Here's what this questionnaire asked about the report:
As you may know, Charles Duelfer, the chief weapons inspector selected by the Bush administration to investigate whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, has just presented his final report to Congress. Is it your impression he concluded that, just before the war, Iraq...
Had actual weapons of mass destruction
Had no weapons of mass destruction but had a major program for developing them
Had some limited activities that could be used to help develop weapons of mass destruction, but not an active program
Did not have any activities related to weapons of mass destruction
The correct answer is (3) -- not (4), as you must be presuming I think it is. According to Duelfer, Iraq had the desire for WMD, and some limited activities to support them, but no actual weapons and no major program. (The report basically said that the UN inspections had basically forced Iraq to give up its program, but Saddam Hussein really wanted to restart the program once he was out from under the thumb of the UN.)
According to the study that we're discussing here, this is how Bush & Kerry supporters responded to the question above:
Bush: 19% / Kerry: 7%
Bush: 38% / Kerry: 16%
Bush: 31% / Kerry: 50% (correct answer)
Bush: 4% / Kerry: 20%
This question is consistent with the results of the study in general: (1) people are really shockingly misinformed, (2) Bush supporters are significantly more misinformed than Kerry supporters for some reason, and (3) everybody sees facts in a way that's skewed to fit their preconceptions.
While I was a Democrat, I never had a Republican call me stupid.
What planet are you from? Where I grew up, Democrats were lucky to be called "stupid." Usually what we get were vulgar sexual epithets.
No party is without its assholes.
An example: did Kerry call terrorists a "nuisance"? Yep. Sure did. Undeniable fact. Never mind that I've taken this out of context in order to intentionally bias the question.
Did you read the questionnaire the test subjects were given? Here, I'll copy and paste an example for you:
As you may know, Charles Duelfer, the chief weapons inspector selected by the Bush administration to investigate whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, has just presented his final report to Congress. Is it your impression he concluded that, just before the war, Iraq...
Had actual weapons of mass destruction
Had no weapons of mass destruction but had a major program for developing them
Had some limited activities that could be used to help develop weapons of mass destruction, but not an active program
Did not have any activities related to weapons of mass destruction
That seems fairly phrased to me, not deliberately taking a fragment out of context. What do you think the correct answer would be? Or how do you think the question is slanted?
Your post isn't really fact so much as assertions. That's OK! They might really be correct assertions -- I'm not saying they're wrong, because that's a separate debate! -- but they are debatable. What do NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN "want us" to believe? How do you quantify "not as bad"? What defines a "HORRIBLE" economic situation? Where do you draw the line between "depressed" and "HORRIBLE"? They're all subjective terms.
Let me emphasize before you flame me: I'm not saying your assertions are wrong, just that they're debatable.
If you somebody disagreed with you about Bush inheriting a "horrible" economy, what would you do? You'd pull up some economic data. You know, facts to back up your assertion.
This study, in addition to asking many subjective questions, asked some questions that were about specific, well-defined, falsifiable facts that are not really debatable. For example:
They asked what the conclusions of the Duelfer report were. Now you can argue about whether that report was wrong (that's an assertion), but you can't really argue about what it said. Duelfer said that there was no major weapons program. Maybe the report was wrong, but that was indeed what it said.
They asked what sort of evidence of a Saddam-Qaeda relationship the US had found. Again, you can argue that we should read between the lines, and presume less or more of a relationship than the evidence suggests -- but it's not really debatable what evidence has been presented to the public by intelligence agencies.
It is even on the factual information that Bush supporters seemed to get it wrong. Maybe you're better informed than most! So stay better informed, and read the article.
I used a Logitech keyboard for the Playstation at work for a while. The keys feel pretty nice, but the layout is kind of wonky. It's not expensive, IIRC.
Well, my own take on your griping about "mommy" thinking is that, when people share code, they all have to live with a language together, and decisions about what to leave out of the language are at least as important as decisions about what to put in. People who are eager to use tons of language features and be super-clever with syntax are a pain in the ass to share code with, and a liability on a team; that's why Perl is widely used by recreational hackers and open source projects, but almost unheard of in the world of large commercial projects with shared teams -- and it's why C++ is rapidly losing market share in that world.
I personally ran screaming from C++ to Java after years of having worked in the former. It was as if somebody had read my mind about what went wrong with C++ and invented the language I'd been wanting to use that whole time. When I code in Java, the code is an elegant realization of my object model. When I code in C++, the code is an awkward approximation of it.
I guess we just value different things in a language. De gustibus non disputandum est.
Agreed that, for the single purpose of numerical computing, in certain well-controlled circumstances, operator overloading gives an arguable benefit in readability.
But dude, have you ever programmed in C++? Used STL? Blech! Blech^2! I know there are people who love these things, but the readability is unforgivable. Only a Perl code could make it look good. Operator overloading brings out the worst in developers, encourages them to be waaaay to clever for anybody's good. In C++, the evil started with
cout << "Hello world!";
(what the hell were they thinking?!) and went downhill from there. Once you open the door to crap like that, the crap will come.
Years ago, I was at a forum with Josh Bloch and Gilad Bracha where a Java numerics guy berated them for not having overloading and asked them to add it. Bracha basically said "over my cold, dead body." I'm with him on that. The greater cause of readable Java trumps the minor benefits of overloading.
Let me re-phrase that and turn it around a bit: Which Apache Java packages, if any, have a policy that they must run and execute properly (at least core functionality) on a Free Java implementation?
Oh give me a break.
Nobody would take any of the Apache projects seriously if they didn't run against any implementation of the Java standard. IBM's VM is very different from Sun's, and all the Apache projects I've used (Tomcat, Ant, Commons, BCEL, log4j, Jakarta regexp) run on it just fine... er, well, as well as anything runs on IBM's VM. Five will get you ten they all run just fine on any Java runtime worth its salt.
I'm sure many Apache projects do not run under GNU's Java implementation. This is not because Apache has secretly poisoned their well for the free-as-in-GNU implementations. It is because those implementations suck.
Obviously if a distro wants to rule out Java's license for ideological reasons, that's their prerogative. And yes, you are right, many things in Sun's license are not compatible with the Stallmanist party line. My point is that the Java community basically doesn't give a shit. Die-hard free software activists, while I admire their cause, often seem to think the world revolves around their personal crusade, and if you're not riding their bus and spouting their rhetoric, you're probably secretly conspiring against them. The truth is, the Java community is quite sympathetic, but considers other problems (like verifiable compatibility) far more important.
So when the Stallman Armada whines about how restrictive Java's unusually generous source license is, the Java folks basically say, "Know what this is? It's the world's smallest platform-neutral mod player playing a sad song for you."
Any GNU/Linux distribution cares if it is strict about being Open Source, because it can't include Sun's Java. This is includes Debian and Red Hat / Fedora.
True enough -- the compatibility test suite does rule Java out for some distros. But is this really such a big deal? Are sysadmins really so busy or incompetent that they can't just download Java if they need it? And who we blame: Java for having a test suite, or the distros for ruling out software whose license requires test suites? Is this such a dire problem that Stallman is right to call Java a "trap", and "free but shackled"? I'd say "free but different" would be a fairer statement.
Apache is heavily in bed with Sun, and is happy to develop code that depends on Sun-only features...
Whoa, whoa, I'm sorry... what? I've read a fair amount of Apache source code, and I've never seen it depend on "Sun-only features." Can you give some examples of Sun-only features used by a Jakarta projects?
Stallman is less open minded than Java is open source.
OK, here's the deal with the Java source code: You can get it. You can modify it. You can redistribute it.
BUT...
It has to pass Sun's compatibility tests.
OK, so yes, I can see how an ideologue like RMS would lump Sun's Java implementation into the same category as closed-source software. But really, you do have quite a lot of freedom with Java. It's just that Sun (and the Java community, myself included) are very concerned about compability: cross-platform dependability is one of Java's must important features, and forking is a big concern. (Sun was already bitten once by Microsoft making an incompatible "Java" and basically wreaking havoc on the client Java market for years.) Just look at all the crap that goes into the typical C/C++ project's./configure.sh to see why Sun is so anal about this!
Gosling explains this well in the article (for those who actually read it...).
On top of all that, Java != Sun's implementation of Java. Everything in Java is determined by a spec -- the language, the runtime, the libraries, everything. If Sun's requirement that you pass their test suite is too restrictive, just write your own damn implementation of the specs. Yes, I know that's a lot of work. Boo hoo hoo.
JessLeah is totally wrong on this point: the reason that the GNU Java projects are not "Java proper" is not that Sun didn't make them, but that they are immature and don't completely implement that Java spec. I think this may help explain why RMS is so sore (and unfair) on this point: GNU Java kind of sucks, even after many years of work, his "free software" baby isn't winning in the Java world, and nobody really cares except GNU... so there's a bit of sour grapes.
Yes, it is The Cathedral and the Bazaar, in that blindly traditionalist slavery to the former and ideological treatment of the latter as panacea are equally stupid. It's not either/or. I want cathedrals and bazaars. Or rather, I want plenty of cathedrals in the bazaar.
So sure, take your example: On the one hand, my work relies on the JCP (a bazaar), and on Jakarta projects (even more a bazaar) to implement those specs and pick up things they miss miss. I'm typing this on an open-source rendering engine, and I'll post it with an open source network stack. And how happy I am! On the other hand, I'm posting this on OS X, because Linux's font rendering and usability standards just drive me up the wall. The recent/. article on open source's usability problems hit the nail on the head. Frankly, Linux usability sucks ass, and could use a bit of Cathedralizing!
Same thing in news: I would rather have a world full of cathedrals and bazaars, where I can pick from the best of both, than a world where ideas (however diverse) flow around in only one way.
(I don't know what your WSJ comment is supposed to mean. They're both very fine papers, and will remain among the country's half-dozen flagship publications for a long time, I think.)
Your links are great examples of what's great about the blogging world.
Still, there's a lot of value in what the major news sources do. Even the blogsphere is susceptible to a consensus of opinion -- and one example of that is the general contempt for the major news sources, as exemplified by the first sentence of the first blog you posted:
Even the New York Times is beginning to apprecate the difference between conservatives and neoconservatives.
"Even the New York Times?" Oh for heaven's sake, the NYT writers have been presenting a very complex and nuanced picture of the relationships of the different parties in the Bush administration for years. In fact, it was from a NYT article that I learned about the term "neoconservative", about the history of the movement, and about the particular personal history of Paul Wolfowitz and his disagreements with other members of the administration. That article was published over a year ago.
So yes, it's great that we have a forum where people can make overdrawn statements like the one above, and draw out debate. But it's also great that I can go read a news analysis written by people who are holding themselves to higher standards of circumspection and objectivity than the bloggers.
Yes, I know none of the media are perfectly objective. Well, duh. But the NYT (and most of the other *respectable* big names, i.e. not Fox or CNN) hold themselves to much higher standards of objectivity than any blog I read. That effort is worth a lot, even if the success is never complete.
Well, I do appreciate, say, a really well-written news analysis in the New York Times (which aims for neutrality and comprehensiveness). And I think that's different from, and complementary to, the analysis bloggers generally do. So I wouldn't want the news sources to "let the bloggers handle the journaling".
But I also appreciate a news source that clearly labels analysis and commentary as such, and also includes the straight-up reporting -- and I agree on that point: news sources should not neglect reporting proper.
Journalism is a craft which mixes observation, investigation, analysis, scientific description, creative description, and a careful balancing of conflicting information and viewpoints. It leads to a certain kind of information -- journalistic information -- which has a very important place in the world.
There are other kinds of information: gossip, rumors, speculation, argumentation, analysis from a particular viewpoint, the presentation of interesting information which favors timeliness over verifiability, research, balance, and even accuracy. Like Slashdot, for example. This kind of information also has a place in the world, and it's also a very important place. And the list goes on: there is scientific research, which is not the same as philosophy, which is not the same as intuitive speculation... and so on.
I wouldn't want to live in a world without this variety of types of information.
The problem comes when people confuse these many different kinds of information. Slashdot, for example, is not journalism. It is great and fun and sometimes idiotic but often useful -- it's just simply not journalism.
So, as daeley rightly points out: let the reader beware! Judge your information and the sources of that information. Be a wise reader. And to that I'd add: let the writer beware as well. Know what kind of information you are presenting, and present it well.
If so, why is Sun dorking around with platform-specific installers?
Either way, it seems tantamount to an admission of the failure of Java portability... which is funny, because Java is, by and large, extraordinarily portable, and there are plenty of platform-neutral installers around coming from people with far fewer resources than Sun.
Fascinating -- a good falsification for a good theory! (Popper would be proud.) I'm glad that the investigation addressed the issue. And I'm also glad that the systems weren't so vulnerable as to be taken under by the worm.
Thanks for digging that out of the report. I looked briefly, but hardly knew where to start!
Bruce Schneier put forward the hypothesis that the problems at FirstEnergy were caused by the MSBlast virus. The company is generally considered the place where the problem could have been prevented, but their operational computers failed to sound the alarm at the critical moment. In fact, "for over an hour no one in FE's control room grasped that their computer systems were not operating properly, even though FE's Information Technology support staff knew of the problems and were working to solve them." What "problems" were these? Well, we don't know, but this happened at exactly the time that MSBlast was spreading...and isn't that just...interesting.
It's only a hypothesis, of course. His argument is basically, "Here's some really, really compelling circumstantial evidence; somebody should look in to this."
I wonder: Did anybody look into it? Has anybody heard any more about this intriguing theory? Do we know what the problem with the operational machines actually was from this new report? Just what problem was FirstEnergy's IT staff fixing?
Nah, your taunt is off the mark. The square wheels really fit better with the Linux subculture: "Look! I made Linux run on my toaster, and put it inside a modified TRS-80 case with neon lights! And my bicycle has square wheels! Uh...What's this 'why' of which you speak?"
Microsoft would just sell lots of these, and then find a way to make it impossible to ride anything else on 95% of all roads. Square wheels are way too creative.
OK, so the parent post was kind of silly, but it gives me a chance to mention Imre Lakatos, my favorite mathematical philosopher. (Yes, I have a favorite favorite mathematical philosopher. Don't you?)
He wrote a marvelous little book called Proofs and Refutations -- here's a very brief bit of summary and context -- which present a very interesting very of the process of mathematical discovery: instead of accumulating an ever-increasing series of perfect truths, he argues, mathematicians are constantly shifting their perceptions of what is true, because they're constantly shifting the very definitions of the things they're writing the proofs about. (This happened in a major way with calculus during the 19th century, for example, when limits, derivatives and integrals were redefined more formally, giving birth to the field of analysis.)
The book is a lot of fun, and actually not such a hard read. It takes place in an imaginary classroom, where the students and the professor, having just proved a simple little theorem about polyhedra, start coming up with counterexamples by "stretching" their notion of what a polyhedron is. (Should a cylinder be a polyhedron? Why not? What about a box with a box-shaped hole on the inside? etc.)
Through their arguments, they end up sharpening the definition of "polyhedron", eventually replacing their naive notion with something clearer and more formalized through a process of proofs and refutations.
So, Stan Wagon challenges our definition of "wheel" with an apparent counterexample: Does the bike have no wheels? Or are wheels not round? We might propose sharpening the definition of "wheel" to account for the new counterexample:
A wheel is a solid object designed to rotate about an axle, with its perimeter in constant contact with some other surface.
Yes, you too can become a fanatical Lisp user! Just trawl for any online discussion of any programming langauge that is not Lisp, then post using the following handy form:
Derogatory or condescending salutation. Quasi-religious statement of love for Lisp.
Laundry list of several nifty Lisp features. (It doesn't really matter which ones.)
Implication or outright statement that every feature in programming language in question has already been implemented in Lisp. Subsequent dismissal of language in question.
Remember, in writing your post, it is essential that you adhere to the following guidelines:
Never show any respect for a non-Lisp language.
Never admit the usefulness of new experiments, or of personal exploration.
Never contribute concrete, constructive suggestions to the designers or users of any other language.
Never, never think outside the Lisp box.
(Disclaimer: I like Lisp. Actually, I love Lisp. It really, truly is incredibly awesome. It's just Lisp users that drive me crazy.)
I really like Moro. It was a shift, but it worked well. Was it identical to the original? No. Did the character work? Absolutely.
It was actually Claire Daines I didn't like as San. In English she wasn't the savvy wild girl she was in Japanese... she was just sort of bratty. But each to their own!
In spite of that, the English Mononoke came off beautifully; it really worked as a piece of storytelling. I know others are up at arms about the dub; I'm not.
That just sounds like the ISPs are acting like idiots.
It's not just that: the DMCA gives copyright holders rights in this situation they ought not to have. If an ISP sticks up for its customers, then bravo to them -- but they're going out on a legal limb to do it. And if they don't, well, their "acting like idiots" may actually be more "acting like people who are scared of legal reprecussions."
It may not be the same case here, but I don't trust most service providers any more than I trust the RIAA.
Last time I checked, people where actually being locked out of their accounts due to the RIAA contacting their ISP (not due to a warrant being issued).
You're right though: as phrased, the article in question doesn't make it clear that they're using this power at the moment. Perhaps they've decided to ignore the law they went to so much trouble to pass, because they are nice people! We can all hope.:)
Slashdot Mirror
The correct answer is (3) -- not (4), as you must be presuming I think it is. According to Duelfer, Iraq had the desire for WMD, and some limited activities to support them, but no actual weapons and no major program. (The report basically said that the UN inspections had basically forced Iraq to give up its program, but Saddam Hussein really wanted to restart the program once he was out from under the thumb of the UN.)
According to the study that we're discussing here, this is how Bush & Kerry supporters responded to the question above:
- Bush: 19% / Kerry: 7%
- Bush: 38% / Kerry: 16%
- Bush: 31% / Kerry: 50% (correct answer)
- Bush: 4% / Kerry: 20%
This question is consistent with the results of the study in general: (1) people are really shockingly misinformed, (2) Bush supporters are significantly more misinformed than Kerry supporters for some reason, and (3) everybody sees facts in a way that's skewed to fit their preconceptions.What planet are you from? Where I grew up, Democrats were lucky to be called "stupid." Usually what we get were vulgar sexual epithets.
No party is without its assholes.
An example: did Kerry call terrorists a "nuisance"? Yep. Sure did. Undeniable fact. Never mind that I've taken this out of context in order to intentionally bias the question.
Did you read the questionnaire the test subjects were given? Here, I'll copy and paste an example for you:That seems fairly phrased to me, not deliberately taking a fragment out of context. What do you think the correct answer would be? Or how do you think the question is slanted?
Did you actually read the article?
Your post isn't really fact so much as assertions. That's OK! They might really be correct assertions -- I'm not saying they're wrong, because that's a separate debate! -- but they are debatable. What do NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN "want us" to believe? How do you quantify "not as bad"? What defines a "HORRIBLE" economic situation? Where do you draw the line between "depressed" and "HORRIBLE"? They're all subjective terms.
Let me emphasize before you flame me: I'm not saying your assertions are wrong, just that they're debatable.
If you somebody disagreed with you about Bush inheriting a "horrible" economy, what would you do? You'd pull up some economic data. You know, facts to back up your assertion.
This study, in addition to asking many subjective questions, asked some questions that were about specific, well-defined, falsifiable facts that are not really debatable. For example:
They asked what the conclusions of the Duelfer report were. Now you can argue about whether that report was wrong (that's an assertion), but you can't really argue about what it said. Duelfer said that there was no major weapons program. Maybe the report was wrong, but that was indeed what it said.
They asked what sort of evidence of a Saddam-Qaeda relationship the US had found. Again, you can argue that we should read between the lines, and presume less or more of a relationship than the evidence suggests -- but it's not really debatable what evidence has been presented to the public by intelligence agencies.
It is even on the factual information that Bush supporters seemed to get it wrong. Maybe you're better informed than most! So stay better informed, and read the article.
I used a Logitech keyboard for the Playstation at work for a while. The keys feel pretty nice, but the layout is kind of wonky. It's not expensive, IIRC.
Well, my own take on your griping about "mommy" thinking is that, when people share code, they all have to live with a language together, and decisions about what to leave out of the language are at least as important as decisions about what to put in. People who are eager to use tons of language features and be super-clever with syntax are a pain in the ass to share code with, and a liability on a team; that's why Perl is widely used by recreational hackers and open source projects, but almost unheard of in the world of large commercial projects with shared teams -- and it's why C++ is rapidly losing market share in that world.
I personally ran screaming from C++ to Java after years of having worked in the former. It was as if somebody had read my mind about what went wrong with C++ and invented the language I'd been wanting to use that whole time. When I code in Java, the code is an elegant realization of my object model. When I code in C++, the code is an awkward approximation of it.
I guess we just value different things in a language. De gustibus non disputandum est.
But dude, have you ever programmed in C++? Used STL? Blech! Blech^2! I know there are people who love these things, but the readability is unforgivable. Only a Perl code could make it look good. Operator overloading brings out the worst in developers, encourages them to be waaaay to clever for anybody's good. In C++, the evil started with (what the hell were they thinking?!) and went downhill from there. Once you open the door to crap like that, the crap will come.
Years ago, I was at a forum with Josh Bloch and Gilad Bracha where a Java numerics guy berated them for not having overloading and asked them to add it. Bracha basically said "over my cold, dead body." I'm with him on that. The greater cause of readable Java trumps the minor benefits of overloading.
Let me re-phrase that and turn it around a bit: Which Apache Java packages, if any, have a policy that they must run and execute properly (at least core functionality) on a Free Java implementation?
... er, well, as well as anything runs on IBM's VM. Five will get you ten they all run just fine on any Java runtime worth its salt.
Oh give me a break.
Nobody would take any of the Apache projects seriously if they didn't run against any implementation of the Java standard. IBM's VM is very different from Sun's, and all the Apache projects I've used (Tomcat, Ant, Commons, BCEL, log4j, Jakarta regexp) run on it just fine
I'm sure many Apache projects do not run under GNU's Java implementation. This is not because Apache has secretly poisoned their well for the free-as-in-GNU implementations. It is because those implementations suck.
Obviously if a distro wants to rule out Java's license for ideological reasons, that's their prerogative. And yes, you are right, many things in Sun's license are not compatible with the Stallmanist party line. My point is that the Java community basically doesn't give a shit. Die-hard free software activists, while I admire their cause, often seem to think the world revolves around their personal crusade, and if you're not riding their bus and spouting their rhetoric, you're probably secretly conspiring against them. The truth is, the Java community is quite sympathetic, but considers other problems (like verifiable compatibility) far more important.
So when the Stallman Armada whines about how restrictive Java's unusually generous source license is, the Java folks basically say, "Know what this is? It's the world's smallest platform-neutral mod player playing a sad song for you."
Any GNU/Linux distribution cares if it is strict about being Open Source, because it can't include Sun's Java. This is includes Debian and Red Hat / Fedora.
... what? I've read a fair amount of Apache source code, and I've never seen it depend on "Sun-only features." Can you give some examples of Sun-only features used by a Jakarta projects?
True enough -- the compatibility test suite does rule Java out for some distros. But is this really such a big deal? Are sysadmins really so busy or incompetent that they can't just download Java if they need it? And who we blame: Java for having a test suite, or the distros for ruling out software whose license requires test suites? Is this such a dire problem that Stallman is right to call Java a "trap", and "free but shackled"? I'd say "free but different" would be a fairer statement.
Apache is heavily in bed with Sun, and is happy to develop code that depends on Sun-only features...
Whoa, whoa, I'm sorry
Can you give even a single example?
Stallman is less open minded than Java is open source.
./configure.sh to see why Sun is so anal about this!
... so there's a bit of sour grapes.
OK, here's the deal with the Java source code: You can get it. You can modify it. You can redistribute it.
BUT...
It has to pass Sun's compatibility tests.
OK, so yes, I can see how an ideologue like RMS would lump Sun's Java implementation into the same category as closed-source software. But really, you do have quite a lot of freedom with Java. It's just that Sun (and the Java community, myself included) are very concerned about compability: cross-platform dependability is one of Java's must important features, and forking is a big concern. (Sun was already bitten once by Microsoft making an incompatible "Java" and basically wreaking havoc on the client Java market for years.) Just look at all the crap that goes into the typical C/C++ project's
Gosling explains this well in the article (for those who actually read it...).
On top of all that, Java != Sun's implementation of Java. Everything in Java is determined by a spec -- the language, the runtime, the libraries, everything. If Sun's requirement that you pass their test suite is too restrictive, just write your own damn implementation of the specs. Yes, I know that's a lot of work. Boo hoo hoo.
JessLeah is totally wrong on this point: the reason that the GNU Java projects are not "Java proper" is not that Sun didn't make them, but that they are immature and don't completely implement that Java spec. I think this may help explain why RMS is so sore (and unfair) on this point: GNU Java kind of sucks, even after many years of work, his "free software" baby isn't winning in the Java world, and nobody really cares except GNU
Yes, it is The Cathedral and the Bazaar, in that blindly traditionalist slavery to the former and ideological treatment of the latter as panacea are equally stupid. It's not either/or. I want cathedrals and bazaars. Or rather, I want plenty of cathedrals in the bazaar.
/. article on open source's usability problems hit the nail on the head. Frankly, Linux usability sucks ass, and could use a bit of Cathedralizing!
So sure, take your example: On the one hand, my work relies on the JCP (a bazaar), and on Jakarta projects (even more a bazaar) to implement those specs and pick up things they miss miss. I'm typing this on an open-source rendering engine, and I'll post it with an open source network stack. And how happy I am! On the other hand, I'm posting this on OS X, because Linux's font rendering and usability standards just drive me up the wall. The recent
Same thing in news: I would rather have a world full of cathedrals and bazaars, where I can pick from the best of both, than a world where ideas (however diverse) flow around in only one way.
(I don't know what your WSJ comment is supposed to mean. They're both very fine papers, and will remain among the country's half-dozen flagship publications for a long time, I think.)
Your links are great examples of what's great about the blogging world.
Still, there's a lot of value in what the major news sources do. Even the blogsphere is susceptible to a consensus of opinion -- and one example of that is the general contempt for the major news sources, as exemplified by the first sentence of the first blog you posted:
Even the New York Times is beginning to apprecate the difference between conservatives and neoconservatives.
"Even the New York Times?" Oh for heaven's sake, the NYT writers have been presenting a very complex and nuanced picture of the relationships of the different parties in the Bush administration for years. In fact, it was from a NYT article that I learned about the term "neoconservative", about the history of the movement, and about the particular personal history of Paul Wolfowitz and his disagreements with other members of the administration. That article was published over a year ago.
So yes, it's great that we have a forum where people can make overdrawn statements like the one above, and draw out debate. But it's also great that I can go read a news analysis written by people who are holding themselves to higher standards of circumspection and objectivity than the bloggers.
Yes, I know none of the media are perfectly objective. Well, duh. But the NYT (and most of the other *respectable* big names, i.e. not Fox or CNN) hold themselves to much higher standards of objectivity than any blog I read. That effort is worth a lot, even if the success is never complete.
Well, I do appreciate, say, a really well-written news analysis in the New York Times (which aims for neutrality and comprehensiveness). And I think that's different from, and complementary to, the analysis bloggers generally do. So I wouldn't want the news sources to "let the bloggers handle the journaling".
But I also appreciate a news source that clearly labels analysis and commentary as such, and also includes the straight-up reporting -- and I agree on that point: news sources should not neglect reporting proper.
Journalism is a craft which mixes observation, investigation, analysis, scientific description, creative description, and a careful balancing of conflicting information and viewpoints. It leads to a certain kind of information -- journalistic information -- which has a very important place in the world.
... and so on.
There are other kinds of information: gossip, rumors, speculation, argumentation, analysis from a particular viewpoint, the presentation of interesting information which favors timeliness over verifiability, research, balance, and even accuracy. Like Slashdot, for example. This kind of information also has a place in the world, and it's also a very important place. And the list goes on: there is scientific research, which is not the same as philosophy, which is not the same as intuitive speculation
I wouldn't want to live in a world without this variety of types of information.
The problem comes when people confuse these many different kinds of information. Slashdot, for example, is not journalism. It is great and fun and sometimes idiotic but often useful -- it's just simply not journalism.
So, as daeley rightly points out: let the reader beware! Judge your information and the sources of that information. Be a wise reader. And to that I'd add: let the writer beware as well. Know what kind of information you are presenting, and present it well.
I wonder, is this IDE written in pure Java?
... which is funny, because Java is, by and large, extraordinarily portable, and there are plenty of platform-neutral installers around coming from people with far fewer resources than Sun.
If not, why not?
If so, why is Sun dorking around with platform-specific installers?
Either way, it seems tantamount to an admission of the failure of Java portability
Fascinating -- a good falsification for a good theory! (Popper would be proud.) I'm glad that the investigation addressed the issue. And I'm also glad that the systems weren't so vulnerable as to be taken under by the worm.
Thanks for digging that out of the report. I looked briefly, but hardly knew where to start!
Bruce Schneier put forward the hypothesis that the problems at FirstEnergy were caused by the MSBlast virus. The company is generally considered the place where the problem could have been prevented, but their operational computers failed to sound the alarm at the critical moment. In fact, "for over an hour no one in FE's control room grasped that their computer systems were not operating properly, even though FE's Information Technology support staff knew of the problems and were working to solve them." What "problems" were these? Well, we don't know, but this happened at exactly the time that MSBlast was spreading...and isn't that just...interesting.
It's only a hypothesis, of course. His argument is basically, "Here's some really, really compelling circumstantial evidence; somebody should look in to this."
I wonder: Did anybody look into it? Has anybody heard any more about this intriguing theory? Do we know what the problem with the operational machines actually was from this new report? Just what problem was FirstEnergy's IT staff fixing?
Nah, your taunt is off the mark. The square wheels really fit better with the Linux subculture: "Look! I made Linux run on my toaster, and put it inside a modified TRS-80 case with neon lights! And my bicycle has square wheels! Uh...What's this 'why' of which you speak?"
Microsoft would just sell lots of these, and then find a way to make it impossible to ride anything else on 95% of all roads. Square wheels are way too creative.
Fish bulb, bulk flush.
OK, so the parent post was kind of silly, but it gives me a chance to mention Imre Lakatos, my favorite mathematical philosopher. (Yes, I have a favorite favorite mathematical philosopher. Don't you?)
He wrote a marvelous little book called Proofs and Refutations -- here's a very brief bit of summary and context -- which present a very interesting very of the process of mathematical discovery: instead of accumulating an ever-increasing series of perfect truths, he argues, mathematicians are constantly shifting their perceptions of what is true, because they're constantly shifting the very definitions of the things they're writing the proofs about. (This happened in a major way with calculus during the 19th century, for example, when limits, derivatives and integrals were redefined more formally, giving birth to the field of analysis.)
The book is a lot of fun, and actually not such a hard read. It takes place in an imaginary classroom, where the students and the professor, having just proved a simple little theorem about polyhedra, start coming up with counterexamples by "stretching" their notion of what a polyhedron is. (Should a cylinder be a polyhedron? Why not? What about a box with a box-shaped hole on the inside? etc.)
Through their arguments, they end up sharpening the definition of "polyhedron", eventually replacing their naive notion with something clearer and more formalized through a process of proofs and refutations.
So, Stan Wagon challenges our definition of "wheel" with an apparent counterexample: Does the bike have no wheels? Or are wheels not round? We might propose sharpening the definition of "wheel" to account for the new counterexample:
A wheel is a solid object designed to rotate about an axle, with its perimeter in constant contact with some other surface.
(Make a ridiculous post, get a ridiculous reply!)
I believe it's still sitting in the basement-level lobby of the Olin/Rice building at Macalester. You can just walk up and give it a ride.
In practice, it doesn't work perfectly: the wheels slip a bit on the upslope. But if you get a bit of speed, it rolls along nicely! Quite fun.
I thought the current administration was Republican.
(BTW, the donkey has a mildly interesting history.)
Derogatory or condescending salutation. Quasi-religious statement of love for Lisp.
Laundry list of several nifty Lisp features. (It doesn't really matter which ones.)
Implication or outright statement that every feature in programming language in question has already been implemented in Lisp. Subsequent dismissal of language in question.
Remember, in writing your post, it is essential that you adhere to the following guidelines:
(Disclaimer: I like Lisp. Actually, I love Lisp. It really, truly is incredibly awesome. It's just Lisp users that drive me crazy.)
<ducks REALLY low>
I really like Moro. It was a shift, but it worked well. Was it identical to the original? No. Did the character work? Absolutely.
... she was just sort of bratty. But each to their own!
It was actually Claire Daines I didn't like as San. In English she wasn't the savvy wild girl she was in Japanese
In spite of that, the English Mononoke came off beautifully; it really worked as a piece of storytelling. I know others are up at arms about the dub; I'm not.
That just sounds like the ISPs are acting like idiots.
It's not just that: the DMCA gives copyright holders rights in this situation they ought not to have. If an ISP sticks up for its customers, then bravo to them -- but they're going out on a legal limb to do it. And if they don't, well, their "acting like idiots" may actually be more "acting like people who are scared of legal reprecussions."
It may not be the same case here, but I don't trust most service providers any more than I trust the RIAA.
I'm a big fan of Visi, but in general, I'd agree.
Last time I checked, people where actually being locked out of their accounts due to the RIAA contacting their ISP (not due to a warrant being issued).
:)
You're right though: as phrased, the article in question doesn't make it clear that they're using this power at the moment. Perhaps they've decided to ignore the law they went to so much trouble to pass, because they are nice people! We can all hope.