GCJ will survive because it provides a facility that doesn't exist in the standard JDK (i.e., ahead-of-time compilation).
Well, that would be a reason. But on the other hand, the main developer of GCJ is RedHat, and they may well not feel like continuing it now.
Kaffe will survive because it's BSD licensed.
Kaffe is GPL.
Classpath will initially try to survive by copying large amounts of original Java code into itself, but I suspect will eventually become irrelevant as patches for classpath-using applications become available to allow them to use the original Java class library.
Well, then you know more than I do. And I'm a Classpath dev.:) There are no Classpath-using applications that don't run on the original class library. Classpath is not Mono - we've never accepted any incompatibility against Sun's java, and certainly haven't promoted working around our bugs.
Anyway, there's a good six months or so before we'll be seeing the classlib code from Sun. Yes, if we do continue development (or those who do) will probably be incorporating parts of it, but not large swaths of it. There are some fundamental differences in how the two libraries have chosen to solve certain things, and it's hardly a matter of cutting and pasting some code.
There's also a likelyhood that parts of Classpath are going to end up in Sun's libaries. There are actually things that Classpath does do better. There are also parts of the classlib that aren't going to be open-sourced because Sun doesn't have ownership. Classpath may provide the replacements for those parts.
But all in all, it's a big win for Classpath, regardless. We're getting what we wanted, under the license we wanted it. And we even got Sun to talk to us and ask advice before it all happened. (And judging from the details of their actions, I'd say I they listened well)
Seems to me that would be a bad call for Hormel and the EU court, although I suspect the quote here has probably been taken out of context and given undue weight.
Thing is, I see no reason at all for how a trademark could become genericized merely by becoming a common word for something completely different. (Python reference intended)
The point, as I learned it, was that a trademark becomes generic when it becomes the generic term for that product. E.g. "Cola" is a generic term for a certain type of soft drink, but "Coca-Cola" is not.
"Yo-yo" used to be a trademark for a specific kind of spinning toy, but they lost it when it became the generic term for that kind of toy.
"Windows" is a generic term to begin with. But it wasn't (and still isn't) a generic term for operating system software.
Now "Spam" is indeed threatened as a trademark, since people indeed are referring canned corned beef in general as "Spam". But I can't see any relevance in whether people use the same term to refer to unsolicited email or not. It's not like there is any risk the two 'products' would ever be confused.
The article says no such thing. It says the police have "secret" (i.e. undisclosed) information about Reiser.
It does not say that it had anything at all to do with the custody of his children. In fact, what I can tell from the article, the issue of permanent custody has not been decided yet, which would be in-line with the fact that the divorce proceedings apparently aren't finished yet either.
What it says, is that the police testified against Reiser in the (presumably temporary) custody proceedings. It also says he'd been previously bound by a restraining order. Presumably the Police had at some point been involved in whatever incidents had lead up to that restraining order being issued. It's hardly a stretch of the imagination to think that same testimony would be brought up when it came to deciding on temporary custody.
You cannot gain or lose custody of your children on the basis of any kind of "secret" information. Custody can only be granted by a court in a proper hearing, where both sides are represented, due process, etc. Whatever "secret" information the police have about him now, it would not be secret if it had been brought up in a custody hearing.
The "secret" information here cannot have anything to do with the custody. It must be related to why he was arrested. And they are not required to disclose those reasons until either the preliminary hearing or the trial, should there be one.
Looked at broadly, Communism and Socialism are fairly similar.
Yes, in the same way that fundamentalism and religion are similar.
And how many Socialists you know have positive things to say about the wealthy?
Socialists are like any other people. Some are judgemental and self-righteous, most are not. Socialists relate to the wealthy in the same way that religious people relate to sinners. They distinguish wealth from the wealthy in the same way you distinguish sin from the sinners. (This isn't to say they consider wealth somehow immoral)
Personally, I abhor all kinds of intolerance and self-righteousness equally. So I don't associate with any socialists who hate the wealthy, nor any religious people who hate sinners. But I would hardly deny they exist.
Moderate and democratic forms of socialism don't really have any antagonism against wealth or capitalists either. I'd rather say scepticism. In particular against the idea that what's best for the richest is what's best for everyone.
If we are to ban ideas on the basis that they could possibly lead to genocide, then economic equality is on that list. Which is why ideas shouldn't be banned.
The thing is, like most encroachments on free speech, hate speech isn't being banned on the grounds of threatening democracy (even if it does). It's being banned for the same reasons people want flag-burning and porn - it's deemed extremely offensive. This is much much more of a free-speech issue than any kind of right-left issue.
Well, that's kind of wrong: Most people in the USA who've been jailed on laws later ruled anti-1st-amendment were Communists and Socialists prosecuted under the Smith Act and earlier sedition laws. A lot of them remain on the books as well.
E.g. the Smith Act is still in effect. The way the Supreme Court sees it (Yates v. USA), it's been restricted in that "advocacy of abstract doctrine" (including unlawful ones) is protected free speech but "advocacy directed at promoting unlawful action" is not.
So, it's not really useful given that the illegal act in question (advocating revolutionary acts) already was illegal. But it's still noteworthy in that it shows the First Amendment would not actually apply to a law banning the promotion of hate crimes, should people decide to pass one.
Unfortunately, it seems like people in the USA would much rather curtail free-speech by banning flag burning. (Which I do find a lot less offensive) It only failed by one vote last time.
What a load of manure. Socialism is not Marxism is not Communism. Perhaps you should check out those wikipedia articles as well, and while you're at it try "Social Democracy", "Democratic Socialism", "Libertarian socialism" and "Social liberalism" as well.
Of course Communism commited genocide. There's no large group of people claiming otherwise. I certainly haven't met any, even among self-proclaimed Marxists. I for one am not going to stand up and defend Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol-Pot and their ilk.
But I will definitely stand up and defend both Socialism and Marxism from being associated with those guys. For the first thing: "Socialism" as a concept and term predates Marx by quite a good amount of time. There is nothing inherently totalitarian about the Workers movement, about government welfare, about socialized health-care or about unions. (Maybe you missed it, but unions were actually banned in Communist countries)
Socialism is the belief that everyone would live in an egalitarian and peaceful world if there were not a small group of people who were conspiring to keep control.
No it is not. That's a stereotyped and oversimplified view of Marxism. "Socialism" in it's broadest meaning is nothing more and nothing less than the opinion that the government should act (to whatever extent) to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. It's also strongly coupled to the Workers' movement, meaning support of demands for labor laws and fair working conditions, etc. In other words, the view that private property rights can sometimes (or always) be overridden in order to promote social fairness. (Now, Marx had his own definition. But anyone holding to that one is per definition a Marxist)
To detail, Social Democracy was born out of Marxism, combined with the conviction that revolution would cause injustice. That socialist goals could be better achived through more moderate means. During the 20th century, they've also successivly abandoned quite a lot of Marxism. Most Soc-Dems don't advocate a fully planned economy anymore. Marx's historic and economic theories have been abandoned in general by Soc-Dems.
You can't ban Socialist speech. If someone wants universal health care or the right to form a union, you can't throw them in jail. Yet we all have to acknowledge that if Socialists were to gain absolute power, they are capable of genocide.
Why should I acknowledge such a blatantly false statement? Tell me, which genocides have occured in Social Democrat-ruled countries? I don't see how you can put Tony Blair in the same boat as Stalin. But by all means, if you think you can give an argument on how trade unions and universal health care ipso facto leads to genocide, I suggst you do so.
Now, if you want to say that Communism sucks, that's fine. But if think the examples you cited are somthing advocated by Karl Marx, then you frankly don't have a clue what you're talking about, whatever you may think of his theories. If you want to claim that Marxism inherently leads to totalitarianism regardless, that's fine too - there have been cogent arguments to that effect. (E.g. Popper's Open society and its enemies)
But don't be so utterly stupid as to confuse the whole Socialist movement with its radical factions. Because the extremes of all ideologies lead to totalitarianism. And you need to go look up "Fascism" as well You said it yourself - it's not the beliefs, it's the type of government. Or rather, it's the conviction that you hold an absolute truth.
Actually, I think you prove my point more than you refute it.
The grass is only greener on the other side of the fence if you wear the right shades.
No, how it works is that some people will always think the other guy's grass is greener. Some people always think their own grass is greener. This doesn't change the fact that some grass is still actually greener than others'.
For instance, you're talking about a "welfare system in shambles". Well, in Norway the political spectrum amounts to: "Should we spend more on welfare or less" and "Should it be run in the public or private sector". But there is no mainstream debate on "Should we have a welfare system at all?" - which is what the US situation is like. See what I mean by 'less polarization'?
From personal experience I know that corruption is rampant in Norway, both in the private and government sector. .. Only what you consider "rampant corruption" is not what is considered "rampant corruption" in the USA or Italy or in many other places.
"Idealists" with a hard-on for systems which shadowy sides they obviously cannot have any real knowledge of nor experience with only manage to make themselves look foolish.
Well, I've got a dual US-Swedish citizenship and have lived for decades in both countries. I believe that I do have a quite good experience with both systems and a quite good understanding of the respective points-of-view and biases.
I also think the opinion you are espousing shows heavy and typical national bias. You're so concerned with the problems of Norway from the Norwegian point-of-view, that you can't see its successes in terms of a broader global perspective. I recommend that you sit down and take a good hard look at the US system and US politics and judge them from the same POV before you decide Norway has more problems.
I wasn't making an argument against the fact that some of the current attempts to amend it have failed. I was making an argument against the state-ratification requirement, and against the fact that there's too little constitutional debate.
Just because it's not broken doesn't mean there's no reason to debate it. There's a lot of archaic stuff in there, and I'd rather have the thing rewritten than have the Supreme Court make increasingly stretched interpretations to be able to apply it to modern government.
Have you seen any of the constitutional amendments they've been trying to pass lately? Have you seen how close some of the anti-freedom votes have been?
Sure, I'm well aware of that, e.g. how the Flag Burning Amendment only failed to pass by a single vote a few months ago. I am no supporter of that amendment. But that doesn't make it a good argument. You can't have any "pro-freedom" amendments either if you can't pass any at all. (Also, it's entirely possible to ban flag burning even without an amendment, via the Supreme Court, there are already several current members who do not feel it violates the 1st)
Also, it's not that I'm saying that you shouldn't require a qualified majority (or similar). A constitution would be pointless if it could be changed as easily as any other law. What I was critisising was rather the idea that it should never be amended. (Which is in itself pointless, when you can subvert SCOTUS) I was also opposing the slow state-ratification process. - I'd rather see something along the lines of requiring a qualified majority in two different congresses (that is, with an election in-between. Or perhaps two elections)
So, constitution-wise I was mainly opposing the state-ratification requirement and the attitude that it should never be changed, as well as the complete lack of debate on the constitution itself. E.g. the Senate and presidential vetos are historical equivalents of the First Chambers and royal priviledges in many European countries. But in those places, they've either abolished them (Scandinavia), changed their function (Dutch Eerste Kamer) or reduced them to a more or less symbolic role (England).
So here we have a similar set of circumstances--only the nation at risk has really changed--and the Dutch appear to be fighting mad over this. What gives?
The obvious answer is that they're freedom-hating socialists.:)
But seriously? It's the culture. The Netherlands and the Nordic countries are about the same like this. Big on democracy, accountability, transparency, highly intolerant of corruption, etc.
In the end, it's basically a self-fulfilling thing, really. People trust the system --> therefore they have low tolerance for corruption --> get very pissed when it happens --> therefore they have low corruption --> therefore they trust the system.
It's not just faith in the Government itself, but to all the institutions, and the parliament, etc. And there's a lot less political polarization. Of course part of the latter is due to the multi-party system. I used to be agnostic on which system was better, but now I'm pretty convinced that the many-party parliamentary system is superior to the US system.
In particular the President has just too much power and it's emphasized too much as well. And too much negative power - the Veto is too strong, and the constitution is (IMHO) too hard to amend. I don't think the Founding Fathers would have done it the same way if they'd anticipated there'd be another 37 states. This is of course heresey - which is another problem; Not only is it hard to change, but there's a strong disinclination against doing so since it's been raised almost to the status of some kind of Holy Scripture. With the Founding Fathers as some kind of prophets. Every dang constitutional debate is always in terms of "What did the F.Fs intend?"*. There's just too little impetus.
(*Damnit, I'll tell you what they wanted: They wanted a democracy based on ideas of critical reason. They sure as heck didn't want to be elevated to the status of unquestionable demigods.)
I guess the biggest point that I was trying to make is that it's not complete. You can't hold it against the same scrutiny as you would, say, QED, because it's not at the same stage of completeness.
That's what you should have said, then.:) It's true, you can't judge a theory until it's done. String theory is not done at all.
However, what I think they're saying, what I was saying at least, is that you can judge from the methodology used if it's going to give a useful result or not. As 't Hooft pointed out, at least some string theorists have resorted to problem-solving tactics that will end up creating more problems than they solve.
There's also a general legitimacy problem, not only within string theory (although it's particularily bad there) but within Theoretical Physics as a whole. Some areas of the field are so abstract nowadays, that few know what the heck it's all about. For instance the Bogdanoff affair (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanoff/). Two guys got PhDs on the basis of papers that simply didn't make any sense to anyone. And noone's quite sure whether it was sheer fraud or an honestly intended but ultimately pseudoscientific result.
But the extremely abstract nature of modern theoretical physics makes it very vunerable to this unless they interact with others. And string theory is isolated, even for being theoretical physics.
I think that even if turns out to be the right place to go, it might not be the right way to get there. Intermediate theories such as supersymmetry exist, and are not as isolated from 'real' physics.
Is it even worth attempting then? Emphatically YES!
I agree. I think most critics do as well (although perhaps not the most skeptical ones). It's more or less the only line of attack we've got towards a GUT, and we should persue it.
The real question is: How hard should we persue it? Is it getting more resources than it deserves? It's the most important field of theory in the sense that it could provide a GUT. But it's the least important one in the sense that a GUT would have little impact on most applied physics.
Personally, I'm waiting for the Holy Grail of molecular physics: A way to solve to the molecular Schrödinger equation that scales linearly. It's been mathematically proven one exists (at least in the density-functional reformulation). We just have no clue what it is. Or even a straightforward way to find out!
Anyway.. Sorry 'bout the "no clue" remark before, that was an uncalled for. I guess I'm just a bit touchy about erroneous statements on my field of expertise.
I don't quite understand your point. But as I interpret it, you're basically saying we should alter the definition of "science" so that string theory can qualify as science, should it ultimately fail to meet the usual criteria for science. I think that would more or less make the term "science" meaningless.
However one thing I can say for sure. It's science whether you approve the methods or not.
What a silly thing to say! String theory is scientific no matter how they arrive at their results? What if they're using a Ouija Board?
Anyway I think you misunderstood me. I don't disapprove of their methods. I am not saying you can't rely on assumptions and empirical results to form your theory. That's how all scientific theories get formed. But that methodology does automatically mean the resulting theory is scientific, or that the result is a better scientific theory.
I can go out and do an experimental observation of grass, and then formulate the theory "grass is green". This makes a prediction. It is falsifiable. But it is not a scientific theory, because it explains no more than what I'd already observed. I assume you agree to that much? You need to predict more than you assume. Part of the critisism here is based on the fear (voiced also by 't Hooft) that string theory may ultimately amount to little more than that.
It's true that you can argue it's still a scientific theory since it does explain more than it assumes, in the same way QM and relativity does. But if it makes the same number of assumptions, then it's not a better theory than those two. It's not even a new theory. It's just a useless restatement of the old one.
To give such an example: Does the Earth orbit the Sun? The heliocentric model doesn't assume more than the geocentric model. One doesn't explain more than the other. The heliocentric model is just simpler, and therefore more useful.
As I understand it, you're saying it's fine to sacrifice the goal of fewer assumptions for the goal of a more general theory in this case. That's not a view representative of what most physicists think. I'd say the goal of fewer assumptions is actually much more important in this case.
QM and relativity already explain everything we can observe so far. Likewise, what we know them not to explain (e.g. singularities in relativity) is not observable. Science is not in the business of explaining the unobservable in terms of the unknowable, and any such theory is simply unscientific, no matter how rigorous it is in terms of logic.
(Don't get me wrong, any GUT, even such an unscientific one, is still a great intellectual achievement. Just because it's not scientific knowledge doesn't mean it's not knowledge. Math is not a science, as far as I'm concerned. It's still knowledge. Logic is knowledge. Even metaphysics is knowledge - albeit not a very useful kind.)
However: It's entirely wrong to make any kind of blanket statement that string theory is unscientific. I am not doing so, nor are any critics that I know of or would consider listening to. There's no point passing judgement on a theory until there's a finished theory to judge. They're currently nowhere near that point.
But the issue of scientific rigor isn't just the aforementioned philosophical problems. There's also a more obvious social problem. String theorists are largely working in isolation from the rest of (theoretical) physics, and increasingly so. That constitutes a major warning-flag in terms of scientific rigor. Isolation leads loss of critical distance and creation of group-think. Good science is almost never done in isolation.
Because of its big goal, string theory is extremely popular and well-funded. It's a prestige subject. (and many string theorists have the big heads that go with it, another warning sign) The rest of theoretical physics is not so well funded. So a lot of people think that it's getting an inordinate amount of resources, giv
I haven't delved into the details, but the latter one seems to have a much higher lifetime as well, and I guess is the more proper BEC of the two. I presume it's the more interesting result, since as you say (and the references indicate) the 2d-quasiparticle-condensate thing has been done before.
(Since it's not my field, don't put too much faith in my impressions of what seesm to be 'interesting'. For all I know, this could be undergrad-level condensed-matter physics by now;) )
I thought Bose-Einstein condensate was a completely different state of matter. How then, could it appear in a "solid state"?
Good question. And damn hard to explain in terms that don't sound insane to the layman:)
Thing is, the condensed particles here aren't the particles that make up the solid. They're not quite real particles, even. They're so-called quasiparticles, which are a fancy way condensed-matter physicists have of describing what the rest of us call "interactions". Each interaction has its own kind of quasiparticle, (and some silly name ending with -on) and they're basically described just like real particles are. The trick is you can describe the system in terms of these virtual particles instead of the real ones and simplify the problem.
To give an analogy, you could think about a bubble moving through some liquid. The bubble isn't actually a real particle - it's just the overall effect of a bunch of gas molecules pressing and bouncing against the liquid molecules. But thinking of it as just a "bubble particle" is a lot simpler.
Anyway. So the condensate here isn't made up of the solid's atoms. It's made up of quasiparticles. And this is why there's some debate on whether this should be called a BEC or not. On one hand, they can, and do have coherence here. On the other hand, they're just not really real!:)
But it's also pointed out they're extremely short-lived. It's indeed questionable if you can call something a BEC if it's short-lived, because a BEC is supposedly a low and stable state. (So the question becomes "How stable should it be to be a BEC?") But regardless of that, it's no less interesting.
My guess is, people will probably continue to call every BEC-like kind of condensate a BEC. When the need arises to distinguish the two, they'll have to invent a new term for that context, like "quasiparticle condensate" or something.
It's not "FUD" in the least. Have you forgotten entirely what that term's origin and use is? Just because you disagree with a critical view doesn't make it a baseless propaganda effort. If it had been that, they wouldn't have bothered writing an entire book to presesnt their arguments. They wouldn't be presenting arguments to begin with!
There are reasons why string theory has failed to come up with any NEW predictions. For one thing, it's being constantly tweaked so that it is consistent with EXISTING experimentation. After all, why would you build a theory that you hope will become a GUT if it's not consistent with other proven theories?
This is why you don't get it: That is behaviour which is generally considered unscientific. If you need to keep modifying your theory to explain stuff, then it's not a scientific theory. It's an ad-hoc mess of empiricism of zero real value. The rules of the game are: 1) It must be testable (falsifiable) 2) You must provide new predictions 3) You must explain previous observations, observations not used in formulating the theory., and ideally, none at all. 4) You must do so using fewer postulates (assumptions) than the previous theory.
The other thing is that this is a theory... the fact that it (mathematically) treats particles as being a 1D string vibrating in n-dimensions doesn't actually mean that if you could see items smaller than the planck length, that you would actually see a vibrating string!! It's a mathematical representation... the math doesn't have to represent exactly what's happening as long as it can be used to describe what is happening.
The word you're looking for is "model". But how is this another thing? Our current understanding is a model as well. The question is whether it's a better model or not is still there and unanswered.
After all, modern chemistry is incredibly useful for predicting how atoms interact with eachother to form compounds... even though it's based off the idea that electrons orbit a nucleus like a tiny little planet orbitting a sun... that is precisely NOT what an electron does, but who cares, the math allows you to make determinations. It's the same with string theory.
You have no clue. Modern chemistry is not based on any such model. It's based entirely on the standard model of physics. There is not one, not one! molecular property that can be described in anything less than a fully quantum-mechanical treatment. All of chemistry is purely due to quantum-mechanical effects.
And string theory is not the same at all, even if you'd been right. String theory is an attempt at a more basic and general theory of quantum mechanics, in the same way as classical mechanics is a limiting case of quantum theory. It is not an approximation of quantum theory, and not intended to be one.
They're starting with a very simple, and very elegant premise (that all particles are periodic vibrations with different frequencies corresponding to different particles) and then building from there. Hell... start with that and just try and figure out how to represent the periodic table... that alone would be mind-boggling.
You don't get it. The periodic table is already entirely explained from QM, and has been for some time. There's no more reason to describe it in terms of string theory than to describe the motion of billiard balls in terms of quantum mechanics: It's unnecessary because it's already explained by classical mech, and we know classical mech is a subset of quantum mech.
In the case of string theory, all they need to do is show that QM is a subset of that theory. That's not hard and it is. It forms the basic premise of their work as well as the goal. The idea is that they're going to work from part of quantum theory and relativity and somehow arrive at the whole thing. Which parts the
There are a couple problems, though. Lawrence Britt is not a doctor and is not a political scientist. He's an average-joe journalist.
But the links you give do not corroborate that statement either. All they say is that he wrote a book. I see nothing more or less.
Now, you may still think those points are insightful and apropos, but the fact of the matter is, it was not written by and expert and it is not backed up by research.
What a load of utter bullshit. As if you need to be an "expert" to know something. Apparently you've never heard of ad-hominem attacks or appeals to authority, eh?
It doesn't matter one bit what his qualifications are because he isn't the one appealing to authority to make his point. The guy using rational argument. The article also provides references which is conclusions were presumably based on, most of which were written by experts, if that's so important to you.
Now: What are you basing your assertion that it's "not backed up by research" on? You haven't given any justification. Not even an appeal to authority. Are you an expert on the subject? If you're so certain it's wrong, you should have no problems coming up with an actual counter-argument.
I can only assume that you're not giving one because you don't have one. Why are you so sure he's wrong if you don't know why? Could it be that you don't like what you're hearing? I assume you dislike fascism? Shouldn't you then be correspondingly careful about dismissing the allegation out-of-hand?
You're plainly talking out of your ass with the entire "research" claim. "Fascism" is not something open to objective measurement, it's just a label. As such, its meaning is whatever you want to define it as, and every political scientist out there has his own variation. And it's not relevant; the guy is not purporting to give an absolute definition of the term or ideology. He's enumerating a set of common features he has identified, and which he considers important in a set of dictatorships he (but most others too) consider fascist.
Exactly what kind of research would refute or back that up? No kind! It's completely subjective how you define the characteristic, which ones you think are significant, and how you determine whether the criteria for it are met. Research does not do Top-10 lists, buddy.
This is not research and doesn't need any because it's obviously not fact, nor political theory. It's an opinion, and his reasons for it in terms of the facts and how he interprets them. And that does make it interesting.
Using the nonsensical word "Islamo-fascist" should disqualify you from any discussion. There's no relation between fascists and terrorists, that's just a made up word to create more irrational fear.
I don't know why bother with these semantical debates anymore.. but here goes:
What's nonsensical about it? If you mean "fascist" as in "supporter of the early 20th century political movement led by Mussolini", then it's certainly nonsensical. So it follows then that they can't be meaning "fascism" in the most literal sense*, but are rather referring to a broader, more abstract definition of the term. (*well the most literal sense would be "someone who likes fasces", I guess. Intersting considering they've got some decorating the House of Reps..)
And in that respect, it seems fine by me. I'll give my own definition, based on my thinking and experience: (My experience consisting of knowing an ex-Nazi, another guy who turned into one, and my family - My grandparents moved to South America after the war. 'nough said.)
1) They are extremely conservative. 2) They are militant. 3) They advocate a totalitarian form of government. 4) They are Group-ist, Group- = however they choose to distinguish "us" from "them" (nation/race/religion). 5) They appeal to romantic notions of recreating a glorious past (The Romans, The Caliphate) 6) They perceive themselves as a superior group, morally if not in more ways, who have been corrupted and treated unfairly. 7) The percieved corruption due to modern society and/or 'foreign' cultural influences (Jazz music, Baywatch), where 'foreign' means 'not part of the Group' (this always holds true since producing such a thing means you are corrupted and can be excluded from the Group.) 8) Unfair treatment should be some real injustice, current or historical (Versailles Treaty, Colonialism), and it should be exaggerated as much as possible. 9) If none exists, one is invented, that is, a scapegoat. Or conspiracy of scapegoats, even. 10) The ends justify the means, or rather: They believe themselves to be acting in defense.
These points aren't really independent, and you can't really expect them to be, since they're all products of the same mindset, which can really be stated as simply as: victim mentality.
Anyway, my opinion here is that 1), 5) and 7) are defining for Fascism as opposed to other totalitarian ideologies, although the latter two are more or less implied by the first. Communism substitutes "conservatism" for "radicalism" in 1), "glorious past" becomes "utopian future" in 5), and "modern/foreign" should read "capitalist". (This is a bit simplistic*)
(8) constitutes the real threat-potential. Extremism will always be marginal (in numbers) unless there's a sufficiently big real injustice going on, or an existing one can be exaggerated enough. Hitler and Mussolini, for all their political prowess, would never have succeeded on bogus anti-semitism alone.
As for (10) - Aggressors invariably rationalize their agression as 'self-defense'. The old saw about how islamists supposedly misinterpret "jihad" as allowing aggression when it only allows defense, is really totally irrelevant: They consider their acts to be self-defense anyway. Even Hitler thought he was acting in self-defense when attacking Poland.
Anyway, back to the topic: So yes, I think "islamofascism" is a perfectly apt term when applied to what is more commonly known as islamism or islamic fundamentalism. (And an equally bad term when applied to islam) Similarily, I'd find "christianofascism" a perfectly good term for christian fundamentalism. (although somewhat redundant, since classical fascism often did draw its moral superiority, in part if not in whole, from the Church).
The people who seem to most often use the term "islamofascism" are the American right-wing pundits. I find this ironic since I consider them to be increasingly fascist. (And
Either way, they have been hating and attacking us long before Bush took office, I seem to recall a few attacks during the 90's (one involving the wtc).
And I didn't dispute that. What I said was that there were fewer of them. I am convinced the "War on Terror" as it has been conducted up to now, has created far more terrorists than it has stopped.
In fact, I think I could sum up my entire critique of the thing that way: Practically from the start, the thing has been conducted as if the terrorists were the main problem, and not people becoming terrorists. You're about as likely to 'win' a war fought like that, as you are to stop a boat from sinking by bailing it out without plugging the leak.
Not only that; the Bush administration has perpetuated the exact opposite viewpoint: Not only can we ignore the causes of terrorism, but we should do so, or we're being "weak" by "making concessions to terrorists". Something easily shown to be false, if you have any kind of knowledge of the history of political extremism: For instance, in 1920's terms: should you oppose the minimum wage because the Bolsheviks killed the Tsar family?
If your main goal is to stop Communism, you'd do pretty well to support labor laws to deprive them of that argument. (Indeed, no Communist revolution ever occured in a country with modern labor laws) If you do it without any regard to what you think of them - that's realpolitik. The supreme irony is that realpolitik what the neo-cons themselves think they stand for, when they're anything but.
(E.g. Being buddies with 7 million Israelis at the cost of being disliked by 300 million Arabs - there's no realpolitik in that.)
Blaming Bush for the economic situation involving the Chinese though?
Again, I didn't blame it entirely on Bush; I said that it'd gotten worse. The US budget deficit has increased enormously under Bush, and the money borrowed from China with it. The trade deficit towards China has increased as well, further aggrevating the situation. Bush was the one who made tax cuts in the face of an economic downturn (which I do not blame him for), and then went on to increase government spending without coverage; (a nice jump from the extreme of Reaganomics to the other extreme of Keynesianism, nicely giving us the worst of both worlds.)
So who would you blame for the budget deficit?
As far as Campaign contributions, domestic or foreign, they should be outlawed as far as I'm concerned, period. I got to say, the way you bring that up really lowers my opinion. You started off well with the reasonable "Don't blame Bush for everything" - which I agree on. But now you had to go off and start playing the blame-game yourself? Two wrongs just don't make a right.
But you're just doing crazy speculation if you think that means Clinton willingly let China "buy us up".
The trade (im)balance during Clinton's 8 years went from $18.3 B (1992) to $83.8 B (2000), an increase of $65 B. So far it's gone from that to $201.5 B in 2005, an increase by $117 B. That's 3x the average annual increase during Clinton. (despite the 2002 economic downturn which resulted in the China trade deficit decreasing for the first time ever)
Now, I don't blame Bush or Clinton or any president for causing the trade deficit. It's a long-long term problem for the US. But both share some responsibility for its increase. Bush more so than Clinton.
Look I'm no fan of Bush, but it is not like prior to 2000 the Chinese held none of our assets, the Islamic extremists loved us, and the federal government held civil liberties in high regard.
Well, in order: They had less of them, there were fewer of them, we still had more of them.
I do agree that the principle of the thing is a lot more relevant argument than the implementation. But I don't think that means you shouldn't be able to complain about the latter as well, if it has faults. What's being pointed out here are indeed faults. But you're dead wrong in saying that they're unavoidable.
Every test will ultimately have faults. They will always produce some amount false negatives and false positives, and to that extent you're right in saying that they're unavoidable.
But! That doesn't mean they are equally unavoidable. Depending on the consequences of false negatives and positives, you can and should design your test to avoid one, possibly at the cost of another.
For instance, when testing for a disease, the consequence of a false positive indicates a healthy person is sick. A false negative indicates a sick person is healthy. Obviously the former scenario is a lot more preferable. Proper disease tests are designed in exactly that way, so that the probability of the former is usually several orders of magnitude larger than the latter. (This is also why they almost always do further tests on a positive result.)
Okay. So in the WGA scenario, a false positive means an honest customer is getting screwed out of support they paid for. (I'd actually call it a false negative though, since they're not running 'genuine' software.) A false negative means someone running pirated software gets support they weren't entitled to.
At least from the consumer perspective, the latter scenario is definitely better. In an ideal market, that would be what would be best for MS too. However, it's not an ideal market situation, because they're a monopoly. That makes it possible for them to push their own interest at the expense of the customer to a lot larger extent.
So I think there's every reason to criticise MS here. If they didn't intend for this, it's badly designed software. Given their massive install-base, they should be expected to be careful in designing this stuff. Given their equally massive profit, they certainly have the resources to do so. If they did intend this, then they're screwing their own customers just to save a buck on support.
Incompetence or malice: Take your pick. But in neither case would I hold MS blameless.
Ah, in that case, the point is well taken and quite true.
You can tell from different EULAs the extent of their knowledgeability.
For instance, with respect to digital signatures, the Skype EULA says: "You hereby waive any rights [..] to the extent permitted under applicable mandatory law.", showing they're aware that some laws on that subject can't be voided by a license.
However, the same EULA tries to ban reverse-engineering, despite that EU law and the DMCA both allow it for interoperability purposes. But unlike the DMCA, the European law explicitly states you can't waive that right, and any such license terms are void.
The real tragedy is demonstrated by the terrible ruling in the Blizzard v. Bnetd case: The court found you could waive the DMCA right through a EULA. Which means two things, first that the DMCA is little more than a paper tiger in that respect, and second that businesses seem to have nothing to lose and everything to gain by adding apparently unenforceable clauses.
E.g. the MSN Messenger EULA states: "You will not disassemble, decompile, or reverse engineer [..] except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law.". A court may well find that that clause does not lead you to waive the DMCA rights.
Thus: Microsoft loses out because they added a seemingly redundant reservation, and Blizzard wins by asking for more than most people would assume to be legal.
So IMHO, you can't blame businesses for writing draconian EULAs as long as the courts for make it profitable to do so. In that scenario, I'd say a lawyer not writing a draconian EULA is doing a bad job for his client. The Blizzard lawyer apparently did a better than the Microsoft one. (although you'd think otherwise)
(This of course assumes both Blizzard and MS both intend to ban reverse-engineering as far as they legally can. But I think that's a fair assumption.)
It seems kind of unlikely to me that you could "easily" circumvent a law that limits the use of non-negotiable contract terms through a non-negotiable contract term!
It would be rather entertaining to see them try to sell that to a judge, though.
Actually, on further thought, I'd like to apologize for the second comment, since I didn't actually intend to leave it in. I'd thought I removed it after adding the first one, but it turned out I didn't. So the result was more condescending than I intended.
The first one was still intended though, as I said, in response to what I felt was a presumptious tone of your post. I'd also like to clarify my point, in case it was obscured in the other response:
Don't let the 'snide' nature of the comment distract from the fact that its literal intent was quite honest: Avoid being presumptive. By all means feel free to comment, just avoid sounding like you know more than you know you do. In particular given that you seem quite annoyed by displays of arrogance in others.
Now, it's pretty damn hard to tell someone they're wrong without coming off as sounding arrogant or condecending. Some people always get upset at that, no matter how softly people try to tell them. And some people are indeed assholes who are more interested in proving people wrong than in informing them.
You accuse me of it, but I do not feel I belong in the latter category. I know I often make a concious effort to avoid sounding condecending, even though I didn't do so here. The exceptions to that happen when I think the other person is being presumptuous. Bad behaviour is contagious.
You'd be quite justified in accusing me of being a wise-ass if I'd made condecending remarks like that in response to an honest inquiry. Your comment didn't do that, and the remark itself as well as its tone were in response to that.
Actually, it'd be kind of counter-productive if I were really just out to humiliate folks. Then I'd want to surround myself with as many foolish comments as possible. And there are quite a lot of message boards out there more suitable for that purpose than Slashdot, critisisms notwithstanding.
Did you get beat up alot at school? And now find being a dick on the web is the best way you can make up for it?
Nope. My school experience was quite untraumatic, as with most people. And like them, I'm no saint. I get annoyed at times. That doesn't mean I have "issues".
Most people do in fact find pretentiousness annoying. So if you go around making statements like that, you'll have to accept that if most other people find it annoying, it's probably not their problem.
So not only do I think it's fine to claim the latter while admitting the former, I know it is. So don't be a wise ass.
It's certainly fine to comment on things you don't know about. But if you're going to make those comments with an authorative tone and without a rationale, you're going to run a major risk of sounding pretentious if you're wrong. The more wrong it is, the more pretentious you're gonna seem.
In this case, you were stating an opinion as fact, when that opinion goes right against that of a lot of people more qualified in the subject. (Note that those guys weren't appealing to authority either. They gave a detailed rationale for it.) There's no way that's not going to sound pretentious, or at least arrogant.
So who's the bigger wise-ass? The guy who states his opinion as if based on authority while well aware that he's not an authority, or the guy who gets annoyed with that behaviour?
Seriously, if you don't get that people find pretentiousness annoying, who has the social issues? Or, if can't see how your comment could come across as pretentious, I think you'll need to work on your communication skills. You're never going to get flamed for being wrong if you make it clear you're not sure you're right.
I'd have been perfectly happy to apologize for my remarks if you'd have shown any kind of insight into why I reacted as I did. But instead you blast me, with no analysis of what could possibly have provoked it. Defending it on that "it's all a bullshit discussion anyway". Does that somehow mean people aren't entitled to form an impression from it?
So anyway, that's my rationale for my behaviour. I don't mean to say I think it's justified to respond to an arrogant comment in an arrogant way (however much it's human nature). That doesn't mean I'm going to apologize if you can't see the provocation.
That's not accounting for the name-calling you just engaged in. But I'm not about to conciously stoop to that level of responding-in-kind.
The all-too-common fallacy the GP poster was committing was the old "Let's be open-minded" routine. First point out some mistakes of the past (but no mention of the far more common case of insane ideas correctly being dismissed as such). Then imply that uncertainty means that you should, in the name of open-mindedness, give all claims equal weight. (This guy even goes as far as stating so directly in the topic!)
That's of course a major fallacy, since things obviously have different degrees of uncertainty, like you said. Not only that, but Science has methods of determining the uncertainty. (and determining the uncertainty of the uncertainty too, and so on)
Plus, the given examples aren't really fair either. None of them represent any real scientific opinion at any specific time. He'd do well to read up on some history of ideas. There are plenty of real misconceptions to complain about. But a lot of the most blatant ones, often the most common ones, are in themselves little more than a misconception themselves. Like the flat-earth myth, or the patent-office director who believed "everything that can be invented already had".
It's quite possible to put forward a theory that violates conservation of momentum without violating conservation of energy.
Are you sure? I haven't thought too hard about it, but my immediate reaction is that it would.
What if I accelerate some particle and then bump it into another, and through some magic of non-conserved momentum transfer more momentum than the first particle had to the second. You could then use the second particle to accelerate another particle like the first one (in a conserved fashion). The surplus momentum in the second could then be used to drive a turbine and solve the world's energy problems.:)
Alternately, conservation of momentum and energies are both consequences of the translational invariance of space and time, respectively. Now, I don't do relativistic stuff, so someone might need to correct me on this, but IIRC, I think that makes them the same thing, at least in a Minkowski space.
I also recall that conservation in G.R. seemed to be an intensely difficult thing, so I'm being very careful here. Of course, in practice, if one is false, physics as we know it is invalid, and the door opens for just about anything to be challenged.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that would be a reason. But on the other hand, the main developer of GCJ is RedHat, and they may well not feel like continuing it now.
Kaffe is GPL.
Well, then you know more than I do. And I'm a Classpath dev.
Anyway, there's a good six months or so before we'll be seeing the classlib code from Sun. Yes, if we do continue development (or those who do) will probably be incorporating parts of it, but not large swaths of it. There are some fundamental differences in how the two libraries have chosen to solve certain things, and it's hardly a matter of cutting and pasting some code.
There's also a likelyhood that parts of Classpath are going to end up in Sun's libaries. There are actually things that Classpath does do better. There are also parts of the classlib that aren't going to be open-sourced because Sun doesn't have ownership. Classpath may provide the replacements for those parts.
But all in all, it's a big win for Classpath, regardless. We're getting what we wanted, under the license we wanted it. And we even got Sun to talk to us and ask advice before it all happened. (And judging from the details of their actions, I'd say I they listened well)
Seems to me that would be a bad call for Hormel and the EU court, although I suspect the quote here has probably been taken out of context and given undue weight.
Thing is, I see no reason at all for how a trademark could become genericized merely by becoming a common word for something completely different. (Python reference intended)
The point, as I learned it, was that a trademark becomes generic when it becomes the generic term for that product. E.g. "Cola" is a generic term for a certain type of soft drink, but "Coca-Cola" is not.
"Yo-yo" used to be a trademark for a specific kind of spinning toy, but they lost it when it became the generic term for that kind of toy.
"Windows" is a generic term to begin with. But it wasn't (and still isn't) a generic term for operating system software.
Now "Spam" is indeed threatened as a trademark, since people indeed are referring canned corned beef in general as "Spam". But I can't see any relevance in whether people use the same term to refer to unsolicited email or not. It's not like there is any risk the two 'products' would ever be confused.
The article says no such thing. It says the police have "secret" (i.e. undisclosed) information about Reiser.
It does not say that it had anything at all to do with the custody of his children. In fact, what I can tell from the article, the issue of permanent custody has not been decided yet, which would be in-line with the fact that the divorce proceedings apparently aren't finished yet either.
What it says, is that the police testified against Reiser in the (presumably temporary) custody proceedings. It also says he'd been previously bound by a restraining order. Presumably the Police had at some point been involved in whatever incidents had lead up to that restraining order being issued. It's hardly a stretch of the imagination to think that same testimony would be brought up when it came to deciding on temporary custody.
You cannot gain or lose custody of your children on the basis of any kind of "secret" information. Custody can only be granted by a court in a proper hearing, where both sides are represented, due process, etc. Whatever "secret" information the police have about him now, it would not be secret if it had been brought up in a custody hearing.
The "secret" information here cannot have anything to do with the custody. It must be related to why he was arrested. And they are not required to disclose those reasons until either the preliminary hearing or the trial, should there be one.
Yes, in the same way that fundamentalism and religion are similar.
Socialists are like any other people. Some are judgemental and self-righteous, most are not. Socialists relate to the wealthy in the same way that religious people relate to sinners. They distinguish wealth from the wealthy in the same way you distinguish sin from the sinners. (This isn't to say they consider wealth somehow immoral)
Personally, I abhor all kinds of intolerance and self-righteousness equally. So I don't associate with any socialists who hate the wealthy, nor any religious people who hate sinners. But I would hardly deny they exist.
Moderate and democratic forms of socialism don't really have any antagonism against wealth or capitalists either. I'd rather say scepticism. In particular against the idea that what's best for the richest is what's best for everyone.
The thing is, like most encroachments on free speech, hate speech isn't being banned on the grounds of threatening democracy (even if it does). It's being banned for the same reasons people want flag-burning and porn - it's deemed extremely offensive. This is much much more of a free-speech issue than any kind of right-left issue.
Well, that's kind of wrong: Most people in the USA who've been jailed on laws later ruled anti-1st-amendment were Communists and Socialists prosecuted under the Smith Act and earlier sedition laws. A lot of them remain on the books as well.
E.g. the Smith Act is still in effect. The way the Supreme Court sees it (Yates v. USA), it's been restricted in that "advocacy of abstract doctrine" (including unlawful ones) is protected free speech but "advocacy directed at promoting unlawful action" is not.
So, it's not really useful given that the illegal act in question (advocating revolutionary acts) already was illegal. But it's still noteworthy in that it shows the First Amendment would not actually apply to a law banning the promotion of hate crimes, should people decide to pass one.
Unfortunately, it seems like people in the USA would much rather curtail free-speech by banning flag burning. (Which I do find a lot less offensive) It only failed by one vote last time.
Of course Communism commited genocide. There's no large group of people claiming otherwise. I certainly haven't met any, even among self-proclaimed Marxists. I for one am not going to stand up and defend Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol-Pot and their ilk.
But I will definitely stand up and defend both Socialism and Marxism from being associated with those guys. For the first thing: "Socialism" as a concept and term predates Marx by quite a good amount of time. There is nothing inherently totalitarian about the Workers movement, about government welfare, about socialized health-care or about unions. (Maybe you missed it, but unions were actually banned in Communist countries)
No it is not. That's a stereotyped and oversimplified view of Marxism. "Socialism" in it's broadest meaning is nothing more and nothing less than the opinion that the government should act (to whatever extent) to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. It's also strongly coupled to the Workers' movement, meaning support of demands for labor laws and fair working conditions, etc. In other words, the view that private property rights can sometimes (or always) be overridden in order to promote social fairness. (Now, Marx had his own definition. But anyone holding to that one is per definition a Marxist)
To detail, Social Democracy was born out of Marxism, combined with the conviction that revolution would cause injustice. That socialist goals could be better achived through more moderate means. During the 20th century, they've also successivly abandoned quite a lot of Marxism. Most Soc-Dems don't advocate a fully planned economy anymore. Marx's historic and economic theories have been abandoned in general by Soc-Dems.
Why should I acknowledge such a blatantly false statement? Tell me, which genocides have occured in Social Democrat-ruled countries? I don't see how you can put Tony Blair in the same boat as Stalin. But by all means, if you think you can give an argument on how trade unions and universal health care ipso facto leads to genocide, I suggst you do so.
Now, if you want to say that Communism sucks, that's fine. But if think the examples you cited are somthing advocated by Karl Marx, then you frankly don't have a clue what you're talking about, whatever you may think of his theories. If you want to claim that Marxism inherently leads to totalitarianism regardless, that's fine too - there have been cogent arguments to that effect. (E.g. Popper's Open society and its enemies)
But don't be so utterly stupid as to confuse the whole Socialist movement with its radical factions. Because the extremes of all ideologies lead to totalitarianism. And you need to go look up "Fascism" as well You said it yourself - it's not the beliefs, it's the type of government. Or rather, it's the conviction that you hold an absolute truth.
No, how it works is that some people will always think the other guy's grass is greener. Some people always think their own grass is greener. This doesn't change the fact that some grass is still actually greener than others'.
For instance, you're talking about a "welfare system in shambles". Well, in Norway the political spectrum amounts to: "Should we spend more on welfare or less" and "Should it be run in the public or private sector". But there is no mainstream debate on "Should we have a welfare system at all?" - which is what the US situation is like.
See what I mean by 'less polarization'?
From personal experience I know that corruption is rampant in Norway, both in the private and government sector.
"Idealists" with a hard-on for systems which shadowy sides they obviously cannot have any real knowledge of nor experience with only manage to make themselves look foolish.
Well, I've got a dual US-Swedish citizenship and have lived for decades in both countries. I believe that I do have a quite good experience with both systems and a quite good understanding of the respective points-of-view and biases.
I also think the opinion you are espousing shows heavy and typical national bias. You're so concerned with the problems of Norway from the Norwegian point-of-view, that you can't see its successes in terms of a broader global perspective. I recommend that you sit down and take a good hard look at the US system and US politics and judge them from the same POV before you decide Norway has more problems.
Of course constitutions should be hard to amend.
I wasn't making an argument against the fact that some of the current attempts to amend it have failed. I was making an argument against the state-ratification requirement, and against the fact that there's too little constitutional debate.
Just because it's not broken doesn't mean there's no reason to debate it. There's a lot of archaic stuff in there, and I'd rather have the thing rewritten than have the Supreme Court make increasingly stretched interpretations to be able to apply it to modern government.
Sure, I'm well aware of that, e.g. how the Flag Burning Amendment only failed to pass by a single vote a few months ago. I am no supporter of that amendment. But that doesn't make it a good argument. You can't have any "pro-freedom" amendments either if you can't pass any at all.
(Also, it's entirely possible to ban flag burning even without an amendment, via the Supreme Court, there are already several current members who do not feel it violates the 1st)
Also, it's not that I'm saying that you shouldn't require a qualified majority (or similar). A constitution would be pointless if it could be changed as easily as any other law. What I was critisising was rather the idea that it should never be amended. (Which is in itself pointless, when you can subvert SCOTUS) I was also opposing the slow state-ratification process. - I'd rather see something along the lines of requiring a qualified majority in two different congresses (that is, with an election in-between. Or perhaps two elections)
So, constitution-wise I was mainly opposing the state-ratification requirement and the attitude that it should never be changed, as well as the complete lack of debate on the constitution itself. E.g. the Senate and presidential vetos are historical equivalents of the First Chambers and royal priviledges in many European countries. But in those places, they've either abolished them (Scandinavia), changed their function (Dutch Eerste Kamer) or reduced them to a more or less symbolic role (England).
Yup, same thing.. but the question? Good question.
The obvious answer is that they're freedom-hating socialists.
But seriously? It's the culture. The Netherlands and the Nordic countries are about the same like this. Big on democracy, accountability, transparency, highly intolerant of corruption, etc.
In the end, it's basically a self-fulfilling thing, really. People trust the system --> therefore they have low tolerance for corruption --> get very pissed when it happens --> therefore they have low corruption --> therefore they trust the system.
It's not just faith in the Government itself, but to all the institutions, and the parliament, etc. And there's a lot less political polarization. Of course part of the latter is due to the multi-party system. I used to be agnostic on which system was better, but now I'm pretty convinced that the many-party parliamentary system is superior to the US system.
In particular the President has just too much power and it's emphasized too much as well. And too much negative power - the Veto is too strong, and the constitution is (IMHO) too hard to amend. I don't think the Founding Fathers would have done it the same way if they'd anticipated there'd be another 37 states. This is of course heresey - which is another problem; Not only is it hard to change, but there's a strong disinclination against doing so since it's been raised almost to the status of some kind of Holy Scripture. With the Founding Fathers as some kind of prophets. Every dang constitutional debate is always in terms of "What did the F.Fs intend?"*. There's just too little impetus.
(*Damnit, I'll tell you what they wanted: They wanted a democracy based on ideas of critical reason. They sure as heck didn't want to be elevated to the status of unquestionable demigods.)
That's what you should have said, then.
It's true, you can't judge a theory until it's done. String theory is not done at all.
However, what I think they're saying, what I was saying at least, is that you can judge from the methodology used if it's going to give a useful result or not. As 't Hooft pointed out, at least some string theorists have resorted to problem-solving tactics that will end up creating more problems than they solve.
There's also a general legitimacy problem, not only within string theory (although it's particularily bad there) but within Theoretical Physics as a whole. Some areas of the field are so abstract nowadays, that few know what the heck it's all about. For instance the Bogdanoff affair (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanoff/). Two guys got PhDs on the basis of papers that simply didn't make any sense to anyone. And noone's quite sure whether it was sheer fraud or an honestly intended but ultimately pseudoscientific result.
But the extremely abstract nature of modern theoretical physics makes it very vunerable to this unless they interact with others. And string theory is isolated, even for being theoretical physics.
I think that even if turns out to be the right place to go, it might not be the right way to get there. Intermediate theories such as supersymmetry exist, and are not as isolated from 'real' physics.
I agree. I think most critics do as well (although perhaps not the most skeptical ones). It's more or less the only line of attack we've got towards a GUT, and we should persue it.
The real question is: How hard should we persue it? Is it getting more resources than it deserves?
It's the most important field of theory in the sense that it could provide a GUT. But it's the least important one in the sense that a GUT would have little impact on most applied physics.
Personally, I'm waiting for the Holy Grail of molecular physics: A way to solve to the molecular Schrödinger equation that scales linearly. It's been mathematically proven one exists (at least in the density-functional reformulation). We just have no clue what it is. Or even a straightforward way to find out!
Anyway.. Sorry 'bout the "no clue" remark before, that was an uncalled for. I guess I'm just a bit touchy about erroneous statements on my field of expertise.
What a silly thing to say! String theory is scientific no matter how they arrive at their results? What if they're using a Ouija Board?
Anyway I think you misunderstood me. I don't disapprove of their methods. I am not saying you can't rely on assumptions and empirical results to form your theory. That's how all scientific theories get formed. But that methodology does automatically mean the resulting theory is scientific, or that the result is a better scientific theory.
I can go out and do an experimental observation of grass, and then formulate the theory "grass is green". This makes a prediction. It is falsifiable. But it is not a scientific theory, because it explains no more than what I'd already observed. I assume you agree to that much? You need to predict more than you assume. Part of the critisism here is based on the fear (voiced also by 't Hooft) that string theory may ultimately amount to little more than that.
It's true that you can argue it's still a scientific theory since it does explain more than it assumes, in the same way QM and relativity does. But if it makes the same number of assumptions, then it's not a better theory than those two. It's not even a new theory. It's just a useless restatement of the old one.
To give such an example: Does the Earth orbit the Sun? The heliocentric model doesn't assume more than the geocentric model. One doesn't explain more than the other. The heliocentric model is just simpler, and therefore more useful.
As I understand it, you're saying it's fine to sacrifice the goal of fewer assumptions for the goal of a more general theory in this case. That's not a view representative of what most physicists think. I'd say the goal of fewer assumptions is actually much more important in this case.
QM and relativity already explain everything we can observe so far. Likewise, what we know them not to explain (e.g. singularities in relativity) is not observable. Science is not in the business of explaining the unobservable in terms of the unknowable, and any such theory is simply unscientific, no matter how rigorous it is in terms of logic.
(Don't get me wrong, any GUT, even such an unscientific one, is still a great intellectual achievement. Just because it's not scientific knowledge doesn't mean it's not knowledge. Math is not a science, as far as I'm concerned. It's still knowledge. Logic is knowledge. Even metaphysics is knowledge - albeit not a very useful kind.)
However: It's entirely wrong to make any kind of blanket statement that string theory is unscientific. I am not doing so, nor are any critics that I know of or would consider listening to. There's no point passing judgement on a theory until there's a finished theory to judge. They're currently nowhere near that point.
But the issue of scientific rigor isn't just the aforementioned philosophical problems. There's also a more obvious social problem. String theorists are largely working in isolation from the rest of (theoretical) physics, and increasingly so. That constitutes a major warning-flag in terms of scientific rigor. Isolation leads loss of critical distance and creation of group-think. Good science is almost never done in isolation.
Because of its big goal, string theory is extremely popular and well-funded. It's a prestige subject. (and many string theorists have the big heads that go with it, another warning sign) The rest of theoretical physics is not so well funded. So a lot of people think that it's getting an inordinate amount of resources, giv
Kasprzak et al. is 2d, Demokritov et al is 3d.
;) )
I haven't delved into the details, but the latter one seems to have a much higher lifetime as well, and I guess is the more proper BEC of the two. I presume it's the more interesting result, since as you say (and the references indicate) the 2d-quasiparticle-condensate thing has been done before.
(Since it's not my field, don't put too much faith in my impressions of what seesm to be 'interesting'. For all I know, this could be undergrad-level condensed-matter physics by now
I thought Bose-Einstein condensate was a completely different state of matter. How then, could it appear in a "solid state"?
:)
:)
Good question. And damn hard to explain in terms that don't sound insane to the layman
Thing is, the condensed particles here aren't the particles that make up the solid. They're not quite real particles, even. They're so-called quasiparticles, which are a fancy way condensed-matter physicists have of describing what the rest of us call "interactions". Each interaction has its own kind of quasiparticle, (and some silly name ending with -on) and they're basically described just like real particles are. The trick is you can describe the system in terms of these virtual particles instead of the real ones and simplify the problem.
To give an analogy, you could think about a bubble moving through some liquid. The bubble isn't actually a real particle - it's just the overall effect of a bunch of gas molecules pressing and bouncing against the liquid molecules. But thinking of it as just a "bubble particle" is a lot simpler.
Anyway. So the condensate here isn't made up of the solid's atoms. It's made up of quasiparticles. And this is why there's some debate on whether this should be called a BEC or not. On one hand, they can, and do have coherence here. On the other hand, they're just not really real!
But it's also pointed out they're extremely short-lived. It's indeed questionable if you can call something a BEC if it's short-lived, because a BEC is supposedly a low and stable state. (So the question becomes "How stable should it be to be a BEC?") But regardless of that, it's no less interesting.
My guess is, people will probably continue to call every BEC-like kind of condensate a BEC. When the need arises to distinguish the two, they'll have to invent a new term for that context, like "quasiparticle condensate" or something.
This is why you don't get it: That is behaviour which is generally considered unscientific. If you need to keep modifying your theory to explain stuff, then it's not a scientific theory. It's an ad-hoc mess of empiricism of zero real value. The rules of the game are:
1) It must be testable (falsifiable)
2) You must provide new predictions
3) You must explain previous observations, observations not used in formulating the theory., and ideally, none at all.
4) You must do so using fewer postulates (assumptions) than the previous theory.
The word you're looking for is "model". But how is this another thing? Our current understanding is a model as well. The question is whether it's a better model or not is still there and unanswered.
You have no clue. Modern chemistry is not based on any such model. It's based entirely on the standard model of physics. There is not one, not one! molecular property that can be described in anything less than a fully quantum-mechanical treatment. All of chemistry is purely due to quantum-mechanical effects.
And string theory is not the same at all, even if you'd been right. String theory is an attempt at a more basic and general theory of quantum mechanics, in the same way as classical mechanics is a limiting case of quantum theory. It is not an approximation of quantum theory, and not intended to be one.
You don't get it. The periodic table is already entirely explained from QM, and has been for some time. There's no more reason to describe it in terms of string theory than to describe the motion of billiard balls in terms of quantum mechanics: It's unnecessary because it's already explained by classical mech, and we know classical mech is a subset of quantum mech.
In the case of string theory, all they need to do is show that QM is a subset of that theory. That's not hard and it is. It forms the basic premise of their work as well as the goal. The idea is that they're going to work from part of quantum theory and relativity and somehow arrive at the whole thing. Which parts the
But the links you give do not corroborate that statement either. All they say is that he wrote a book. I see nothing more or less.
What a load of utter bullshit. As if you need to be an "expert" to know something. Apparently you've never heard of ad-hominem attacks or appeals to authority, eh?
It doesn't matter one bit what his qualifications are because he isn't the one appealing to authority to make his point. The guy using rational argument. The article also provides references which is conclusions were presumably based on, most of which were written by experts, if that's so important to you.
Now: What are you basing your assertion that it's "not backed up by research" on? You haven't given any justification. Not even an appeal to authority. Are you an expert on the subject? If you're so certain it's wrong, you should have no problems coming up with an actual counter-argument.
I can only assume that you're not giving one because you don't have one. Why are you so sure he's wrong if you don't know why? Could it be that you don't like what you're hearing? I assume you dislike fascism? Shouldn't you then be correspondingly careful about dismissing the allegation out-of-hand?
You're plainly talking out of your ass with the entire "research" claim. "Fascism" is not something open to objective measurement, it's just a label. As such, its meaning is whatever you want to define it as, and every political scientist out there has his own variation. And it's not relevant; the guy is not purporting to give an absolute definition of the term or ideology. He's enumerating a set of common features he has identified, and which he considers important in a set of dictatorships he (but most others too) consider fascist.
Exactly what kind of research would refute or back that up? No kind! It's completely subjective how you define the characteristic, which ones you think are significant, and how you determine whether the criteria for it are met. Research does not do Top-10 lists, buddy.
This is not research and doesn't need any because it's obviously not fact, nor political theory. It's an opinion, and his reasons for it in terms of the facts and how he interprets them. And that does make it interesting.
I don't know why bother with these semantical debates anymore.. but here goes:
What's nonsensical about it? If you mean "fascist" as in "supporter of the early 20th century political movement led by Mussolini", then it's certainly nonsensical. So it follows then that they can't be meaning "fascism" in the most literal sense*, but are rather referring to a broader, more abstract definition of the term. (*well the most literal sense would be "someone who likes fasces", I guess. Intersting considering they've got some decorating the House of Reps..)
And in that respect, it seems fine by me. I'll give my own definition, based on my thinking and experience:
(My experience consisting of knowing an ex-Nazi, another guy who turned into one, and my family - My grandparents moved to South America after the war. 'nough said.)
1) They are extremely conservative.
2) They are militant.
3) They advocate a totalitarian form of government.
4) They are Group-ist, Group- = however they choose to distinguish "us" from "them" (nation/race/religion).
5) They appeal to romantic notions of recreating a glorious past (The Romans, The Caliphate)
6) They perceive themselves as a superior group, morally if not in more ways, who have been corrupted and treated unfairly.
7) The percieved corruption due to modern society and/or 'foreign' cultural influences (Jazz music, Baywatch), where 'foreign' means 'not part of the Group' (this always holds true since producing such a thing means you are corrupted and can be excluded from the Group.)
8) Unfair treatment should be some real injustice, current or historical (Versailles Treaty, Colonialism), and it should be exaggerated as much as possible.
9) If none exists, one is invented, that is, a scapegoat. Or conspiracy of scapegoats, even.
10) The ends justify the means, or rather: They believe themselves to be acting in defense.
These points aren't really independent, and you can't really expect them to be, since they're all products of the same mindset, which can really be stated as simply as: victim mentality.
Anyway, my opinion here is that 1), 5) and 7) are defining for Fascism as opposed to other totalitarian ideologies, although the latter two are more or less implied by the first. Communism substitutes "conservatism" for "radicalism" in 1), "glorious past" becomes "utopian future" in 5), and "modern/foreign" should read "capitalist". (This is a bit simplistic*)
(8) constitutes the real threat-potential. Extremism will always be marginal (in numbers) unless there's a sufficiently big real injustice going on, or an existing one can be exaggerated enough. Hitler and Mussolini, for all their political prowess, would never have succeeded on bogus anti-semitism alone.
As for (10) - Aggressors invariably rationalize their agression as 'self-defense'. The old saw about how islamists supposedly misinterpret "jihad" as allowing aggression when it only allows defense, is really totally irrelevant: They consider their acts to be self-defense anyway. Even Hitler thought he was acting in self-defense when attacking Poland.
Anyway, back to the topic: So yes, I think "islamofascism" is a perfectly apt term when applied to what is more commonly known as islamism or islamic fundamentalism. (And an equally bad term when applied to islam) Similarily, I'd find "christianofascism" a perfectly good term for christian fundamentalism.
(although somewhat redundant, since classical fascism often did draw its moral superiority, in part if not in whole, from the Church).
The people who seem to most often use the term "islamofascism" are the American right-wing pundits. I find this ironic since I consider them to be increasingly fascist. (And
And I didn't dispute that. What I said was that there were fewer of them. I am convinced the "War on Terror" as it has been conducted up to now, has created far more terrorists than it has stopped.
In fact, I think I could sum up my entire critique of the thing that way: Practically from the start, the thing has been conducted as if the terrorists were the main problem, and not people becoming terrorists. You're about as likely to 'win' a war fought like that, as you are to stop a boat from sinking by bailing it out without plugging the leak.
Not only that; the Bush administration has perpetuated the exact opposite viewpoint: Not only can we ignore the causes of terrorism, but we should do so, or we're being "weak" by "making concessions to terrorists".
Something easily shown to be false, if you have any kind of knowledge of the history of political extremism: For instance, in 1920's terms: should you oppose the minimum wage because the Bolsheviks killed the Tsar family?
If your main goal is to stop Communism, you'd do pretty well to support labor laws to deprive them of that argument. (Indeed, no Communist revolution ever occured in a country with modern labor laws) If you do it without any regard to what you think of them - that's realpolitik. The supreme irony is that realpolitik what the neo-cons themselves think they stand for, when they're anything but.
(E.g. Being buddies with 7 million Israelis at the cost of being disliked by 300 million Arabs - there's no realpolitik in that.)
Again, I didn't blame it entirely on Bush; I said that it'd gotten worse. The US budget deficit has increased enormously under Bush, and the money borrowed from China with it. The trade deficit towards China has increased as well, further aggrevating the situation. Bush was the one who made tax cuts in the face of an economic downturn (which I do not blame him for), and then went on to increase government spending without coverage; (a nice jump from the extreme of Reaganomics to the other extreme of Keynesianism, nicely giving us the worst of both worlds.)
So who would you blame for the budget deficit?
As far as Campaign contributions, domestic or foreign, they should be outlawed as far as I'm concerned, period. I got to say, the way you bring that up really lowers my opinion. You started off well with the reasonable "Don't blame Bush for everything" - which I agree on. But now you had to go off and start playing the blame-game yourself? Two wrongs just don't make a right.
But you're just doing crazy speculation if you think that means Clinton willingly let China "buy us up".
The trade (im)balance during Clinton's 8 years went from $18.3 B (1992) to $83.8 B (2000), an increase of $65 B. So far it's gone from that to $201.5 B in 2005, an increase by $117 B. That's 3x the average annual increase during Clinton. (despite the 2002 economic downturn which resulted in the China trade deficit decreasing for the first time ever)
Now, I don't blame Bush or Clinton or any president for causing the trade deficit. It's a long-long term problem for the US. But both share some responsibility for its increase. Bush more so than Clinton.
Well, in order: They had less of them, there were fewer of them, we still had more of them.
I do agree that the principle of the thing is a lot more relevant argument than the implementation. But I don't think that means you shouldn't be able to complain about the latter as well, if it has faults. What's being pointed out here are indeed faults. But you're dead wrong in saying that they're unavoidable.
Every test will ultimately have faults. They will always produce some amount false negatives and false positives, and to that extent you're right in saying that they're unavoidable.
But! That doesn't mean they are equally unavoidable. Depending on the consequences of false negatives and positives, you can and should design your test to avoid one, possibly at the cost of another.
For instance, when testing for a disease, the consequence of a false positive indicates a healthy person is sick. A false negative indicates a sick person is healthy. Obviously the former scenario is a lot more preferable. Proper disease tests are designed in exactly that way, so that the probability of the former is usually several orders of magnitude larger than the latter. (This is also why they almost always do further tests on a positive result.)
Okay. So in the WGA scenario, a false positive means an honest customer is getting screwed out of support they paid for. (I'd actually call it a false negative though, since they're not running 'genuine' software.) A false negative means someone running pirated software gets support they weren't entitled to.
At least from the consumer perspective, the latter scenario is definitely better. In an ideal market, that would be what would be best for MS too. However, it's not an ideal market situation, because they're a monopoly. That makes it possible for them to push their own interest at the expense of the customer to a lot larger extent.
So I think there's every reason to criticise MS here. If they didn't intend for this, it's badly designed software. Given their massive install-base, they should be expected to be careful in designing this stuff. Given their equally massive profit, they certainly have the resources to do so. If they did intend this, then they're screwing their own customers just to save a buck on support.
Incompetence or malice: Take your pick. But in neither case would I hold MS blameless.
Ah, in that case, the point is well taken and quite true.
You can tell from different EULAs the extent of their knowledgeability.
For instance, with respect to digital signatures, the Skype EULA says: "You hereby waive any rights [..] to the extent permitted under applicable mandatory law.", showing they're aware that some laws on that subject can't be voided by a license.
However, the same EULA tries to ban reverse-engineering, despite that EU law and the DMCA both allow it for interoperability purposes. But unlike the DMCA, the European law explicitly states you can't waive that right, and any such license terms are void.
The real tragedy is demonstrated by the terrible ruling in the Blizzard v. Bnetd case: The court found you could waive the DMCA right through a EULA. Which means two things, first that the DMCA is little more than a paper tiger in that respect, and second that businesses seem to have nothing to lose and everything to gain by adding apparently unenforceable clauses.
E.g. the MSN Messenger EULA states: "You will not disassemble, decompile, or reverse engineer [..] except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law.". A court may well find that that clause does not lead you to waive the DMCA rights.
Thus: Microsoft loses out because they added a seemingly redundant reservation, and Blizzard wins by asking for more than most people would assume to be legal.
So IMHO, you can't blame businesses for writing draconian EULAs as long as the courts for make it profitable to do so. In that scenario, I'd say a lawyer not writing a draconian EULA is doing a bad job for his client. The Blizzard lawyer apparently did a better than the Microsoft one. (although you'd think otherwise)
(This of course assumes both Blizzard and MS both intend to ban reverse-engineering as far as they legally can. But I think that's a fair assumption.)
Say what now?
It seems kind of unlikely to me that you could "easily" circumvent a law that limits the use of non-negotiable contract terms through a non-negotiable contract term!
It would be rather entertaining to see them try to sell that to a judge, though.
Actually, on further thought, I'd like to apologize for the second comment, since I didn't actually intend to leave it in. I'd thought I removed it after adding the first one, but it turned out I didn't. So the result was more condescending than I intended.
The first one was still intended though, as I said, in response to what I felt was a presumptious tone of your post. I'd also like to clarify my point, in case it was obscured in the other response:
Don't let the 'snide' nature of the comment distract from the fact that its literal intent was quite honest: Avoid being presumptive. By all means feel free to comment, just avoid sounding like you know more than you know you do. In particular given that you seem quite annoyed by displays of arrogance in others.
Now, it's pretty damn hard to tell someone they're wrong without coming off as sounding arrogant or condecending. Some people always get upset at that, no matter how softly people try to tell them. And some people are indeed assholes who are more interested in proving people wrong than in informing them.
You accuse me of it, but I do not feel I belong in the latter category. I know I often make a concious effort to avoid sounding condecending, even though I didn't do so here. The exceptions to that happen when I think the other person is being presumptuous. Bad behaviour is contagious.
You'd be quite justified in accusing me of being a wise-ass if I'd made condecending remarks like that in response to an honest inquiry. Your comment didn't do that, and the remark itself as well as its tone were in response to that.
Actually, it'd be kind of counter-productive if I were really just out to humiliate folks. Then I'd want to surround myself with as many foolish comments as possible. And there are quite a lot of message boards out there more suitable for that purpose than Slashdot, critisisms notwithstanding.
Nope. My school experience was quite untraumatic, as with most people. And like them, I'm no saint. I get annoyed at times. That doesn't mean I have "issues".
Most people do in fact find pretentiousness annoying. So if you go around making statements like that, you'll have to accept that if most other people find it annoying, it's probably not their problem.
It's certainly fine to comment on things you don't know about. But if you're going to make those comments with an authorative tone and without a rationale, you're going to run a major risk of sounding pretentious if you're wrong. The more wrong it is, the more pretentious you're gonna seem.
In this case, you were stating an opinion as fact, when that opinion goes right against that of a lot of people more qualified in the subject. (Note that those guys weren't appealing to authority either. They gave a detailed rationale for it.) There's no way that's not going to sound pretentious, or at least arrogant.
So who's the bigger wise-ass? The guy who states his opinion as if based on authority while well aware that he's not an authority, or the guy who gets annoyed with that behaviour?
Seriously, if you don't get that people find pretentiousness annoying, who has the social issues? Or, if can't see how your comment could come across as pretentious, I think you'll need to work on your communication skills. You're never going to get flamed for being wrong if you make it clear you're not sure you're right.
I'd have been perfectly happy to apologize for my remarks if you'd have shown any kind of insight into why I reacted as I did. But instead you blast me, with no analysis of what could possibly have provoked it. Defending it on that "it's all a bullshit discussion anyway". Does that somehow mean people aren't entitled to form an impression from it?
So anyway, that's my rationale for my behaviour. I don't mean to say I think it's justified to respond to an arrogant comment in an arrogant way (however much it's human nature). That doesn't mean I'm going to apologize if you can't see the provocation.
That's not accounting for the name-calling you just engaged in. But I'm not about to conciously stoop to that level of responding-in-kind.
You said it in degree of certainty.
The all-too-common fallacy the GP poster was committing was the old "Let's be open-minded" routine. First point out some mistakes of the past (but no mention of the far more common case of insane ideas correctly being dismissed as such). Then imply that uncertainty means that you should, in the name of open-mindedness, give all claims equal weight. (This guy even goes as far as stating so directly in the topic!)
That's of course a major fallacy, since things obviously have different degrees of uncertainty, like you said. Not only that, but Science has methods of determining the uncertainty. (and determining the uncertainty of the uncertainty too, and so on)
Plus, the given examples aren't really fair either. None of them represent any real scientific opinion at any specific time. He'd do well to read up on some history of ideas. There are plenty of real misconceptions to complain about. But a lot of the most blatant ones, often the most common ones, are in themselves little more than a misconception themselves. Like the flat-earth myth, or the patent-office director who believed "everything that can be invented already had".
Are you sure? I haven't thought too hard about it, but my immediate reaction is that it would.
What if I accelerate some particle and then bump it into another, and through some magic of non-conserved momentum transfer more momentum than the first particle had to the second. You could then use the second particle to accelerate another particle like the first one (in a conserved fashion). The surplus momentum in the second could then be used to drive a turbine and solve the world's energy problems.
Alternately, conservation of momentum and energies are both consequences of the translational invariance of space and time, respectively. Now, I don't do relativistic stuff, so someone might need to correct me on this, but IIRC, I think that makes them the same thing, at least in a Minkowski space.
I also recall that conservation in G.R. seemed to be an intensely difficult thing, so I'm being very careful here. Of course, in practice, if one is false, physics as we know it is invalid, and the door opens for just about anything to be challenged.