t's not his equation. It's the Dirac's equation, arguably among the most important discoveries of 20th century physics.
The poster presented the equation with tbe belief that it be included on the list because it is "Said by Hotson to be the Equation of Everything.", or so I interpreted his post. In this I could have been wrong.
That's not too hard to believe. In fact, I'm *sure* science is wrong, and you should be too. Until we have a complete and consistent explanation for all phenomena, any model we use is incomplete at best.
And I'm pretty sure you're very adept at splitting hairs. Hotson isn't just claiming minor holes in existing theory. He has the belief that the entire scientific establishment got a major portion of fundamental physics completely wrong, despite massive experimental evidence which largely validates these theories, while at the same time being totally unqualified (based on a lack of a formal education in the area) to make this sort of judgement.
This would be akin to me saying "Hey, those guys researching cancer got it totally wrong! See, I was in a first year biology class and I asked <insert question here>, and I didn't believe their answer, even though I don't have the knowledge to make that sort of judgement, and so I came up with this theory that totally invalidates 50 years of work in the area! Now, sure, the only thing I know about medicine is a few undergrad courses in bio and a really cool show I saw on the Discovery Channel, but I figure that's enough to propose a theory that goes against everything dicovered by many more knowledgeable people than me. Oh, and BTW, my theory also provides evidence for telepathy, alien abductions, and Bigfoot."
Most people are convinced they are right, until proven otherwise.
Yeah, for example I'm convinced you don't know how to make a useful argument. There's one problem, though: I'm not qualified to make that judgement. Why? Because I don't know you or your posting history. Therefore, what I have to say regarding your ability to debate is largely immaterial and should be ignored by any logical individual unless additional supporting evidence is provided.
The only qualifications necessary for a science are a logical argument supported by facts.
Agreed. But if you don't have the necessary education, and hence understanding, to put forward a valid, logical argument, then that significantly reduces the weight of any such argument that is put forth. And, guess what, a university degree is pretty decent evidence that someone has acquired the necessary knowledge.
No kidding! Damn Clinton, doing what people wanted. Bush, OTOH? *That's* a president. Popular opinion be damned! Just push on, ignore the public, ignore the experts, ignore the facts, and most importantly, ignore the outcomes... just keep on truckin'! I mean, since when was the government supposed to represent those who elected them? Or, worse yet, make decisions based on public preference combined with scientific fact? That's just ridiculous!
Umm, by the very definition of that presentation, I am not, by any means, a "pathological disbeliever". If this individual was, say, qualified in the field, I might pay a little more attention to his claims. If he was able to successfully test his theories with experiments, I would most certainly be willing to hear him out. However, until he's either 1) achieved a doctorate in Physics, thus proving that he's competant enough to question fundamental building blocks of theoretical physics, or 2) proved his theories with valid, repeatable experiments, I will continue to be highly skeptical, as you should you.
Frankly, it sounds to me like you should try to be a little *more* skeptical. After all, you're putting an awful lot of stock into the claims of someone who can't even earn a degree in the area (or even a related area... AFAICT, he doesn't have a degree of *any kind*!) he's claiming to study.
Yeah, except one of Debian's *huge* selling points (to me, anyway) is the ability to move an installed system from one release to the next with virtually no problems. This is only possible because Debian is incredibly anal about ensuring that each and every package will upgrade cleanly. This, unfortunately, means that minor packages like Abuse, or anything else you can think of, could block the release, because otherwise, someone's box somewhere could suddenly break after an upgrade.
He could submit it to one or more legitimate scientific journals. Or he could present the work to a qualified physicist and try to get them on board. Or he could actually, you know, work toward a physics degree, in which case he could use this work his PhD dissertation.
or tested
You said it yourself, he could attempt to develop experiments to test his theories. And as long as these experiments can be repeated, there should be no problems.
Oh, and FYI cold fusion has done some remarkable progress those last 15 years
If, by progress, you mean it's been largely debunked, I couldn't agree more!;)
Oh yes, you're right. We should burn him at the stake.
I never said that. However, his work does *not*, in any way, qualify for a spot on the list of Greatest Equations Ever. The fact is, this person is 1) convinced science is wrong, 2) convinced he knows the answer, and 3) isn't *qualified* to decide either of these things. So, until his work is either 1) peer reviewed and validated or 2) verified experimentally, and these experiments are repeated by other, reputable scientists, his work will continue to lack credibility, and so will be ignored.
It'd be interesting to see what experiments he comes up with to validate the theory.
Agreed, and I'd love for him to come up with such experiments, and for others to validate his work. But I ain't holdin' my breath, any more than I'm expecting a breakthrough in cold fusion or gravity shielding.
Pfft... the guy isn't even a physicist. Meanwhile, he goes on to write about how the entire physics establishment fscked up, and how he is, apparently, the only one smart enough to realize the Real Truth. If this doesn't fit the definition of crackpot "science", I don't know what does...
Not quite. ObjectiveC requires the programmer to spend more effort handling memory management and distinguishes between objects and primitives.
OTOH, they are more similar than different. Weak encapsulation. Message passing as the model for object interaction. Dynamic binding. Incredible introspection capabilities. The list goes on. Basically, ObjC is as close to SmallTalk+C as you can possibly get.
Also, the typical Smalltalk class system seems much more orthogonal. ObjectiveC frameworks...
Bah, this entire section of your post isn't even about ObjectiveC "the language". All your issues are with the OpenStep APIs. Don't confuse the two. Agreed, the OpenStep has some oddities in it, and it's not *nearly* as nice as the standard SmallTalk object model, but that's not the fault of the language... you could create equally bad APIs in SmallTalk if you wanted to.
Ahh, I wasn't aware that they came to their senses and "undeprecated" import. Thank gawd... apparently, I need to upgrade my Objective-C compiler, though.:)
I built it from source, which was routine, but non trivial.
Well, my first question is, what was non-trivial about it? You download four packages (gnustep-make, gnustep-base, gnustep-gui, gnustep-backend) and build them (in the order I listed them) just like any other application. Then, just source $GNUSTEP_ROOT/System/Makesfiles/GNUstep.sh in your.bashrc and you're all set to go. Any other GNUstep apps you wish to build are a simple untar and "make && make install".
It turns out that GCC for OS X has some options that are not present on Linux, such as (IIRC) -framework.
Yes, there are some issues with OSX compatibility (in particular, the "import" versus "include + ifdefs" issue), but they're fairly easy to work around (just ask the GNUmail folks). (BTW, the answer is "include + ifdefs", if you want your code to be portable.:)
And as for garbage collection, GC in GNUstep is still experimental, AFAIK, and isn't really necessary (though very convenient). The OpenStep way is to use NSAutoreleasePools and the related retain: release: and autorelease: messages in NSObject itself. It's an odd paradigm to get used to, but once you understand it, it works fairly well (aside from it using straight reference counting which, as well all know, breaks in the face of circular dependencies).
The final annoyance I encountered, before moving on to other projects, was the lack of autoconf support for Objective C.
Why, dear god, would you ever *want* autoconf support? The whole point of the Makefiles package is to take care of all your build requirements for you. All you have to do is create a simple Makefile for your project, and voila, the system does everything else for you. All you have to do is a basic "make && make install" to build and install your package. Frankly, I consider this a *far* superior solution to the mess that is autoconf. The fact is, autoconf has no place in the world of GNUstep (other than to, of course, build some of the GNUstep packages, themselves, before the Makfiles package is available)... and it's a better world as a result.
I thought there was a canadian citizen that we intercepted at our borders and then sent to Syria where he said he was tortured.
There was. Maher Arar was picked up by the US, detained, questioned, and then deported to Syria where Arar claims US officials new he would be tortured. So far, CSIS has been cleared of any wrongdoing, however the RCMP is looking pretty bad. Arar is now back in Canada and is filing suit against the US government.
Well, if the response to the initial accusations had been "Yup, you're right, it's based off of PearPC and we're going to release our code right away", no one would care (for example, see the TransGaming work with WINE... a slightly different, though similar situation (different because the TransGaming code base is from the MIT-licensed version of WINE)). However, they've repeatedly denied that their code is based off of PearPC, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, making it pretty obvious that they don't plan to comply with the GPL (assuming they release anything in the first place).
Ok, now everyone has adopted PGP. What's to stop spammers from zombifying PCs using PGP and using their keys to sign a bunch of other keys which they can use to spam?
Umm... a password on the private key? Wait, don't tell me you use unencrypted private keys? Are you really that dumb?
Excellent explanation. Very enlightening, although is does point out the fact that designing and proper testing methodology is easily as important as the act of testing itself.
Well, first off, that isn't necessarily true. While the X server may crash, the underlying OS may still be working, meaning you can still ssh your way in and perform a controlled shutdown.
Second, while the X server is given limited direct access to some hardware, it still isn't running in kernel space (unlike, say, GDI+ in Windows). Thus, the access the server has is limited to the access the kernel gives it, meaning the X server couldn't start tromping on, say, memory for the filesystem drivers, thus limiting the damage it can do.
Third, you could choose not to enable DRI, if stability is more important for you than performance. And, of course, as you mentioned, you have the option of simply not running X.
So, no, I don't think you are in the same boat with Linux/FreeBSD at all.
See my other response. You're splitting hairs. "Part of the kernel" vs "in kernel space" is immaterial from a software stability point of view. The fact is, UI stuff is allowed direct access to kernel memory, which means bugs in said code, which is large and complex, can bring down the entire OS by merrily tromping over kernel memory.
Gah, you're splitting hairs. The point is the code runs in kernel space. I don't give a damn if it's not, technically, part of the kernel. The problems the code can cause are the same in either case.
And I suggest you re-read the grand-parent post of my original post, which stated the following:
How about blaming the US for not fixing things while at the same time claiming to have done so?
To which the AC replied with:
Are you ready to commit another $85 billion dollars?
Hence my response of "That's not the point, the US lied by claiming they 'fixed' the situation in Afghanistan when, in fact, they didn't." Thus, the AC didn't even respond to the poster... he simply propped up his "$85 billion dollar" straw man and proceeded to knock it over.
Is that the point? No. The point is: The US said it fixed things, but it didn't. The point is: The US administration lied. Again. That is the point. So, please, take your straw man and beat it up in the privacy of your own home... no one else wants to see that.
Take out another loan. Or borrow money from the parents. Or get a crappy job and pinch every penny you have until you've saved enough to move. Or move somewhere where you have relatives, in order to cushion the setup costs. Or find an employer who's willing to pay for your moving expenses (if you really are skilled, there are employers that will do this... a co-worker of mine got a job across the country and his employer moved him). Hell, declare bankruptcy. It's not impossible. And either you move and get a job, or you don't and stay unemployed. Take your pick. But sitting there complaining about it ain't gonna help...
Why bother? The point is not to teach them industry skills, but rather to impart on people "a rudimentary, working knowledge of computer programming", so why hobble them with ugly, broken, inconsistent syntax? Why not use a language which has had teaching in mind from the get-go? After all, there's a reason things like Logo, Basic, and Hypercard are/were popular... because they're easy to learn and it's easy to produce really cool things quickly and with relatively little effort.\
Shhh, you can't talk about things like that. You might disillusion all those parents out there who think their children are lovely, innocent angels who need to be protected from those nasty, perverted people in Hollywood.
Slashdot Mirror
t's not his equation. It's the Dirac's equation, arguably among the most important discoveries of 20th century physics.
The poster presented the equation with tbe belief that it be included on the list because it is "Said by Hotson to be the Equation of Everything.", or so I interpreted his post. In this I could have been wrong.
That's not too hard to believe. In fact, I'm *sure* science is wrong, and you should be too. Until we have a complete and consistent explanation for all phenomena, any model we use is incomplete at best.
And I'm pretty sure you're very adept at splitting hairs. Hotson isn't just claiming minor holes in existing theory. He has the belief that the entire scientific establishment got a major portion of fundamental physics completely wrong, despite massive experimental evidence which largely validates these theories, while at the same time being totally unqualified (based on a lack of a formal education in the area) to make this sort of judgement.
This would be akin to me saying "Hey, those guys researching cancer got it totally wrong! See, I was in a first year biology class and I asked <insert question here>, and I didn't believe their answer, even though I don't have the knowledge to make that sort of judgement, and so I came up with this theory that totally invalidates 50 years of work in the area! Now, sure, the only thing I know about medicine is a few undergrad courses in bio and a really cool show I saw on the Discovery Channel, but I figure that's enough to propose a theory that goes against everything dicovered by many more knowledgeable people than me. Oh, and BTW, my theory also provides evidence for telepathy, alien abductions, and Bigfoot."
Most people are convinced they are right, until proven otherwise.
Yeah, for example I'm convinced you don't know how to make a useful argument. There's one problem, though: I'm not qualified to make that judgement. Why? Because I don't know you or your posting history. Therefore, what I have to say regarding your ability to debate is largely immaterial and should be ignored by any logical individual unless additional supporting evidence is provided.
The only qualifications necessary for a science are a logical argument supported by facts.
Agreed. But if you don't have the necessary education, and hence understanding, to put forward a valid, logical argument, then that significantly reduces the weight of any such argument that is put forth. And, guess what, a university degree is pretty decent evidence that someone has acquired the necessary knowledge.
None of which mean he's wrong.
Nope, it just makes it highly likely.
No kidding! Damn Clinton, doing what people wanted. Bush, OTOH? *That's* a president. Popular opinion be damned! Just push on, ignore the public, ignore the experts, ignore the facts, and most importantly, ignore the outcomes... just keep on truckin'! I mean, since when was the government supposed to represent those who elected them? Or, worse yet, make decisions based on public preference combined with scientific fact? That's just ridiculous!
Umm, by the very definition of that presentation, I am not, by any means, a "pathological disbeliever". If this individual was, say, qualified in the field, I might pay a little more attention to his claims. If he was able to successfully test his theories with experiments, I would most certainly be willing to hear him out. However, until he's either 1) achieved a doctorate in Physics, thus proving that he's competant enough to question fundamental building blocks of theoretical physics, or 2) proved his theories with valid, repeatable experiments, I will continue to be highly skeptical, as you should you.
Frankly, it sounds to me like you should try to be a little *more* skeptical. After all, you're putting an awful lot of stock into the claims of someone who can't even earn a degree in the area (or even a related area... AFAICT, he doesn't have a degree of *any kind*!) he's claiming to study.
Oh, and BTW, you might want to look at some of Hotson's other claims. He's done a talk on Dirac's Equation And A Possible Physical Basis For Some of Astrology (astrology!), and apparently he has some interesting beliefs regarding ball lightening, "time storms", and other phenomena. So, why was it that I should bother paying any attention to this guy? He's looking more and more like a total crackpot the more I dig...
Yeah, except one of Debian's *huge* selling points (to me, anyway) is the ability to move an installed system from one release to the next with virtually no problems. This is only possible because Debian is incredibly anal about ensuring that each and every package will upgrade cleanly. This, unfortunately, means that minor packages like Abuse, or anything else you can think of, could block the release, because otherwise, someone's box somewhere could suddenly break after an upgrade.
How will this work be reviewed
;)
He could submit it to one or more legitimate scientific journals. Or he could present the work to a qualified physicist and try to get them on board. Or he could actually, you know, work toward a physics degree, in which case he could use this work his PhD dissertation.
or tested
You said it yourself, he could attempt to develop experiments to test his theories. And as long as these experiments can be repeated, there should be no problems.
Oh, and FYI cold fusion has done some remarkable progress those last 15 years
If, by progress, you mean it's been largely debunked, I couldn't agree more!
Yeah, 'cuz $298 = $100... in Bizarro World.
Oh yes, you're right. We should burn him at the stake.
I never said that. However, his work does *not*, in any way, qualify for a spot on the list of Greatest Equations Ever. The fact is, this person is 1) convinced science is wrong, 2) convinced he knows the answer, and 3) isn't *qualified* to decide either of these things. So, until his work is either 1) peer reviewed and validated or 2) verified experimentally, and these experiments are repeated by other, reputable scientists, his work will continue to lack credibility, and so will be ignored.
It'd be interesting to see what experiments he comes up with to validate the theory.
Agreed, and I'd love for him to come up with such experiments, and for others to validate his work. But I ain't holdin' my breath, any more than I'm expecting a breakthrough in cold fusion or gravity shielding.
Pfft... the guy isn't even a physicist. Meanwhile, he goes on to write about how the entire physics establishment fscked up, and how he is, apparently, the only one smart enough to realize the Real Truth. If this doesn't fit the definition of crackpot "science", I don't know what does...
StepTalk is Smalltalk for GNUStep.
Not quite. ObjectiveC requires the programmer to spend more effort handling memory management and distinguishes between objects and primitives.
OTOH, they are more similar than different. Weak encapsulation. Message passing as the model for object interaction. Dynamic binding. Incredible introspection capabilities. The list goes on. Basically, ObjC is as close to SmallTalk+C as you can possibly get.
Also, the typical Smalltalk class system seems much more orthogonal. ObjectiveC frameworks...
Bah, this entire section of your post isn't even about ObjectiveC "the language". All your issues are with the OpenStep APIs. Don't confuse the two. Agreed, the OpenStep has some oddities in it, and it's not *nearly* as nice as the standard SmallTalk object model, but that's not the fault of the language... you could create equally bad APIs in SmallTalk if you wanted to.
Ahh, I wasn't aware that they came to their senses and "undeprecated" import. Thank gawd... apparently, I need to upgrade my Objective-C compiler, though. :)
I built it from source, which was routine, but non trivial.
.bashrc and you're all set to go. Any other GNUstep apps you wish to build are a simple untar and "make && make install".
:)
Well, my first question is, what was non-trivial about it? You download four packages (gnustep-make, gnustep-base, gnustep-gui, gnustep-backend) and build them (in the order I listed them) just like any other application. Then, just source $GNUSTEP_ROOT/System/Makesfiles/GNUstep.sh in your
It turns out that GCC for OS X has some options that are not present on Linux, such as (IIRC) -framework.
Yes, there are some issues with OSX compatibility (in particular, the "import" versus "include + ifdefs" issue), but they're fairly easy to work around (just ask the GNUmail folks). (BTW, the answer is "include + ifdefs", if you want your code to be portable.
And as for garbage collection, GC in GNUstep is still experimental, AFAIK, and isn't really necessary (though very convenient). The OpenStep way is to use NSAutoreleasePools and the related retain: release: and autorelease: messages in NSObject itself. It's an odd paradigm to get used to, but once you understand it, it works fairly well (aside from it using straight reference counting which, as well all know, breaks in the face of circular dependencies).
The final annoyance I encountered, before moving on to other projects, was the lack of autoconf support for Objective C.
Why, dear god, would you ever *want* autoconf support? The whole point of the Makefiles package is to take care of all your build requirements for you. All you have to do is create a simple Makefile for your project, and voila, the system does everything else for you. All you have to do is a basic "make && make install" to build and install your package. Frankly, I consider this a *far* superior solution to the mess that is autoconf. The fact is, autoconf has no place in the world of GNUstep (other than to, of course, build some of the GNUstep packages, themselves, before the Makfiles package is available)... and it's a better world as a result.
I thought there was a canadian citizen that we intercepted at our borders and then sent to Syria where he said he was tortured.
There was. Maher Arar was picked up by the US, detained, questioned, and then deported to Syria where Arar claims US officials new he would be tortured. So far, CSIS has been cleared of any wrongdoing, however the RCMP is looking pretty bad. Arar is now back in Canada and is filing suit against the US government.
Well, if the response to the initial accusations had been "Yup, you're right, it's based off of PearPC and we're going to release our code right away", no one would care (for example, see the TransGaming work with WINE... a slightly different, though similar situation (different because the TransGaming code base is from the MIT-licensed version of WINE)). However, they've repeatedly denied that their code is based off of PearPC, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, making it pretty obvious that they don't plan to comply with the GPL (assuming they release anything in the first place).
Ok, now everyone has adopted PGP. What's to stop spammers from zombifying PCs using PGP and using their keys to sign a bunch of other keys which they can use to spam?
Umm... a password on the private key? Wait, don't tell me you use unencrypted private keys? Are you really that dumb?
Excellent explanation. Very enlightening, although is does point out the fact that designing and proper testing methodology is easily as important as the act of testing itself.
Well, first off, that isn't necessarily true. While the X server may crash, the underlying OS may still be working, meaning you can still ssh your way in and perform a controlled shutdown.
Second, while the X server is given limited direct access to some hardware, it still isn't running in kernel space (unlike, say, GDI+ in Windows). Thus, the access the server has is limited to the access the kernel gives it, meaning the X server couldn't start tromping on, say, memory for the filesystem drivers, thus limiting the damage it can do.
Third, you could choose not to enable DRI, if stability is more important for you than performance. And, of course, as you mentioned, you have the option of simply not running X.
So, no, I don't think you are in the same boat with Linux/FreeBSD at all.
See my other response. You're splitting hairs. "Part of the kernel" vs "in kernel space" is immaterial from a software stability point of view. The fact is, UI stuff is allowed direct access to kernel memory, which means bugs in said code, which is large and complex, can bring down the entire OS by merrily tromping over kernel memory.
Gah, you're splitting hairs. The point is the code runs in kernel space. I don't give a damn if it's not, technically, part of the kernel. The problems the code can cause are the same in either case.
And I suggest you re-read the grand-parent post of my original post, which stated the following:
How about blaming the US for not fixing things while at the same time claiming to have done so?
To which the AC replied with:
Are you ready to commit another $85 billion dollars?
Hence my response of "That's not the point, the US lied by claiming they 'fixed' the situation in Afghanistan when, in fact, they didn't." Thus, the AC didn't even respond to the poster... he simply propped up his "$85 billion dollar" straw man and proceeded to knock it over.
Is that the point? No. The point is: The US said it fixed things, but it didn't. The point is: The US administration lied. Again. That is the point. So, please, take your straw man and beat it up in the privacy of your own home... no one else wants to see that.
Take out another loan. Or borrow money from the parents. Or get a crappy job and pinch every penny you have until you've saved enough to move. Or move somewhere where you have relatives, in order to cushion the setup costs. Or find an employer who's willing to pay for your moving expenses (if you really are skilled, there are employers that will do this... a co-worker of mine got a job across the country and his employer moved him). Hell, declare bankruptcy. It's not impossible. And either you move and get a job, or you don't and stay unemployed. Take your pick. But sitting there complaining about it ain't gonna help...
but I already went to college and found that nobody in town wanted programmers anymore.
Move.
Why bother? The point is not to teach them industry skills, but rather to impart on people "a rudimentary, working knowledge of computer programming", so why hobble them with ugly, broken, inconsistent syntax? Why not use a language which has had teaching in mind from the get-go? After all, there's a reason things like Logo, Basic, and Hypercard are/were popular... because they're easy to learn and it's easy to produce really cool things quickly and with relatively little effort.\
Shhh, you can't talk about things like that. You might disillusion all those parents out there who think their children are lovely, innocent angels who need to be protected from those nasty, perverted people in Hollywood.