You know, if you had asked, they would have said 'modprobe sb', which would have auto-configured your Vibra16 (I used to have one).
Your problem is that you tried to do things the same way you did in Windows, by clicking on icons, searching through menus, and such; Linux doesn't work that way. You would have had the same kind of problems under OS X, because you expected the interfaces of two totally different OSes to work exactly the same.
It's like getting mad because you can't fly an aeroplane when you know how to ride a bicycle.
No-one understands Windows, but anyone can use it. Linux is simple, but few can use it.
If it were possible to give every Windows user a three-day Linux course, compared to the months they spent learning to use Windows, many would probably want to switch.
You can't tell me that Linux is easier to use and install hardware drivers for than Windows.
Actually, I find it to be much easier -- I don't need to worry about Linux fscking up my system by auto-detecting hardware that I can't get a driver for.
Take, for example, my last experience installing an 802.11b card; same card, supported under both Windows and Linux.
Linux:
Install card, boot system, rebuild kernel with appropriate module, load module...hey, it works!
Windows:
Install card, boot, new device found, no driver, device disabled...ok. Try to install driver from CD, which installs half-way and then crashes with some bizarre error. Reboot, search the docs, and find out that you can't have the card in the system when you're installing the driver unless you have the latest version, which you can download -- too bad I'm installing the NIC driver. Kind of hard to download that.
After I got the driver installed, I then had to unload the pile of crapware that got installed on the system with it.
Evolution is theory taught in our schools as fact, this is what really gets those of us who believe in creation or creational-evolution "in a twist".
I'm going to assume that 'creational evolution' is another variant of the Intelligent Design argument[1]; the problem is that, not only is there no data backing Intelligent Design up, there is a huge pile of data contradicting the theory. It just doesn't hold up under any form of scrutiny. What's worse is that the Intelligent Design community intentionally 'forgets' certain facts (such as Peking Man being exposed as a hoax within months of discovery, or the fact that it is possible for chimpanzees to learn and express abstract concepts), or completely misrepresents others (such as using the wrong type of radioactive dating[2]).
Evolution is still taught because it is the best theory we have that fits what we have found, and nothing that the Intelligent Design people have come up with works even close to as well as the adaptive landscape model presently used to model evolutionary change.
There are many many scientists who dispute the alleged "scientific evidence" to support the idea that global warming is a threat, but in the mainstream press, global warming is presented as undisputed fact.
Blame the media for that one, although there is some credence to the fact that nearly all of the scientists who state that global warming is 'not a problem' all work for large chemical companies, whereas most of the scientists pointing out the problem often do their research for little or no money. But this is a different topic entirely. *grin*
Reliance on "Junk Science" is a huge problem internationally and here in the US. I believe in relying upon empirical evidence to support our beliefs in this world, but I don't share your naivete that the scientific community is doing a good job governing itself and protecting its integrity through consensus based only on scientific evidence.
Oh, it's not naivete. The problem is that the "scientific community" is not represented by the mass media; very few, if any, widely-used textbooks contain 'junk science', but it permeates our movies, sitcoms, and news broadcasts. What's worse is that very few people bother to take the time to learn about how science works at all. There are people graduating from high schools who can't tell you what the acceleration of gravity is, or understand the chemistry behind the formation of rust, or explain why a car tire loses traction when it is sliding instead of rolling.
The problem is not in the science; it is in our culture's overall naivety towards scientific knowledge. People take scientific facts for granted, instead of asking questions, or doing experiements, or even learning about how we came by those facts in the first place.
[1] E.g., everything was made by a god, and he had an active role -- he didn't just set the laws of the universe in motion, and let evolution happened as a part of the universe unfolding.
[2] Each type of radioactive dating has a certain range within which it is accurate; many creationist websites either fail to mention the dating methods used in their arguments, or use a dating method with a range of 6000 years to 'prove' the age of the Earth.
But! Even following the scientific method we are still not sure. Maybe throughout history gravity pulled at 9.5N/kg and it gradually changed to 9.8 in say... 1743. It might be scheduled to change back in 2014. Heck the world could have been created yesterday with all of our memories and everything by a supreme being!! (I know not a very good explanation)
This is known as the Problem of Induction. In a nutshell, it states that inductive logic is itself not valid; e.g., we can not make statements about anything unknown by looking at things that we do know. In addition, even our knowledge of the past and future are suspect; we have no knowledge that the past is static, and no proof that our estimates about the future will ever come to pass. We have no non-inductive proof that dropping a ball from a tower will cause it to fall, because assuming that the world will continue to work as it always has (e.g., previous balls dropped from towers did fall).
This can be handled one of two ways.
The first is that one can state that we can (and do) know absolutely nothing -- the universe could have been a fruitcake ten seconds ago, and changed form in such a way that we never knew it. Some deity could have created things; or the universe could have congealed out of Lime Jell-O. Logic is invalid and useless.
The problem with this viewpoint is that, if one were to really subscribe to it, there would be no point in making plans. No reason to even live; after all, you don't know whether or not your existence is itself real, or if it will just stop in a second when the universe becomes solid Jell-O again. This is not a very practical viewpoint, nor one compatible with our biology or psychology -- we inherently use past events to predict future results. Ever gotten sick from eating one type of food, and avoided that type of food in the future? Exactly.
The second way of dealing with the problem of induction is by making one assumption -- that things we have observed in the past did happen, and will continue to happen in the future. Note that this means that the events occur -- we may be wrong in our interpretation of said events. This is the principle upon which all of the knowledge of Man is founded, including science.
We can make a lot of measures in a lot of different times; we can apply statistical measures, making our theory more and more "scientific". But we can never say that it is absolutely "scientifically proven". Gravity at 9.8 can be the "best" Scientific explanation. This is totally subjective.
Any human viewpoint is, by this definition, subjective; we are not omnipotent nor omniscient, and therefore cannot ever see every single aspect of every single problem we encounter. We are limited to using the tools at hand; namely, our senses, and our ability to reason, which is derived solely from the assumption of pragmatism.
In fact, it is this admission that none of our knowledge can be 'truly objective' that renders scientific facts so strong. Whereas dogmatic sources of knowledge claim to hold perfect truths, scientific theories have the built-in intellectual credibility to allow for our human weaknesses. Scientific facts change as our understanding grows; they allow for us to make mistakes. In fact, the scientific process rewards those that find mistakes, and the greater the mistake, the bigger the reward. It is a self-correcting process.
Occam said that the simplest theory was the best. But is it really the truest?
What William of Occam said was that, given two or more competing theories with equal support, the most simple of all the theories is the best one to assume correct, because it will have less loopholes to check, and will be less likely to have mistakes. The important part is that the competing theories require equal evidence -- Occam's Razor does not apply in any other circumstance.
It's not a matter of being the, er, 'truest'; it's a matter of being the best theory that fits the data; shoul
Simple logic. You make an assertion that if rule X is true, than A causes B. If A fails to cause B, than your hypothesis is instantly disproven. If A causes B, but it is later found that an unknown influence C that was associted with A caused B, than your theory would be disproven, and the new theory would be that C causes B.
This is oversimplified, but gets the point across. In addition, in some so-called 'soft sciences' (such as psychology) where there are few hard mathematical rules, than many theories are buoyed more by popular support of the evidence than by anything else -- although, to be fair, this is rapidly changing (as far as psychology goes) with our increased understanding of neurochemistry.
I'll have to take your word for it. I've spent enough time reading Ayn Rand's ravings -- time I'll never recover. Her political writing vacillates between the blindingly obvious and the blindingly stupid, and I doubt her fiction is any more meritorious.
I'm not a Randroid or an Objectivist, but I have read and enjoyed both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead; her two first real novels, as I recall. Both were fantastic, and both made very solid points about a number of good things -- the power of the unfettered mind, the crime of stealing the fruits of one's labor, and the travesty of assuming that the best world is one in which everyone is equal. We need our geniuses, just as we need our burger-flippers.
The problem is, after these were written, Rand started buying into her own press. She started writing crap like Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. She took some good general ideas, and made very bad hard-and-fast rules of of them, completely ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
In this, Rand is an example of exactly how one should not handle criticism. Instead of reconsidering her viewpoints in light of constructive critique, she violently lashed out at anyone who questioned her Divine Word.
But that doesn't mean that she didn't have some good ideas.
Consensus and evidence. Science doesn't espouse things like evolution and gravity because they have popular support; they are considered scientific fact because of the wealth of evidence supporting them, and when new evidence comes to light, even well-established theories get thrown out on their ear. Popular support won't get you very far in science unless you have solid, credible evidence to back it up.
This is what gets the creationists and the flat-earth types all in a twist; they can't present credible evidence to the scientific community to support their claims, so they claim that there is some sort of conspiracy against them, when nothing could be further from the truth.
If you want a real morning of fun, eat a box of Rice-A-Roni for dinner, have a bowl of Fiber One cereal and a cup of coffee for breakfast, and wait about an hour. Do this and you will lose five pounds *and* experience the same sensations as a woman giving birth.
Considering American standards, I don't think that makes you very liberal at all. I'm a fscking hippie by American standards (sans the pot, smelly clothes, anarchist attitude, or anything else that really makes up a hippie), and slightly conservative according to most of the rest of the world.
Our company of about 20 people hires about one new engineer every 3 months, and we fire about 50% of those people in the first 3 months of their employment because they're lacking in one or more of these qualities: technical ability, interest in the job, their ability to work independently, to find answers on their own, and most importantly, their ability to come up with new ideas.
Oh, there are many lousy technicians. Don't get me wrong on that score; but there are also a lot of great technicians out of work. You are employed at a very small company -- your bosses couldn't afford to outsource even if they wanted to. Likewise, you are forced to hire local talent, and given the present market, a 50% chrurn rate supports my claim -- your attrition rate would be much higher, even among the idiots, in a dot-com economy.
Look, supposedly "all" the manufacturing jobs left, but I've been to far too many factories in the U.S. that build car parts, toys, garments, even bullets, to know that this is B.S., and new plants are being built all the time. Yes, they're all more automated now, but there are still jobs for everybody out there. I've seen them.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'evidence'. Look at the numbers of Americans employed in manufacturing, from 1950 until today, you will see a decline that is almost exponential. Furthermore, many of the factories building cars here do so for foreign firms -- Toyota, Honda, BMW, and such. GM and Ford both produce parts and cars in Mexico and Southeast Asia.
Someone who is only marginally able to do "mind-work", that got hired during the tech boom, is going to have to face facts and realize that since demand is lower, and supply is higher, they might as well go find something more menial to do. If that's serving coffee at Starbucks, so be it. I'd rather they serve me coffee than write crappy code that I have to go and fix. I hate being responsible for other people's sh!t.
This sounds like a direct shot at the individuals I referenced; let me restate that Mr. Barista was a *fantastic* technician. Knowledgable, patient with the users, efficient, kind, considerate, and willing to work for peanuts because he loved what he did. Too bad his employer laid off *everyone* working in the Service department in favor of offshore outsourcing. His job loss had nothing to do with his lack of skills, and he was unable to find anything else because nobody...was...hiring....because I don't particularly like Americans (particularly the whiny ones) any more than any other people on this Earth.
On that we agree.
Now stop whining, get out of your frickin' SUV and mow my damned lawn, so I can get some real work done! I'm offering $5 / hour. Feel free to clean my eavestroughs while you're at it.
I'm not unemployed. I make substantially more than that $5 an hour, and I drive a Miata, not an SUV. Perhaps you should reconsider your views before you post such a blatantly ignorant rant.
You need to re-read the book; Dawkins makes the exact opposite claim in Watchmaker. Namely, that ever-increasing chains of replicating molecules eventually build to the point of reaching self-replication.
So you start with molecules that self-organize -- crystals. These molecules tend to provide a focal point for other similar molecules; the crystal structure grows bigger and bigger.
Eventually, parts of the crystal recombine in a way that produces faster replication, at the expense of having a larger and more complex molecule. You now have a different crystal, one which is more complex, and which is 'better suited' towards survival because it can increase in size more rapidly (eating food, in effect).
Repeat this a number of times, and you eventually get a molecular structure that is both complex and capable of self-replication; you would expect that this molecule would follow its crystaline roots, by having a more-or-less fixed structure composed of simple compounds that interact with other readily available compounds to replicate.
It's not really about low-grade techs "whining" that their FrontPage skills won't net them a six-figure salary; it's about fantastic technicians unable to get a $10/hr tech support job, because they've all been sent overseas. I know a large number of very competent people, all of which I would hire had I a position to put them in, who are working for Starbucks[1] and Pep Boys because the jobs just don't exist anymore.
The U.S. has spent a half-century (this all started in about 1949) ramming *our* flavor of globalization down the collective throat of the world, and it is ironic that we are reaping our just rewards. I give the U.S. economy maybe enother fifty years of life, before we either fall to third-world status or suffer a very violent revolution. A first-world nation is not one in which a hundredth of a percent of its population works in executive management, and the rest work at McDisneyWalbucks.
[1] To Starbucks' credit, they treat their employees well; healthcare for part-time workers, a free pound of coffee per week, great pay for entry-level service-industry management, decent pay for the grunts.
From my perspective, however, it's my responsibility to ensure my own health and happiness. I don't think it's anybody else's responsibility, and I sure as hell don't want their attempts to 'help' me to infringe upon my ability to help myself.
To a certain degree, I agree with that; I'm much the same way -- I take a very active role in maintaining my own happiness; and, yes, I am quite satisfied with my life. *grin* I also realize that I'm lucky, though. I was born healthy, I'm relatively good-looking[1], I have a good job, and I'm looking at having an MBA, as well as being fluent in two foreign languages, in about three years. I don't need or want any help.
I find it interesting to see how widely diversified folks' perspectives are on this issue. Maybe it's because I'm somewhat accustomed to the feeling of working without a net...
Do you really work without a net, though? Would you be okay if you got slapped with a million-dollar RIAA lawsuit? Would you not ask society, in the form of police and EMTs, to assist you if you were shot? Would you let your house burn rather than call firemen? Do you refuse to drive upon the roads that others have helped to provide you with?
At some level, we depend on society -- after all, we're technologically advanced pack animals. All of us have a safety net of sorts that we rely on either explicitly (roads) or implicitly (knowing that EMTs will help me if I get in an auto accident without asking for a credit card first); all I advocate is raising that net a little bit.
And I do mean a little bit. How?
Welfare is screwed. Giving money to people who have demonstrated a lack of ability to manage it is nuts. Providing said people with basic needs like shelter, food, medical care, clothing, education, and simple public transit is humanitarianism. Besides, it provides a very basic incentive to get off of 'welfare' -- if you want anything that requires money, from a movie to a cup of coffee at Starbucks, you still have to work.
Think about how cheap a national healthcare system would be (cheaper than HMOs), coupled with a national network of homeless shelters, from which the state could draw workers for public projects -- keeping streets clean and such. We'd spend just as much money as we do now, but we'd eliminate homelessness, reduce disease, and have cleaner cities.
Ok, I'm done. I'll shut up now. *grin*
[1] This does help with job interviews; research has shown that a more attractive candidate, whether male or female, is more likely to get picked over a less attractive candidate.
It's pretty neat. Didn't require a man page, an apt get, or a kernal recompile.
What's a kernal?[1]
Seriously, though, it's just because you know Windows better -- I'm sure many Windows newbies would have a hell of a time with your backup procedure, as would those used to MacOS. Hell, I'm a sysadmin, supporting three different operating environments, and it took me about fifteen minutes to find and operate the CD-burning software on my friend's Windows 2000 machine.
On my home linux box, installing a DVD-RW and testing it only took me about five minutes, including boot time -- primarily because I'm more comfortable with Linux.
The big thing I get out of Linux, though, is flexibility; I have a backup script that does a very good job of backing up my system onto a single DVD-RW; I can have the backup running while I work on the machine, and with compression I get about 6G on the disk. It doesn't back up certain directories (my MP3 and movie collections, which are backed up elsewhere), and presents me with a nice summary when its done. Took ten minutes to write and test.
I guess my point is that, whichever system you know best and are more comfortable with will be easier.
But your first post said they had a choice; that no-one was forced to work in any environment against their will. But now you say they don't have a choice; at least, 'to eat or not to eat' doesn't sound like one. Make up your mind.
Office workers who are overstressed should not work those jobs. If they are obese, they should not eat the foods they are eating, or exercise more.
Wow, and where do these guys find the time? I mean, I work one of those office jobs, go to school full time, and the only reason I find time to exercise is that I have no family, and no friends outside of work, school, and the place I go rock-climbing; I talk to the people I grew up with about once a year, because that's when I (and they) have free time. Hell, I don't even get to see my parents that often, and they live about thirty miles away; all because I'm too busy keeping myself employed, educated, and healthy -- all at the same time.
Throw a family into that mix and it collapses.
It is not the investors, the boardmembers, or the employers' responsibilities to make sure their employees are happy or stress free or skinny. It is the investors job to keep the business running.
It's that type of shortsighted attitude that has been screwing the US into the ground for some time now; part of "keeping a business running" is keeping one's employees healthy, happy, and employed for you -- which, of course, cuts healthcare and retraining costs, as well as providing great PR. But we don't have time for rational solutions, do we?
If employees are unhappy, there are literally millions of positions open at other companies. Stop accepting risky jobs, the free market honestly offers you better positions, albeit maybe for less money.
No, there aren't; at least, not unless you want to take a pay-cut that might be below starvation wages, or be out of work for a year, or move to a country where a proper sewer system is considered a luxury. Have you even bothered looking for a job recently? It takes either incredible credentials or the ability to work for minimum wage to get a job nowadays, and if you're stuck in-betwen, you get screwed.
Why? Because there is no such thing as a free market; they don't exist in the real world, because either governments seize too much power (communism), or because individual businesses become too powerful (oligarchy/corporate monarchy). A balance must exist between the two, and that balance is something which is not to be found in the US today.
In a free market, no one forces anyone to work any job in any environment against their will. If you feel the job is unsafe, don't work at that rate in that environment. If you are unsure of the chemicals you have in your environment, consult independent authorities on the subject and see if there are health risks.
Problem is, you don't work, you don't eat. You don't eat, you starve, and almost every job you can take (outside of high-level management) comes with a boatload of problems. Office workers tend to be overstressed and obese[1]; factory and fast-food workers are exposed to hazardous environments and toxic chemicals. The sad thing is that both environments could be made drastically better, but it would nominally suck a few pennies off the stock price, and this is unacceptable to investors and boardmembers alike.
[1] Many American offices unoffically require sixty-hour workweeks among their office workers; after working a twelve hour day with no exercise and/or real 'rest' breaks, going out to the gym is not a fun prospect.
No really. A power switch is too easy; it's like just putting the heroin away in a cabinet. It's too simple to switch on and plug in again.
I've been a geek for a long time, and I'm finding it increasingly appealing to just unplug and do...stuff. The results have been great; I discovered that I'm a pretty decent cyclist, and that I like rock climbing. I became a gourmet cook, and single-handedly financed Barnes & Noble's last fiscal quarter. I started studying Japanese.
All this, instead of surfing the web, or watching TV; hell I don't even own a TV. I spend my life doing, rather than watching.
I'm sorry, but am I the only person who hates talk shows? Every single radio station in my area plays nothing but talk shows during my morning commute; are we really so pathetic as to need to listen to the lives of other people because ours aren't enriching enough?
The last fscking thing I want in the morning is two inspid drones talking about events in the news that they know almost nothing about; doubly so because 75% of these news events are political. Why the hell can't they play some upbeat music in the morning instead?
And, before you say, "but it's free", think about it -- I pay for the radio station by listening to commercials. That's their business model. Only now, they're pretty much just solid commercials. Even the talk shows are commercials.
*sigh* I'd buy an XM head unit if I wasn't going to sell my car off in a few months and go car-free...
Firsrt, they're all for large, overreaching Japanese companies. Foreigners need not apply. Baka gaijin.
Second, Japanese companies are much more sensitive to their customers and workers than American companies are; it's kind of ironic that Americans have less vacation time per year and work more hours per week, on average, when compared to their Japanese counterparts. Hell; many companies mandate exercise breaks for their office workers to keep them alert and fresh. So, an overreaching Japanese company is typically a benefit to the customers and workers, rather than a detriment.
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Er, how would you report an error to the user if printf() failed?
You know, if you had asked, they would have said 'modprobe sb', which would have auto-configured your Vibra16 (I used to have one).
Your problem is that you tried to do things the same way you did in Windows, by clicking on icons, searching through menus, and such; Linux doesn't work that way. You would have had the same kind of problems under OS X, because you expected the interfaces of two totally different OSes to work exactly the same.
It's like getting mad because you can't fly an aeroplane when you know how to ride a bicycle.
No-one understands Windows, but anyone can use it. Linux is simple, but few can use it.
If it were possible to give every Windows user a three-day Linux course, compared to the months they spent learning to use Windows, many would probably want to switch.
You can't tell me that Linux is easier to use and install hardware drivers for than Windows.
Actually, I find it to be much easier -- I don't need to worry about Linux fscking up my system by auto-detecting hardware that I can't get a driver for.
Take, for example, my last experience installing an 802.11b card; same card, supported under both Windows and Linux.
Linux:
Install card, boot system, rebuild kernel with appropriate module, load module...hey, it works!
Windows:
Install card, boot, new device found, no driver, device disabled...ok. Try to install driver from CD, which installs half-way and then crashes with some bizarre error. Reboot, search the docs, and find out that you can't have the card in the system when you're installing the driver unless you have the latest version, which you can download -- too bad I'm installing the NIC driver. Kind of hard to download that.
After I got the driver installed, I then had to unload the pile of crapware that got installed on the system with it.
Teaches me to post when I'm exhausted. What's worse is that I'm an anthropology major, and just finished up a physical anthropology lab class. *sigh*
Evolution is theory taught in our schools as fact, this is what really gets those of us who believe in creation or creational-evolution "in a twist".
I'm going to assume that 'creational evolution' is another variant of the Intelligent Design argument[1]; the problem is that, not only is there no data backing Intelligent Design up, there is a huge pile of data contradicting the theory. It just doesn't hold up under any form of scrutiny. What's worse is that the Intelligent Design community intentionally 'forgets' certain facts (such as Peking Man being exposed as a hoax within months of discovery, or the fact that it is possible for chimpanzees to learn and express abstract concepts), or completely misrepresents others (such as using the wrong type of radioactive dating[2]).
Evolution is still taught because it is the best theory we have that fits what we have found, and nothing that the Intelligent Design people have come up with works even close to as well as the adaptive landscape model presently used to model evolutionary change.
There are many many scientists who dispute the alleged "scientific evidence" to support the idea that global warming is a threat, but in the mainstream press, global warming is presented as undisputed fact.
Blame the media for that one, although there is some credence to the fact that nearly all of the scientists who state that global warming is 'not a problem' all work for large chemical companies, whereas most of the scientists pointing out the problem often do their research for little or no money. But this is a different topic entirely. *grin*
Reliance on "Junk Science" is a huge problem internationally and here in the US. I believe in relying upon empirical evidence to support our beliefs in this world, but I don't share your naivete that the scientific community is doing a good job governing itself and protecting its integrity through consensus based only on scientific evidence.
Oh, it's not naivete. The problem is that the "scientific community" is not represented by the mass media; very few, if any, widely-used textbooks contain 'junk science', but it permeates our movies, sitcoms, and news broadcasts. What's worse is that very few people bother to take the time to learn about how science works at all. There are people graduating from high schools who can't tell you what the acceleration of gravity is, or understand the chemistry behind the formation of rust, or explain why a car tire loses traction when it is sliding instead of rolling.
The problem is not in the science; it is in our culture's overall naivety towards scientific knowledge. People take scientific facts for granted, instead of asking questions, or doing experiements, or even learning about how we came by those facts in the first place.
[1] E.g., everything was made by a god, and he had an active role -- he didn't just set the laws of the universe in motion, and let evolution happened as a part of the universe unfolding.
[2] Each type of radioactive dating has a certain range within which it is accurate; many creationist websites either fail to mention the dating methods used in their arguments, or use a dating method with a range of 6000 years to 'prove' the age of the Earth.
But! Even following the scientific method we are still not sure. Maybe throughout history gravity pulled at 9.5N/kg and it gradually changed to 9.8 in say... 1743. It might be scheduled to change back in 2014. Heck the world could have been created yesterday with all of our memories and everything by a supreme being!! (I know not a very good explanation)
This is known as the Problem of Induction. In a nutshell, it states that inductive logic is itself not valid; e.g., we can not make statements about anything unknown by looking at things that we do know. In addition, even our knowledge of the past and future are suspect; we have no knowledge that the past is static, and no proof that our estimates about the future will ever come to pass. We have no non-inductive proof that dropping a ball from a tower will cause it to fall, because assuming that the world will continue to work as it always has (e.g., previous balls dropped from towers did fall).
This can be handled one of two ways.
The first is that one can state that we can (and do) know absolutely nothing -- the universe could have been a fruitcake ten seconds ago, and changed form in such a way that we never knew it. Some deity could have created things; or the universe could have congealed out of Lime Jell-O. Logic is invalid and useless.
The problem with this viewpoint is that, if one were to really subscribe to it, there would be no point in making plans. No reason to even live; after all, you don't know whether or not your existence is itself real, or if it will just stop in a second when the universe becomes solid Jell-O again. This is not a very practical viewpoint, nor one compatible with our biology or psychology -- we inherently use past events to predict future results. Ever gotten sick from eating one type of food, and avoided that type of food in the future? Exactly.
The second way of dealing with the problem of induction is by making one assumption -- that things we have observed in the past did happen, and will continue to happen in the future. Note that this means that the events occur -- we may be wrong in our interpretation of said events. This is the principle upon which all of the knowledge of Man is founded, including science.
We can make a lot of measures in a lot of different times; we can apply statistical measures, making our theory more and more "scientific". But we can never say that it is absolutely "scientifically proven". Gravity at 9.8 can be the "best" Scientific explanation. This is totally subjective.
Any human viewpoint is, by this definition, subjective; we are not omnipotent nor omniscient, and therefore cannot ever see every single aspect of every single problem we encounter. We are limited to using the tools at hand; namely, our senses, and our ability to reason, which is derived solely from the assumption of pragmatism.
In fact, it is this admission that none of our knowledge can be 'truly objective' that renders scientific facts so strong. Whereas dogmatic sources of knowledge claim to hold perfect truths, scientific theories have the built-in intellectual credibility to allow for our human weaknesses. Scientific facts change as our understanding grows; they allow for us to make mistakes. In fact, the scientific process rewards those that find mistakes, and the greater the mistake, the bigger the reward. It is a self-correcting process.
Occam said that the simplest theory was the best. But is it really the truest?
What William of Occam said was that, given two or more competing theories with equal support, the most simple of all the theories is the best one to assume correct, because it will have less loopholes to check, and will be less likely to have mistakes. The important part is that the competing theories require equal evidence -- Occam's Razor does not apply in any other circumstance.
It's not a matter of being the, er, 'truest'; it's a matter of being the best theory that fits the data; shoul
Simple logic. You make an assertion that if rule X is true, than A causes B. If A fails to cause B, than your hypothesis is instantly disproven. If A causes B, but it is later found that an unknown influence C that was associted with A caused B, than your theory would be disproven, and the new theory would be that C causes B.
This is oversimplified, but gets the point across. In addition, in some so-called 'soft sciences' (such as psychology) where there are few hard mathematical rules, than many theories are buoyed more by popular support of the evidence than by anything else -- although, to be fair, this is rapidly changing (as far as psychology goes) with our increased understanding of neurochemistry.
I'll have to take your word for it. I've spent enough time reading Ayn Rand's ravings -- time I'll never recover. Her political writing vacillates between the blindingly obvious and the blindingly stupid, and I doubt her fiction is any more meritorious.
I'm not a Randroid or an Objectivist, but I have read and enjoyed both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead; her two first real novels, as I recall. Both were fantastic, and both made very solid points about a number of good things -- the power of the unfettered mind, the crime of stealing the fruits of one's labor, and the travesty of assuming that the best world is one in which everyone is equal. We need our geniuses, just as we need our burger-flippers.
The problem is, after these were written, Rand started buying into her own press. She started writing crap like Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. She took some good general ideas, and made very bad hard-and-fast rules of of them, completely ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
In this, Rand is an example of exactly how one should not handle criticism. Instead of reconsidering her viewpoints in light of constructive critique, she violently lashed out at anyone who questioned her Divine Word.
But that doesn't mean that she didn't have some good ideas.
Consensus and evidence. Science doesn't espouse things like evolution and gravity because they have popular support; they are considered scientific fact because of the wealth of evidence supporting them, and when new evidence comes to light, even well-established theories get thrown out on their ear. Popular support won't get you very far in science unless you have solid, credible evidence to back it up.
This is what gets the creationists and the flat-earth types all in a twist; they can't present credible evidence to the scientific community to support their claims, so they claim that there is some sort of conspiracy against them, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Hey, it's not personal -- if I really got mad about every post on Slashdot, I'd have killed at least ten people by now. *grin*
Besides, this provides me a good amount of exercise in arguing with people, which comes in handy every now and then.
If you want a real morning of fun, eat a box of Rice-A-Roni for dinner, have a bowl of Fiber One cereal and a cup of coffee for breakfast, and wait about an hour. Do this and you will lose five pounds *and* experience the same sensations as a woman giving birth.
Identifying Starbucks as the pinnacle of coffee is like identifying Michael Jackson as the model of proper child care.
I'm pretty liberal by American standards
...because I don't particularly like Americans (particularly the whiny ones) any more than any other people on this Earth.
Considering American standards, I don't think that makes you very liberal at all. I'm a fscking hippie by American standards (sans the pot, smelly clothes, anarchist attitude, or anything else that really makes up a hippie), and slightly conservative according to most of the rest of the world.
Our company of about 20 people hires about one new engineer every 3 months, and we fire about 50% of those people in the first 3 months of their employment because they're lacking in one or more of these qualities: technical ability, interest in the job, their ability to work independently, to find answers on their own, and most importantly, their ability to come up with new ideas.
Oh, there are many lousy technicians. Don't get me wrong on that score; but there are also a lot of great technicians out of work. You are employed at a very small company -- your bosses couldn't afford to outsource even if they wanted to. Likewise, you are forced to hire local talent, and given the present market, a 50% chrurn rate supports my claim -- your attrition rate would be much higher, even among the idiots, in a dot-com economy.
Look, supposedly "all" the manufacturing jobs left, but I've been to far too many factories in the U.S. that build car parts, toys, garments, even bullets, to know that this is B.S., and new plants are being built all the time. Yes, they're all more automated now, but there are still jobs for everybody out there. I've seen them.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'evidence'. Look at the numbers of Americans employed in manufacturing, from 1950 until today, you will see a decline that is almost exponential. Furthermore, many of the factories building cars here do so for foreign firms -- Toyota, Honda, BMW, and such. GM and Ford both produce parts and cars in Mexico and Southeast Asia.
Someone who is only marginally able to do "mind-work", that got hired during the tech boom, is going to have to face facts and realize that since demand is lower, and supply is higher, they might as well go find something more menial to do. If that's serving coffee at Starbucks, so be it. I'd rather they serve me coffee than write crappy code that I have to go and fix. I hate being responsible for other people's sh!t.
This sounds like a direct shot at the individuals I referenced; let me restate that Mr. Barista was a *fantastic* technician. Knowledgable, patient with the users, efficient, kind, considerate, and willing to work for peanuts because he loved what he did. Too bad his employer laid off *everyone* working in the Service department in favor of offshore outsourcing. His job loss had nothing to do with his lack of skills, and he was unable to find anything else because nobody...was...hiring.
On that we agree.
Now stop whining, get out of your frickin' SUV and mow my damned lawn, so I can get some real work done! I'm offering $5 / hour. Feel free to clean my eavestroughs while you're at it.
I'm not unemployed. I make substantially more than that $5 an hour, and I drive a Miata, not an SUV. Perhaps you should reconsider your views before you post such a blatantly ignorant rant.
You need to re-read the book; Dawkins makes the exact opposite claim in Watchmaker. Namely, that ever-increasing chains of replicating molecules eventually build to the point of reaching self-replication.
So you start with molecules that self-organize -- crystals. These molecules tend to provide a focal point for other similar molecules; the crystal structure grows bigger and bigger.
Eventually, parts of the crystal recombine in a way that produces faster replication, at the expense of having a larger and more complex molecule. You now have a different crystal, one which is more complex, and which is 'better suited' towards survival because it can increase in size more rapidly (eating food, in effect).
Repeat this a number of times, and you eventually get a molecular structure that is both complex and capable of self-replication; you would expect that this molecule would follow its crystaline roots, by having a more-or-less fixed structure composed of simple compounds that interact with other readily available compounds to replicate.
Sounds like DNA to me.
It's not really about low-grade techs "whining" that their FrontPage skills won't net them a six-figure salary; it's about fantastic technicians unable to get a $10/hr tech support job, because they've all been sent overseas. I know a large number of very competent people, all of which I would hire had I a position to put them in, who are working for Starbucks[1] and Pep Boys because the jobs just don't exist anymore.
The U.S. has spent a half-century (this all started in about 1949) ramming *our* flavor of globalization down the collective throat of the world, and it is ironic that we are reaping our just rewards. I give the U.S. economy maybe enother fifty years of life, before we either fall to third-world status or suffer a very violent revolution. A first-world nation is not one in which a hundredth of a percent of its population works in executive management, and the rest work at McDisneyWalbucks.
[1] To Starbucks' credit, they treat their employees well; healthcare for part-time workers, a free pound of coffee per week, great pay for entry-level service-industry management, decent pay for the grunts.
From my perspective, however, it's my responsibility to ensure my own health and happiness. I don't think it's anybody else's responsibility, and I sure as hell don't want their attempts to 'help' me to infringe upon my ability to help myself.
To a certain degree, I agree with that; I'm much the same way -- I take a very active role in maintaining my own happiness; and, yes, I am quite satisfied with my life. *grin* I also realize that I'm lucky, though. I was born healthy, I'm relatively good-looking[1], I have a good job, and I'm looking at having an MBA, as well as being fluent in two foreign languages, in about three years. I don't need or want any help.
I find it interesting to see how widely diversified folks' perspectives are on this issue. Maybe it's because I'm somewhat accustomed to the feeling of working without a net...
Do you really work without a net, though? Would you be okay if you got slapped with a million-dollar RIAA lawsuit? Would you not ask society, in the form of police and EMTs, to assist you if you were shot? Would you let your house burn rather than call firemen? Do you refuse to drive upon the roads that others have helped to provide you with?
At some level, we depend on society -- after all, we're technologically advanced pack animals. All of us have a safety net of sorts that we rely on either explicitly (roads) or implicitly (knowing that EMTs will help me if I get in an auto accident without asking for a credit card first); all I advocate is raising that net a little bit.
And I do mean a little bit. How?
Welfare is screwed. Giving money to people who have demonstrated a lack of ability to manage it is nuts. Providing said people with basic needs like shelter, food, medical care, clothing, education, and simple public transit is humanitarianism. Besides, it provides a very basic incentive to get off of 'welfare' -- if you want anything that requires money, from a movie to a cup of coffee at Starbucks, you still have to work.
Think about how cheap a national healthcare system would be (cheaper than HMOs), coupled with a national network of homeless shelters, from which the state could draw workers for public projects -- keeping streets clean and such. We'd spend just as much money as we do now, but we'd eliminate homelessness, reduce disease, and have cleaner cities.
Ok, I'm done. I'll shut up now. *grin*
[1] This does help with job interviews; research has shown that a more attractive candidate, whether male or female, is more likely to get picked over a less attractive candidate.
It's pretty neat. Didn't require a man page, an apt get, or a kernal recompile.
What's a kernal?[1]
Seriously, though, it's just because you know Windows better -- I'm sure many Windows newbies would have a hell of a time with your backup procedure, as would those used to MacOS. Hell, I'm a sysadmin, supporting three different operating environments, and it took me about fifteen minutes to find and operate the CD-burning software on my friend's Windows 2000 machine.
On my home linux box, installing a DVD-RW and testing it only took me about five minutes, including boot time -- primarily because I'm more comfortable with Linux.
The big thing I get out of Linux, though, is flexibility; I have a backup script that does a very good job of backing up my system onto a single DVD-RW; I can have the backup running while I work on the machine, and with compression I get about 6G on the disk. It doesn't back up certain directories (my MP3 and movie collections, which are backed up elsewhere), and presents me with a nice summary when its done. Took ten minutes to write and test.
I guess my point is that, whichever system you know best and are more comfortable with will be easier.
[1] Sorry, couldn't resist. *grin*
You don't work, you don't eat? So work.
But your first post said they had a choice; that no-one was forced to work in any environment against their will. But now you say they don't have a choice; at least, 'to eat or not to eat' doesn't sound like one. Make up your mind.
Office workers who are overstressed should not work those jobs. If they are obese, they should not eat the foods they are eating, or exercise more.
Wow, and where do these guys find the time? I mean, I work one of those office jobs, go to school full time, and the only reason I find time to exercise is that I have no family, and no friends outside of work, school, and the place I go rock-climbing; I talk to the people I grew up with about once a year, because that's when I (and they) have free time. Hell, I don't even get to see my parents that often, and they live about thirty miles away; all because I'm too busy keeping myself employed, educated, and healthy -- all at the same time.
Throw a family into that mix and it collapses.
It is not the investors, the boardmembers, or the employers' responsibilities to make sure their employees are happy or stress free or skinny. It is the investors job to keep the business running.
It's that type of shortsighted attitude that has been screwing the US into the ground for some time now; part of "keeping a business running" is keeping one's employees healthy, happy, and employed for you -- which, of course, cuts healthcare and retraining costs, as well as providing great PR. But we don't have time for rational solutions, do we?
If employees are unhappy, there are literally millions of positions open at other companies. Stop accepting risky jobs, the free market honestly offers you better positions, albeit maybe for less money.
No, there aren't; at least, not unless you want to take a pay-cut that might be below starvation wages, or be out of work for a year, or move to a country where a proper sewer system is considered a luxury. Have you even bothered looking for a job recently? It takes either incredible credentials or the ability to work for minimum wage to get a job nowadays, and if you're stuck in-betwen, you get screwed.
Why? Because there is no such thing as a free market; they don't exist in the real world, because either governments seize too much power (communism), or because individual businesses become too powerful (oligarchy/corporate monarchy). A balance must exist between the two, and that balance is something which is not to be found in the US today.
In a free market, no one forces anyone to work any job in any environment against their will. If you feel the job is unsafe, don't work at that rate in that environment. If you are unsure of the chemicals you have in your environment, consult independent authorities on the subject and see if there are health risks.
Problem is, you don't work, you don't eat. You don't eat, you starve, and almost every job you can take (outside of high-level management) comes with a boatload of problems. Office workers tend to be overstressed and obese[1]; factory and fast-food workers are exposed to hazardous environments and toxic chemicals. The sad thing is that both environments could be made drastically better, but it would nominally suck a few pennies off the stock price, and this is unacceptable to investors and boardmembers alike.
[1] Many American offices unoffically require sixty-hour workweeks among their office workers; after working a twelve hour day with no exercise and/or real 'rest' breaks, going out to the gym is not a fun prospect.
No really. A power switch is too easy; it's like just putting the heroin away in a cabinet. It's too simple to switch on and plug in again.
I've been a geek for a long time, and I'm finding it increasingly appealing to just unplug and do...stuff. The results have been great; I discovered that I'm a pretty decent cyclist, and that I like rock climbing. I became a gourmet cook, and single-handedly financed Barnes & Noble's last fiscal quarter. I started studying Japanese.
All this, instead of surfing the web, or watching TV; hell I don't even own a TV. I spend my life doing, rather than watching.
I think you meant to say:
n dthepossibilitiesarelimitless.Ifinishedtheentire"A larecherchedutempsperdu"in18hoursintheoriginalandI don'tevenspeakFrench.Ithink.Exceptforthesedamnspid erscrawlingupmyarms,thisisgreat.Justgreat!
Crank.Onceyougetridofthatannoyingsleephabit,youfi
HTH. HAND.
I'm sorry, but am I the only person who hates talk shows? Every single radio station in my area plays nothing but talk shows during my morning commute; are we really so pathetic as to need to listen to the lives of other people because ours aren't enriching enough?
The last fscking thing I want in the morning is two inspid drones talking about events in the news that they know almost nothing about; doubly so because 75% of these news events are political. Why the hell can't they play some upbeat music in the morning instead?
And, before you say, "but it's free", think about it -- I pay for the radio station by listening to commercials. That's their business model. Only now, they're pretty much just solid commercials. Even the talk shows are commercials.
*sigh* I'd buy an XM head unit if I wasn't going to sell my car off in a few months and go car-free...
Two things:
Firsrt, they're all for large, overreaching Japanese companies. Foreigners need not apply. Baka gaijin.
Second, Japanese companies are much more sensitive to their customers and workers than American companies are; it's kind of ironic that Americans have less vacation time per year and work more hours per week, on average, when compared to their Japanese counterparts. Hell; many companies mandate exercise breaks for their office workers to keep them alert and fresh. So, an overreaching Japanese company is typically a benefit to the customers and workers, rather than a detriment.
I'm sure all linux sysadmins would love the "Root-Vue Farm."
Actually, I hear they come bundled in certain recent Linux kernel versions *duck*.