That post (and the article) both say that it WAS a flame of Hooke, just like the poster.
The post I referred to says: "Nope - this is (probably) a fallacy."
The article says:
Finally we come to Newton's reply of 5th February 1676. He says Hooke has ``done what becomes a true Philosophical spirit'' and that ``there is nothing wch I desire to avoyde in matters of Philosophy more than contention, nor any kind of contention more than one in print.'' In response to Hooke's compliment that Newton was the fittest person to continue his investigations, he begins:
you defer too much to my ability for searching into this subject. What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking ye colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants. But I make no question but you have divers very considerable experiments besides those you have published, & some it's very probable the same wth some of those in my late papers. Two at least there are wch I know you have observed.
The tone is certainly conciliatory and significantly Newton praises Hooke for beginning and publishing the study of phenomena of thin plates, just as he did in the letter to Oldenburg on 21st December 1675, and just as Hooke insisted on in his letter to Newton (and remember this is the only claim Hooke makes in that letter.) It seems that all three letters agree over this issue and both Newton and Hooke imply the other has achieved more than they claim credit for. This flatly contradicts suggestions that they are damning each other with faint praise or implying the other's work is unimportant.
I call your attention particularly to the following phrases from the article:
Hooke's compliment that Newton was the fittest person to continue his investigations
The tone is certainly conciliatory
Newton praises Hooke
both Newton and Hooke imply the other has achieved more than they claim credit for
Want to know why adding programmers to a late software project makes it later? I'm a programmer not a project manager and don't want to be a project manager, ever.
Are there some problems which are not solvable by computer? I never encounter those problems, thank Heaven.
How does entropy and communications work? Don't need to know in order to copy a file.
Check out the history of AI research. It's mostly a failure.
Does Babbage's engine really work? Not as well as my PC.
I don't wish to be deliberately obtuse and I support reading widely and deeply but I can't see how any of these examples makes me a better programmer than reading a programming manual.
There is a tendency to justify all kinds of worthwhile activities on the grounds that they are useful as if the pleasure of knowing something is not sufficient. I think it is a mistake to make utility the only test of whether something is important. There is a lot of useful activity that is unimportant, particularly when one looks back on it. When deciding whether learning is important, usefulness is only one criteria. The other criteria, I leave as an exercise to the student.
Where does one draw the line between useful information and cool things to talk about at a party?
Knowledge does not have to be either useful or cool in order to be valuable.
One common approach is that of Cardinal Newman in the Idea of a University: Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward.
The other common approach is to follow Socrates' dictim that "The unexamined life is not worth living", which he derived from his belief that ignorance causes evil.
These approaches still leave unanswered the question of where you draw the line between learning and other activities, knowledge being infinite and time being short.
I submit that there is no line. Learning includes close observation of things around you. In this way you integrate a love learning with everyday life and test the ideas acquired in solitary study.
Despite the fact that most great scientists have been more motivated by the love of learning than anything else, I've found that people who insist that knowledge must have a utilitarian purpose cannot be convinced otherwise.
So the real message is more of a flame of Hooke, yet most people consider it some great admission of humility.
In case you missed it, I must refer you to another post by pmc in this thread that points to an very interesting article that refutes your conclusion fairly decisively.
...the hackers and crackers are just not "evil" as they are made out.
Or at least, they aren't beyond redemption. The infamous Captain Crunch seems to have turned his life around and is now a productive member of society.
But evil is not the issue. The law punishes people for what they do, not who they are. Just as they should not be punished for being evil, they should not be spared punishment because they are fundamentally decent.
Many of us have more sympathy for hackers than other types of juvenile delinquents because we recognize some of the same impulses in ourselves. To the extent we advocate mercy for hackers we are also asking for mercy for ourselves. We probably shouldn't let ourselves off the hook so easily either.
I'm dubious about the idea that knowing the history of computer science helps you be a better programmer. I've known several excellent programmers whose knowledge of computer science was limited to the tools of their trade and the underlying theory. My own knowledge of the history of my profession hasn't made learning OOP any easier.
One should have a broader interest in the world than simply making a living but there are many places to go beside the history of computer science. One could argue that, given limited time, one should look outside one's profession rather than inside it for a broader perspective.
Having said that, some of life's lesson can seem more acute when seen in the context of familiar problems. For instance, this example from Babbage's life:
Babbage's private income perhaps deprived him of the drive that would have whipped his work into shape. Every time he came up against a problem with the design of his various engines, his impulse was to turn away and start again. Instead of breaking through the pain barrier, he finished his 80-year life with a lot of drawings and not a prototype in sight.
Many of us who've found a comfortable life in programming struggle with that problem every day.
You should have replied to the original poster, not me.
Sorry. I actually thought I was replying to the original poster. I replied to you by mistake because I had two windows open and your comment was partially obscured. It's a long story. I did eventually reply to the right post
Re:Constrain the elements, not the requirements
on
Autonomic Computing
·
· Score: 1
Maybe this is an example of what you mean by "Simplicity engenders complexity."
It's one example. Carrying it forward, a living organism with autonomic systems will form complex societies of individual organisms. As soon as these societies evolve autonomic functions, they form complex alliances or symbiotic relationships. And so forth.
I'm also thinking of the rules of chess that allow for a vast number of games, simple mathematical formulas that generate fractals, rules of grammar that produce language.
There seems to be some kind of recursive process at work that tends toward greater complexity. As a result, the autonomic theorists may not be tackling complexity but simply moving it to a higher level.
As bad as it is to live with an economy that can be easily trashed by 5 million idiots...
I don't think the economy was trashed by the idiots, although a segment of the stock market took a beating. The dotcom debacle merely points out that the free market system has glaring deficiencies and cannot claim to be wiser than government agencies in every instance.
When someone in the private sector wastes his company's or his investors' money, he doesn't usually get the chance to repeat the process.
On the contrary, he usually gets the chance to repeat the process.
Case in point is the chief financial officer of Nortel Networks succeeding the president of Nortel after overseeing the largest corporate losses in history.
Furthermore, the board of directors of corporations remains constant from one disaster to the next. The CEO often takes the fall but he's provided with a handsome severance package despite the company's dismal results.
If a failed corporate executive doesn't get a second chance, it's because he doesn't need the work.
...he doesn't usually get the chance to repeat the process.
On the contrary, he usually gets the chance to repeat the process.
Case in point is the chief financial officer of Nortel Networks succeeding the president of Nortel after overseeing the largest corporate losses in history.
Furthermore, the board of directors of corporations remains constant from one disaster to the next. The CEO often takes the fall but he's provided with a handsome severance package despite the company's dismal results.
If a failed corporate executive doesn't get a second chance, it's because he doesn't need the work.
It's investors who have their money squandered by managers and directors who may not get a second chance.
I think this is a darn good incentive for airlines to listen to consumer demand and start providing better security in order to regain business!
The free market system you described failed completely. The reason it failed is because it was skewed toward providing services at a low price rather than providing services consumers deserved. That problem is inherent in the free market. Inevitably, private security agencies are going to provide the least service they can get away with.
The only way to adjust the system is through government regulation with government inspectors or by the government taking it over. Notice that it may be more expensive but cost of delivery is not the issue.
You need a system similar to the National Transportation Safety Board that enforces airline maintenance regulations. Under this system, you don't wait for airplanes to crash before checking their maintenance records and auditing their procedures.
If enough people demanded a safety feature in their car...
Once again, you are describing a free market mechanism that doesn't always work. Every safety feature in a car from padded dashboards to air bags have been mandated by law and over the objections of auto industry lobbiest. Tens of thousands of people died from poorly designed cars while you were waiting for the free market to work its magic. Much better to just pass the safety legislation and save the lives.
People can legitimately make their demands known through their elected representatives as well as through their buying habits.
The free market has it virtues but it also has its limits. Government has a role to play when the free market fails and it fails often.
The article lists 8 characteristics of autonomic systems:
To be autonomic, a computing system needs to "know itself " and comprise components that also possess a system identity.
An autonomic computing system must configure and reconfigure itself under varying and unpredictable conditions.
An autonomic computing system never settles for the status quo -- it always looks for ways to optimize its workings.
An autonomic computing system must perform something akin to healing -- it must be able to recover from routine and extraordinary events that might cause some of its parts to malfunction.
A virtual world is no less dangerous than the physical one, so an autonomc computing system must be an expert in self-protection.
An autonomic computing system knows its environment and the context surrounding its activity, and acts accordingly.
An autonomic computing system cannot exist in an hermetic environment.
Perhaps, most critical for the user, an autonomic computing system will anticipate the optimized resources needed while keeping its complexity hidden.
The features indicate a system several orders of magnitude more complex than the one it is intended to correct. Given the fact that these autonomic systems are supposed to deal with the shortage of IT professionals, where are the IT professionals supposed to come from that will implement these systems? Are they solving the problem of complexity or just creating more complex systems to maintain?
When they develop an autonomic programing language it will be time to give it some serious consideration.
things tend towards chaos, not the order displayed in even the tiniest living cell.
This issue is dealt with very well in information theory in which error correction methods are used to ensure that information is copied accurately from one generation to the next.
For instance, if you make a copy of a page on a photocopier and then copy the copy and so forth, the copy will be unreadable within about 10 generations because there is no error correction. However, if you make a copy of a file on disk and then copy the copy and so forth, the copies will be identical practically forever.
Study of DNA shows that error correction methods are employed when cells divide, thus defeating your theory that they should tend toward chaos.
Actually, I think chaos is the wrong term anyway. Systems tend toward disorder, not chaos, through the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Chaotic systems are highly organized but unpredictable. Like living organisms.
The private sector can usually do the same job better, cheaper, and faster.
Now is a peculiar time to be making this assertion.
One need only look at the issue of airport security before 9/11 for an example of how delivering services at a low cost is not a relevant consideration.
Apologists for corporate efficiency simply slough off the recent dotcom debacle as the price one pays for a free market.
Government certainly has failures but all organizations do. Bankruptcy is endemic in small businesses. Virtually none of the original Dow Jones 30 companies, the strongest companies in the economy, are still in business.
The idea that corporations deliver services better than government is mostly a product of selective use of evidence, bad cost accounting and corporate propaganda.
It is a meaningless number. The article doesn't even say if the savings are annual or not.
Even if the savings are annual and they include transition costs such as training and temporarily maintaining two incompatible systems, redeveloping some programs, etc., they would be such a small percentage of the annual computing costs as to make it not worth the disruption. A poor transition strategy could completely cancel out the cost savings.
Rather than considering a wholesale transition, making a system by system analysis usually yields the best results. This type of analysis is usually technical and is beyond the ability of a parliamentary committee to have an informed opinion.
It's good that open source platforms have intruded into the decisions of government committees, but, as the article suggests, cost is the last issue they should consider.
Fred Brooks dealt with the issue of complexity in his classic The Mythical Man Month. Of the quest for a technique to fundamentally simplify software development, he says: Not only are there no silver bullets now in view, the very nature of software makes it unlikely that there will be any--no inventions that will do for software productivity, reliablity, and simplicity what electronics, transistors and large-scale integration did for computer hardware. We cannot expect ever to see two-fold gains every two years.
It is curious that the paper mentioned in the article does not deal explicitly with Brooks' objections since they are the best known statements of the problem of complexity in software.
Among Brooks solution for reducing complexity is to use great design: Whereas the difference between poor conceptual designs and good ones may lie in the soundness of design method, the difference between good designs and great ones surely does not. Great designs come from great designers. Software construction is a creative process. Sound methodology can empower and liberate the creative mind; it cannot enflame or inspire the drudge.
I would also add that simplicity engenders complexity. Simplified systems become subsystems for more complex designs. When the complexity of a system becomes a barrier to its further enhancement, simplifying it only allows its complexity to continue to increase.
It is the objectives of the system that creates complexity, not the development techniques. The only way ultimately to reduce complexity is to artificially constrain the requirements.
I suspect that even on 9/11 there were more people killed on the roads than the few hundred killed _in_ airplanes.
If 41,000 people a year are killed in auto accidents, then about 110 people a day are killed, distributed over a much larger number of passenger miles than flying. I believe this figure suggests that on 9/11 the risk from flying was about 4 times greater than driving before allowing for deaths per passenger mile.
The statistical approach used in your argument would conclude that as the days go by and there are no further hijackings, air travel appears to become safer because the number of passenger deaths remain constant while the number of passenger miles become larger.
In fact, if the terrorist threat remains constant or increases, the risk is the same or greater.
...driving instead of riding after they went back into service is NOT
Bear in mind that the same people that were assuring people that air travel was safe after 9/11 were the ones assuring them it was safe before 9/11. They had no way of knowing for sure for two reasons:
1) the additional airport security measure were of unknown effectiveness and
2) the size of the remaining terrorist threat was unknown.
If the passengers had just rushed the hijackers right at the start...
Once again, this approach presumes that the level of risk was known. In the past, hijackings have generally ended peacefully while attacking a violent hijacker was clearly perilous.
The success of the hijackers depended in part on people thinking that their level of risk was lower than it actually was. Using pre-9/11 statistics to guide our current decisions is a dubious proposition. I'm betting that nearly everyone is adjusting their risk/reward ratios, including the terrorists.
you truly believe that in today's climate of anxiety, anybody would be foolish enough to eat any foodstuff he received in the mail in such a way?
No, I was joking as I assumed you were.
Your clever reference to spam in your original post clearly indicated that it was a joke and not an earnest attempt at making a helpful suggestion for terrorists, if anyone had any doubt. Similarly, there was a secondary suggestion in my comment that the psychological stability of slashdot readers required them to be protected from your comment. This suggestion was so obviously an exaggeration that it was supposed to indicate the rest of my comment was not be taken seriously.
Given the fact that your comment was clearly a joke, my comment that it should be modded down as a threat to national security could be seen as funny because I was further exaggerating the absurd humour in your suggestion.
So, it was a failed joke but still just a joke. However, I still think that the idea that slashdot moderators might have a role to play in national security has some humourous potential. I'll have to work on it.
The deadpan observation by FrizzleFry that a terrorist could defeat my suggestion by setting their threshold lower than +1 was also funny but I can't tell if he is joking.
What increases your chance of dying is when you go into a panic about a few hijackings or plane crashes and drive instead.
Most airline passengers' reactions to the events of 9/11 are not accurately described as either kneejerk reactions or as panic. If they could be articulated, they would probably be something to the effect that they had seriously underestimated the risk of air travel and now had no way of estimating the true risk.
It is reasonable for people to accept a known risk, such as driving, over an unknown risk when the unknown risk is potentially large. To simply assert that the unknown risk is actually low, as the previous post did, when in fact no one knows with certainty what the true risk is would fail to reassure a prudent traveler.
The fact that those in the best position to know the risk shut down all airline travel for a while and did not reopen Reagan International until much later suggest that the risk is still unknown and potentially large.
Under these circumstance, people who accept the known risk of driving over the unknown risk of flying have a reasonable case.
One might say with the hindsight of a month that the risk of further hijackings appears lower than it did immediately after 9/11. However, the FBI is still issuing warnings of unspecified attacks, which does not raise one's confidence that anyone knowns the true risk except the terrorists.
However, I'm glad you mentioned botulism. It has long been on the list of toxins that are easily made and delivered by the lone terrorists.
The number of malicious hackers in the world suggests that the sneaky mentality that exploits innocent security holes is fairly widespread. One can conceive of bioterrorism being an outlet for this mentality just as hacking is. The bioterrorists might even come up with some of the same justifications for it.
you (personally) shouldn't worry about anthrax until the danger to your demographic is non-negligable
At the point that the danger is non-negligible, it is a bit late to start worrying. The question is whether there is reasonable chance of it becoming non-negligible. There is at least the same chance of it becoming non-negligible as there is of 4 planes being hijacked and crashed into major buildings. It's prudent to start worrying is now. If the threat fails to materialize, you can laugh about it years from now.
it would take far more than four planes to bring the risk up to levels for driving
True enough but is the implication that the additional money being spent on airline security might be better spent on improving automobile safety? Would the FBI be more usefully employed in tracking down drunk drivers than terrorists? After all, a fifteen per cent reduction in automobile fatalities would about equal the number of victims of terrorism.
There's often a temporary drop in airline travel after a major accident and one can presume that the larger the accident, the larger the drop. Airline passenger volumes will probably return to previous levels as the images of 9/11 begin to fade because terrorism didn't reduce the need to fly.
However, while the images are still fresh, people can be forgiven for reacting in fear. They're not like soldiers or firemen who are trained to run toward disaster rather than recoil.
In fact, if terrorist incidents continue, you can expect travelers to become inured. The incidents will have a briefer effect on passenger volumes. People's perception of the risk of air travel will be brought closer into line with reality. It's a small, but real victory.
I'm beginning to think that moderators have a duty to mod down posts like this one that may put ideas in the heads of terrorists or raise the level of anxiety in slashdotters who are already unhinged over the loss of their rights.
For the sake of national security, please be a little more circumspect.
If I understand your argument it is that if you aren't going to worry about automobile accidents or pesticides, then you shouldn't take any action to protect yourself from anthrax.
My position is that if people can reduce the risk of anthrax infection by not using the mail, they don't have to wait to do so until the automobile accident rate drops.
Other points of contention:
panic over one person dying (while incredibly tragic) is just absurd...
You are distorting the situation. First, there's no panic in usual sense and second, the reaction is not just to one person dying but to the fact that
anthrax is being sent through the mail
many more people could die and
the extent of the threat is unknown.
It's a fact that people's perception of risk can be wildly at variance with reality. However, there is good reason to think that the level of risk in normal life has risen and will continue to rise for sometime. It may not, but there is good reason to think so or those pictures on television on 9/11 held nothing more than morbid fascination.
The only way to significantly reduce the risk is to not drive.
It is not the only way. Obeying traffic laws significantly reduces the risk. I think you mean that the only way to eliminate the risk is not to drive. But it is an irrelevant observation. People generally have to drive in order to work, shop and have a normal life in the suburbs so they can only aim to reduce their risk.
My point is that no one simply looks at the risk side of the equation. They also look at the rewards, or lack thereof, as well.
You don't see "HOLY SHIT! SOMEONE DIED IN A CAR ACCIDENT! SHUT DOWN THE HIGHWAYS!".
Of course, you saw exactly this reaction when the planes were hijacked on 9/11. All airplanes in North America were grounded. There is evidence that this reaction prevented further hijackings. Precisely calibrating one's response is impossible when the size of the threat is unknown and the potential consequences are large. Similarly, with the anthrax threat, the prudent thing to do is assume the worst until more information is available.
There's a lot of knee-jerk reactions which are not necessarily effective...
Actually the reactions are extremely effective. Not flying completely eliminates the personal threat of hijacking. Grounding all airplanes was the completely reasonable reaction when the hijackings first occurred and people can reasonably take their cue from that act.
Similarly, not using mail completely eliminates the threat of catching a horrible disease from the mail. Many large corporations x-ray parcels in their mailrooms because of the remote possibility of bombs. Until similar methods can be devised for regular mail, individuals must take whatever precautions they can.
...and the economic effects of wholesale eschewment of mail and air travel are pretty widespread.
The idea that one should increase one's risk of dying for the benefit of airline industry or the economy in general is surely one of the least helpful suggestion since Mayor Guiliani suggested everyone go shopping.
Changing one's behavior when faced with a new threat is a reasonable thing to do. Once the full extent of the threat is known and some countermeasures are in place, people may change their behavior again. The dumbest reaction would be to proceed as if nothing had happened.
Slashdot Mirror
That post (and the article) both say that it WAS a flame of Hooke, just like the poster.
The post I referred to says: "Nope - this is (probably) a fallacy."
The article says:
Finally we come to Newton's reply of 5th February 1676. He says Hooke has ``done what becomes a true Philosophical spirit'' and that ``there is nothing wch I desire to avoyde in matters of Philosophy more than contention, nor any kind of contention more than one in print.'' In response to Hooke's compliment that Newton was the fittest person to continue his investigations, he begins:
The tone is certainly conciliatory and significantly Newton praises Hooke for beginning and publishing the study of phenomena of thin plates, just as he did in the letter to Oldenburg on 21st December 1675, and just as Hooke insisted on in his letter to Newton (and remember this is the only claim Hooke makes in that letter.) It seems that all three letters agree over this issue and both Newton and Hooke imply the other has achieved more than they claim credit for. This flatly contradicts suggestions that they are damning each other with faint praise or implying the other's work is unimportant.
I call your attention particularly to the following phrases from the article:
Hooke's compliment that Newton was the fittest person to continue his investigations
The tone is certainly conciliatory
Newton praises Hooke
both Newton and Hooke imply the other has achieved more than they claim credit for
No flame war here. You are in disgrace, Mr. AC.
Want to know why adding programmers to a late software project makes it later? I'm a programmer not a project manager and don't want to be a project manager, ever.
Are there some problems which are not solvable by computer? I never encounter those problems, thank Heaven.
How does entropy and communications work? Don't need to know in order to copy a file.
Check out the history of AI research. It's mostly a failure.
Does Babbage's engine really work? Not as well as my PC.
I don't wish to be deliberately obtuse and I support reading widely and deeply but I can't see how any of these examples makes me a better programmer than reading a programming manual.
There is a tendency to justify all kinds of worthwhile activities on the grounds that they are useful as if the pleasure of knowing something is not sufficient. I think it is a mistake to make utility the only test of whether something is important. There is a lot of useful activity that is unimportant, particularly when one looks back on it. When deciding whether learning is important, usefulness is only one criteria. The other criteria, I leave as an exercise to the student.
Where does one draw the line between useful information and cool things to talk about at a party?
Knowledge does not have to be either useful or cool in order to be valuable.
One common approach is that of Cardinal Newman in the Idea of a University: Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward.
The other common approach is to follow Socrates' dictim that "The unexamined life is not worth living", which he derived from his belief that ignorance causes evil.
These approaches still leave unanswered the question of where you draw the line between learning and other activities, knowledge being infinite and time being short.
I submit that there is no line. Learning includes close observation of things around you. In this way you integrate a love learning with everyday life and test the ideas acquired in solitary study.
Despite the fact that most great scientists have been more motivated by the love of learning than anything else, I've found that people who insist that knowledge must have a utilitarian purpose cannot be convinced otherwise.
So the real message is more of a flame of Hooke, yet most people consider it some great admission of humility.
In case you missed it, I must refer you to another post by pmc in this thread that points to an very interesting article that refutes your conclusion fairly decisively.
Or at least, they aren't beyond redemption. The infamous Captain Crunch seems to have turned his life around and is now a productive member of society.
But evil is not the issue. The law punishes people for what they do, not who they are. Just as they should not be punished for being evil, they should not be spared punishment because they are fundamentally decent.
Many of us have more sympathy for hackers than other types of juvenile delinquents because we recognize some of the same impulses in ourselves. To the extent we advocate mercy for hackers we are also asking for mercy for ourselves. We probably shouldn't let ourselves off the hook so easily either.
I'm dubious about the idea that knowing the history of computer science helps you be a better programmer. I've known several excellent programmers whose knowledge of computer science was limited to the tools of their trade and the underlying theory. My own knowledge of the history of my profession hasn't made learning OOP any easier.
One should have a broader interest in the world than simply making a living but there are many places to go beside the history of computer science. One could argue that, given limited time, one should look outside one's profession rather than inside it for a broader perspective.
Having said that, some of life's lesson can seem more acute when seen in the context of familiar problems. For instance, this example from Babbage's life:
Babbage's private income perhaps deprived him of the drive that would have whipped his work into shape. Every time he came up against a problem with the design of his various engines, his impulse was to turn away and start again. Instead of breaking through the pain barrier, he finished his 80-year life with a lot of drawings and not a prototype in sight.
Many of us who've found a comfortable life in programming struggle with that problem every day.
You should have replied to the original poster, not me.
Sorry. I actually thought I was replying to the original poster. I replied to you by mistake because I had two windows open and your comment was partially obscured. It's a long story. I did eventually reply to the right post
Maybe this is an example of what you mean by "Simplicity engenders complexity."
It's one example. Carrying it forward, a living organism with autonomic systems will form complex societies of individual organisms. As soon as these societies evolve autonomic functions, they form complex alliances or symbiotic relationships. And so forth.
I'm also thinking of the rules of chess that allow for a vast number of games, simple mathematical formulas that generate fractals, rules of grammar that produce language.
There seems to be some kind of recursive process at work that tends toward greater complexity. As a result, the autonomic theorists may not be tackling complexity but simply moving it to a higher level.
Unfortunately, I'm out of my depth here.
As bad as it is to live with an economy that can be easily trashed by 5 million idiots...
I don't think the economy was trashed by the idiots, although a segment of the stock market took a beating. The dotcom debacle merely points out that the free market system has glaring deficiencies and cannot claim to be wiser than government agencies in every instance.
When someone in the private sector wastes his company's or his investors' money, he doesn't usually get the chance to repeat the process.
On the contrary, he usually gets the chance to repeat the process.
Case in point is the chief financial officer of Nortel Networks succeeding the president of Nortel after overseeing the largest corporate losses in history.
Furthermore, the board of directors of corporations remains constant from one disaster to the next. The CEO often takes the fall but he's provided with a handsome severance package despite the company's dismal results.
If a failed corporate executive doesn't get a second chance, it's because he doesn't need the work.
On the contrary, he usually gets the chance to repeat the process.
Case in point is the chief financial officer of Nortel Networks succeeding the president of Nortel after overseeing the largest corporate losses in history.
Furthermore, the board of directors of corporations remains constant from one disaster to the next. The CEO often takes the fall but he's provided with a handsome severance package despite the company's dismal results.
If a failed corporate executive doesn't get a second chance, it's because he doesn't need the work.
It's investors who have their money squandered by managers and directors who may not get a second chance.
I think this is a darn good incentive for airlines to listen to consumer demand and start providing better security in order to regain business!
The free market system you described failed completely. The reason it failed is because it was skewed toward providing services at a low price rather than providing services consumers deserved. That problem is inherent in the free market. Inevitably, private security agencies are going to provide the least service they can get away with.
The only way to adjust the system is through government regulation with government inspectors or by the government taking it over. Notice that it may be more expensive but cost of delivery is not the issue.
You need a system similar to the National Transportation Safety Board that enforces airline maintenance regulations. Under this system, you don't wait for airplanes to crash before checking their maintenance records and auditing their procedures.
If enough people demanded a safety feature in their car...
Once again, you are describing a free market mechanism that doesn't always work. Every safety feature in a car from padded dashboards to air bags have been mandated by law and over the objections of auto industry lobbiest. Tens of thousands of people died from poorly designed cars while you were waiting for the free market to work its magic. Much better to just pass the safety legislation and save the lives.
People can legitimately make their demands known through their elected representatives as well as through their buying habits.
The free market has it virtues but it also has its limits. Government has a role to play when the free market fails and it fails often.
The article lists 8 characteristics of autonomic systems:
- To be autonomic, a computing system needs to "know itself " and comprise components that also possess a system identity.
- An autonomic computing system must configure and reconfigure itself under varying and unpredictable conditions.
- An autonomic computing system never settles for the status quo -- it always looks for ways to optimize its workings.
- An autonomic computing system must perform something akin to healing -- it must be able to recover from routine and extraordinary events that might cause some of its parts to malfunction.
- A virtual world is no less dangerous than the physical one, so an autonomc computing system must be an expert in self-protection.
- An autonomic computing system knows its environment and the context surrounding its activity, and acts accordingly.
- An autonomic computing system cannot exist in an hermetic environment.
- Perhaps, most critical for the user, an autonomic computing system will anticipate the optimized resources needed while keeping its complexity hidden.
The features indicate a system several orders of magnitude more complex than the one it is intended to correct. Given the fact that these autonomic systems are supposed to deal with the shortage of IT professionals, where are the IT professionals supposed to come from that will implement these systems? Are they solving the problem of complexity or just creating more complex systems to maintain?When they develop an autonomic programing language it will be time to give it some serious consideration.
things tend towards chaos, not the order displayed in even the tiniest living cell.
This issue is dealt with very well in information theory in which error correction methods are used to ensure that information is copied accurately from one generation to the next.
For instance, if you make a copy of a page on a photocopier and then copy the copy and so forth, the copy will be unreadable within about 10 generations because there is no error correction. However, if you make a copy of a file on disk and then copy the copy and so forth, the copies will be identical practically forever.
Study of DNA shows that error correction methods are employed when cells divide, thus defeating your theory that they should tend toward chaos.
Actually, I think chaos is the wrong term anyway. Systems tend toward disorder, not chaos, through the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Chaotic systems are highly organized but unpredictable. Like living organisms.
The private sector can usually do the same job better, cheaper, and faster.
Now is a peculiar time to be making this assertion.
One need only look at the issue of airport security before 9/11 for an example of how delivering services at a low cost is not a relevant consideration.
Apologists for corporate efficiency simply slough off the recent dotcom debacle as the price one pays for a free market.
Government certainly has failures but all organizations do. Bankruptcy is endemic in small businesses. Virtually none of the original Dow Jones 30 companies, the strongest companies in the economy, are still in business.
The idea that corporations deliver services better than government is mostly a product of selective use of evidence, bad cost accounting and corporate propaganda.
"116 *Million* Dollars".....
It is a meaningless number. The article doesn't even say if the savings are annual or not.
Even if the savings are annual and they include transition costs such as training and temporarily maintaining two incompatible systems, redeveloping some programs, etc., they would be such a small percentage of the annual computing costs as to make it not worth the disruption. A poor transition strategy could completely cancel out the cost savings.
Rather than considering a wholesale transition, making a system by system analysis usually yields the best results. This type of analysis is usually technical and is beyond the ability of a parliamentary committee to have an informed opinion.
It's good that open source platforms have intruded into the decisions of government committees, but, as the article suggests, cost is the last issue they should consider.
Not only are there no silver bullets now in view, the very nature of software makes it unlikely that there will be any--no inventions that will do for software productivity, reliablity, and simplicity what electronics, transistors and large-scale integration did for computer hardware. We cannot expect ever to see two-fold gains every two years.
It is curious that the paper mentioned in the article does not deal explicitly with Brooks' objections since they are the best known statements of the problem of complexity in software.
Among Brooks solution for reducing complexity is to use great design: Whereas the difference between poor conceptual designs and good ones may lie in the soundness of design method, the difference between good designs and great ones surely does not. Great designs come from great designers. Software construction is a creative process. Sound methodology can empower and liberate the creative mind; it cannot enflame or inspire the drudge.
I would also add that simplicity engenders complexity. Simplified systems become subsystems for more complex designs. When the complexity of a system becomes a barrier to its further enhancement, simplifying it only allows its complexity to continue to increase.
It is the objectives of the system that creates complexity, not the development techniques. The only way ultimately to reduce complexity is to artificially constrain the requirements.
I suspect that even on 9/11 there were more people killed on the roads than the few hundred killed _in_ airplanes.
If 41,000 people a year are killed in auto accidents, then about 110 people a day are killed, distributed over a much larger number of passenger miles than flying. I believe this figure suggests that on 9/11 the risk from flying was about 4 times greater than driving before allowing for deaths per passenger mile.
The statistical approach used in your argument would conclude that as the days go by and there are no further hijackings, air travel appears to become safer because the number of passenger deaths remain constant while the number of passenger miles become larger.
In fact, if the terrorist threat remains constant or increases, the risk is the same or greater.
Bear in mind that the same people that were assuring people that air travel was safe after 9/11 were the ones assuring them it was safe before 9/11. They had no way of knowing for sure for two reasons:
1) the additional airport security measure were of unknown effectiveness and
2) the size of the remaining terrorist threat was unknown.
If the passengers had just rushed the hijackers right at the start...
Once again, this approach presumes that the level of risk was known. In the past, hijackings have generally ended peacefully while attacking a violent hijacker was clearly perilous.
The success of the hijackers depended in part on people thinking that their level of risk was lower than it actually was. Using pre-9/11 statistics to guide our current decisions is a dubious proposition. I'm betting that nearly everyone is adjusting their risk/reward ratios, including the terrorists.
you truly believe that in today's climate of anxiety, anybody would be foolish enough to eat any foodstuff he received in the mail in such a way?
No, I was joking as I assumed you were.
Your clever reference to spam in your original post clearly indicated that it was a joke and not an earnest attempt at making a helpful suggestion for terrorists, if anyone had any doubt. Similarly, there was a secondary suggestion in my comment that the psychological stability of slashdot readers required them to be protected from your comment. This suggestion was so obviously an exaggeration that it was supposed to indicate the rest of my comment was not be taken seriously.
Given the fact that your comment was clearly a joke, my comment that it should be modded down as a threat to national security could be seen as funny because I was further exaggerating the absurd humour in your suggestion.
So, it was a failed joke but still just a joke. However, I still think that the idea that slashdot moderators might have a role to play in national security has some humourous potential. I'll have to work on it.
The deadpan observation by FrizzleFry that a terrorist could defeat my suggestion by setting their threshold lower than +1 was also funny but I can't tell if he is joking.
What increases your chance of dying is when you go into a panic about a few hijackings or plane crashes and drive instead.
Most airline passengers' reactions to the events of 9/11 are not accurately described as either kneejerk reactions or as panic. If they could be articulated, they would probably be something to the effect that they had seriously underestimated the risk of air travel and now had no way of estimating the true risk.
It is reasonable for people to accept a known risk, such as driving, over an unknown risk when the unknown risk is potentially large. To simply assert that the unknown risk is actually low, as the previous post did, when in fact no one knows with certainty what the true risk is would fail to reassure a prudent traveler.
The fact that those in the best position to know the risk shut down all airline travel for a while and did not reopen Reagan International until much later suggest that the risk is still unknown and potentially large.
Under these circumstance, people who accept the known risk of driving over the unknown risk of flying have a reasonable case.
One might say with the hindsight of a month that the risk of further hijackings appears lower than it did immediately after 9/11. However, the FBI is still issuing warnings of unspecified attacks, which does not raise one's confidence that anyone knowns the true risk except the terrorists.
It was not botulism, it was salmonella.
I stand corrected.
However, I'm glad you mentioned botulism. It has long been on the list of toxins that are easily made and delivered by the lone terrorists.
The number of malicious hackers in the world suggests that the sneaky mentality that exploits innocent security holes is fairly widespread. One can conceive of bioterrorism being an outlet for this mentality just as hacking is. The bioterrorists might even come up with some of the same justifications for it.
you (personally) shouldn't worry about anthrax until the danger to your demographic is non-negligable
At the point that the danger is non-negligible, it is a bit late to start worrying. The question is whether there is reasonable chance of it becoming non-negligible. There is at least the same chance of it becoming non-negligible as there is of 4 planes being hijacked and crashed into major buildings. It's prudent to start worrying is now. If the threat fails to materialize, you can laugh about it years from now.
it would take far more than four planes to bring the risk up to levels for driving
True enough but is the implication that the additional money being spent on airline security might be better spent on improving automobile safety? Would the FBI be more usefully employed in tracking down drunk drivers than terrorists? After all, a fifteen per cent reduction in automobile fatalities would about equal the number of victims of terrorism.
There's often a temporary drop in airline travel after a major accident and one can presume that the larger the accident, the larger the drop. Airline passenger volumes will probably return to previous levels as the images of 9/11 begin to fade because terrorism didn't reduce the need to fly.
However, while the images are still fresh, people can be forgiven for reacting in fear. They're not like soldiers or firemen who are trained to run toward disaster rather than recoil.
In fact, if terrorist incidents continue, you can expect travelers to become inured. The incidents will have a briefer effect on passenger volumes. People's perception of the risk of air travel will be brought closer into line with reality. It's a small, but real victory.
I'm beginning to think that moderators have a duty to mod down posts like this one that may put ideas in the heads of terrorists or raise the level of anxiety in slashdotters who are already unhinged over the loss of their rights.
For the sake of national security, please be a little more circumspect.
Imagine bus boys sprinking a tasteless powder on meals in a restaurant.
Or putting a tasteless white powder in the salt shakers.
The ways to deliver biological agents appears to be only limited by your imagination and your willingness to contract the disease yourself.
I may start bringing my own condiments when I dine out.
If I understand your argument it is that if you aren't going to worry about automobile accidents or pesticides, then you shouldn't take any action to protect yourself from anthrax.
My position is that if people can reduce the risk of anthrax infection by not using the mail, they don't have to wait to do so until the automobile accident rate drops.
Other points of contention:
panic over one person dying (while incredibly tragic) is just absurd...
You are distorting the situation. First, there's no panic in usual sense and second, the reaction is not just to one person dying but to the fact that
anthrax is being sent through the mail
many more people could die and
the extent of the threat is unknown.
It's a fact that people's perception of risk can be wildly at variance with reality. However, there is good reason to think that the level of risk in normal life has risen and will continue to rise for sometime. It may not, but there is good reason to think so or those pictures on television on 9/11 held nothing more than morbid fascination.
The only way to significantly reduce the risk is to not drive.
It is not the only way. Obeying traffic laws significantly reduces the risk. I think you mean that the only way to eliminate the risk is not to drive. But it is an irrelevant observation. People generally have to drive in order to work, shop and have a normal life in the suburbs so they can only aim to reduce their risk.
My point is that no one simply looks at the risk side of the equation. They also look at the rewards, or lack thereof, as well.
You don't see "HOLY SHIT! SOMEONE DIED IN A CAR ACCIDENT! SHUT DOWN THE HIGHWAYS!".
Of course, you saw exactly this reaction when the planes were hijacked on 9/11. All airplanes in North America were grounded. There is evidence that this reaction prevented further hijackings. Precisely calibrating one's response is impossible when the size of the threat is unknown and the potential consequences are large. Similarly, with the anthrax threat, the prudent thing to do is assume the worst until more information is available.
There's a lot of knee-jerk reactions which are not necessarily effective...
Actually the reactions are extremely effective. Not flying completely eliminates the personal threat of hijacking. Grounding all airplanes was the completely reasonable reaction when the hijackings first occurred and people can reasonably take their cue from that act. Similarly, not using mail completely eliminates the threat of catching a horrible disease from the mail. Many large corporations x-ray parcels in their mailrooms because of the remote possibility of bombs. Until similar methods can be devised for regular mail, individuals must take whatever precautions they can.
The idea that one should increase one's risk of dying for the benefit of airline industry or the economy in general is surely one of the least helpful suggestion since Mayor Guiliani suggested everyone go shopping.
Changing one's behavior when faced with a new threat is a reasonable thing to do. Once the full extent of the threat is known and some countermeasures are in place, people may change their behavior again. The dumbest reaction would be to proceed as if nothing had happened.