When a biologist says "simple" people take it for granted that the opposite is "advanced", which is wrong.
And yet somehow, there remains *some* quality that while intangible and difficult to pinpoint, most definitely exists and constitutes what we would ordinarily intuitively characterize as "advanced". How odd.
Of *course* such a thing as "advanced" life exists; if it did not, we would all just look around puzzled when somebody used the term, and funnily enough, we don't --- in fact amazingly (for a concept that you say doesn't exist), we all know *exactly* what somebody means when they speak that way. Weird hey? Bringing up some domain-specific use of terminology does not negate that at all, and sorry, does not inherently mean that you have a higher level of understanding of life than the "mere" mortals around you. In fact, pretending the concept does not exist, when it does, is far more harmful to the discourse; instead, it would be more useful to try to find a systematic definition for what qualities our intuition is analyzing, and then rationally judging the validity of that, and, if Mr Pedantic really prefers, coming up with a new word for it.
There is most cetainly a difference between "complex" and what we typically call "advanced", because it's possible for something to be *both* complex and un-advanced (primitive / stupid) - therefore your attempt to claim that the word we're looking for is "complex", is incorrect. And no, "advanced" is not subjective; it is possible to objectively say that we are more "advanced" than bacteria, and it doesn't just mean "more complex".
Bigger life forms may be more complex in the sense of having more parts, or possessing intelligence, but they are not more advanced in any meaningful way.
Highly evolved intelligence is not "more advanced in any meaningful way"? You must either know a different English to the one I'm familiar with, or live in a different Universe. You're just playing around with semantics in erudite language but saying nothing really. How can you claim what constitutes "advanced" anyway, are you God? You don't even know what our sentience means, nobody does, yet when you consider the Dawkins quote that "We are the Universe, thinking", and then together with that consider the very high possibilities of advanced machine and collective intelligences in our near future, you realise that something far, far more profound is underway than what you get with mere plants and bacteria.
The majority of politicians are in it for money and power, just like the majority of businesspeople;
Don't pretend these two are equivalent though; unlike "businesspeople", government bureaucrats are assured of continuing to receive a salary regardless of whether they actually deliver, or just sit on their thumbs for a few years. Businesspeople also don't take money by force. Businesspeople also are forced to invest their money wisely in ways that helps others (i.e. that generate sales), because otherwise they soon wouldn't have any money left.
we should accept that, because it's not changing any time soon.
That's the stupidest statement I've heard in a very long time. Hey, let's all just "accept" anything that isn't going to change anytime soon, regardless of how bad or damaging it is... that makes so much sense. No, let's not "accept" it, let's work hard to keep it in check, not just hand people with the power to take our money even more power and money just because it's always going to exist.
Yet another "strategy board" to waste huge chunks of our money to sit around and pretend to work, under the guise of helping. Do we really believe amazing advances are going to come of this, or are we all just going to have forgotten about this a few years from now when some or other new "strategic initiative" is launched, while we fall further behind the East? Leave the money in the hands of the companies who stand to benefit from this, and set up true free market competition - if it's really good for the companies, they will not only do it themselves, but spend the money far more efficiently, because unlike these bureaucrats, they aren't assured of a future salary regardless of whether or not they produce anything at all. That's basically how we got ahead in the first place.
No, it's not - by incredibly simple logic, two "backups" must not be susceptible to the same potential *event*, even if it seems a somewhat unlikely event. Otherwise it of course defeats the entire purpose of a real backup, as there is no true redundancy (you need "in the event of X, Y will be safe"... if your system has "for some very possible values of X, Y will also not be safe" then NO you have not made a proper backup - it is NOT "the thought that counts" - "well at least I tried to make some sort of backup" is not "I made a backup" and won't bring your data back). Two servers on the Internet, even if on opposite sides of the country, may both be vulnerable to, say, an exploit that affects both (as here). Two servers in the same building are both susceptible to theft or fire or earthquake/flood/hurricane etc.. You get the idea.
Your suggestion is fine for *some* scenarios (especially if the servers are in different parts of the country *and*, say, use different operating systems) - but should still not be considered a "real" backup - just a convenience.
Obviously you get "potential events" that will wipe out all your backups, e.g. our sun going supernova, or all-out global thermonuclear war - but as a general rule, any event that catastrophic is probably not going to leave enough people (or industrialized economy) alive to care about backups anymore.
So, in the AC's world, the entire underpinnings of ocean circulation can be incorrect, yet the conclusions are NOT to be questioned.
Perhaps that's because the fact that the planet is getting warmer is, um, a *fact*. We measure that. This doesn't call that "conclusion" into question; at best it implies we have even less understanding of why the planet is getting hotter, which suggests we need *less* calm, not more. Our temperature measurements aren't wrong, and still remain valid.
But that all being said, I'd try and sell Laptops via a "Aspirational Lifestyle" (e.g. "You're a 20~ successful, confident, and stylish women. This is the laptop for you.").
That's also actually a stereotype; funny how some stereotypes are "bad" while others are "good". Pushing the agenda that women should all be career types stigmatizes the women who actually want to be family women.
Dell probably spent millions on research figuring out what they thought was the magic bullet in marketing a laptop to women. Focus groups, design teams of women, and they might have even found things that a majority of their women customers are interested in.
More likely, some manager probably decided "we should market to women", gave the mandate to a marketing firm, who probably thought "this is stupid" but then sucked their thumbs and tried to come up with some things that fulfilled the paper mandate of "marketing to women". Making it much more subtle might not have done so.
Stereotypes are actually almost always valid, and usually far more generally than we care to admit in our overly-PC times. But *marketing to the stereotype* is still demeaning not because it's necessarily factually incorrect, but because it's so *obvious* and patronising - *individuals* remain complex, and like to think of themselves as complex individuals, even when they do conform to stereotypes. In other words, a woman might love pink, but marketing that says "hey we made our product pink so we think you will love it because you're a woman" is offensive even to someone who loves pink because it *reduces* her to a stereotype and regards her as a simple-minded "ooh, see pink, must buy" creature, which isn't the truth. The average woman doesn't want a laptop "because it's pink and cute and Dell gave her dieting tips"; she wants it to do accounting for her business or writing invoices for customers or preparing reports for work etc. - if it happens to be pink, bonus.
My last gf loved pink, incidentally, almost everything she bought was either pink or red.
What does it even mean to "force" a "label" on someone? This is reification if I ever saw it. You're speaking in metaphors, as if it's some real negative action being performed on some victims.
And that fifth girlfriend it didn't describe? And the solid minority that don't want that label? The 10% or whatever that have been trying to shake that which society has tried to force on them because it suits everyone else's needs?
Who cares? Is someone getting hurt? I have absolutely no interest in watching sports. But I feel absolutely no compunction to "shake" any so-called "label" (aw boo hoo I'm getting *labelled*! waaaah!) stemming from that classic male stereotype. The stereotype is based on truth, but somehow I don't feel oppressed, boxed in, limited or insulted when people regularly assume (and they do) that I "should" like doing that just because I have a dick. I recognize my freedom, so I just keep doing whatever I want, in fact it's really none of my business to force others to behave how I think they should behave. If one fifth of women don't like the way the rest behave, they don't have a right to force the others to behave differently. If women assume I'm as vapid as most other men, I really don't care.
Mod parent up. These guys made mistakes, but well paid admins for enormous organizations make these same mistakes.
Sorry, but there are some types of mistakes you "Just. Don't. Make.". Like 'changing lanes without looking'. Like 'accidentally getting your girlfriend pregnant'. Like 'amputating the wrong leg'. And 'not sensibly backing up important data'.
Some things in life you best learn through making mistakes - but not everything. You don't *need* to "learn from your mistakes" how not to knock up your girl. And you don't need to "learn from your mistakes" what proper backups involve. It does not take a genius, you only need three brain cells to rub together.
And if you're a paid professional whose job is to do this right, then sorry, "oops I made a mistake" is really criminal negligence. Or when a surgeon operates on you, are you also cool with it if he just makes a few mistakes? What, you think data isn't as important as that? Guess you feel that way when it's *not your data*... talk to me again when you own a medium-sized business that needs their data backed up.
I don't think 'olol' is going to impress anyone whos work was just wiped out by their incompetence.
I *fully* agree with you. Just one point though; the creators of the data should, likewise, also have their own backups;) If you've spent months creating some gorgeous terrain or whatever, if you have half a brain you're also not going to trust that merely uploading it to some community website is going to constitute a "backup".
Hopefully most data creators who had decent data will be able to re-upload their creations. I would guess some of the biggest fans might even have extensive local copies of the data.
Removable hard disks are cheap these days. No excuse not to backup.
So if it was a minor natural disaster that destroyed the data, tell me which asshole do you shoot?
Sorry, but anyone who doesn't properly back up 13 years of data is a bloody idiot, and yes it is their fault, because if you are in charge of that much data, it is your job and responsibility to do proper backups. It doesn't even take a genius to think up a few scary "what if" scenarios, nor does it take more than a few seconds, and it only takes a few minutes of Googling to learn the obvious basics.
In fact, it is people like this who *purposely* tempt fate who should be held criminally negligent, especially if it's a business.
An analogy might be a hospital that decides to tempt fate by not having generators. If you go in for some complex surgery, and you die because the power cuts out and there were no backup generators, you would say it's the hospital's fault, regardless of whether the power cut was caused by natural disaster or somebody malicious... because a hospital should anticipate such things, and, like backups, the cost of anticipating and installing generators is miniscule compared to the disasterous alternative. To throw your hands up in the air and say "oh well, sh-t just happens that we can't control for, and people who damage electricity cables should be shot" is just a third-world mentality... there's a reason hospitals have generators. The difference between animals and evolved man, is that man is capable of anticipating his potential futures and adapting his environment to mitigate accordingly. Animals sit and wait for bad stuff to happen, and whine about how it "shouldn't have happened" when it does.
Yes we seldom put enough thought into what we do, but on the other hand, it's how we learn. Rabbits in Australia were a disaster, but we learned a lot.
So the virus is found in the poor countryside of Mexico...
And someone thinks it was created somewhere in a lab?
I've heard some far out conspiracy theories, but creating a mild flu in a lab and then transported out to Colillacarajo, Mexico? That's just dumb.
Yes, because it would make far more sense to release it right near the lab, of course... nobody would *ever* guess *then*. Also, it makes much more sense to release it in a country far better prepared to not only contain any outbreak rapidly, but also far better able to analyse the genetic make-up and origins, in addition to analysing the spread of the disease for further clues on its origins.
Actually, if you think about it for more than five seconds, if you *are* part of such a "conspiracy", it makes perfectly logical sense to purposely release it in the middle of a pig farming community in Mexico, and would be incredibly stupid to release it in your own backyard.
It's slightly dumb, but it's only as spectacularly dumb as you suggest if you honestly think he could've reasonably expected to be charged with a crime like this as a result. I think it's obvious that no reasonable person would expect that, and most people aren't aware of such laws either. It's only easy for you to see that because of the context you're reading it in, where you happen to know the harshness of the consequences.
What this law says is that if your company has a policy somewhere in its fine print that you can't access, say, Slashdot from a work computer, and you are caught accessing Slashdot, you can be charged with hacking as a crime. Does that really seem reasonable to you? I don't think so, I don't think any sane person thinks you'd be that much of a dumbass just for reading Slashdot on a work computer, but that is *exactly* what this law allows.
Obviously a law like this could be abused by a boss who just doesn't like you, or wants to extort anything from you in any other way (e.g. prevent you from leaving).
Slashdot Mirror
That people implicate better or higher is the mistake, as you already put it correctly.
Nope, sorry, still not a mistake. Only a "mistake" from the pure genetics / biology viewpoint. But that isn't the only one that exists.
When a biologist says "simple" people take it for granted that the opposite is "advanced", which is wrong.
And yet somehow, there remains *some* quality that while intangible and difficult to pinpoint, most definitely exists and constitutes what we would ordinarily intuitively characterize as "advanced". How odd.
Of *course* such a thing as "advanced" life exists; if it did not, we would all just look around puzzled when somebody used the term, and funnily enough, we don't --- in fact amazingly (for a concept that you say doesn't exist), we all know *exactly* what somebody means when they speak that way. Weird hey? Bringing up some domain-specific use of terminology does not negate that at all, and sorry, does not inherently mean that you have a higher level of understanding of life than the "mere" mortals around you. In fact, pretending the concept does not exist, when it does, is far more harmful to the discourse; instead, it would be more useful to try to find a systematic definition for what qualities our intuition is analyzing, and then rationally judging the validity of that, and, if Mr Pedantic really prefers, coming up with a new word for it.
There is most cetainly a difference between "complex" and what we typically call "advanced", because it's possible for something to be *both* complex and un-advanced (primitive / stupid) - therefore your attempt to claim that the word we're looking for is "complex", is incorrect. And no, "advanced" is not subjective; it is possible to objectively say that we are more "advanced" than bacteria, and it doesn't just mean "more complex".
Bigger life forms may be more complex in the sense of having more parts, or possessing intelligence, but they are not more advanced in any meaningful way.
Highly evolved intelligence is not "more advanced in any meaningful way"? You must either know a different English to the one I'm familiar with, or live in a different Universe. You're just playing around with semantics in erudite language but saying nothing really. How can you claim what constitutes "advanced" anyway, are you God? You don't even know what our sentience means, nobody does, yet when you consider the Dawkins quote that "We are the Universe, thinking", and then together with that consider the very high possibilities of advanced machine and collective intelligences in our near future, you realise that something far, far more profound is underway than what you get with mere plants and bacteria.
The OP is just a classic Internet Libertarian
Lol, what is an "Internet Libertarian"? Can you get "Internet Socialists" and "Internet Communists" too? That doesn't even make sense.
The majority of politicians are in it for money and power, just like the majority of businesspeople;
Don't pretend these two are equivalent though; unlike "businesspeople", government bureaucrats are assured of continuing to receive a salary regardless of whether they actually deliver, or just sit on their thumbs for a few years. Businesspeople also don't take money by force. Businesspeople also are forced to invest their money wisely in ways that helps others (i.e. that generate sales), because otherwise they soon wouldn't have any money left.
we should accept that, because it's not changing any time soon.
That's the stupidest statement I've heard in a very long time. Hey, let's all just "accept" anything that isn't going to change anytime soon, regardless of how bad or damaging it is ... that makes so much sense. No, let's not "accept" it, let's work hard to keep it in check, not just hand people with the power to take our money even more power and money just because it's always going to exist.
Yet another "strategy board" to waste huge chunks of our money to sit around and pretend to work, under the guise of helping. Do we really believe amazing advances are going to come of this, or are we all just going to have forgotten about this a few years from now when some or other new "strategic initiative" is launched, while we fall further behind the East? Leave the money in the hands of the companies who stand to benefit from this, and set up true free market competition - if it's really good for the companies, they will not only do it themselves, but spend the money far more efficiently, because unlike these bureaucrats, they aren't assured of a future salary regardless of whether or not they produce anything at all. That's basically how we got ahead in the first place.
No, it's not - by incredibly simple logic, two "backups" must not be susceptible to the same potential *event*, even if it seems a somewhat unlikely event. Otherwise it of course defeats the entire purpose of a real backup, as there is no true redundancy (you need "in the event of X, Y will be safe" ... if your system has "for some very possible values of X, Y will also not be safe" then NO you have not made a proper backup - it is NOT "the thought that counts" - "well at least I tried to make some sort of backup" is not "I made a backup" and won't bring your data back). Two servers on the Internet, even if on opposite sides of the country, may both be vulnerable to, say, an exploit that affects both (as here). Two servers in the same building are both susceptible to theft or fire or earthquake/flood/hurricane etc.. You get the idea.
Your suggestion is fine for *some* scenarios (especially if the servers are in different parts of the country *and*, say, use different operating systems) - but should still not be considered a "real" backup - just a convenience.
Obviously you get "potential events" that will wipe out all your backups, e.g. our sun going supernova, or all-out global thermonuclear war - but as a general rule, any event that catastrophic is probably not going to leave enough people (or industrialized economy) alive to care about backups anymore.
So, in the AC's world, the entire underpinnings of ocean circulation can be incorrect, yet the conclusions are NOT to be questioned.
Perhaps that's because the fact that the planet is getting warmer is, um, a *fact*. We measure that. This doesn't call that "conclusion" into question; at best it implies we have even less understanding of why the planet is getting hotter, which suggests we need *less* calm, not more. Our temperature measurements aren't wrong, and still remain valid.
But that all being said, I'd try and sell Laptops via a "Aspirational Lifestyle" (e.g. "You're a 20~ successful, confident, and stylish women. This is the laptop for you.").
That's also actually a stereotype; funny how some stereotypes are "bad" while others are "good". Pushing the agenda that women should all be career types stigmatizes the women who actually want to be family women.
Actually I love your ideas, I think it would be hilarious to implement some of your proposed sites! (Perhaps as parody ;)
You need a "detailed sociological study" to realise the majority of men dig sport? Where have you been living?
Here on the geek fringes it's much less true, but we're a tiny minority.
Dell probably spent millions on research figuring out what they thought was the magic bullet in marketing a laptop to women. Focus groups, design teams of women, and they might have even found things that a majority of their women customers are interested in.
More likely, some manager probably decided "we should market to women", gave the mandate to a marketing firm, who probably thought "this is stupid" but then sucked their thumbs and tried to come up with some things that fulfilled the paper mandate of "marketing to women". Making it much more subtle might not have done so.
The reason this is stupid is because none of those things really have anything to do with a computer.
The reason this is offensive is because it shows how dell thought women were too stupid to recognize this.
Bingo.
Stereotypes are actually almost always valid, and usually far more generally than we care to admit in our overly-PC times. But *marketing to the stereotype* is still demeaning not because it's necessarily factually incorrect, but because it's so *obvious* and patronising - *individuals* remain complex, and like to think of themselves as complex individuals, even when they do conform to stereotypes. In other words, a woman might love pink, but marketing that says "hey we made our product pink so we think you will love it because you're a woman" is offensive even to someone who loves pink because it *reduces* her to a stereotype and regards her as a simple-minded "ooh, see pink, must buy" creature, which isn't the truth. The average woman doesn't want a laptop "because it's pink and cute and Dell gave her dieting tips"; she wants it to do accounting for her business or writing invoices for customers or preparing reports for work etc. - if it happens to be pink, bonus.
My last gf loved pink, incidentally, almost everything she bought was either pink or red.
What does it even mean to "force" a "label" on someone? This is reification if I ever saw it. You're speaking in metaphors, as if it's some real negative action being performed on some victims.
And that fifth girlfriend it didn't describe? And the solid minority that don't want that label? The 10% or whatever that have been trying to shake that which society has tried to force on them because it suits everyone else's needs?
Who cares? Is someone getting hurt? I have absolutely no interest in watching sports. But I feel absolutely no compunction to "shake" any so-called "label" (aw boo hoo I'm getting *labelled*! waaaah!) stemming from that classic male stereotype. The stereotype is based on truth, but somehow I don't feel oppressed, boxed in, limited or insulted when people regularly assume (and they do) that I "should" like doing that just because I have a dick. I recognize my freedom, so I just keep doing whatever I want, in fact it's really none of my business to force others to behave how I think they should behave. If one fifth of women don't like the way the rest behave, they don't have a right to force the others to behave differently. If women assume I'm as vapid as most other men, I really don't care.
Just like I know I'm not like all the other computer nerd programmers! In my case it's true!
Mod parent up. These guys made mistakes, but well paid admins for enormous organizations make these same mistakes.
Sorry, but there are some types of mistakes you "Just. Don't. Make.". Like 'changing lanes without looking'. Like 'accidentally getting your girlfriend pregnant'. Like 'amputating the wrong leg'. And 'not sensibly backing up important data'.
Some things in life you best learn through making mistakes - but not everything. You don't *need* to "learn from your mistakes" how not to knock up your girl. And you don't need to "learn from your mistakes" what proper backups involve. It does not take a genius, you only need three brain cells to rub together.
And if you're a paid professional whose job is to do this right, then sorry, "oops I made a mistake" is really criminal negligence. Or when a surgeon operates on you, are you also cool with it if he just makes a few mistakes? What, you think data isn't as important as that? Guess you feel that way when it's *not your data* ... talk to me again when you own a medium-sized business that needs their data backed up.
I don't think 'olol' is going to impress anyone whos work was just wiped out by their incompetence.
I *fully* agree with you. Just one point though; the creators of the data should, likewise, also have their own backups ;) If you've spent months creating some gorgeous terrain or whatever, if you have half a brain you're also not going to trust that merely uploading it to some community website is going to constitute a "backup".
Hopefully most data creators who had decent data will be able to re-upload their creations. I would guess some of the biggest fans might even have extensive local copies of the data.
Removable hard disks are cheap these days. No excuse not to backup.
Perhaps if the jokes were funny it would help.
So if it was a minor natural disaster that destroyed the data, tell me which asshole do you shoot?
Sorry, but anyone who doesn't properly back up 13 years of data is a bloody idiot, and yes it is their fault, because if you are in charge of that much data, it is your job and responsibility to do proper backups. It doesn't even take a genius to think up a few scary "what if" scenarios, nor does it take more than a few seconds, and it only takes a few minutes of Googling to learn the obvious basics.
In fact, it is people like this who *purposely* tempt fate who should be held criminally negligent, especially if it's a business.
An analogy might be a hospital that decides to tempt fate by not having generators. If you go in for some complex surgery, and you die because the power cuts out and there were no backup generators, you would say it's the hospital's fault, regardless of whether the power cut was caused by natural disaster or somebody malicious ... because a hospital should anticipate such things, and, like backups, the cost of anticipating and installing generators is miniscule compared to the disasterous alternative. To throw your hands up in the air and say "oh well, sh-t just happens that we can't control for, and people who damage electricity cables should be shot" is just a third-world mentality ... there's a reason hospitals have generators. The difference between animals and evolved man, is that man is capable of anticipating his potential futures and adapting his environment to mitigate accordingly. Animals sit and wait for bad stuff to happen, and whine about how it "shouldn't have happened" when it does.
Yes we seldom put enough thought into what we do, but on the other hand, it's how we learn. Rabbits in Australia were a disaster, but we learned a lot.
So the virus is found in the poor countryside of Mexico...
And someone thinks it was created somewhere in a lab?
I've heard some far out conspiracy theories, but creating a mild flu in a lab and then transported out to Colillacarajo, Mexico? That's just dumb.
Yes, because it would make far more sense to release it right near the lab, of course ... nobody would *ever* guess *then*. Also, it makes much more sense to release it in a country far better prepared to not only contain any outbreak rapidly, but also far better able to analyse the genetic make-up and origins, in addition to analysing the spread of the disease for further clues on its origins.
Actually, if you think about it for more than five seconds, if you *are* part of such a "conspiracy", it makes perfectly logical sense to purposely release it in the middle of a pig farming community in Mexico, and would be incredibly stupid to release it in your own backyard.
True, but to be fair, you could also have said that about most the big corps that have collapsed over the last year or two before they went belly-up.
It's slightly dumb, but it's only as spectacularly dumb as you suggest if you honestly think he could've reasonably expected to be charged with a crime like this as a result. I think it's obvious that no reasonable person would expect that, and most people aren't aware of such laws either. It's only easy for you to see that because of the context you're reading it in, where you happen to know the harshness of the consequences.
What this law says is that if your company has a policy somewhere in its fine print that you can't access, say, Slashdot from a work computer, and you are caught accessing Slashdot, you can be charged with hacking as a crime. Does that really seem reasonable to you? I don't think so, I don't think any sane person thinks you'd be that much of a dumbass just for reading Slashdot on a work computer, but that is *exactly* what this law allows.
Obviously a law like this could be abused by a boss who just doesn't like you, or wants to extort anything from you in any other way (e.g. prevent you from leaving).