N.B.: I'm *assuming* that this book is just asserting the Everett-Graham-Wheeler multi-world interpretation. If this is wrong, then please tell me so.
This is wrong. The book discusses a number of different multiverse scenarios. It does not assert any specific one of them, or any at all, are actually true. It asserts, at best/worst, that they are possible.
It doesn't even necessarily require a premeditated back door creation. Sometimes an ex-admin might be aware of certain vulnerabilities, or figure them out using their detailed insider knowledge, after leaving. Particularly if the main focus of their job wasn't security; they might not have put as much thought into securing systems as they should have while they were there, but feel suddenly and remarkably inspired once they are gone, and once they do put some serious thought into it, realize that there's an exploitable weakness.
If people routinely leave your non-profit organization in anger, then the organization's leaders probably need to address a more fundamental problem than server administrative rights.
Unfortunately, there are many tasks today that still require you hire humans to do them. As long as that remains true, the fundamental problem is unsolvable. There is no conceivable human organization composed of more than one that will not, given sufficient time, suffer from conflict and angry departures. Even if it's not routine, it's still an issue that must be dealt with if one is to have responsible management.
I'm not sure that the crime of going from point A to point B without the proper paperwork warrants a death sentence.
Then again, I don't believe the government has the right to prevent any non-criminal from traveling where ever they damn well please, renting or buying a place to stay when they get there, and getting any job an employer is willing to pay them for there. As such, the whole notion of visas, much less quotas, seems rather silly to me. I don't have the right to prevent you from going to Los Angeles and getting a job if you want. It's absurd to agree that I don't if you happen to be from San Francisco, but that I do if you were born in Mexico City. What the hell does that have to do with it? If you're a free person, I have no right to dictate where you can live or work, regardless of where your mother decided to live when you were born.
I have ten bucks that says he developed the ulcer due to the stress of having to deal with modern copyright issuess and whatever big name Hollywood studios he's had to tolerate doing business with.
That's a pretty poor bet, given that ulcers are usually caused by Helicobacter pylori, not stress, sin, witchcraft, or any of the other superstitious beliefs we used to have regarding ulcers.
Yeah, that kind of bugged me - especially when he removed the pencil at the end. It almost looked like the pencil point was embedded in a bit of rubber.
Yeah, they didn't fool you with those fake moon landing vids, they're not gonna fool you this time either, right?:p
I give you...Facebook. A veritable cornucopia of evidence.
Facebook certainly proves that a lot more people are writing than before. This, however, is not evidence for the point you were trying to make, but in fact tends to support the opposite. People writing mistake-ridden text are already more literate, and are more likely to improve in the future, than those who don't write at all. Facebook is also often informal -- writing like a lolcat is not evidence of damaged literacy development but of luv ov teh intarwebs.;)
Sure, this is anecdotal, and the plural of anecdote is not data, but if students who text all the time are actually good spellers and have a grasp on English, why does it seem like more and more students are using text abbreviations in actual writing?
First of all, the claim is that those who text are better spellers than they would otherwise be, not that they "are actually good spellers". Secondly, there's a difference between having a grasp of English rules and having respect for them.
...they are not realizing that there are appropriate and inappropriate times to use these abbreviations, and more and more often they are using them at the wrong times.
This is, ultimately, a value judgment. What's clear here is that these kids have different ideas about when their use is appropriate and inappropriate. The article suggests the kids are more knowledgeable than they would otherwise be, it does not follow that they have the exact same standards.
Indeed. These are bywords you should look for in any article before considering it credible. The honest and diligent who pursue knowledge invariably speak in such terms.
On the other hand, any article in which the author asserts certainty and the incontrovertible truth of what is said is an article obviously written by an idiot and contains zero in the way of reliable information. Where it happens to be true, it's only coincidentally so.
Quite the opposite. French is, in fact, the source of much of the inconsistency in the English language (modern English being the bastard love-child of French and Old English, a more purely germanic language).
Years after getting out of the system, I still saw high school seniors in honors programs who couldn't spell worth a damn.
...and I still see high school seniors in honors programs who can't spell worth a damn, who were not subjected to the same educational program. To assume X caused Y because X preceded Y is an all too common fallacy.
Way worse! Especially the last decade, many people don't even know that "then" and "than" are different words, that "ironic" doesn't mean "odd or coincidental", and how about expressions like "for all intensive purposes"? And don't get me started on "orientate"...
In other words, the situation is exactly the same as it was in the 70s. I can't really attest to any earlier than that, but what you say was certainly as true in the 70s as it is today. You just didn't see it as much prior to email/etc.
Technically, isn't almost all power we currently use solar power? That energy we're releasing when burning fossil fuels came from the sun, stored by the plants millions of years ago. The process in this article is essentially the same idea, just on timescales more acceptable to humans.
Wind and hydro power are just indirect solar power, too. I think the only non-solar power we use is nuclear and geothermal, both of which are releasing the stored power from the previous star that went supernova and created all those heavy elements (so, star power, but not Solar (as in from Sol, our current sun)).
This was certainly not the first personal computer virus, as I recall there was a virus running rampant on the Apple II computers in my high school running Apple's DOS 3.3 before this. The virus was one of the things that got them to switch everyone over to using the spiffy new ProDOS instead.
Security of any sort is always about tradeoffs -- you can always make things more secure, but is the cost (in dollars or convenience) worth the effort? The same general principle applies to the kind of things that could have been done to Stuxnet that the author of this article talks about. He presents the conclusion that they simply ran out of time, but overlooks the more likely answer: that they decided the extra time wouldn't be worth the extra benefit. Sure, some of those things might have delayed its discovery, but they would have also delayed its initial deployment. Even if there was no hard deadline, it's not clear that the benefit here would be worth the cost.
Saying or doing something different from what someone else said or did is not hypocrisy. Thus, "hypocrisy" is not a word you would ever use to describe Slashdot (or any other collective group of people) if you understand what the word actually means. When the actions of Slashdot users are inconsistent with the actions of Slashdot users, this isn't hypocrisy, it's a demonstration of the mythological status of the "group think" you speak of. It's not that there aren't Slashdot users who hold all the views and display all the actions you cite, it's just there's also ones who display the opposite, and there's nothing even slightly odd, inconsistent, or hypocritical about that.
I have always felt that people put too narrow a view on what life is or could be.
You're reading too much into it if you're thinking they're limiting their view on what life is or could be. If I tell you I've just arrived in the city and am looking for good Italian restaurants, it does not follow that I am assuming only Italian food exists or could exist. It's just the kind I'm most interested in finding at the moment. The "habitable zone" is the zone that could support all the life we've ever detected. If we detect new forms of life, the zone will get bigger. There's no a priori assumption here that only life as we know it can exist, it's an a posteriori judgement: "this is what we've seen -- where could it survive?"
... Isn't it much clearer to say Mercury is 20 times farther from our sun than this planet is from its?
No. It just maps onto a mathematical statement more directly, but the meaning is perfectly clear in either case to a fluent speaker of the English language. Twice as close means half as far, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
N.B.: I'm *assuming* that this book is just asserting the Everett-Graham-Wheeler multi-world interpretation. If this is wrong, then please tell me so.
This is wrong. The book discusses a number of different multiverse scenarios. It does not assert any specific one of them, or any at all, are actually true. It asserts, at best/worst, that they are possible.
It doesn't even necessarily require a premeditated back door creation. Sometimes an ex-admin might be aware of certain vulnerabilities, or figure them out using their detailed insider knowledge, after leaving. Particularly if the main focus of their job wasn't security; they might not have put as much thought into securing systems as they should have while they were there, but feel suddenly and remarkably inspired once they are gone, and once they do put some serious thought into it, realize that there's an exploitable weakness.
While your advice is good, it ignores the fact that some people will be pissed off sooner or later no matter how good they are treated.
If people routinely leave your non-profit organization in anger, then the organization's leaders probably need to address a more fundamental problem than server administrative rights.
Unfortunately, there are many tasks today that still require you hire humans to do them. As long as that remains true, the fundamental problem is unsolvable. There is no conceivable human organization composed of more than one that will not, given sufficient time, suffer from conflict and angry departures. Even if it's not routine, it's still an issue that must be dealt with if one is to have responsible management.
I'm not sure that the crime of going from point A to point B without the proper paperwork warrants a death sentence.
Then again, I don't believe the government has the right to prevent any non-criminal from traveling where ever they damn well please, renting or buying a place to stay when they get there, and getting any job an employer is willing to pay them for there. As such, the whole notion of visas, much less quotas, seems rather silly to me. I don't have the right to prevent you from going to Los Angeles and getting a job if you want. It's absurd to agree that I don't if you happen to be from San Francisco, but that I do if you were born in Mexico City. What the hell does that have to do with it? If you're a free person, I have no right to dictate where you can live or work, regardless of where your mother decided to live when you were born.
I have ten bucks that says he developed the ulcer due to the stress of having to deal with modern copyright issuess and whatever big name Hollywood studios he's had to tolerate doing business with.
That's a pretty poor bet, given that ulcers are usually caused by Helicobacter pylori, not stress, sin, witchcraft, or any of the other superstitious beliefs we used to have regarding ulcers.
He's going from defending the RIAA to defending the government. His clients get scummier every year... :p
Yeah, that kind of bugged me - especially when he removed the pencil at the end. It almost looked like the pencil point was embedded in a bit of rubber.
Yeah, they didn't fool you with those fake moon landing vids, they're not gonna fool you this time either, right? :p
I give you...Facebook. A veritable cornucopia of evidence.
Facebook certainly proves that a lot more people are writing than before. This, however, is not evidence for the point you were trying to make, but in fact tends to support the opposite. People writing mistake-ridden text are already more literate, and are more likely to improve in the future, than those who don't write at all. Facebook is also often informal -- writing like a lolcat is not evidence of damaged literacy development but of luv ov teh intarwebs. ;)
If you want people to actually listen to you, you derive benefit from spending more time proofreading.
If you don't want people to actually listen to you, why are you typing up the post in the first place? This seems like a special kind of stupid...
Sure, this is anecdotal, and the plural of anecdote is not data, but if students who text all the time are actually good spellers and have a grasp on English, why does it seem like more and more students are using text abbreviations in actual writing?
First of all, the claim is that those who text are better spellers than they would otherwise be, not that they "are actually good spellers". Secondly, there's a difference between having a grasp of English rules and having respect for them.
...they are not realizing that there are appropriate and inappropriate times to use these abbreviations, and more and more often they are using them at the wrong times.
This is, ultimately, a value judgment. What's clear here is that these kids have different ideas about when their use is appropriate and inappropriate. The article suggests the kids are more knowledgeable than they would otherwise be, it does not follow that they have the exact same standards.
This is like saying Ebonics is a language.
No, it isn't. Nice troll, though...
From TFA:
"may be"
"possible"
Indeed. These are bywords you should look for in any article before considering it credible. The honest and diligent who pursue knowledge invariably speak in such terms.
On the other hand, any article in which the author asserts certainty and the incontrovertible truth of what is said is an article obviously written by an idiot and contains zero in the way of reliable information. Where it happens to be true, it's only coincidentally so.
Are you talking about French?
Quite the opposite. French is, in fact, the source of much of the inconsistency in the English language (modern English being the bastard love-child of French and Old English, a more purely germanic language).
Years after getting out of the system, I still saw high school seniors in honors programs who couldn't spell worth a damn.
...and I still see high school seniors in honors programs who can't spell worth a damn, who were not subjected to the same educational program. To assume X caused Y because X preceded Y is an all too common fallacy.
Way worse! Especially the last decade, many people don't even know that "then" and "than" are different words, that "ironic" doesn't mean "odd or coincidental", and how about expressions like "for all intensive purposes"? And don't get me started on "orientate"...
In other words, the situation is exactly the same as it was in the 70s. I can't really attest to any earlier than that, but what you say was certainly as true in the 70s as it is today. You just didn't see it as much prior to email/etc.
Technically, isn't almost all power we currently use solar power? That energy we're releasing when burning fossil fuels came from the sun, stored by the plants millions of years ago. The process in this article is essentially the same idea, just on timescales more acceptable to humans.
Wind and hydro power are just indirect solar power, too. I think the only non-solar power we use is nuclear and geothermal, both of which are releasing the stored power from the previous star that went supernova and created all those heavy elements (so, star power, but not Solar (as in from Sol, our current sun)).
This was certainly not the first personal computer virus, as I recall there was a virus running rampant on the Apple II computers in my high school running Apple's DOS 3.3 before this. The virus was one of the things that got them to switch everyone over to using the spiffy new ProDOS instead.
Security of any sort is always about tradeoffs -- you can always make things more secure, but is the cost (in dollars or convenience) worth the effort? The same general principle applies to the kind of things that could have been done to Stuxnet that the author of this article talks about. He presents the conclusion that they simply ran out of time, but overlooks the more likely answer: that they decided the extra time wouldn't be worth the extra benefit. Sure, some of those things might have delayed its discovery, but they would have also delayed its initial deployment. Even if there was no hard deadline, it's not clear that the benefit here would be worth the cost.
Maybe "respect for the law" is not high on many people's list of admirable qualities.
Is that even questionable? Might be an American thing... we love our outlaws.
/me hums Judas Priest's "Breaking The Law".
...most people hate him
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask for some reference on that. ...
When you're the center of the universe, you can determine what "most people" think via introspection. ;)
Saying or doing something different from what someone else said or did is not hypocrisy. Thus, "hypocrisy" is not a word you would ever use to describe Slashdot (or any other collective group of people) if you understand what the word actually means. When the actions of Slashdot users are inconsistent with the actions of Slashdot users, this isn't hypocrisy, it's a demonstration of the mythological status of the "group think" you speak of. It's not that there aren't Slashdot users who hold all the views and display all the actions you cite, it's just there's also ones who display the opposite, and there's nothing even slightly odd, inconsistent, or hypocritical about that.
Lobster is not commonly regarded as disgusting and horrible.
[citation needed]
In my experience, lobster is not universally but most certainly is commonly regarded as disgusting. Might be a regional thing...
I have always felt that people put too narrow a view on what life is or could be.
You're reading too much into it if you're thinking they're limiting their view on what life is or could be. If I tell you I've just arrived in the city and am looking for good Italian restaurants, it does not follow that I am assuming only Italian food exists or could exist. It's just the kind I'm most interested in finding at the moment. The "habitable zone" is the zone that could support all the life we've ever detected. If we detect new forms of life, the zone will get bigger. There's no a priori assumption here that only life as we know it can exist, it's an a posteriori judgement: "this is what we've seen -- where could it survive?"
... Isn't it much clearer to say Mercury is 20 times farther from our sun than this planet is from its?
No. It just maps onto a mathematical statement more directly, but the meaning is perfectly clear in either case to a fluent speaker of the English language. Twice as close means half as far, etc.