Agreed. But one problem I have with web-based solutions is that the provider is free to tinker with the interface at any time. And you know engineers... they love to change things.:-)
What I want is for some reputable, responsible company to offer a cloud-based webmail solution with a decent interface and a very good API that supports search, address book integration, etc. Then I want a variety of clients for that API -- some open-source and maybe some not; some fully-browser-based, some standalone, some written for Android... you get the idea.
In short: universal access everywhere, but I decide what UI I'll be using.
Basically, this is equivalent to taking every library function which returns an error code, and accessing them through a Facade which throws an unchecked exception instead.
Now assume that the Facade is the only sanctioned interface to that functionality. In the cases where the main program can do something about the error, it would wrap the invocation of the method in a try/catch.
So, basically, we're talking about same approach, but without using exceptions (which may not have existed in C at that time, apart from setjmp/longjmp).
Sadly, this is very common. I have seen developers go out of their way not to throw exceptions which by all rights should be thrown, such as checking for unexpected null values in variables and then setting those variables to dummy values... sigh...
> Christianity has been threatened since long, long ago.
By which I think you mean that there hasn't been a strong pushback yet, so it's reasonable to think that one will never come. When discussing social change I tend not to think in terms of years but decades and centuries: change is sometimes glacial, but glaciers still move.
What has changed recently is technology. Google and the modern web didn't exist 20 years ago, yet blocking Google today is (1) a significant political act, and (2) easily achievable. If we come to a day when all information resides in the cloud, censorship will be so simple as to be invisible. No public book burnings, no jack-booted thugs breaking down doors and confiscating printing presses. No optics of any sort. Just a few mouse clicks, and the offensive work disappears. A few more, and any story that mentions the disappearance itself disappears.
The question is, who gets to hold that mouse, and why might they use it?
Let's not talk about Christianity (an all-too-easy target). Forget theocracy; I don't seriously think it would happen here in the next 200 years, though I do sometimes wonder what the sequence of events might be, and how unlikely they really are. Instead let's talk about political parties that come into power and seize upon some crisis as an excuse to put an entire nation on ideological lockdown. Let's talk about the Big Bad Thing that happens on the 200th anniversary of 9/11, the thing that popularizes the idea that subversives need to be rooted out and shut down. Censorship, isolationism, handed down from above, all in the same of keeping us safe. The scenario doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility to me.
> Only 20% oppose evolution being taught in public school science classes, and 61% support it.
That's encouraging, and indeed, many Christians that I know (middle class, educated, living in or near large cities) would fall solidly into that camp. But 20% is still too high for my comfort. The theory of evolution is probably as well-established as the theory of atomic structure, with a preponderance of evidence in its favor.
> Thank you very much for listening to me, and also for being polite.
Not at all; you're quite welcome. I enjoy debates here... I usually learn a few things. For example, I didn't know that Vatican II had addressed the issue of government censorship. Mostly I thought it dealt with more basic matters of worship (such as eating meat on Friday, that sort of thing).
> Not exactly. Young Earth Creationism states that the _Earth_ is a few thousand years old. It conflicts with quite a lot of established science. Believing that _humans_ were created recently (possibly from preexisting hominids) has much less conflict with established science
Well, I'm going to have to let this one slide. But if someone tells me that they think that humans were created several thousand years ago, I'd bet heavily that they were speaking of a literal interpretation of Genesis, right down to the Ussher chronology [which establishes the year of Creation as 4004 BC].
Anyway, whether or not you choose to reply, thanks for the convo.
I'm not making an argument. I'm simply wondering if the "walling off" of sections of the Internet could happen in this country in the coming decades if the political landscape tilts heavily in one direction.
I picked a religious example, because Iranian censorship is rooted in religion, and because we have many people of strong faith in this country who have fought against the teaching of evolution in the schools. It's an easy example; I was being intellectually lazy. But when people of strong faith feel that their religion is being threatened, it's not insane to expect them to push back.
You say that Christianity is not Islam; I agree that today it seems to be a much gentler religion. But it wasn't always that way. Consider Galileo, or Giordano Bruno. Then consider what might happen -- 50, 100 years from now -- if the political leadership happened to be composed entirely of people drawn from the same religious background: good people, honest people, sincere people, who wish only the best for their nation. They may see censorship not as evil, but as a protection *from* evil influence. I doubt it would even be called censorship. "Standards of decency," maybe. "Protection from harmful influences."
It would very probably start with pornography. But I'm afraid that it would not end there.
But as you can see, 46% polled by Gallup believe that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." That most certainly is Young Earth Creationism.
Myself, I don't understand why faith and science have to be at each other's throats. If God chose to create intelligent life by a slow process taking billions of years, how is that any less miraculous than taking seven days?
Parents often have simplistic answers to the question "where do babies come from?" because young children are not thought to be emotionally ready for the full answer. Why can't we view Genesis the same way? An allegory for a more-primitive time when human beings did not yet have the scientific tools available.
I hope you're right. It does seem unthinkable at the present moment. But I can imagine scenarios where only certain approved sites and communication channels would be approved. Commerce isn't speech; it might be possible to regulate the latter without significantly denting the former.
I completely agree. But even in the United States, some people are willing to surrender personal liberty in exchange for safety. Then it all just comes down to what "safety" means.
I would temper your point to say that I don't see censorship as being the sole province of one political party in the United States. I know many fine Republicans and many fine Democrats. But some folks just plain don't like how accessible the seamier side of culture is on the web. They worry -- sincerely -- about the next generation growing up with values different from their own.
But yes, I agree that if you're willing to close your mind to basic science, and encourage others to do the same (by voting for like-minded individuals; by working to change school curricula), then you're implicitly helping that 46% to increase.
I don't think it's going to go up. But I'm appalled that it hasn't gone down, and that it's as high as it is.
And I'm not getting at anything. I just think it's unfortunate that entire countries are going on lockdown, and I wonder what it would take for the United States to institute such measures. Of course it won't happen tomorrow, or next year. But what about fifty years, or a hundred? Political, cultural, and religious landscapes change, and not always in ways that we'd expect. Do you think it's impossible?
I did not say that 46% support censorship. 46% believe in Young Earth Creationism; I cited an article that posted the Gallup poll where that number came from.
Do I believe that every person of that 46% supports censorship? Absolutely not. But don't you wonder what percentage of Iranian citizens really support censorship? Even in a theocracy, people are people, and the people I know generally chafe at restrictions.
Draconian restrictions can be imposed by a government on a populace for their alleged safety, and the populace will go along with it if scared enough, or if dissent is not tolerated.
Good point. But I'm just saying that their entire approach is the problem. They're trying to reconstruct photo-realistic scenes from geospatial data that will never be absolutely perfect. Why not just use actual photos? That approach has far less intrinsic data distortion, and delivers exactly what the map-user needs.
(Not that the "Street View" van doesn't produce its own strange photo artifacts, but generally these don't play havoc with the entire scene.)
in the United States. Large swaths of the country are deeply religious, by which I mean some stripe of Christianity. They have grown increasingly suspicious (if not downright scornful) of scientists and educators who challenge their views and threaten to corrupt the views of their children. I suspect that many of these folks sincerely see unrestricted search engines and an uncensored internet as tools of the devil. How far would public opinion have to tip before *all* searches are "safe" searches, and the "sanitized" web becomes the norm?
It seems unthinkable. But when 46% of the U.S. population earnestly believes that humans were created in their present form within the last 10,000 years, you have to be open to what happens if that number goes to 56%, or 96%.
I respectfully disagree that the primary problem is the data. Have you seen the comparisons of Apple's "virtual flyover" with Google's "street view"? Flyover looks nice for certain scenes, but others are full of bizarre Dali-esque digital artifacts and distortions.
...or some other quantum computer programming language.
(Of course, I suppose that to really do quantum software development correctly, you have to learn to be great at it and totally suck at the same time. Well, at least while no one's watching...)
I'm sure there are a depressingly-large number of Americans who would be overjoyed at the prospect of NASA being monetarily crippled, if not defunded altogether. Not only is it a haven for climate scientists (NASA has Earth-looking satellites, and has monitored the Antactic ozone hole for years), but it's packed to the gills with astrophysicists who maintain that the universe is billions of years old instead of a mere six thousand.
show them documentation you've written. UML diagrams, tutorials, presentations.
Everyone wants an IT specialist who can sling code, but if you can convey information effectively to help other people work better, it shows that you're focused on the bigger picture and the longer term.
Hey, how the heck was I modded "Troll'? If the FAA is replacing onboard printed matter with an electronic reading device, the most obvious question is one of reliability.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. But one problem I have with web-based solutions is that the provider is free to tinker with the interface at any time. And you know engineers... they love to change things. :-)
What I want is for some reputable, responsible company to offer a cloud-based webmail solution with a decent interface and a very good API that supports search, address book integration, etc. Then I want a variety of clients for that API -- some open-source and maybe some not; some fully-browser-based, some standalone, some written for Android... you get the idea.
In short: universal access everywhere, but I decide what UI I'll be using.
Basically, this is equivalent to taking every library function which returns an error code, and accessing them through a Facade which throws an unchecked exception instead.
Now assume that the Facade is the only sanctioned interface to that functionality. In the cases where the main program can do something about the error, it would wrap the invocation of the method in a try/catch.
So, basically, we're talking about same approach, but without using exceptions (which may not have existed in C at that time, apart from setjmp/longjmp).
Sadly, this is very common. I have seen developers go out of their way not to throw exceptions which by all rights should be thrown, such as checking for unexpected null values in variables and then setting those variables to dummy values... sigh...
> Christianity has been threatened since long, long ago.
By which I think you mean that there hasn't been a strong pushback yet, so it's reasonable to think that one will never come. When discussing social change I tend not to think in terms of years but decades and centuries: change is sometimes glacial, but glaciers still move.
What has changed recently is technology. Google and the modern web didn't exist 20 years ago, yet blocking Google today is (1) a significant political act, and (2) easily achievable. If we come to a day when all information resides in the cloud, censorship will be so simple as to be invisible. No public book burnings, no jack-booted thugs breaking down doors and confiscating printing presses. No optics of any sort. Just a few mouse clicks, and the offensive work disappears. A few more, and any story that mentions the disappearance itself disappears.
The question is, who gets to hold that mouse, and why might they use it?
Let's not talk about Christianity (an all-too-easy target). Forget theocracy; I don't seriously think it would happen here in the next 200 years, though I do sometimes wonder what the sequence of events might be, and how unlikely they really are. Instead let's talk about political parties that come into power and seize upon some crisis as an excuse to put an entire nation on ideological lockdown. Let's talk about the Big Bad Thing that happens on the 200th anniversary of 9/11, the thing that popularizes the idea that subversives need to be rooted out and shut down. Censorship, isolationism, handed down from above, all in the same of keeping us safe. The scenario doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility to me.
> Only 20% oppose evolution being taught in public school science classes, and 61% support it.
That's encouraging, and indeed, many Christians that I know (middle class, educated, living in or near large cities) would fall solidly into that camp. But 20% is still too high for my comfort. The theory of evolution is probably as well-established as the theory of atomic structure, with a preponderance of evidence in its favor.
> Thank you very much for listening to me, and also for being polite.
Not at all; you're quite welcome. I enjoy debates here... I usually learn a few things. For example, I didn't know that Vatican II had addressed the issue of government censorship. Mostly I thought it dealt with more basic matters of worship (such as eating meat on Friday, that sort of thing).
> Not exactly. Young Earth Creationism states that the _Earth_ is a few thousand years old. It conflicts with quite a lot of established science. Believing that _humans_ were created recently (possibly from preexisting hominids) has much less conflict with established science
Well, I'm going to have to let this one slide. But if someone tells me that they think that humans were created several thousand years ago, I'd bet heavily that they were speaking of a literal interpretation of Genesis, right down to the Ussher chronology [which establishes the year of Creation as 4004 BC].
Anyway, whether or not you choose to reply, thanks for the convo.
I'm not making an argument. I'm simply wondering if the "walling off" of sections of the Internet could happen in this country in the coming decades if the political landscape tilts heavily in one direction.
I picked a religious example, because Iranian censorship is rooted in religion, and because we have many people of strong faith in this country who have fought against the teaching of evolution in the schools. It's an easy example; I was being intellectually lazy. But when people of strong faith feel that their religion is being threatened, it's not insane to expect them to push back.
You say that Christianity is not Islam; I agree that today it seems to be a much gentler religion. But it wasn't always that way. Consider Galileo, or Giordano Bruno. Then consider what might happen -- 50, 100 years from now -- if the political leadership happened to be composed entirely of people drawn from the same religious background: good people, honest people, sincere people, who wish only the best for their nation. They may see censorship not as evil, but as a protection *from* evil influence. I doubt it would even be called censorship. "Standards of decency," maybe. "Protection from harmful influences."
It would very probably start with pornography. But I'm afraid that it would not end there.
As for the "46%" poll, it was done by Gallup: http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx . When I googled for it the Huffington Post link was the first one that came up. Laziness on my part again. Next time I'll be more careful and cite the original source.
But as you can see, 46% polled by Gallup believe that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." That most certainly is Young Earth Creationism.
I agree especially with your final point.
Myself, I don't understand why faith and science have to be at each other's throats. If God chose to create intelligent life by a slow process taking billions of years, how is that any less miraculous than taking seven days?
Parents often have simplistic answers to the question "where do babies come from?" because young children are not thought to be emotionally ready for the full answer. Why can't we view Genesis the same way? An allegory for a more-primitive time when human beings did not yet have the scientific tools available.
I hope you're right. It does seem unthinkable at the present moment. But I can imagine scenarios where only certain approved sites and communication channels would be approved. Commerce isn't speech; it might be possible to regulate the latter without significantly denting the former.
I completely agree. But even in the United States, some people are willing to surrender personal liberty in exchange for safety. Then it all just comes down to what "safety" means.
In my previous reply I forgot to post the link to the poll:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx
I would temper your point to say that I don't see censorship as being the sole province of one political party in the United States. I know many fine Republicans and many fine Democrats. But some folks just plain don't like how accessible the seamier side of culture is on the web. They worry -- sincerely -- about the next generation growing up with values different from their own.
But yes, I agree that if you're willing to close your mind to basic science, and encourage others to do the same (by voting for like-minded individuals; by working to change school curricula), then you're implicitly helping that 46% to increase.
I don't think it's going to go up. But I'm appalled that it hasn't gone down, and that it's as high as it is.
And I'm not getting at anything. I just think it's unfortunate that entire countries are going on lockdown, and I wonder what it would take for the United States to institute such measures. Of course it won't happen tomorrow, or next year. But what about fifty years, or a hundred? Political, cultural, and religious landscapes change, and not always in ways that we'd expect. Do you think it's impossible?
The article references a gallup poll stating that 46% believe in Young Earth Creationism. Here's the original poll:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx
I did not say that 46% support censorship. 46% believe in Young Earth Creationism; I cited an article that posted the Gallup poll where that number came from.
Do I believe that every person of that 46% supports censorship? Absolutely not. But don't you wonder what percentage of Iranian citizens really support censorship? Even in a theocracy, people are people, and the people I know generally chafe at restrictions.
Draconian restrictions can be imposed by a government on a populace for their alleged safety, and the populace will go along with it if scared enough, or if dissent is not tolerated.
Good point. But I'm just saying that their entire approach is the problem. They're trying to reconstruct photo-realistic scenes from geospatial data that will never be absolutely perfect. Why not just use actual photos? That approach has far less intrinsic data distortion, and delivers exactly what the map-user needs.
(Not that the "Street View" van doesn't produce its own strange photo artifacts, but generally these don't play havoc with the entire scene.)
in the United States. Large swaths of the country are deeply religious, by which I mean some stripe of Christianity. They have grown increasingly suspicious (if not downright scornful) of scientists and educators who challenge their views and threaten to corrupt the views of their children. I suspect that many of these folks sincerely see unrestricted search engines and an uncensored internet as tools of the devil. How far would public opinion have to tip before *all* searches are "safe" searches, and the "sanitized" web becomes the norm?
It seems unthinkable. But when 46% of the U.S. population earnestly believes that humans were created in their present form within the last 10,000 years, you have to be open to what happens if that number goes to 56%, or 96%.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/americans-believe-in-creationism_n_1571127.html
I respectfully disagree that the primary problem is the data. Have you seen the comparisons of Apple's "virtual flyover" with Google's "street view"? Flyover looks nice for certain scenes, but others are full of bizarre Dali-esque digital artifacts and distortions.
Give me real photos from street level, any day.
...or some other quantum computer programming language.
(Of course, I suppose that to really do quantum software development correctly, you have to learn to be great at it and totally suck at the same time. Well, at least while no one's watching...)
...and I thought, these Android apps are really getting out of hand....
Absolutely; great point.
Sigh... "Antarctic ozone hole".
I'm sure there are a depressingly-large number of Americans who would be overjoyed at the prospect of NASA being monetarily crippled, if not defunded altogether. Not only is it a haven for climate scientists (NASA has Earth-looking satellites, and has monitored the Antactic ozone hole for years), but it's packed to the gills with astrophysicists who maintain that the universe is billions of years old instead of a mere six thousand.
show them documentation you've written. UML diagrams, tutorials, presentations.
Everyone wants an IT specialist who can sling code, but if you can convey information effectively to help other people work better, it shows that you're focused on the bigger picture and the longer term.
Use a MTG Turing Machine to create a computer running Minecraft, then use that implementation of Minecraft to create a MTG Turing Machine simulator.
Hey, how the heck was I modded "Troll'? If the FAA is replacing onboard printed matter with an electronic reading device, the most obvious question is one of reliability.
Sheesh. Any meta-moderators in the house?
...but they won't become unusable if you accidentally smash their screens against something hard during unexpected turbulence.