Linguists, in general, seem to have an interesting way of looking at the world. Chomsky has a way of looking at a political situation in a unique way and formulating an opinion that's not widely held (in fact, one that typically annoys all extremes of the political spectrum). Right or wrong, it's an interesting process.
Larry Wall has a similar outlook (though his politics likely diverge heavily from Chomsky, I dunno). He has that linguist's way of looking at theoretically opposing points of view and rationalizing them against each other in a very logical way. It's a kind of fun process to watch, and it makes me wish I had that knack.
Back to Backus: he will be missed. His work in CS was truly ground-breaking, even (especially) where it simply extended the work of others. FORTRAN has a legacy all its own, and the fact that the scientific community still continues to use it to this day is testimony to its power and utility, even if much of it is dated today.
It's OK. SCO is actually trying to subvert the process. You can tell, based on the name of the bill, which is an anagram for "contentment: promiscuity art."
Even those mice you mentioned (hyperphagic) actually consumed far more than the others. The problem was they had lost their ability to know when to stop eating. Actually, it's been demonstrated fairly conclusively that there are animals (including mice and humans) who never had a fully developed ability to know when to stop eating in the first place. This is part of why it's so hard for people to understand the problem. So many people just assume that everyone knows when they've eaten enough, and they can't imagine the difficulty that arises from trying to stop eating when your body tells you that you're still hungry.
That said, of course, you're right to an extent. The problem compounds itself as your insulin production adapts to your over-eating, and eventually becomes far, far worse, potentially even leading to diabetes when your pancreas just gives up entirely.
Well, not exactly. It will mean that yet more hands get greased; lots of folks who've done nothing in particular go to jail; an active underground economy forms; violence increases... and people continue to do what they've always done.
Body fat isn't magic. Neither is diabetes or heart disease, but while we know that risks for both can be dramatically altered via diet and lifestyle, we also know that the single largest factor in both is genetics. When it comes to obesity, however, we have a blind spot. I suspect that that's genetic as well.
It comes from food you eat. If you are exercising more and still have more weight, it means you are eating too much. People need to stop looking for excuses. Most of us aren't looking for excuses, but rather for the mechanisms that drive one person to become obese while another remains thin. We know that in mice there are a number of disorders which can cause one mouse out of a population to gain weight on the same diet as the others. We also know that there are disorders in the opposite direction: the need to consume far more in order to support a minimal level of fat reserves.
These aren't mysteries, but there's a strong social stigma that tells us that those who are obese just aren't "trying". Well, I can tell you from personal experience that, even motivated by health problems, it was a HUGE effort for me to go from morbidly obese down to merely substantially overweight, and it's even harder keeping it off in the long term. I walk a minimum of 10 miles per week, and when the weather is good I hike, swim, and I even took up running until shin splints made it too painful to sustain. Yes, I think there's a significant genetic hurdle in my way, and no I'm not looking for something to "blame" or for an "excuse" to cry over. I'm just dead-sure that people with more median physiological makeups have absolutely no idea how much work it is for someone like myself to loose weight, nor how exponential that curve is with respect to how much weight I want to loose.
So the question is-- why not be cautious? We have the ability and technological means to begin using alternative energy sources. And there is the reasonable argument. I'm not in 100% agreement with everything you said, but this is what we should be talking about. Instead of inventing scare-tactic scenarios where millions die, we should be focusing on the most likely outcomes within two or three sigma, and talking about how they stack up against other problems we face. Then we can discuss solutions that make sense.
When we do that, all of a sudden, someone saying, "I think X," which contradicts prevailing consensus doesn't seem so threatening. We can praise such work when it produces useful results, even if those results are negative, and not feel threatened. No one issues death-threats against people who claim that quantum mechanics is wrong, after all.
Do we need a model for the forcers in order to theorize their existence? There has to be some kind of physically plausible mechanism, yes. No, and there's the problem. We know that the Sun has impact on both systems, so to see a change to both suggests that the Sun might be involved in a way we don't fully understand. We can then investigate that possibility, and possibly even prove conclusively (some day) that it is or is not true.
The problem is that that's not sufficient information on which to base random arm-waving on the Internet. Point taken, it's not, and for that I'm glad. You can put down the pitchfork, now.
Considering that it is still the case that solar intensity decreased slightly for most of the time that this warming took place, exactly what process do you think is at work on Mars that has any relevance at all to the Earth's climate? Do we need a model for the forcers in order to theorize their existence? It seems to me that we didn't have a model for global warming when we started theorizing its existence, and now that that theory is pretty solid, we're developing new, related theories. One observation is that Mars and Earth show similar warming trends... if they are, then there are some scenarios under which they are related. Could be increased magnetic field strength. Could be changes in the solar wind. Could be all sorts of things (keeping in mind that solar astrophysicists are VERY careful these days about saying anything that could involve them in a controversial debate about terrestrial temperature changes... whole institutions have seen their funding dry up over that sort of thing).
What's important is that we have an observation that needs more investigation.
"The UN predicts several centimeters of raised sea-level over the coming century. That's what you're concerned about?"
Yep, there is where most people live. That means, it's where most people have everything they own. They may be able to escape, our economy, not.
This is exactly what I fear in this sort of discussion... Do yourself a favor, go get a topographical map, and measure on it, from both the high and low tide marks, which are usually on the order of a METER apart, a "few centimeters" (that is, a small number, more than 3... say 10). Now, how much land on that topographical map is within your measurement.... go. Try it out. Oh, you'll find that most such maps are measured off in >1 meter increments....
Yes, that's right. A rise in sea levels of 10cm would be very close to noise in the tidal fluctuation. It does mean that storm surges that didn't used to affect your beachfront-house might. It does mean that storm drains in some cities might be in trouble during storms. That's the extent of the concern. But just watch the news and they'll sing you any sort of dire prediction you like!
Places like New Orleans and Amsterdam are in more trouble, though. Such places actually exist BELOW the water line, and constantly run the risk of flooding. They WILL be flooded someday, and a 10cm rise in oceans certainly puts them in greater immediate risk, so there's your imminent danger model. Just be clear that you're talking about specific problems, not "most people."
"The fact that fertile growing regions might shift north by a few hundred miles?"
Give me a single piece of evidence that says that increasing the temperature (but not solar power) increases the fertility of land (I can give you several examples of the contrary). Permanently frozen lands excluded.
,
There are plenty of areas in the northern parts of North America, Asia and parts of Europe that aren't suitable for growing most crops because of the mean temperature, not the fertility of the land. When the temperatures go up, those areas WILL be suitable for growing (are now for heartier crops).
I'm horribly ignorant of the fertility of the colder regions of South America, so I can't tell you anything about that.
There is also the huge climate change, that will probably obsolet a lot of our housing investiment and take a lot of people lifes, the increase on wet of places that already have problems with it (that will probably be the most affected), and possible problems with the atmosphere (more tornadoes) and sea currents. Not to talk about the disruption that is already happenning at sea life.
I don't think it is a good idea to gamble on that.
Let's be specific. What lives will be taken, and how. Exactly. Cite examples. I'm not buying it.
Now that the stakes are so high [...] Are they? What stakes?
I mean that quite seriously. If we're to reduce the rhetoric and move forward, we have to stop relying on fear and TALK rationally and plainly.
The UN predicts several centimeters of raised sea-level over the coming century. That's what you're concerned about? What? The fact that fertile growing regions might shift north by a few hundred miles? The fact that a few new shipping lanes might be opened up? The fact that Tundra wildlife might explode? What, exactly are the stakes? I'm not sure warming is a good thing, but I'm also not convinced that it's the cataclysmic event that we're being told by some.
WHAT are these stakes? Al Gore's alarmist fears of Florida disappearing under the waves? Honestly, I like Al Gore. I voted for Al Gore because I watched his career in the 80s and 90s and was hugely thankful for the work that he did (and later took undeserved heat for) in building the Internet in the 80s. But, on this I think he's done an issue that he clearly cares about a disservice.
The "I think its probably just a natural cycle" is specious at best. It was an example of something to start the conversation with. I'm not issuing an opinion, just offering some thoughts on the social problems involved.
MY OPINION differs from that of most of the activists on all sides, and I have no hard data to support that opinion, so I mostly keep my mouth shut these days and wait to see what pans out.
Of course. I make the joking comment that "we need more SUVs" when there's a cold snap, but I think most reasonable people realize that when we're talking about the climate as a whole, local (even regional) weather can't be read as a sole indicator.
You don't have to buy anything, just walk up to a representative sample of people who think that global warming is anthropogenic and say, "actually I think it's probably just a natural cycle."
The shock, hostility and downright hatred you will come across will very quickly render claims of death threats highly believable. Is this guy a jerk? Maybe. Is his science on-par? I have no clue. But, there is no denying the fact that this has become such an emotionally charged issue that climatology is probably the hardest field to do real science in today. I really wish we could de-politicize the whole process, but I fear that we would have had to start slowing this train about a decade ago in order to accomplish that feat.
You seem to have not paid attention. There were wide, and well substantiated claims of Diebold problems in that election, many of which are open to interpretation as to whether or not they were fraudulent, and if so if they were politically motivated (as opposed to just covering for incompetence). The problem was that the elections were so overwhelmingly in favor of the Democrats that these irregularities had little impact.
Here's the thing that bothers me about this, though: EVERYONE should be upset when someone says something like that. His statement should be read as, "I will use the Republican party to tear down democracy." Republicans should take that as a slap in the face, and should be MORE outraged than Democrats!
Pot/Kettle
Other than your attempts to divert the issue away from one of the most amazing statements ever to be made in the political world, I'm not sure what your point there is (BTW: I'll note that I haven't told you my party affiliation... just for fun, I'm going to continue to not do so, as I love watching people guess).
As an ofttimes Republican voter I was:
* Upset when a thorough study of the 2000 Florida results (by mostly liberal mainstream media) concluded that Bush had indeed won the state, but long after that history has been re-written to only focus on headlines from 24 hours after the election.
This is unrelated to my point, but it so happens it's wrong. In reality a number of news outlets worked together to determine which of the statistical methods that various parties were pushing for made sense, given the situation. The conclusion was not particularly aimed at a "who won" sort of result, but the findings did indicate that Al Gore's chosen method of recount would not have made a substantial difference in the outcome, while a state-wide recount most likely would have resulted in the opposite result.[1]
* Upset that in the 2004 election cycle, Democrats AGAIN cried foul in districts where lazy, incompetent election officials spent taxpayers money hand over fist too buy this junky hardware and software rather than do realistic requirements analysis, and particularly upset that while these changes took place (pre 2004) these same left wing complainers said NOTHING, waiting instead for the results that they didn't like.
This is not fair. I watched as plenty of "left wing complainers" screamed bloody murder in the non-mainstream press, but the mainstream press didn't want to touch the story because it was too "technical." Once the election was on... then it was news. Either way, the fault does not lie with the "complainers", but with those that were producing the bad systems and selling them to states that were hard-pressed to meet ill-interpreted new regulations.
* Post 2004 I engaged in numerous debates with individuals who swore they were not complaining about the 2004 results, but were indeed interested in the issue. Again, these people grew silent as distance from the 2004 election increased. As I would bring up newly discovered issues with this Windoze based software (and hardware) they would thank me politely for reminding them and then go right back to Bush bashing, continuing to ignore the very REAL bipartisan problems that were being ignored by the mainstream media.
Many of us have given up, and it's nice to see in this article that Diebold is finally deciding that they don't want to be in that business.
* While you say the results of 2006 were "overwhelming", in fact in many local elections the margin of victory, particularly for newly elected democrats were a dozen votes, and for state level offices a few hundred. Almost NONE of these votes were contested, even in cases where the Republican candidate had only to request a recount.
Of course. An overwhelming margin in the U.S. for (just for example) a Presidential race is what, 10-15%? That me
That, and Diebold has already accomplished what it's CEO promised to do - deliver the Presidency to the Republicans. Funny - I would have expected that sort of talk to end after the latest congressional elections. Or is this one of those "only bring it up when we don't like the result" kind of things. You seem to have not paid attention. There were wide, and well substantiated claims of Diebold problems in that election, many of which are open to interpretation as to whether or not they were fraudulent, and if so if they were politically motivated (as opposed to just covering for incompetence). The problem was that the elections were so overwhelmingly in favor of the Democrats that these irregularities had little impact.
Here's the thing that bothers me about this, though: EVERYONE should be upset when someone says something like that. His statement should be read as, "I will use the Republican party to tear down democracy." Republicans should take that as a slap in the face, and should be MORE outraged than Democrats! This isn't an us-vs-them issue. If ANY party gains control over voting, EVERYONE loses. Don't imagine for a second that such a change would benefit the core values of the Republicans. As soon as entrenched politicians have no one to answer to, and no means of removal, they will serve their own needs (desires) alone. This has been demonstrated by members of every political organization (regardless of their views) that has ever been given the opportunity to go bad.
This is not a partisan issue. This is one man making statements that are darned close to treasonous and certainly a smear on the reputation of any party that accepts his support thereafter.
I was once asked if I believed in "deity" in a rather odd way that made me think that my answer was important to the person who was asking, and so he was asking it in a way that was as wide-open as possible. I replied in kind, by pointing out that the Drake equation makes it pretty clear that we stand a low chance of being the most developed race in the galaxy, and a sufficiently advanced race will match any reasonable definition of "deity", so yes, I suppose I do believe in "deity".
That said, I think it's clear where the adaptive feature of religion is: anthropomorphization. We understand things in the world by comparing them to ourselves and/or placing them in a scenario where an anthropomorphic entity is interacting with them. This turns out to be helpful in terms of survival because of the fact that it allows for paranoia: "that object isn't where it was yesterday... someone may have come by and moved it!" It's not clear to me that paranoia is something that other creatures are capable of (though fear is). This process requires that we evaluate our environment in terms of potential manipulation by another like ourselves... the ultimate conclusion of which is that our environment must have been created by someone else. It's simply paranoia (a survival trait) writ large.
The best part about the entire thing is the very last quote:
"If they told me it was 100,000 hours, I'd still protect it the same way. If they told me if was 5 million hours I'd still protect it the same way. I have to assume every drive could fail."
Just common sense. It's "common sense," but not as useful as one might hope. What MTTF tells you is, within some expected margin of error, how much failure you should plan on in a statistically significant farm. So, for example, I know of an installation that has thousands of disks used for everything from root disks on relatively drop-in-replaceable compute servers to storage arrays. On the budgetary side, that installation wants to know how much replacement cost to expect per annum. On the admin side, that installation wants to be prepared with an appropriate number of redundant systems, and wants to be able to assert a failure probability for key systems. That is, if you have a raid array with 5 disks and one spare, then you want to know the probability that three disks will fail on it in the, let's say, 6 hour worst-case window before you can replace any of them. That probability is non-zero, and must be accounted for in your computation of anticipated downtime, along with every other unlikely, but possible event that you can account for.
When a vendor tells you to expect 1 0.2% failure rate, but it's really 2-4% that's a HUGE shift in the impact to your organization.
When you just have one or a handful of disks in your server at home, that's a very different situation from a datacenter full of systems with all kinds of disk needs.
This is a different matter. Encyclopedias typically cite secondary sources. For something like graduate-level papers, you're typically expected to cite primary sources.
Primary sources aren't typically cited in encyclopedias because their context has not yet been established. When they are, it's usually with a healthy dose of that context (e.g. Special Relativity is cited by every encyclopedia, but with lots of context on how it impacted physics, and how, by whom and to what extent it was accepted).
I am an Apple Authorized Business Agent, and Apple Enterprise sales group absolutely can and does offer corporate dicounts. Check your facts. Great, then the person who told me that they could not over volume discounts and specialized support offerings for powerbooks was wrong. Who do I call for those?... When we asked this question, we got the blank stare and the stammering,... you mean *servers*, right?
The very idea that a corporate customer would want powerbooks on the desktop is (in my direct experience) dismissed out of hand in every negotiation I've seen, and there's no price structure for it that I've seen that isn't, "the prices are published on the little labels in the Apple Store."
This article is about desktops, not servers. Corporate servers aren't going to be either MacOS or Windows in 10 years, and honestly I'd be surprised if any company over 500 people ran their own servers in 10 years. I suspect that duty will fall to the IBMs of the world who will continue to run datacetners full of systems. That transition has already begun.
The interesting question is who will own the desktop. My money would be on Apple if they cared.
Yeah, they have these discounts on their *servers*, but that's not what this article is about. Please stay on topic.
Try getting Apple to agree to a corporate discount on their notebooks... good luck, I've seen others try. The price comparison between Apple and Dell on notebooks in an enterprise setting is amazing due to the latter's willingness to build specialized discount structures. Yes, such things are really all a negotiation over the profit margin of the vendor, but Apple is simply saying, "our profit margin is huge, get over it." That's fine if you're not buying hundreds of systems at a time, but when you are that has a substantial impact.
The problem with Apple is that they do not consider the corporation to be a target audience. They don't allow for corporate volume discounts (that alone is a massive deal breaker, making them substantially more expensive than anything else); and they don't provide customer service packages that mid-to-large corporations expect. Overall, they're looking for single users and small businesses. They have made it very clear that they don't want the corporate desktop, which is fine if that's how they want it.
They can get into schools because they specifically work with schools to make it easy for them to buy and maintain Macs. When they do this for corporations, they will have a ready audience, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there are deals behind the scenes that prevent that. Remember that Microsoft once held a chunk of Apple, and there may well have been contractual elements to the divestiture of MS's stake.
He used --force or --nodeps when removing that package. It tried to stop him and he overrode it.
Better disable 'cat' since it can be used to erase your hard drive!
If the system leaves you no choice but to override it because it is doing something wrong, and YOU do something wrong, who is at fault?
There is no fault. There is only an OS on a hard-drive.
Raymond was complaining that a) he wanted to install something b) it had dependency problems (since there are no unresolved dependencies in the current os or extras trees, we have to assume it was a third-party RPM) c) he has said that he wasn't using a dependency resolver like yum, since he doesn't feel they're fast enough d) he has said that he blew away a library by hand that he then found was needed by ssh to boot the system.
Ok, so there's some problems here:
1. There's a package that wasn't supported. It should probably be. Tuits are the likely culprit. 2. Raymond should use yum, much though he may dislike its speed. It would have solved this problem by telling him that he was about to shoot himself. If I try to remove that package with yum, I'm given a handy list of every package on my system and asked if I really want to delete them all. The correct answer is, of course, "no".
To the statement that RPM should not ALLOW you to remove critical components, I have one response: "from my cold, dead hands." (a statement I'm sure Raymond would approve of for other reasons)
RPM should provide the low-level functionality of adding, removing and performing basic management of packages. If you want a system that holds your hand, you can use the high-level tools like yum or one of the GUIs. That RPM has the capability to use the --angle-at-which-to-shoot-foot flag is one of its primary features. It means that it is an excellent back-end tool for higher level package administration functions.
Keep in mind that Fermi said nothing like what this Slashdot article implies. What Fermi said was a follow-on to the Drake Equation and nothing more. Many valid solutions to the Fermi paradox exist, most of which invalidate the assumptions of the Drake Equation's most common forms (e.g. intelligent life might not be detectable beyond a certain level of advancement, effectively reducing the lifespan of the race from the point of view of the Drake equation to a sliver of a millenia or two).
Slashdot Mirror
Linguists, in general, seem to have an interesting way of looking at the world. Chomsky has a way of looking at a political situation in a unique way and formulating an opinion that's not widely held (in fact, one that typically annoys all extremes of the political spectrum). Right or wrong, it's an interesting process.
Larry Wall has a similar outlook (though his politics likely diverge heavily from Chomsky, I dunno). He has that linguist's way of looking at theoretically opposing points of view and rationalizing them against each other in a very logical way. It's a kind of fun process to watch, and it makes me wish I had that knack.
Back to Backus: he will be missed. His work in CS was truly ground-breaking, even (especially) where it simply extended the work of others. FORTRAN has a legacy all its own, and the fact that the scientific community still continues to use it to this day is testimony to its power and utility, even if much of it is dated today.
All software from Adobe is an attempt to create lock-in. Anyone still shocked by that should be sent to the short bus.
It's OK. SCO is actually trying to subvert the process. You can tell, based on the name of the bill, which is an anagram for "contentment: promiscuity art."
That said, of course, you're right to an extent. The problem compounds itself as your insulin production adapts to your over-eating, and eventually becomes far, far worse, potentially even leading to diabetes when your pancreas just gives up entirely.
Well, not exactly. It will mean that yet more hands get greased; lots of folks who've done nothing in particular go to jail; an active underground economy forms; violence increases... and people continue to do what they've always done.
These aren't mysteries, but there's a strong social stigma that tells us that those who are obese just aren't "trying". Well, I can tell you from personal experience that, even motivated by health problems, it was a HUGE effort for me to go from morbidly obese down to merely substantially overweight, and it's even harder keeping it off in the long term. I walk a minimum of 10 miles per week, and when the weather is good I hike, swim, and I even took up running until shin splints made it too painful to sustain. Yes, I think there's a significant genetic hurdle in my way, and no I'm not looking for something to "blame" or for an "excuse" to cry over. I'm just dead-sure that people with more median physiological makeups have absolutely no idea how much work it is for someone like myself to loose weight, nor how exponential that curve is with respect to how much weight I want to loose.
When we do that, all of a sudden, someone saying, "I think X," which contradicts prevailing consensus doesn't seem so threatening. We can praise such work when it produces useful results, even if those results are negative, and not feel threatened. No one issues death-threats against people who claim that quantum mechanics is wrong, after all.
The problem is that that's not sufficient information on which to base random arm-waving on the Internet. Point taken, it's not, and for that I'm glad. You can put down the pitchfork, now.
What's important is that we have an observation that needs more investigation.
Yep, there is where most people live. That means, it's where most people have everything they own. They may be able to escape, our economy, not.
This is exactly what I fear in this sort of discussion... Do yourself a favor, go get a topographical map, and measure on it, from both the high and low tide marks, which are usually on the order of a METER apart, a "few centimeters" (that is, a small number, more than 3... say 10). Now, how much land on that topographical map is within your measurement.... go. Try it out. Oh, you'll find that most such maps are measured off in >1 meter increments....Yes, that's right. A rise in sea levels of 10cm would be very close to noise in the tidal fluctuation. It does mean that storm surges that didn't used to affect your beachfront-house might. It does mean that storm drains in some cities might be in trouble during storms. That's the extent of the concern. But just watch the news and they'll sing you any sort of dire prediction you like!
Places like New Orleans and Amsterdam are in more trouble, though. Such places actually exist BELOW the water line, and constantly run the risk of flooding. They WILL be flooded someday, and a 10cm rise in oceans certainly puts them in greater immediate risk, so there's your imminent danger model. Just be clear that you're talking about specific problems, not "most people."
Give me a single piece of evidence that says that increasing the temperature (but not solar power) increases the fertility of land (I can give you several examples of the contrary). Permanently frozen lands excluded.
,There are plenty of areas in the northern parts of North America, Asia and parts of Europe that aren't suitable for growing most crops because of the mean temperature, not the fertility of the land. When the temperatures go up, those areas WILL be suitable for growing (are now for heartier crops).
I'm horribly ignorant of the fertility of the colder regions of South America, so I can't tell you anything about that.
There is also the huge climate change, that will probably obsolet a lot of our housing investiment and take a lot of people lifes, the increase on wet of places that already have problems with it (that will probably be the most affected), and possible problems with the atmosphere (more tornadoes) and sea currents. Not to talk about the disruption that is already happenning at sea life.
I don't think it is a good idea to gamble on that.
Let's be specific. What lives will be taken, and how. Exactly. Cite examples. I'm not buying it.I mean that quite seriously. If we're to reduce the rhetoric and move forward, we have to stop relying on fear and TALK rationally and plainly.
The UN predicts several centimeters of raised sea-level over the coming century. That's what you're concerned about? What? The fact that fertile growing regions might shift north by a few hundred miles? The fact that a few new shipping lanes might be opened up? The fact that Tundra wildlife might explode? What, exactly are the stakes? I'm not sure warming is a good thing, but I'm also not convinced that it's the cataclysmic event that we're being told by some.
WHAT are these stakes? Al Gore's alarmist fears of Florida disappearing under the waves? Honestly, I like Al Gore. I voted for Al Gore because I watched his career in the 80s and 90s and was hugely thankful for the work that he did (and later took undeserved heat for) in building the Internet in the 80s. But, on this I think he's done an issue that he clearly cares about a disservice.
MY OPINION differs from that of most of the activists on all sides, and I have no hard data to support that opinion, so I mostly keep my mouth shut these days and wait to see what pans out.
Of course. I make the joking comment that "we need more SUVs" when there's a cold snap, but I think most reasonable people realize that when we're talking about the climate as a whole, local (even regional) weather can't be read as a sole indicator.
You don't have to buy anything, just walk up to a representative sample of people who think that global warming is anthropogenic and say, "actually I think it's probably just a natural cycle."
The shock, hostility and downright hatred you will come across will very quickly render claims of death threats highly believable. Is this guy a jerk? Maybe. Is his science on-par? I have no clue. But, there is no denying the fact that this has become such an emotionally charged issue that climatology is probably the hardest field to do real science in today. I really wish we could de-politicize the whole process, but I fear that we would have had to start slowing this train about a decade ago in order to accomplish that feat.
You seem to have not paid attention. There were wide, and well substantiated claims of Diebold problems in that election, many of which are open to interpretation as to whether or not they were fraudulent, and if so if they were politically motivated (as opposed to just covering for incompetence). The problem was that the elections were so overwhelmingly in favor of the Democrats that these irregularities had little impact.
Here's the thing that bothers me about this, though: EVERYONE should be upset when someone says something like that. His statement should be read as, "I will use the Republican party to tear down democracy." Republicans should take that as a slap in the face, and should be MORE outraged than Democrats!
Pot/Kettle
Other than your attempts to divert the issue away from one of the most amazing statements ever to be made in the political world, I'm not sure what your point there is (BTW: I'll note that I haven't told you my party affiliation... just for fun, I'm going to continue to not do so, as I love watching people guess).
As an ofttimes Republican voter I was:
* Upset when a thorough study of the 2000 Florida results (by mostly liberal mainstream media) concluded that Bush had indeed won the state, but long after that history has been re-written to only focus on headlines from 24 hours after the election.
This is unrelated to my point, but it so happens it's wrong. In reality a number of news outlets worked together to determine which of the statistical methods that various parties were pushing for made sense, given the situation. The conclusion was not particularly aimed at a "who won" sort of result, but the findings did indicate that Al Gore's chosen method of recount would not have made a substantial difference in the outcome, while a state-wide recount most likely would have resulted in the opposite result.[1]
* Upset that in the 2004 election cycle, Democrats AGAIN cried foul in districts where lazy, incompetent election officials spent taxpayers money hand over fist too buy this junky hardware and software rather than do realistic requirements analysis, and particularly upset that while these changes took place (pre 2004) these same left wing complainers said NOTHING, waiting instead for the results that they didn't like.
This is not fair. I watched as plenty of "left wing complainers" screamed bloody murder in the non-mainstream press, but the mainstream press didn't want to touch the story because it was too "technical." Once the election was on... then it was news. Either way, the fault does not lie with the "complainers", but with those that were producing the bad systems and selling them to states that were hard-pressed to meet ill-interpreted new regulations.
* Post 2004 I engaged in numerous debates with individuals who swore they were not complaining about the 2004 results, but were indeed interested in the issue. Again, these people grew silent as distance from the 2004 election increased. As I would bring up newly discovered issues with this Windoze based software (and hardware) they would thank me politely for reminding them and then go right back to Bush bashing, continuing to ignore the very REAL bipartisan problems that were being ignored by the mainstream media.
Many of us have given up, and it's nice to see in this article that Diebold is finally deciding that they don't want to be in that business.
* While you say the results of 2006 were "overwhelming", in fact in many local elections the margin of victory, particularly for newly elected democrats were a dozen votes, and for state level offices a few hundred. Almost NONE of these votes were contested, even in cases where the Republican candidate had only to request a recount.
Of course. An overwhelming margin in the U.S. for (just for example) a Presidential race is what, 10-15%? That me
Here's the thing that bothers me about this, though: EVERYONE should be upset when someone says something like that. His statement should be read as, "I will use the Republican party to tear down democracy." Republicans should take that as a slap in the face, and should be MORE outraged than Democrats! This isn't an us-vs-them issue. If ANY party gains control over voting, EVERYONE loses. Don't imagine for a second that such a change would benefit the core values of the Republicans. As soon as entrenched politicians have no one to answer to, and no means of removal, they will serve their own needs (desires) alone. This has been demonstrated by members of every political organization (regardless of their views) that has ever been given the opportunity to go bad.
This is not a partisan issue. This is one man making statements that are darned close to treasonous and certainly a smear on the reputation of any party that accepts his support thereafter.
There is no God? Is that a statement of faith? ;-)
I was once asked if I believed in "deity" in a rather odd way that made me think that my answer was important to the person who was asking, and so he was asking it in a way that was as wide-open as possible. I replied in kind, by pointing out that the Drake equation makes it pretty clear that we stand a low chance of being the most developed race in the galaxy, and a sufficiently advanced race will match any reasonable definition of "deity", so yes, I suppose I do believe in "deity".
That said, I think it's clear where the adaptive feature of religion is: anthropomorphization. We understand things in the world by comparing them to ourselves and/or placing them in a scenario where an anthropomorphic entity is interacting with them. This turns out to be helpful in terms of survival because of the fact that it allows for paranoia: "that object isn't where it was yesterday... someone may have come by and moved it!" It's not clear to me that paranoia is something that other creatures are capable of (though fear is). This process requires that we evaluate our environment in terms of potential manipulation by another like ourselves... the ultimate conclusion of which is that our environment must have been created by someone else. It's simply paranoia (a survival trait) writ large.
"If they told me it was 100,000 hours, I'd still protect it the same way. If they told me if was 5 million hours I'd still protect it the same way. I have to assume every drive could fail."
Just common sense. It's "common sense," but not as useful as one might hope. What MTTF tells you is, within some expected margin of error, how much failure you should plan on in a statistically significant farm. So, for example, I know of an installation that has thousands of disks used for everything from root disks on relatively drop-in-replaceable compute servers to storage arrays. On the budgetary side, that installation wants to know how much replacement cost to expect per annum. On the admin side, that installation wants to be prepared with an appropriate number of redundant systems, and wants to be able to assert a failure probability for key systems. That is, if you have a raid array with 5 disks and one spare, then you want to know the probability that three disks will fail on it in the, let's say, 6 hour worst-case window before you can replace any of them. That probability is non-zero, and must be accounted for in your computation of anticipated downtime, along with every other unlikely, but possible event that you can account for.
When a vendor tells you to expect 1 0.2% failure rate, but it's really 2-4% that's a HUGE shift in the impact to your organization.
When you just have one or a handful of disks in your server at home, that's a very different situation from a datacenter full of systems with all kinds of disk needs.
This is a different matter. Encyclopedias typically cite secondary sources. For something like graduate-level papers, you're typically expected to cite primary sources.
Primary sources aren't typically cited in encyclopedias because their context has not yet been established. When they are, it's usually with a healthy dose of that context (e.g. Special Relativity is cited by every encyclopedia, but with lots of context on how it impacted physics, and how, by whom and to what extent it was accepted).
Too true. Using Wikipedia for research is always a smart move. Citing it for research clearly indicates you were too lazy to follow up.
The very idea that a corporate customer would want powerbooks on the desktop is (in my direct experience) dismissed out of hand in every negotiation I've seen, and there's no price structure for it that I've seen that isn't, "the prices are published on the little labels in the Apple Store."
This article is about desktops, not servers. Corporate servers aren't going to be either MacOS or Windows in 10 years, and honestly I'd be surprised if any company over 500 people ran their own servers in 10 years. I suspect that duty will fall to the IBMs of the world who will continue to run datacetners full of systems. That transition has already begun.
The interesting question is who will own the desktop. My money would be on Apple if they cared.
Yeah, they have these discounts on their *servers*, but that's not what this article is about. Please stay on topic.
Try getting Apple to agree to a corporate discount on their notebooks... good luck, I've seen others try. The price comparison between Apple and Dell on notebooks in an enterprise setting is amazing due to the latter's willingness to build specialized discount structures. Yes, such things are really all a negotiation over the profit margin of the vendor, but Apple is simply saying, "our profit margin is huge, get over it." That's fine if you're not buying hundreds of systems at a time, but when you are that has a substantial impact.
The problem with Apple is that they do not consider the corporation to be a target audience. They don't allow for corporate volume discounts (that alone is a massive deal breaker, making them substantially more expensive than anything else); and they don't provide customer service packages that mid-to-large corporations expect. Overall, they're looking for single users and small businesses. They have made it very clear that they don't want the corporate desktop, which is fine if that's how they want it.
They can get into schools because they specifically work with schools to make it easy for them to buy and maintain Macs. When they do this for corporations, they will have a ready audience, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there are deals behind the scenes that prevent that. Remember that Microsoft once held a chunk of Apple, and there may well have been contractual elements to the divestiture of MS's stake.
If the system leaves you no choice but to override it because it is doing something wrong, and YOU do something wrong, who is at fault?
There is no fault. There is only an OS on a hard-drive.Raymond was complaining that a) he wanted to install something b) it had dependency problems (since there are no unresolved dependencies in the current os or extras trees, we have to assume it was a third-party RPM) c) he has said that he wasn't using a dependency resolver like yum, since he doesn't feel they're fast enough d) he has said that he blew away a library by hand that he then found was needed by ssh to boot the system.
Ok, so there's some problems here:
1. There's a package that wasn't supported. It should probably be. Tuits are the likely culprit.
2. Raymond should use yum, much though he may dislike its speed. It would have solved this problem by telling him that he was about to shoot himself. If I try to remove that package with yum, I'm given a handy list of every package on my system and asked if I really want to delete them all. The correct answer is, of course, "no".
To the statement that RPM should not ALLOW you to remove critical components, I have one response: "from my cold, dead hands." (a statement I'm sure Raymond would approve of for other reasons)
RPM should provide the low-level functionality of adding, removing and performing basic management of packages. If you want a system that holds your hand, you can use the high-level tools like yum or one of the GUIs. That RPM has the capability to use the --angle-at-which-to-shoot-foot flag is one of its primary features. It means that it is an excellent back-end tool for higher level package administration functions.
Keep in mind that Fermi said nothing like what this Slashdot article implies. What Fermi said was a follow-on to the Drake Equation and nothing more. Many valid solutions to the Fermi paradox exist, most of which invalidate the assumptions of the Drake Equation's most common forms (e.g. intelligent life might not be detectable beyond a certain level of advancement, effectively reducing the lifespan of the race from the point of view of the Drake equation to a sliver of a millenia or two).