The only problem I have with homeschooling is that the vast majority of homeschooling is done by ultra fanatic religious fringe groups who claim their kids would get all those "wrong" ideas (like, say, a humanistic education and values) when they were sent to a public school.
The only problem I have with free political speech is that the vast majority of free political speech is done by ultra fanatic political fringe groups...
Freedom is for everyone, not merely the people you like.
Germany... thought that a child has the right to equal chances with every other child in Germany.
The problem is that the gov't incorrectly believes it has the right to determine what that "equal chance" is. Indeed, in the U.S., homeschooled kids generally have a BETTER chance than public schooled kids, on all objective measurements. But even if they didn't, the gov't has no right to take the right to make that choice away from the parents.
And that means that it also has the right to an education equivalent to the education all the other children get, and this right is not to be withhold, not even by the child's parents.
This rests on the faulty claim that gov't -- rather than the parents -- have the best idea of what a good education is. I have a much better understanding than the government of what the best education for my children is, and they have no right to subject me or my children to any educational requirements, even if that only means passing a silly test.
Well, obviously other religions can't offer any ethical guidance, and exposing the kids to them will clearly cause them to hate Christianity. Better not even expose them to other thoughts! And the best place to go for that? Here in the US.
Who the hell are YOU -- or any government -- to deprive the parents of their right to make that choice? Ridicule it all you want, but it is THEIR choice.
Sounds completely reasonable to me. I don't think any of the half-baked religious nuts know enough about anything to give their children a proper education.
Germany has school duty for all children older than six years up to 9 to 12 years in school (depends on the actual state). And "duty" means that a state examined teacher is required for schooling. You want home schooling? Then get the exam, and you are perfectly fine schooling your children at home.
That would be just fine... if the government had any right to tell you whether you ARE perfectly fine schooling your children at home. It does not. This is a fundamental human right: to raise your children as you see fit. Like all rights, it is not absolute, but you have it unless they prove you are abusing it (due process and all that), and certainly it's an obvious question-begging fallacy to assert that the very fact of home schooling without government permission is abusing your right to raise your children as you see fit.
You apparently make a common error here. He did not give any reasoning; therefore, nothing was required of me except to state disagreement. If he had actually provided evidence or reasoning for his view, then I could have had something to respond to. As it is, I see no basis whatsoever for his claim that not being alienated for being "ripped off" for an iPad means nothing else could alienate them, so I simply state my disagreement, and if he chooses to actually give a basis for the claim, then I can respond to it.
Only if it wants to alienate almost all of its users and developers.
What users? Same users who rushed to buy iPhone, and are now lining up to get iPad, casually dismissing any app restrictions whenever that point is raised?
Why do people keep pretending that people do, or should, have the same standards for a portable appliance, as they do for their main computer?
THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
Many, many people DO NOT CARE, at least, not too much, about app store restrictions, but most of those same people DO care, a lot, about being able to run whatever they want on their main computer.
If you don't understand this obvious fact, then I cannot help you.
I wish I could believe you. But think about how many OS X users also happily bought into the iPhone, even though it's locked down and intentionally crippled.
The iPhone is not your main computer, your desktop, your laptop. There's no real comparison.
Apple turns on the existing digital signature support in the next OS X, so that apps that aren't signed produce huge unfriendly warning dialogs--rather like the dialogs they introduced warning that you're opening something you downloaded from the Internet.
MAYBE on first launch. Never happen after first launch, so hardly interesting or important.
Then they announce the OS X app store, which requires signed apps--but at this stage it's completely optional.
Possible. But since it will always be optional, I don't care.
Then they announce a cheaper OS X Home Edition which only runs the signed apps, and reserve the full OS X for high-end machines like the MacBook Pro and MacPro.
Never. This will not happen, period. (Well, not while the current people in charge are around, anyway... someday when Gates buys Apple, maybe.) Apple has spent considerable time and resources ensuring that Mac OS X is Mac OS X. There's no separate versions (except for Server, which adds in additional server-specific functionality that you can mostly get for free anyway, but even then, all apps that run on Mac OS X run on Mac OS X Server, and vice versa).
Then they start charging for store access and dev kit access.
To the former, perhaps; but since it is entirely optional, I don't care. To the latter, "never."
The actually seriously egregious things you mentioned make no sense and won't happen.
everyone assumed the iPhone would be open eventually, and bought it on the assumption that there would be uncontrolled development like there is on OS X
Untrue. MOST developers and users, in fact, bought in AFTER it was well-understood that it would not be "open."
If ripping off it's potential customers by charging $100 for a $10 stick of 16GB flash, or $130 for a 3G connection when a lot of complete mobile phones don't cost that much, doesn't alienate them then nothing will.
I'm somewhat more sceptical that many consumers like that that "lock" is enforced by criminal law and that they'll be jailed if they ever try to leave the Apple store.
To the extent that's true, I agree. So far I've heard of no one being prosecuted for jailbreaking their iPhone though.
Also, you shouldn't conflate the issue with choice: the FSF and RMS, to my knowledge, have never advocated choice.
Freedom and choice... you cannot have one without the other. As "freedom" is in their name...:-)
It's not defective, RMS et al: it's a CHOICE. You purport to like choice, but no one believes you anymore. Many consumers don't care, and even LIKE, the idea of being locked in to the App Store, because it introduces a significant amount of safety.
Also, it's not a "huge step backward" even if we agree with everything else you say, because it's what's on the iPhone. It's not backward, it's the same.
And there's no chance whatsoever that this will ever happen to Mac OS X, so don't lose sleep over it.
I don't think GV Mobile has direct-dial though, no? It still has to setup calls via a (literal) call-back?
It can do it in two ways: either sending a command to Google Voice over the web which calls your phone, or dialing Google Voice and calling through their system. I am not sure how the new Google system is better, though.
This is really a change of a default assumption than freedom to do anything without penalty. If INTERPOL starts going crazy, it only takes a presidential signature to take this exception back.
False.
It takes less than that!
The President just has to give a new order, with or without a signature. There's nothing legally special about a signature or an Executive Order.
Under Bush many people went completely crazy about Bush's EOs, but they have no force of law (generally speaking), and the President himself is not bound by them (which is also why it's not actually a big deal if Cheney "violated" an EO, if Bush told him verbally he didn't have to follow it... and since only Bush can hold Cheney accountable, if he chooses not to do so, then so what?).
An EO is just what it sounds like: it's the executive giving his underlings an order. It's just a formal way of doing it, and it's not legally special.
But it seems to me that there are many flaws in using all the data you have on your own site.
No, there's not.
For example, to get you thinking and encourage a discussion, ip addresses can change, multiple users can have the same ip addresses, cookies can be deleted, persons can use more than one computer, multiple persons can use one computer.
None of those are flaws "in" using all the data. Those are all data analysis problems, which are distinct from sampling problems.
No. I mean the data on "your own site." Which is obvious, since that is what I was responding to.
By good, what makes it more than bad and less than excellent?
Because on "your own site," you have all the data for all the users. There's no significant sampling error. There can be errors in analyzing the data, but -- minus the occasional lost log entry -- there's no sampling error, because you're not taking a sample, you have the entire possible set of data you are concerned with (the users on your own site); whereas, these people are taking a (relatively) tiny portion of the Internet and trying to generalize it out to the entire set of (demographically different) Internet users.
Please feel free to assume I know as much as you learned from an introductory text on sampling methodology.
Given your questions, that is impossible for me to do.
Except I have other data available, and stats from both large and small ecommerce sites are generally in-line with these published "marketshare" reports. Which leads me to believe that, yes, these reports somewhat accurately reflect general web use trends
Flawed reasoning. This is what gets us into messes like we see with the climate change data. You expect to see certain results, you do, and therefore those results are correct and the methodolgy is good enough. It's nonsense, of course.
Since I mostly have used these numbers to prioritize testing
And that is what this data is obviously WORST at giving you, since it cannot tell you relative browser usage. Use your own site data for that, not someone else's.
You seem to be implying that any bias or skew in your data sample renders it utterly useless.
Not at all. I am, on the contrary, not referring to bias or skew at all, but in the utter lack of randomness in the sample, relative to the general population.
You have to choose between "not really statistically valid sample" and absolutely nothing whatsoever.
And either way, you have no valid results. Guess which one is therefore better, as it costs much less?
This is the real world, not academia. So take what you can get, realize it has limitations, and use it to form a tentative opinion on the relevant matters
In the real world, you can't pretend that something fundamentally flawed isn't fundamentally flawed, just because it's the best you can do.
or remain utterly ignorant
You're not getting it. Relying on this data, you also remain utterly ignorant. This is a case where something IS NOT better than nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem I have with homeschooling is that the vast majority of homeschooling is done by ultra fanatic religious fringe groups who claim their kids would get all those "wrong" ideas (like, say, a humanistic education and values) when they were sent to a public school.
The only problem I have with free political speech is that the vast majority of free political speech is done by ultra fanatic political fringe groups ...
Freedom is for everyone, not merely the people you like.
Germany ... thought that a child has the right to equal chances with every other child in Germany.
The problem is that the gov't incorrectly believes it has the right to determine what that "equal chance" is. Indeed, in the U.S., homeschooled kids generally have a BETTER chance than public schooled kids, on all objective measurements. But even if they didn't, the gov't has no right to take the right to make that choice away from the parents.
And that means that it also has the right to an education equivalent to the education all the other children get, and this right is not to be withhold, not even by the child's parents.
This rests on the faulty claim that gov't -- rather than the parents -- have the best idea of what a good education is. I have a much better understanding than the government of what the best education for my children is, and they have no right to subject me or my children to any educational requirements, even if that only means passing a silly test.
Well, obviously other religions can't offer any ethical guidance, and exposing the kids to them will clearly cause them to hate Christianity. Better not even expose them to other thoughts! And the best place to go for that? Here in the US.
Who the hell are YOU -- or any government -- to deprive the parents of their right to make that choice? Ridicule it all you want, but it is THEIR choice.
Sounds completely reasonable to me. I don't think any of the half-baked religious nuts know enough about anything to give their children a proper education.
Then you need to get out more, obviously.
Germany has school duty for all children older than six years up to 9 to 12 years in school (depends on the actual state). And "duty" means that a state examined teacher is required for schooling. You want home schooling? Then get the exam, and you are perfectly fine schooling your children at home.
That would be just fine ... if the government had any right to tell you whether you ARE perfectly fine schooling your children at home. It does not. This is a fundamental human right: to raise your children as you see fit. Like all rights, it is not absolute, but you have it unless they prove you are abusing it (due process and all that), and certainly it's an obvious question-begging fallacy to assert that the very fact of home schooling without government permission is abusing your right to raise your children as you see fit.
Awesome Comeback, and great reasoning!
You apparently make a common error here. He did not give any reasoning; therefore, nothing was required of me except to state disagreement. If he had actually provided evidence or reasoning for his view, then I could have had something to respond to. As it is, I see no basis whatsoever for his claim that not being alienated for being "ripped off" for an iPad means nothing else could alienate them, so I simply state my disagreement, and if he chooses to actually give a basis for the claim, then I can respond to it.
HTH HAND
Only if it wants to alienate almost all of its users and developers.
What users? Same users who rushed to buy iPhone, and are now lining up to get iPad, casually dismissing any app restrictions whenever that point is raised?
Why do people keep pretending that people do, or should, have the same standards for a portable appliance, as they do for their main computer?
THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
Many, many people DO NOT CARE, at least, not too much, about app store restrictions, but most of those same people DO care, a lot, about being able to run whatever they want on their main computer.
If you don't understand this obvious fact, then I cannot help you.
They're not telling people not to choose the device.
Yes, they are. And in addition, they are telling Apple to not make or sell it.
Will it fall on deaf ears?
Hopefully.
I wish I could believe you. But think about how many OS X users also happily bought into the iPhone, even though it's locked down and intentionally crippled.
The iPhone is not your main computer, your desktop, your laptop. There's no real comparison.
Apple turns on the existing digital signature support in the next OS X, so that apps that aren't signed produce huge unfriendly warning dialogs--rather like the dialogs they introduced warning that you're opening something you downloaded from the Internet.
MAYBE on first launch. Never happen after first launch, so hardly interesting or important.
Then they announce the OS X app store, which requires signed apps--but at this stage it's completely optional.
Possible. But since it will always be optional, I don't care.
Then they announce a cheaper OS X Home Edition which only runs the signed apps, and reserve the full OS X for high-end machines like the MacBook Pro and MacPro.
Never. This will not happen, period. (Well, not while the current people in charge are around, anyway ... someday when Gates buys Apple, maybe.) Apple has spent considerable time and resources ensuring that Mac OS X is Mac OS X. There's no separate versions (except for Server, which adds in additional server-specific functionality that you can mostly get for free anyway, but even then, all apps that run on Mac OS X run on Mac OS X Server, and vice versa).
Then they start charging for store access and dev kit access.
To the former, perhaps; but since it is entirely optional, I don't care. To the latter, "never."
The actually seriously egregious things you mentioned make no sense and won't happen.
everyone assumed the iPhone would be open eventually, and bought it on the assumption that there would be uncontrolled development like there is on OS X
Untrue. MOST developers and users, in fact, bought in AFTER it was well-understood that it would not be "open."
If ripping off it's potential customers by charging $100 for a $10 stick of 16GB flash, or $130 for a 3G connection when a lot of complete mobile phones don't cost that much, doesn't alienate them then nothing will.
False.
I'm somewhat more sceptical that many consumers like that that "lock" is enforced by criminal law and that they'll be jailed if they ever try to leave the Apple store.
To the extent that's true, I agree. So far I've heard of no one being prosecuted for jailbreaking their iPhone though.
Also, you shouldn't conflate the issue with choice: the FSF and RMS, to my knowledge, have never advocated choice.
Freedom and choice ... you cannot have one without the other. As "freedom" is in their name ... :-)
And there's no chance whatsoever that this will ever happen to Mac OS X, so don't lose sleep over it.
Really?
Yes.
I can totally see Apple releasing a new mac mini with this OS because *it just works*.
Then it won't be branded as "Mac OS X," and surely won't become the primary OS sold by Apple.
Then putting a premium on future machines with the OSX variant.
Only if it wants to alienate almost all of its users and developers.
It won't happen.
Would you like some cheese with your whine?
It's not defective, RMS et al: it's a CHOICE. You purport to like choice, but no one believes you anymore. Many consumers don't care, and even LIKE, the idea of being locked in to the App Store, because it introduces a significant amount of safety.
Also, it's not a "huge step backward" even if we agree with everything else you say, because it's what's on the iPhone. It's not backward, it's the same.
And there's no chance whatsoever that this will ever happen to Mac OS X, so don't lose sleep over it.
I don't think GV Mobile has direct-dial though, no? It still has to setup calls via a (literal) call-back?
It can do it in two ways: either sending a command to Google Voice over the web which calls your phone, or dialing Google Voice and calling through their system. I am not sure how the new Google system is better, though.
Use GV Mobile, available through Cydia. Much much better. An actual app for starters. :-)
This is really a change of a default assumption than freedom to do anything without penalty. If INTERPOL starts going crazy, it only takes a presidential signature to take this exception back.
False.
It takes less than that!
The President just has to give a new order, with or without a signature. There's nothing legally special about a signature or an Executive Order.
Under Bush many people went completely crazy about Bush's EOs, but they have no force of law (generally speaking), and the President himself is not bound by them (which is also why it's not actually a big deal if Cheney "violated" an EO, if Bush told him verbally he didn't have to follow it ... and since only Bush can hold Cheney accountable, if he chooses not to do so, then so what?).
An EO is just what it sounds like: it's the executive giving his underlings an order. It's just a formal way of doing it, and it's not legally special.
Obviously the site data is preferable, but you can't use it if the site doesn't exist yet.
I don't understand your use of the word "preferable." It implies there's an alternative set of data.
But it seems to me that there are many flaws in using all the data you have on your own site.
No, there's not.
For example, to get you thinking and encourage a discussion, ip addresses can change, multiple users can have the same ip addresses, cookies can be deleted, persons can use more than one computer, multiple persons can use one computer.
None of those are flaws "in" using all the data. Those are all data analysis problems, which are distinct from sampling problems.
By "we", do you mean slashdot?
No. I mean the data on "your own site." Which is obvious, since that is what I was responding to.
By good, what makes it more than bad and less than excellent?
Because on "your own site," you have all the data for all the users. There's no significant sampling error. There can be errors in analyzing the data, but -- minus the occasional lost log entry -- there's no sampling error, because you're not taking a sample, you have the entire possible set of data you are concerned with (the users on your own site); whereas, these people are taking a (relatively) tiny portion of the Internet and trying to generalize it out to the entire set of (demographically different) Internet users.
Please feel free to assume I know as much as you learned from an introductory text on sampling methodology.
Given your questions, that is impossible for me to do.
I'm willing to trust it a little bit
Feel free, but there's no actual reason to trust it.
Except I have other data available, and stats from both large and small ecommerce sites are generally in-line with these published "marketshare" reports. Which leads me to believe that, yes, these reports somewhat accurately reflect general web use trends
Flawed reasoning. This is what gets us into messes like we see with the climate change data. You expect to see certain results, you do, and therefore those results are correct and the methodolgy is good enough. It's nonsense, of course.
Since I mostly have used these numbers to prioritize testing
And that is what this data is obviously WORST at giving you, since it cannot tell you relative browser usage. Use your own site data for that, not someone else's.
You seem to be implying that any bias or skew in your data sample renders it utterly useless.
Not at all. I am, on the contrary, not referring to bias or skew at all, but in the utter lack of randomness in the sample, relative to the general population.
You have to choose between "not really statistically valid sample" and absolutely nothing whatsoever.
And either way, you have no valid results. Guess which one is therefore better, as it costs much less?
This is the real world, not academia. So take what you can get, realize it has limitations, and use it to form a tentative opinion on the relevant matters
In the real world, you can't pretend that something fundamentally flawed isn't fundamentally flawed, just because it's the best you can do.
or remain utterly ignorant
You're not getting it. Relying on this data, you also remain utterly ignorant. This is a case where something IS NOT better than nothing.
Would you care to enlighten us as to what you mean by "we have a good sample"?
No. But I direct you to seek out any introductory text on sampling methodolgy.
Huh. None of what you said had anything to do with what I said!
None of these surveys claim to be a statistically valid sample, and nobody with half-a-brain believes that they are.
Exactly.
It still is useful to see general browser trends across large pools of sites, despite that.
Your last sentence disagrees with your first.