Spirituality is not compatible with the scientific method.
No, but it's not inherently incompatible either; they deal with nonintersecting domains. Science is concerned with that which can be empirically tested. Spirituality is handy for things that can't.
When people try to apply "belief" to things which can be empirically tested, however, that's not spirituality, it's stupid.
I like this one: Since everything was created by God and acted according to God's will, then the snake who convinced Eve to eat the fruit was also acting according to God's will. Hence, God essentially "forced" Eve to disobey him. In that instant they changed from simple puppets of God's will to individuals who realized they were capable of defying God. It's almost as if God was bored and wanted to spice things up a bit.
It is not Google's job to provide a secure channel.
Yes, it is. If they're exchanging data between their desktop app and their web service, they need to do encryption and key verification to make sure the pipe isn't compromised. Stuff outside of that (like local keyloggers) is your concern, or someone else's. But between their two endpoints, they need to secure the channel.
Congratulations. You seem to be the only one here who really understands this problem space.
Let me tweak your brain just a little bit... Forget the idea of "installing" apps, and think of it as "caching" instead. When you want to run something, you just specify its name (a URI of some sort). If it's already cached locally, it just runs. If it's not, it downloads and then runs. If it's cached but there's a new version, it updates and then runs (unless you disabled updates for some reason).
I'm even more militant when it comes to ads. I will continue to block ads and recommend Adblock Plus to everyone until the whole "ad-supported" facade comes crashing down in a pile of rubble. Think you deserve to be paid for your service? Ask me to pay for it. Too scared to take that leap? Then maybe you'd better examine whether your content is really worth anything.
Fine. So put intelligent rate or bandwidth caps on and be upfront about that policy (this goes both for cable providers and universities). You used to be able to build networks with the assumption that most people wouldn't be transferring data most of the time. This simply isn't true any more.
Much of the foundation of our society and economy is based on false or inflated notions of value. In reality, there are only 4 limited resources: matter, energy, space, and time. All true value flows from these things. All those fancy objects we own are just chunks of matter, and we value them so highly because access to the facilities to make them is restricted.
Really, the current state of things is more artificial. And every time technology helps factor out one of the artificial notions of value, we regain some perspective.
This just sounds like a fancy Cross-Site Request Forgery.
I still maintain that the collective blindness to these security issues comes from our absolute refusal to see HTTP requests as function calls. This is partly due to the silly ideology of the REST crowd.
Rephrase the situation as follows and see if this doesn't make you pee your pants: "Any site can instruct your browser to execute an arbitrary function on another site using your authentication credentials."
Yes, good point. Here I am arguing other people's semantics while being sloppy with my own.
A personal belief that there is no god is Faith, since it's arguably impossible to gather sufficient evidence to prove that assertion. (Proving non-existence is generally a daunting task.)
People banding together and organizing around such a belief would be a Religion.
I meant to challenge those people who claim to be atheist (reject existence of god), yet claim there is no faith involved in that assertion.
Don't forget that atheism is a religion too. "Militant atheists", as described above, believe that God does not exist, despite having no direct evidence to support that belief. No one gave them an exclusive peek outside the universe to see that nothing is out there. Holding an unsubstantiated belief is the definition of religion, and like any other religion, it can be used to justify extremism.
First, a few examples... without ISA and PCI, we wouldn't have any hardware devices that we could just plug in to our computers. Without DirectX, OpenGL, and SDL, we wouldn't have games that could run on multiple platforms. Without TCP, I wouldn't be able to post on slashdot.
Standards are extremely important to computing, but not in the way decried in the article. Standards are not cool for their own sake, they're powerful because they enable modularity and layering, the true holy grails of effective computing. The designer of your network card didn't have to think about what the CPU in your machine was doing, or even whether there's a CPU at all! As long as it handled the specified PCI signals, it will operate correctly in a "standard" PCI system. Likewise, the game developers can use the same OpenGL calls to communicate with many different video cards, because the drivers fulfill the requirements of the standard.
Standards help to erect useful barriers between logical layers of software and hardware. Like anything, they can be misapplied, and using standards "just because they're standards" can often lead to trouble. Still, well-done standards are and will be the foundation just about any successful computing architecture.
RMS wants to take away our freedom to do what we wish.
And the US government wants to take away my freedom to murder other people... DAMN that US government!
Re:LFS is really good
on
LFS 4.0 Released
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· Score: 3, Informative
Ok, here's an example. My linux system at home (functioning as development machine, router, and firewall) is LFS. I've got each package installed in its own subdirectory under/pkg, and I've got/bin/lib/include and/man full of symlinks to the corresponding files in those directories (this is so utils like gcc, man, and the shell can find things without having to go searching all over the disk).
Removing a package is trivial: just delete its directory and remove the symlinks. Upgrading a package is trivial too: install the new package into a new directory, update the symlinks, and remove the old dir. If an upgrade has some problems, I can roll back to a previous install by rolling back the symlinks (provided I haven't deleted the old installation yet). My next project is to create a program that can manage the symlinks automatically, to make it even easier. (Preemptively: yes, I know about "stow", no, it doesn't do what I want)
I don't know of any regular distribution that lets you do that:)
It's obvious that they want market share and more users... The easiest way to do this would be to give away their software for free (like they did in the netscape days). However, they know they probably wouldn't get away with it again, and that someone would scream bloody monopoly. So instead, they just go limp and stop trying to prevent piracy, and the people take care of the free distribution themselves. If anyone bothers to challenge them in court, they'll just say "Woe is me, those uncontrollable pirates are stealing our stuff!" After all, I think it would be a lot harder to cast "not preventing illegal copying" as anticompetitive behavior. That's why they can hide behind it.
I agree with you, but holodecks aren't just going to appear when someone gets around to inventing them... we'll need to build up to them first with other technological advances. Don't you think that "networked microwaves" might be the first step in a long road to food replicators, for example? Sure, that kind of stuff might not seem that useful now, but it might turn out to be an essential step in the progression toward better technology down the line.
In fact, once we get to the point where holodecks and the like ARE feasible, they themselves might not seem like a huge advance beyond what's already available, in the same way that the jump between "microwave" and "networked microwave" seems small to us now.
I think it's stupid to mandate this at all. They should be able to use the best product/format whatever for the job.
In principle, you're right. However, the "job" in this case is very specific and very unique. The system must protect MY data, allow me full, unrestrained access to it (without having to purchase a license from some company first), its operation should be transparent to public scrutiny, and its maintainers must be accountable for these guarantees. These requirements significantly restrict the set of possible software systems that can even do the job, let alone do it well.
Right, ideally we wouldn't HAVE to mandate this. However, current governments have shown that they cannot and will not fulfill the requirements above without a legal kick in the ass. Hence, the proposed legislation.
Seems like a pretty simple and useful concept, actually... something like a GPL for hardware specs. Suppose someone designs a piece of hardware, and they release it under the "GHPL". The license specifies that anyone can take the design and fabricate actual hardware from it, sell the hardware, etc. They can also take the spec and create derived hardware from it, but if they decide to fabricate and distribute hardware from modified specs, they must also distribute their modifications to the public.
This might be be embraced even more quickly than the GPL... hardware manufacturers will be happy because, as mentioned, fab costs are still fairly high, so they can still make a profit from production and sales. Plus, they get to "leech" free hardware designs from the community, so their research costs go down. Finally, open specs means that competing manufacturers can fab and sell the same hardware, so prices go down on the consumer side. Sounds like a win all around!
Back when I first started experimenting with full-screen graphics programming, I went through a phase where I could switch screen modes, but not get anything to show up. This meant that I had no way to print diagnostic messages to the screen to figure out when something went wrong. The solution was to play sounds to track the progress of the program and report error conditions.
"Oh, the program went Boink-Ding and Bloop, but not Clunk... that must mean that palette creation failed!"
Slashdot Mirror
No, but it's not inherently incompatible either; they deal with nonintersecting domains. Science is concerned with that which can be empirically tested. Spirituality is handy for things that can't.
When people try to apply "belief" to things which can be empirically tested, however, that's not spirituality, it's stupid.
I like this one: Since everything was created by God and acted according to God's will, then the snake who convinced Eve to eat the fruit was also acting according to God's will. Hence, God essentially "forced" Eve to disobey him. In that instant they changed from simple puppets of God's will to individuals who realized they were capable of defying God. It's almost as if God was bored and wanted to spice things up a bit.
It is not Google's job to provide a secure channel.
Yes, it is. If they're exchanging data between their desktop app and their web service, they need to do encryption and key verification to make sure the pipe isn't compromised. Stuff outside of that (like local keyloggers) is your concern, or someone else's. But between their two endpoints, they need to secure the channel.
Congratulations. You seem to be the only one here who really understands this problem space.
Let me tweak your brain just a little bit... Forget the idea of "installing" apps, and think of it as "caching" instead. When you want to run something, you just specify its name (a URI of some sort). If it's already cached locally, it just runs. If it's not, it downloads and then runs. If it's cached but there's a new version, it updates and then runs (unless you disabled updates for some reason).
He probably has first-"hand" experience.
I'm even more militant when it comes to ads. I will continue to block ads and recommend Adblock Plus to everyone until the whole "ad-supported" facade comes crashing down in a pile of rubble. Think you deserve to be paid for your service? Ask me to pay for it. Too scared to take that leap? Then maybe you'd better examine whether your content is really worth anything.
A: Create a new TLD!
Q: (what was the question again?)
Fine. So put intelligent rate or bandwidth caps on and be upfront about that policy (this goes both for cable providers and universities). You used to be able to build networks with the assumption that most people wouldn't be transferring data most of the time. This simply isn't true any more.
Much of the foundation of our society and economy is based on false or inflated notions of value. In reality, there are only 4 limited resources: matter, energy, space, and time. All true value flows from these things. All those fancy objects we own are just chunks of matter, and we value them so highly because access to the facilities to make them is restricted.
Really, the current state of things is more artificial. And every time technology helps factor out one of the artificial notions of value, we regain some perspective.
This just sounds like a fancy Cross-Site Request Forgery.
I still maintain that the collective blindness to these security issues comes from our absolute refusal to see HTTP requests as function calls. This is partly due to the silly ideology of the REST crowd.
Rephrase the situation as follows and see if this doesn't make you pee your pants: "Any site can instruct your browser to execute an arbitrary function on another site using your authentication credentials."
Yes, good point. Here I am arguing other people's semantics while being sloppy with my own.
A personal belief that there is no god is Faith, since it's arguably impossible to gather sufficient evidence to prove that assertion. (Proving non-existence is generally a daunting task.)
People banding together and organizing around such a belief would be a Religion.
I meant to challenge those people who claim to be atheist (reject existence of god), yet claim there is no faith involved in that assertion.
Don't forget that atheism is a religion too. "Militant atheists", as described above, believe that God does not exist, despite having no direct evidence to support that belief. No one gave them an exclusive peek outside the universe to see that nothing is out there. Holding an unsubstantiated belief is the definition of religion, and like any other religion, it can be used to justify extremism.
Damn, that's funny.
Bad time to be lacking mod points...
First, a few examples... without ISA and PCI, we wouldn't have any hardware devices that we could just plug in to our computers. Without DirectX, OpenGL, and SDL, we wouldn't have games that could run on multiple platforms. Without TCP, I wouldn't be able to post on slashdot.
Standards are extremely important to computing, but not in the way decried in the article. Standards are not cool for their own sake, they're powerful because they enable modularity and layering, the true holy grails of effective computing. The designer of your network card didn't have to think about what the CPU in your machine was doing, or even whether there's a CPU at all! As long as it handled the specified PCI signals, it will operate correctly in a "standard" PCI system. Likewise, the game developers can use the same OpenGL calls to communicate with many different video cards, because the drivers fulfill the requirements of the standard.
Standards help to erect useful barriers between logical layers of software and hardware. Like anything, they can be misapplied, and using standards "just because they're standards" can often lead to trouble. Still, well-done standards are and will be the foundation just about any successful computing architecture.
RMS wants to take away our freedom to do what we wish.
And the US government wants to take away my freedom to murder other people... DAMN that US government!
Ok, here's an example. My linux system at home (functioning as development machine, router, and firewall) is LFS. I've got each package installed in its own subdirectory under /pkg, and I've got /bin /lib /include and /man full of symlinks to the corresponding files in those directories (this is so utils like gcc, man, and the shell can find things without having to go searching all over the disk).
:)
Removing a package is trivial: just delete its directory and remove the symlinks. Upgrading a package is trivial too: install the new package into a new directory, update the symlinks, and remove the old dir. If an upgrade has some problems, I can roll back to a previous install by rolling back the symlinks (provided I haven't deleted the old installation yet). My next project is to create a program that can manage the symlinks automatically, to make it even easier. (Preemptively: yes, I know about "stow", no, it doesn't do what I want)
I don't know of any regular distribution that lets you do that
It's obvious that they want market share and more users... The easiest way to do this would be to give away their software for free (like they did in the netscape days). However, they know they probably wouldn't get away with it again, and that someone would scream bloody monopoly. So instead, they just go limp and stop trying to prevent piracy, and the people take care of the free distribution themselves. If anyone bothers to challenge them in court, they'll just say "Woe is me, those uncontrollable pirates are stealing our stuff!" After all, I think it would be a lot harder to cast "not preventing illegal copying" as anticompetitive behavior. That's why they can hide behind it.
"Spell checkers are not bad if they do not have to rely on them."
;)
...
"... but now they most definately are."
I definitely agree with you.
nonono... you've got it backwards: We've got a privately held company disguised as a government!
I agree with you, but holodecks aren't just going to appear when someone gets around to inventing them... we'll need to build up to them first with other technological advances. Don't you think that "networked microwaves" might be the first step in a long road to food replicators, for example? Sure, that kind of stuff might not seem that useful now, but it might turn out to be an essential step in the progression toward better technology down the line.
In fact, once we get to the point where holodecks and the like ARE feasible, they themselves might not seem like a huge advance beyond what's already available, in the same way that the jump between "microwave" and "networked microwave" seems small to us now.
It's an interesting topic, anyway...
I think it's stupid to mandate this at all. They should be able to use the best product/format whatever for the job.
In principle, you're right. However, the "job" in this case is very specific and very unique. The system must protect MY data, allow me full, unrestrained access to it (without having to purchase a license from some company first), its operation should be transparent to public scrutiny, and its maintainers must be accountable for these guarantees. These requirements significantly restrict the set of possible software systems that can even do the job, let alone do it well.
Right, ideally we wouldn't HAVE to mandate this. However, current governments have shown that they cannot and will not fulfill the requirements above without a legal kick in the ass. Hence, the proposed legislation.
Seems like a pretty simple and useful concept, actually... something like a GPL for hardware specs. Suppose someone designs a piece of hardware, and they release it under the "GHPL". The license specifies that anyone can take the design and fabricate actual hardware from it, sell the hardware, etc. They can also take the spec and create derived hardware from it, but if they decide to fabricate and distribute hardware from modified specs, they must also distribute their modifications to the public.
This might be be embraced even more quickly than the GPL... hardware manufacturers will be happy because, as mentioned, fab costs are still fairly high, so they can still make a profit from production and sales. Plus, they get to "leech" free hardware designs from the community, so their research costs go down. Finally, open specs means that competing manufacturers can fab and sell the same hardware, so prices go down on the consumer side. Sounds like a win all around!
You, sir/madam, are very creative. Please go start a research company and bring this to us :)
Back when I first started experimenting with full-screen graphics programming, I went through a phase where I could switch screen modes, but not get anything to show up. This meant that I had no way to print diagnostic messages to the screen to figure out when something went wrong. The solution was to play sounds to track the progress of the program and report error conditions.
"Oh, the program went Boink-Ding and Bloop, but not Clunk... that must mean that palette creation failed!"