From "The Data Model That Nearly Killed Me", I came to one conclusion. He was nearly killed by serial incompetence.
There's no excuse for a doctor ignoring a wheezing patient who says "I have severe asthma", and many of the things he describes about the health record system sound like inexcusable incompetence as well.
Let's say you have 2 viruses and 1 piece of spyware running on your computer, does it prevent you from launching the applications you actually want to use... Like the malware removal tool?
While I agree with you that skepticism is generally a good idea, you also have to acknowledge that there are limits to how skeptical you can be. At some point you have to say, "yes the evidence is good enough to accept" or else you'll never ever do anything because you'll be paralyzed by your skepticism.
I don't think it's a case of disallowing skepticism, I think it's a case of the skeptics not having anything useful to contribute. A large part of the intolerance of these skeptics is fueled by the perception that they are funded by those who profit from inaction even as that inaction endangers their own lives and the lives of others.
Quinn is directly quoting Stephen Colbert's response to facts that don't match his world view.
In effect, Quinn is saying that people who think that the "mainstream" news agencies have a liberal bias have little connection to reality. Specifically, they're not really upset about liberal bias they're upset about there not being enough of their preferred bias. Thus the quote summarizes that view as "anything I don't agree with is biased".
This is the same problem that differentiates engineers and mathematicians. The goal is to be perfectly unbiased, however, in practice there actually is "good enough".
There needs to be unbiased, or if you want to be a stickler, minimally biased news reporting. The problem with "honest about your bias" reporting is that it extremely difficult to get valid information out of that, because while you may know the bias that doesn't mean you know whether any particular thing that's reported is truth, half-truth or fabrication. Particularly you won't know what the biased reporting is deliberately omitting.
So in short, while reporters should be honest about their biases, they should also try to minimize their impact on their jobs. If not, I'm sure there's someone else willing to do a better job.
The point isn't that web site owner uses it on his site, the point is that it gets installed into IE and then you can use it on addresses on any site to bring up a map on the highlighted address. Particularly, I suppose on sites where the the address isn't linked for whatever reason (like say you're looking at a text file, instead of an html file).
As I read it, they're not offering free upgrades to people who already have Vista, they're offering free upgrades to people who are going to buy Vista between some point in the future and the release of Windows 7. It's the same thing they did with XP before Vista was released.
I'm not if they think as few people will take advantage of the offer this time around.
There's a theory for that, actually, which I won't explain very well, but here's a shot:
As it turns out, the females prefer the males with larger tails because at some point the tails are a hindrance. Think of it like a self-imposed handicap. The surviving male with the largest tail has the strongest genetics because he's survived despite the tail. It's really an advertisement that he has so much fitness, that he can afford to waste energy growing one heck of a tail.
That excess fitness means the female offspring of that male are more likely to survive, and thus females that prefer males with large tails would eventually replace those that do not (and thus, in theory, choose males with inferior genetics). In the end the tails do little to help the male peacocks but their female offspring are more likely to survive than other female offspring and that's enough for natural selection.
Well that is what we Intelligent Falling people call gravity.
I mean Newtonism is obviously false. When I put an apple on a shelf way up high, it never hits the ground. There. Irrevocable proof that Newtonism is nothing but scientific mumbo jumbo made up the scienticians to lead young Christian children into their dens of Santanism they trickily call "schools".
It kind of sounds like the article's author has never heard of Lamarkian Evolution, which has been proven false. Lamark thought that evolution occurred during a creature's life span and that acquired traits would be passed on to the creature's offspring.
Regardless, the most likely people to refer to Darwinism seem to be the Creationists. I don't think I've heard anyone else use that term.
I don't really think it matters. This is just more evidence that Microsoft doesn't get it, is out of touch with reality, and more concerned with their own profits that what makes them profitable in the first place.
Stop dicking your users around. According to the blog you linked even the limited version of Windows 7 will have all of the components of the top end in the image for it. Frankly, everything after that point about "piracy" is kicking your loyal customers in the nuts to spite the people who never buy your software in the first place.
Seriously, by putting this limitation on "third world OEMs" you're just ensuring that no one in the "third world" uses the legitimate OEM software. Why would they when the cracked version is cheaper and works better?
Except when you actually look at all the facts rather than latching on to one thing and assuming it is the source of all evil, you find out something interesting:
The mortgages backed by that program had a lower than average failure rate. You see, unregulated lending institutions made the majority of the loans that are now going bankrupt, in fact more than 75% of the loans that had gone bad did not involve the companies in the program you cite at all.
Of course, the whole "it's the mortgages" thing is pretty much off track. It was the unregulated trade in "Mortgage backed assets" that caused the problem. That was free market behavior at it's very essence. The banks sold each other worthless bonds because they could find idiots at the other banks willing to buy worthless junk. They paid a rating agency to rate their mortgages as no risk because of the housing bubble, as long as prices on housing skyrocketed even if someone defaulted on the mortgage they could sell the house for more than the mortgage.
Sorry, but the program you cite isn't a culprit in the financial collapse.
What makes you think we'd want the "regulations" that industry would come up with for itself? It's not like companies haven't, in the past, deliberately trapped their employees into indentured servitude and then killed anyone who complained about it.
Industry is not a paragon of virtue, and government by industry is generally much worse than government by the people.
The "error" isn't that you can download the application package. The "error" is that many users are likely to mistakenly download the package when it doesn't apply to them. In this case it would be appropriate to check the system setting and say "Microsoft has detected that your current operating system is . This package is for systems , ,... . Click 'Continue' to download anyway, click 'Cancel' to return to the previous page, or click ' Version' to get this file for operating system."
That's the right way to do it. Check because you can, let the user override if they want to, and provide a link to what you think the proper file should be (if there is one, otherwise say it doesn't exist), and a way to return to the page they were reading.
Why do so many people assume that things are either all right or all wrong?
Multiple distributions are a necessary part of the Open Source ecosystem. Competition keeps the ecosystem healthy, selective pressures keep Linux evolving. Windows is built according to the direction of the Microsoft Holy Profits.
Linux grows according to what the people developing need and want. There will always be the question of which matches more closely what the average user wants and needs, but much of the strength of Linux comes from the existence of multiple distributions.
Well they've proven they know marketing and how to form anticompetitive agreements with end user computer sales companies. Beyond that Microsoft has rarely shown that they know anything else.
That's pretty thin evidence for your claim and your claim has little to do with what I said. Show me where Science classes are to be replaced with Social Justice classes or stop wasting my time.
I'm not a conservative, but placing the curricular focus on "social justice, equity and community", you have to sacrifice other, more important areas that are founded in fact (like science).
That's not the curriculum, that's the ideology of the system being argued for. The system is supposed to embody the values of "social justice, equity and community". It achieves these goals by providing good education regardless of the education and income of the parents, giving all children an equally good education, and involving the community in the education process.
Why is this an either or situation? Surely there should be enough room for the average kid who's going to work really hard and the smart kid who's parents aren't the best at planning things.
Oh wait it isn't an either or situation. Both kids would likely get into the school of choice provided both are willing to put in the effort.
I'm not absolutely sure, but I think much of the money was spent on "high tech schools". Essentially they wired up the schools with a Windows Network, provided Windows tablet PCs to the students and so on to make the High Schools appear new and innovative.
Strangely enough, just putting more computers in the schools didn't improve the education at almost all of the schools. Just one school showed improvement, most showed declines instead.
Slashdot Mirror
So... You go to the doctor and tell him what treatment you should get?
From "The Data Model That Nearly Killed Me", I came to one conclusion. He was nearly killed by serial incompetence.
There's no excuse for a doctor ignoring a wheezing patient who says "I have severe asthma", and many of the things he describes about the health record system sound like inexcusable incompetence as well.
Incompetence can ruin anything.
Perhaps more importantly to most users:
Let's say you have 2 viruses and 1 piece of spyware running on your computer, does it prevent you from launching the applications you actually want to use... Like the malware removal tool?
You know who looks a Zealot? You.
Well they did censor federally funded research that indicated that global warming was occurring:
http://environment.about.com/od/environmentallawpolicy/a/censorship_clim.htm
So that pretty much shows they were only willing to pay for research that showed it wasn't occurring. Is that good enough?
While I agree with you that skepticism is generally a good idea, you also have to acknowledge that there are limits to how skeptical you can be. At some point you have to say, "yes the evidence is good enough to accept" or else you'll never ever do anything because you'll be paralyzed by your skepticism.
I don't think it's a case of disallowing skepticism, I think it's a case of the skeptics not having anything useful to contribute. A large part of the intolerance of these skeptics is fueled by the perception that they are funded by those who profit from inaction even as that inaction endangers their own lives and the lives of others.
Woosh!
Quinn is directly quoting Stephen Colbert's response to facts that don't match his world view.
In effect, Quinn is saying that people who think that the "mainstream" news agencies have a liberal bias have little connection to reality. Specifically, they're not really upset about liberal bias they're upset about there not being enough of their preferred bias. Thus the quote summarizes that view as "anything I don't agree with is biased".
This is the same problem that differentiates engineers and mathematicians. The goal is to be perfectly unbiased, however, in practice there actually is "good enough".
There needs to be unbiased, or if you want to be a stickler, minimally biased news reporting. The problem with "honest about your bias" reporting is that it extremely difficult to get valid information out of that, because while you may know the bias that doesn't mean you know whether any particular thing that's reported is truth, half-truth or fabrication. Particularly you won't know what the biased reporting is deliberately omitting.
So in short, while reporters should be honest about their biases, they should also try to minimize their impact on their jobs. If not, I'm sure there's someone else willing to do a better job.
The point isn't that web site owner uses it on his site, the point is that it gets installed into IE and then you can use it on addresses on any site to bring up a map on the highlighted address. Particularly, I suppose on sites where the the address isn't linked for whatever reason (like say you're looking at a text file, instead of an html file).
As I read it, they're not offering free upgrades to people who already have Vista, they're offering free upgrades to people who are going to buy Vista between some point in the future and the release of Windows 7. It's the same thing they did with XP before Vista was released.
I'm not if they think as few people will take advantage of the offer this time around.
There's a theory for that, actually, which I won't explain very well, but here's a shot:
As it turns out, the females prefer the males with larger tails because at some point the tails are a hindrance. Think of it like a self-imposed handicap. The surviving male with the largest tail has the strongest genetics because he's survived despite the tail. It's really an advertisement that he has so much fitness, that he can afford to waste energy growing one heck of a tail.
That excess fitness means the female offspring of that male are more likely to survive, and thus females that prefer males with large tails would eventually replace those that do not (and thus, in theory, choose males with inferior genetics).
In the end the tails do little to help the male peacocks but their female offspring are more likely to survive than other female offspring and that's enough for natural selection.
Well that is what we Intelligent Falling people call gravity.
I mean Newtonism is obviously false. When I put an apple on a shelf way up high, it never hits the ground. There. Irrevocable proof that Newtonism is nothing but scientific mumbo jumbo made up the scienticians to lead young Christian children into their dens of Santanism they trickily call "schools".
I think you're confusing hero worship with religion.
It kind of sounds like the article's author has never heard of Lamarkian Evolution, which has been proven false. Lamark thought that evolution occurred during a creature's life span and that acquired traits would be passed on to the creature's offspring.
Regardless, the most likely people to refer to Darwinism seem to be the Creationists. I don't think I've heard anyone else use that term.
Loosely translated:
It's so Microsoft can extort monopoly rents from developed countries by charging us much more than they'll actually willing to sell the product for.
I don't really think it matters. This is just more evidence that Microsoft doesn't get it, is out of touch with reality, and more concerned with their own profits that what makes them profitable in the first place.
Stop dicking your users around. According to the blog you linked even the limited version of Windows 7 will have all of the components of the top end in the image for it. Frankly, everything after that point about "piracy" is kicking your loyal customers in the nuts to spite the people who never buy your software in the first place.
Seriously, by putting this limitation on "third world OEMs" you're just ensuring that no one in the "third world" uses the legitimate OEM software. Why would they when the cracked version is cheaper and works better?
Except when you actually look at all the facts rather than latching on to one thing and assuming it is the source of all evil, you find out something interesting:
The mortgages backed by that program had a lower than average failure rate. You see, unregulated lending institutions made the majority of the loans that are now going bankrupt, in fact more than 75% of the loans that had gone bad did not involve the companies in the program you cite at all.
Of course, the whole "it's the mortgages" thing is pretty much off track. It was the unregulated trade in "Mortgage backed assets" that caused the problem. That was free market behavior at it's very essence. The banks sold each other worthless bonds because they could find idiots at the other banks willing to buy worthless junk. They paid a rating agency to rate their mortgages as no risk because of the housing bubble, as long as prices on housing skyrocketed even if someone defaulted on the mortgage they could sell the house for more than the mortgage.
Sorry, but the program you cite isn't a culprit in the financial collapse.
What makes you think we'd want the "regulations" that industry would come up with for itself? It's not like companies haven't, in the past, deliberately trapped their employees into indentured servitude and then killed anyone who complained about it.
Industry is not a paragon of virtue, and government by industry is generally much worse than government by the people.
The "error" isn't that you can download the application package. The "error" is that many users are likely to mistakenly download the package when it doesn't apply to them. In this case it would be appropriate to check the system setting and say "Microsoft has detected that your current operating system is . This package is for systems , , ... . Click 'Continue' to download anyway, click 'Cancel' to return to the previous page, or click ' Version' to get this file for operating system ."
That's the right way to do it. Check because you can, let the user override if they want to, and provide a link to what you think the proper file should be (if there is one, otherwise say it doesn't exist), and a way to return to the page they were reading.
Why do so many people assume that things are either all right or all wrong?
Multiple distributions are a necessary part of the Open Source ecosystem. Competition keeps the ecosystem healthy, selective pressures keep Linux evolving. Windows is built according to the direction of the Microsoft Holy Profits.
Linux grows according to what the people developing need and want. There will always be the question of which matches more closely what the average user wants and needs, but much of the strength of Linux comes from the existence of multiple distributions.
Well they've proven they know marketing and how to form anticompetitive agreements with end user computer sales companies. Beyond that Microsoft has rarely shown that they know anything else.
That's pretty thin evidence for your claim and your claim has little to do with what I said. Show me where Science classes are to be replaced with Social Justice classes or stop wasting my time.
I'm not a conservative, but placing the curricular focus on "social justice, equity and community", you have to sacrifice other, more important areas that are founded in fact (like science).
That's not the curriculum, that's the ideology of the system being argued for. The system is supposed to embody the values of "social justice, equity and community". It achieves these goals by providing good education regardless of the education and income of the parents, giving all children an equally good education, and involving the community in the education process.
Why is this an either or situation? Surely there should be enough room for the average kid who's going to work really hard and the smart kid who's parents aren't the best at planning things.
Oh wait it isn't an either or situation. Both kids would likely get into the school of choice provided both are willing to put in the effort.
I'm not absolutely sure, but I think much of the money was spent on "high tech schools". Essentially they wired up the schools with a Windows Network, provided Windows tablet PCs to the students and so on to make the High Schools appear new and innovative.
Strangely enough, just putting more computers in the schools didn't improve the education at almost all of the schools. Just one school showed improvement, most showed declines instead.