficulty with the Internet: information overload or more accurately, opinion overload. Much that is posted is opinion or speculation that is not any more verifiable than the original article. Worse, their value is zero in situations where indepth investigation or insider information is needed, or when few readers have competence to comment. The result is a "consensus" that is hopelessly subjective. More importantly, the opinions are only useful if you care enough about the issue to dig through the posts. Most of the time, I ignore the responses due to their sheer volume.
/. still gives useful news because the traditional news media still does a passeable job. As most of /.'s articles are links to articles from traditional media, its content's value builds on the editing and self-policing of traditional media. If the traditional media goes further down the tubes, so too would /.'s content. The factual content would be worthless, and all we have left is a lot of the usual open-source-is-good type of opinion.
/. has little original content. It generates too much noise, hiding a tree in a forest. This is not to say that it is not valuable. When I seek geek-news, I look up Slashdot. I read with the assumption that the sources it links to have exercised reasonable editorial oversight.
Nevertheless, the protest is not the solution. As I asked before, is peer review really useful when you have 200 opinionated replies spewed in a matter of hours, and quickly forgotten the next day?
Let me suggest this:
The only viable solution are news sources -- traditional or otherwise -- that can gain public trust by exercising editorial oversight over original content with an eye towards accuracy, objectivity and balance.
Looks like my attempt to include the WSJ editorial URL did not work. My apologies. Please disregard. It was:
? id=SB931991332620916955.djm&template=paste d-1999-07-15.tmpl
http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi
How about truth: something objective, verifiable and valuable? The loss of the ideal -- even if not completely attainable -- of objective reporting in favor of advocacy does a disservice to both journalism and truth. When traditional news media loses its desire to be objective, they lose trust and someone else takes over. This article is only a snapshot of something that has been going on for ages. The WSJ on July 15 had an excellent editorial on the New New Journalism that gives a good historical perspective.
In the 1830s, "staid newspapers" in NYC were attached to political parties. Enter the "penny newspapers": raw, colorful and independent. They settled down and became less sensational, but retained their nonpartisanship. In the 1890s, it was the "former pennies" that were being upstaged by newer papers, but the ensuing debate strengthened restraint and accuracy.
Today the poor state of the press calls for alternatives. The Internet models now, alas, poorly serves the cause of truth. Internet journalist Matt Drudge only claims an accuracy rate of 80%, for example. Peer review only works if all facts are in front of the peers, as in source code. Poorly informed peers make for poor reviews, as has already been pointed out. An orchestrated herd of anonymous cowards can easily bias the atmosphere. And how useful is having 200 comments to a casual browser?
The simple fact is that nothing substitutes a good editor. Slashdot's articles are useful, as another poster pointed out, because they care largely links to other news sources. Slashdot is already benefitting from traditional editorial control. Its only original content -- the Slashdot Effect and followup comments -- are rather lacking in quality. We still rely on traditional journalists for much of Slashdot's useful content. What do we want to see? As the Mindich's WSJ editorial puts it,
they are less partisan, more detached, more accurate. They understand the uses and misuses of balance. They appreciate the difference between opinion--their own in particular--and truth. Unlike self-styled Web journalists, with no distance between their thumb and the "enter" key, responsible journalists have publishers, editors, ethics and professional reputations built over time. In short, responsible journalists have better filters.
It is regrettable that many journalists fall short. Nevertheless, this is something that the new Internet models do not address. They only allow us to hear what we want to hear.
An aside: I am puzzled by what the article considers bias. Is the WSJ really biased in raising the issue of legal costs and a "legal aberration"? The NYT too said that the case is unusual and that Florida courts would be flooded.
Look up the Sahara or Safari PC systems at:
http://www.interpromicro.com
Did anybody read that article? The WSJ did not say that MS invested in Transvirtual. It did say that they were "funded by Microsoft", which is accurate: "we approached them about making Kaffe run both Sun and M$ Java and they paid for the work to happen."
It did not say that Kaffe would run only on Windows, but that "the additions from Microsoft allow programmers to write Java software that will run only on the Windows operating system" (emphasis mine). This is accurate: with J/Direct, direct calls to win32 APIs is possible. Of course, this is only possible under Windows.
In other words, the concerns raised by the article are entirely legitimate. It is possible to write software for Kaffe that will only run on Windows, and that will not work with Sun's Java.
In case there are still people here who hope Mozilla will someday "beat" MS' Internet Explorer: it can never "win" the browser war.
Consider what being open source means. Suppose the Mozilla project does release a top-notch product. What is to prevent Microsoft from grabbing chunks of proven code (say, the layout engine) and stuffing it into their own browser? After all, open source code has to be fairly modular to facilitate wide scale collaboration. Microsoft could add their own features (SSL, for example) to build a more well-rounded product. For all we know, this could be happening right now. With open source, embracing and extending the competition has never been easier.
The winner will hopefully be consumers in that good, standards-compliant browser code, shared all round, will improve our browsing experience. Web developers may also benefit. However, Mozilla will always be at best a runnersup in the browser wars.
Chris
Can't use kfm much on KDE 1.1. It seems to cause the X server (not kfm itself) to leak memory. Besides, it is hard to figure out where to get the latest kfm without going through the CVS + rebuild routine. Regular RPMing of updates would be nice.
Chris
For one thing, it is nice to have everything on one CD, especially if you need to install on more than one machine. For another, it is a lot more than just KDE (preconfigured as the default desktop). Mandrake includes the latest XFree86 3.3.3.1, the latest kernel (2.2.1), the latest RedHat fixes, a bunch of additional KDE apps and big extras such as XEmacs and Wine. If you are installing on a fresh machine, it saves a lot of hassle. You could have answered your own question by reading the Mandrake announcement.