No, it is not. But rather there is a communication problem between you and the original poster.
The original talked about belief in god, but you argued about the wider topic of "spirituality".
To most people (not all) who believe in any sort of supernatural realm, the two are interchangeable in mentioned context for all practical purposes. In most such systems, "spirituality" being of "spirit" transcends nature.
To many (most?) people who reject the existence of a supernatural realm, "spirituality" is seldom used to refer to anything other than natural phenomenon such as "esprit de corps" or "school spirit" or "fervent emotion" or "awe."
This is the largest difficulty with such a dialgoue. Different people have different meanings for words and when we hear somebody else use a word we know, we tend to assume that the speaker has the same meaning in mind as we do. This can lead to no small amount trouble when the dialogue concerns of issues of epistemology or philosophy for which certain words (such as "spirituality") have vastly different meanings to people in different (a)theological camps.
Why are Christians Christians? Catholics Catholic? Upbringing maybe?
Perhaps. But then why did Madeleine Murray O'Hare's son become a Baptist preacher? Why did Dr. Robert Funk go on to found the anti-Christian Jesus Seminar after being raised as a "born again" believer?
I'll grant that statistically speaking, the majority of people will continue to believe what they are raised to believe by their parents. However, there is a significant number of people that convert to other belief systems for one reason or the other.
If you would have been born and raised in Iran, wouldn't you be Muslim, for example?
Perhaps you should ask one of the the Babis, Christians, Gabars, Manicheas, or Sikhs that live in Iran.
If you would have been raised by some remote tribe that believed that God was a giant turtle holding the world on its back, you'd probably be just as firm with that belief.
Maybe the questions is why do you believe in one religion and not in another? And then ask, why believe in any at all?
There are three problems with this line of reasoning.
First, it ignores the fact that there are other reasons for believing in a given system than being raised to believe that system. If this were the only reason to believe in any given system, there would only be one world-wide religion and new religions would never develop and if they did they would never spread faster the the growth of their original consituents.
Second, not believing falls to the same sword. If one is raised to not believe in any religion, why should one accept not believing in any religion?
Third, it ignores that in absence of evidence to the contrary, it is eminently reasonable to trust that which has been taught by a trustworthy source. Honestly, if a tribal member is taught how to farm, how to hunt, how to store meat for the winter and that "God was a giant turtle holding the world on its back" by the same people (tribal parents and elders), what reason is there for a person to disbelieve the last of these when the source of information has proved to be reliable on the other items?
It seems to me that such disbelief is only warranted in light of evidence of one sort or the other that "God is NOT a giant turtle holding the world on its back." So the important issue is what that evidence would consist of.
Perhaps better questions would be:
By what criteria should I judge a given system of beliefs?
What merits does a given system of beliefs have according to those criteria?
By all means, we should think critically about what we would believe. Many belief systems have excellent reasons for which we should disbelieve them. But thus far, the reasons you've given to not believe don't really stand up to scrutiny.
Your points are correct. (Or perhaps I should instead state that I agree with them.)
However, they are irrelevent. Tackhead's post that I was replying to was stating that an absolutely free labor market was the solution to the problem. Hence, my previous post was an analysis of what would happen in such a market. As such your comments are not really applicable to this thread.
If you read my post as analysis of what is currently happening or what has happened, you misread it. I apologize for any ambiguity on my part that may have aided this misunderstanding.
If we had easier permanent immigration ("green card"), employers wouldn't need the H-1B as a stepping-stone to being able to bring a talented worker in on a permanent basis... Likewise, wage devaluation wouldn't be a factor, as foreigners would be able to demand wages comparable to Americans, because any employer that failed to pay real market wages would soon find itself unable to hire.
The missing part of the evaluation is consideration of what people are willing to work for. Given two (or more) programmers with equal aptitude, the one willing to work for less money is the "best" choice from the perspective of management. If management has the option of picking staff from all over the world, the chances are that programmers from poor countries will be willing to work for lower wages (even if emigrating to the US) than programmers from rich countries.
In theory, such a market will eventually balance out at some sort of equilibrium. In practice, such a market may take decades (or even centuries) to balance out and the final state of equilibrium would likely be much lower than the current protected market.
In the very long term, such economic darwinism is likely to be good for shareholders. In the immediate and near future, such economic darwaiism is disasterous for workers in countries with highly paid IT workers such as the US.
What most people tend to miss is that the situation isn't binary (importing workers and exporting jobs both have good and bad points). Rather there is a broad spectrum of effects, both good and bad. What may be good for the economy fifty years from now might be bad in the short term. (And vice versa.)
In the accademic sense of the word, SQL is not a relational language.
A relational database engine would generate relations. Nothing else. Just relations. You could certainly build a SQL Server around a relational database engine, but neither can be the other. The problem here is that what we have is actually two servers - or rather, we should have two. SQL can generate relations, but there is nothing compelling the author to contain himself to relational activities. You can do things like sorting and grouping. A pure relational database engine can only form products, apply theta selections to them, and project relations on this basis, forming projected relations. The direct consequence of limiting its capabilities to product-select-project (PSP) is provable correctness. Not many branches of computer science can boast that. In my less-than-humble opinion, only an idiot would compromise it. Apparently our industry is full of idiots.
Or maybe not. There are very good reasons for wanting to do certain thoroughly non-relational things at the server. Like sorting. If you want to sort and re-sort - we often do, and usually in a hurry - you need indices. At the server you have them. At the client you must either generate them or truck them all the way from the server. Drawing the line
Also, see one of Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties columns as an illustration of how to use clever hackery to get around the lack of one relational feature with ANSI-SQL.
Another good resource is the Database Debunking web page. Browse through the "Content" section to see many discussions on various data models.
My numbers are not flawed. They are from BusinessWeek and represent both companies at the end of the 2001 fiscal year. Number from both companies are not available for the 2002 fiscal year. IBM not only has enough cash to counter any reasonable Microsoft bid for Rational, but could liquidate current assets to outspend Microsoft and still have billions left over. From The Motley Fool:
The first major component of the balance sheet is Current Assets, which are assets that a company has at its disposal that can be easily converted into cash within one operating cycle.
As cash and equivalents is one of the forms of current assets and as IBM has billions more in current assets than Microsoft, if IBM wants to outspend Microsoft on Rational, it most certainly can.
BTW, did you notice that IBM's bid for Rational was a cash offer and not in shares? When was the last time Microsoft bought a company for billions in cash?
While IBM (per BusinessWeek) had 6.3B (compared to Microsoft's 31B) at the end of 2001, they also had 42B of current assets (compared to Microsoft's 39B and tangible book value of 12.9B (compared to Microsoft's 8.7B).
In other words, Microsoft can likely only outbid IBM if IBM chooses to allow such to happen. (Which is a very likely outcome if there is a bidding war. Neither IBM nor Microsoft is run by idiots. Nor is either company likely to bid more for Rational than management at each respective company thinks Rational is worth.)
It's ironic that you mention this, but if you look at SPEC scores, the 500 and 533 Mhz Alpha chips have the highest SPEC/Mhz ration of any CPU for which results have been submitted to SPEC.
Look at the archived results on the SPEC website. (You'll have to do the arithmetic yourself, they only provide scores, not scores/Mhz.)
Anyone else want to wager on whether the security fixes break MS Office? (Especially if security fixes are ever delivered for the MS Windows 9x codebase.)
Install fix
MS Office breaks
Buy upgrade of MS Office
Upgraded MS Office doesn't run on old version of MS Windows
The dichotomy was presented as a distinction in kind, not a distinction of extent. It is not pedantic to point out that the distinction that is being pointed to does not exist.
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a distinction of extent. In fact, if the original poster had presented a spectrum of possible types of religions ranging from needing to do very little to get into heaven to needing to do very much to get into heaven, I would not have complained.
But the original poster did not claim a dichotomy based on extent, but rather claimed a distinction in kind. In doing the poster presented a false dichotomy because the second option is included in the first option.
I do not believe that the original poster completely understands the logical implications of what he or she posted.
as n grows toward 7 and 8 and the second formula solve to a higher value than the first at n = 9 or 10.
And this is in a vertical market? This may very well be the case. But I have trouble believing that this is anything but an exceptional situation.
Also, the question comes up as to whether the vendors are willing to lock-in to their quote prices for n number of years. If the highest n the vendors are willing to lock into is lower than the point at which the second formula exceeds the first, then it is unknown as to which TCO is higher until n + m years pass where m is the difference between n and the point where the cost of the TCO of the open source solution surpasses the TCO of the closed source solution.
From your write up, it seems as if you expect the purchase of a commercial product to have close to a ten year life cycle? Does your budget calculate the cost of upgrading every two or three years?
I have a hard time believing that there would not be more than a few consulting firms willing to work out a support contract for the open source search engine project you are considering.
C'est vrai! The co-founder of Microsoft also founded Transmeta. Transmeta was started by David Ditzel who went to Paul Allen seeking venture capital. He received it, and Paul Allen remains one of the major investors.
So exactly why would Microsoft not support Transmeta?
As I read this, that means that you or I (or the Samba team) will not get to see those APIs.
Perhaps, but any ISV that works on Samba will have access. Further, it should be quite easy for the Samba team to organize as a not-for-profit corporation to qualify as an ISV if they do not already.
Actually, IIRC, Microsoft has been forbidden to do that since 1995 when they settled with the DOJ over exactly that issue. After the settlement, Microsoft managed to implement effectively the same policy by using OEM contracts that lowered the the price on Windows if Windows was the only OS installed by the OEM. OEMs that shipped machines without Windows were threatened with prices hikes.
The language in the new ruling states that Microsoft must publish a standard schedule of fees for all OEMs. The former loophole should be effectively eliminated.
Most of the difference in the flavers above is just in pricing structure and what is enabled or disabled.
Most of the difference in the flavors of Linux is just in pricing structure and what is enabled or disabled.
Aside from that, there are very real and very large differences between W2K Advanced Server, XP Embedded, Stinger, and XP Home. That there aren't many true differences between "home" and "professional" doesn't mean much when products like Advanced Server exist for multiple processor machines and products like Stinger exist for multiple processors.
Lastly, if a singular company sees the need to offer over 12 different flavors of its flagship product that it has complete control over, does it not make sense that a product owned by no one company should not also have multiple flavors?
There are a number of different ways to look at this.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it is not. But rather there is a communication problem between you and the original poster.
To most people (not all) who believe in any sort of supernatural realm, the two are interchangeable in mentioned context for all practical purposes. In most such systems, "spirituality" being of "spirit" transcends nature.
To many (most?) people who reject the existence of a supernatural realm, "spirituality" is seldom used to refer to anything other than natural phenomenon such as "esprit de corps" or "school spirit" or "fervent emotion" or "awe."
This is the largest difficulty with such a dialgoue. Different people have different meanings for words and when we hear somebody else use a word we know, we tend to assume that the speaker has the same meaning in mind as we do. This can lead to no small amount trouble when the dialogue concerns of issues of epistemology or philosophy for which certain words (such as "spirituality") have vastly different meanings to people in different (a)theological camps.
Perhaps. But then why did Madeleine Murray O'Hare's son become a Baptist preacher? Why did Dr. Robert Funk go on to found the anti-Christian Jesus Seminar after being raised as a "born again" believer?
I'll grant that statistically speaking, the majority of people will continue to believe what they are raised to believe by their parents. However, there is a significant number of people that convert to other belief systems for one reason or the other.
Perhaps you should ask one of the the Babis, Christians, Gabars, Manicheas, or Sikhs that live in Iran.
There are three problems with this line of reasoning.
First, it ignores the fact that there are other reasons for believing in a given system than being raised to believe that system. If this were the only reason to believe in any given system, there would only be one world-wide religion and new religions would never develop and if they did they would never spread faster the the growth of their original consituents.
Second, not believing falls to the same sword. If one is raised to not believe in any religion, why should one accept not believing in any religion?
Third, it ignores that in absence of evidence to the contrary, it is eminently reasonable to trust that which has been taught by a trustworthy source. Honestly, if a tribal member is taught how to farm, how to hunt, how to store meat for the winter and that "God was a giant turtle holding the world on its back" by the same people (tribal parents and elders), what reason is there for a person to disbelieve the last of these when the source of information has proved to be reliable on the other items?
It seems to me that such disbelief is only warranted in light of evidence of one sort or the other that "God is NOT a giant turtle holding the world on its back." So the important issue is what that evidence would consist of.
Perhaps better questions would be:
By all means, we should think critically about what we would believe. Many belief systems have excellent reasons for which we should disbelieve them. But thus far, the reasons you've given to not believe don't really stand up to scrutiny.
However, they are irrelevent. Tackhead's post that I was replying to was stating that an absolutely free labor market was the solution to the problem. Hence, my previous post was an analysis of what would happen in such a market. As such your comments are not really applicable to this thread.
If you read my post as analysis of what is currently happening or what has happened, you misread it. I apologize for any ambiguity on my part that may have aided this misunderstanding.
The missing part of the evaluation is consideration of what people are willing to work for. Given two (or more) programmers with equal aptitude, the one willing to work for less money is the "best" choice from the perspective of management. If management has the option of picking staff from all over the world, the chances are that programmers from poor countries will be willing to work for lower wages (even if emigrating to the US) than programmers from rich countries.
In theory, such a market will eventually balance out at some sort of equilibrium. In practice, such a market may take decades (or even centuries) to balance out and the final state of equilibrium would likely be much lower than the current protected market.
In the very long term, such economic darwinism is likely to be good for shareholders. In the immediate and near future, such economic darwaiism is disasterous for workers in countries with highly paid IT workers such as the US.
What most people tend to miss is that the situation isn't binary (importing workers and exporting jobs both have good and bad points). Rather there is a broad spectrum of effects, both good and bad. What may be good for the economy fifty years from now might be bad in the short term. (And vice versa.)
Also, see one of Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties columns as an illustration of how to use clever hackery to get around the lack of one relational feature with ANSI-SQL.
Another good resource is the Database Debunking web page. Browse through the "Content" section to see many discussions on various data models.
As cash and equivalents is one of the forms of current assets and as IBM has billions more in current assets than Microsoft, if IBM wants to outspend Microsoft on Rational, it most certainly can.
BTW, did you notice that IBM's bid for Rational was a cash offer and not in shares? When was the last time Microsoft bought a company for billions in cash?
In other words, Microsoft can likely only outbid IBM if IBM chooses to allow such to happen. (Which is a very likely outcome if there is a bidding war. Neither IBM nor Microsoft is run by idiots. Nor is either company likely to bid more for Rational than management at each respective company thinks Rational is worth.)
Look at the archived results on the SPEC website. (You'll have to do the arithmetic yourself, they only provide scores, not scores/Mhz.)
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a distinction of extent. In fact, if the original poster had presented a spectrum of possible types of religions ranging from needing to do very little to get into heaven to needing to do very much to get into heaven, I would not have complained.
But the original poster did not claim a dichotomy based on extent, but rather claimed a distinction in kind. In doing the poster presented a false dichotomy because the second option is included in the first option.
I do not believe that the original poster completely understands the logical implications of what he or she posted.
In other words (1) and (2) are not mutually exclusive.
Then again, maybe that's why I was visited by the Secret Service last winter.
Approaches:
as n grows toward 7 and 8 and the second formula solve to a higher value than the first at n = 9 or 10.
And this is in a vertical market? This may very well be the case. But I have trouble believing that this is anything but an exceptional situation.
Also, the question comes up as to whether the vendors are willing to lock-in to their quote prices for n number of years. If the highest n the vendors are willing to lock into is lower than the point at which the second formula exceeds the first, then it is unknown as to which TCO is higher until n + m years pass where m is the difference between n and the point where the cost of the TCO of the open source solution surpasses the TCO of the closed source solution.
If it costs $80,000 to hire a person for a year, that person likely has a gross salary between $50,000 and $60,000.
BTW, Rio is used by Sonic Blue as a brand and not only as a product line.
So exactly why would Microsoft not support Transmeta?
Perhaps, but any ISV that works on Samba will have access. Further, it should be quite easy for the Samba team to organize as a not-for-profit corporation to qualify as an ISV if they do not already.
More worrisome is the RAND licensing provision.
The language in the new ruling states that Microsoft must publish a standard schedule of fees for all OEMs. The former loophole should be effectively eliminated.
Aside from that, there are very real and very large differences between W2K Advanced Server, XP Embedded, Stinger, and XP Home. That there aren't many true differences between "home" and "professional" doesn't mean much when products like Advanced Server exist for multiple processor machines and products like Stinger exist for multiple processors.
Lastly, if a singular company sees the need to offer over 12 different flavors of its flagship product that it has complete control over, does it not make sense that a product owned by no one company should not also have multiple flavors?
There are a number of different ways to look at this.
If the CDR comes with a printed label in a jewel case with a J card and with liner notes, would you really notice that it was burned on a CDR.
Also, having "real" CDs burned is only economical for orders that number in the thousands or above when compared with CDR.