faith and reason are in complete opposition at all times.
You have a very narrow definition of reason, and an equally narrow definition of faith. What is reasonable to someone is largely a function of that person's presupposition. And what someone has faith in is not necessarily without reason.
Either one supposes that their is a God or one does not. There is not a particularly good evidential reason for believing either. So, whether one believes in God or not is largely a matter of what you call "faith" in either case.
If on believes in God, then it might be reasonable to believe also in miracles. Otherwise, believing in miracles would be quite unreasonable. Both conclusions rely on reason, but they are based on different presuppositions. Just because something can't be subjected to repeatable experimentation does not mean that there is no reason to believe it.
If you have a reasonable argument for believing in something (as in: there it is, I can see/touch/hear it), you don't require any faith.
Perhaps, but I doubt that you have ever seen/touched/heard the origin of life. Yet you probably believe that there was one. Perhaps the sum of your reason for believing this is the fact that there is life now, and the (perfectly reasonable) assumption that there must have been a time when there was no life. The logical conclusion is of course that, somewhere in between, something happened that marked the beginning of life as we know it. So what was that something? If you believe in God, then God could be that something. If you don't believe in God, then it must be something else; maybe it was random molecular recombination, or another thing. You're arguing that one requires faith while the other does not. Which is likely to be true is a matter of opinion and presupposition, not science, and not reason.
And if you rely on faith to believe in something, it is only because you have no good reason (I can't see/touch/hear/measure/understand it, but the bible tells me so).
I'm not going to belabor my argument. But I find it interesting that you included understanding in this second list. Do you perhaps reason that if you can't understand something that someone else believes, then they must also have no understanding of it?
If that's what they were thinking when they invented it, wouldn't they have simply called it AID?
I've always considered the main features of RAID to be redundancy and striping. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say, "We're going with RAID because of the cost-effectiveness!"
You're the second person I've heard recently call it that (the other not on/.), so I guess I can call it a trend.
Up until now, I've always understood it as, "Redundant Array of Independent Disks." The other (new??) definition seems to suggest that if I stack up a bunch of Quantum Ultra-10K drives then I no longer have RAID because the disks are no longer inexpensive. RAED, maybe?
Anyway, I don't know which is right. Can somebody in the know clarify?
The Open Source philosophy, being mostly pragmatic, has the unstated opinion that just because the user probably doesn't need or want the source code, it is okay to be taken away.
When did you ever have the source code to Borland C++? At what point was it taken away from you?
Probably the number one reason I won't join the ranks of the Free Software zealots is that one can never give them anything without them complaining that it wasn't enough.
Well, the definition of "compelling evidence" is subjective, so what I find compelling you may not. The editorial itself was merely commentary, but there were a number of references to URLs which contained a wealth of data (which I found compelling).
I disagree with the argument that the labor shortage is a "hoax".
You are free to do so. What data do you provide to support your position? "Unemployment figures" is a bit too vague.
Low unemployment is equivalent to a labor shortage -- it is indicative of a low supply of job seekers.
But it's only one indicator. And it's too broad a category. Unemployment can be very low even though the number of "unemployed MS-degreed computer scientists, age 35-50" is very high. Consider that an individual who has taken a temporary job outside his intended field while looking for an appropriate position is not considered unemployed.
In general, unemployment is only one part of a very big statistical picture. And statistics frequently don't tell the whole truth.
If there is such a dramatic shortage of workers, companies wouldn't be disregarding all but the most stellar resumes. Perhaps this isn't the case for young college grads, but for those of us in our thirties who are trying to find a decent job that will support a family is a real challenge. This is one of the reasons that I'm presently starting my own business.
Blaming the immigrants is nothing but a cheap copout, and ignores the real problems.
I don't recall making the assertion that immigrants were to blame. The editorial doesn't say that either. It's just something that I read recently and thought was topical to the current thread.
The editorial in the February Dr. Dobbs Journal has some interesting things to say about this "labor shortage."
In short, Jonathan Erickson disagrees with you and points to some fairly compelling evidence that the labor shortage is a hoax concocted by the industry so that it can favor cheaper college grads and foreign workers over retraining expensive midcareer professionals. The editorial also has some interesting insights into the probable long-term effects.
I have found that keeping/home on a it's own partition is usefull.
Indeed.
It is also important to consider the security advantage of a separate/var partition, Since this is where logs go. Allowing an attacker to fill your root partition with log info would likely be very bad.
The short reason is that if you can find a loophole in a credit card database, you can steal thousands of numbers in one night, possibly undetected. In the physical world, it takes longer, so you are likely to get less numbers.
This doesn't necessarily mean that it is more risky to buy online. It would only if the number of stolen card numbers per purchase is greater in the case of online transactions than in real-world transactions.
For the individual consumer, it doesn't make any difference how the number is stolen, or the scale of the crime. The only concern for the consumer is the chance that this one transaction will result in his/her number being compromised.
There is also the factor that, online, making multiple purchases from the same vendor probably does not expose the consumer to greater risk. Not true in the real world.
Writing a piece of software and giving it away as an OS-bundled freebie may drive out the competition, but it doesn't do them much good.
I hope that this speaks for itself. How could driving out the competition not benefit Microsoft?
The problem is not with driving out the competition. This is what every company ultimately wants. The problem is using an existing monopoly position to strong-arm their way into another market, and choking the life out of their new competitors by weilding the power of the existing monopoly.
[As an aside, I'm not buying the story that Netscape lost to Internet Explorer based on product quality. Internet Explorer won because the consumer usually had no choice but to have it. (Can somebody explain to me why I was required to install Internet Explorer before installing Visual C++?) If I've already got a web browser soaking up multiple hundreds of megabytes of my hard disk then why would I install another, regardless of quality? The average user will just put up with the one that MUST be there.
Microsoft can easily pay several hundred people full-time salaries to develop Internet Explorer because that's pocket change to their existing monopoly. Netscape can only do this until they run out of money, which isn't very long given the above situation. In the end, the quality of Netscape's product fell behind as a result. But product quality is not why Netscape lost; poor product quality was the result of their losing.]
I'm amazed at the ability of slashdotters to interpret everything Microsoft does as evil. If any other company gave a product away for free, Slashdotters would be happy about it. But when MS does it, it's "predatory."
There's a big difference between giving something away for free and being predatory. Don't even get me started on the list of underhanded things Microsoft has done to further their dynasty.
There are already several competing OS's.
Apparently I wasn't being clear here. I was speaking of the possibility for a compatible Windows alternative, like DR-DOS was to MS-DOS. DR-DOS was possible, by and large, because the DOS API was known, even the undocumented part.
I don't think that this is what they are thinking. The idea is rather to level the playing field.
Since the application group will have the same documentation as everybody else regarding the OS API, no more secret hooks into the OS that make it impossible for a would-be competitor to write a decent office suite.
Similarly, it is now possible to develop a competing OS, since the only requirement is providing a fully functional API. This will be possible because the API would be fully documented.
Also, no more squashing a competing application by extending the OS to include the equivalent of their application.
Whether one thinks this is the best solution is largely a matter of taste, it seems. After reading about, discussing, and considering all of the options that were available, I'm inclined to believe that this is the best (as in, least among the list of evils) that could be hoped for.
I'd rather have a screen saver of that guy dancing around the glass of Guinness that I kept seeing before the films in British cinemas.
I lived in the UK for a couple of years in the mid-90's and I'm still laughing. Can anyone there tell me if they are still showing that commercial before the movies?
Numbering products which are updated every couple of years by the release date is about as valid as anything else, so long as they continue doing it that way.
Chessmaster once had versions based on the chess engine's play rating. Up to about 2100 or something; after that, 3000, 4000,... 7000 (or whatever it is now), the numbers were merely marketing hype. This inspired a competing product called 'Chess Maniac 5.1 Billion' or some such which was just trying to have the ultimate version number.
Does 'Windows 2005' really make less sense than, say, 'Mandrake 7.0'?
Perhaps these kids are just being practical. Santa only gives toys to the nice boys and girls, or so the legend goes. If these kids were, in fact, naughty (as the evidence would seem to suggest) then this is the only way that they are getting any toys from Santa this Christmas.
These kids might be smarter than we give them credit for.
what I call the "the Spirit of Xmas" (Christmas without Christ)
Please excuse this (short) off-topic detour. You may be interested to know that "Xmas" is actually an ancient reverent form of the word. It turns out that the first letter of the word "Christ" is, in fact, "X" in Greek (or maybe it was Latin; can't recall off the top of my head, and I don't really know either language). "Xmas" was originally used by the religious zealots. I remember all this because I got it wrong in some trivia quiz when I was a kid.
But why the new major number? We are right on the verge of a whole mess of new-version products. Why is it that the 6.1->7.0 jump happens just before the new packages arrive, and theoretically contains mostly incremental package changes while we expect 7.0->7.1 to include the long-awaited new product lines. This doesn't make any sense to me.
On the other hand, it is Mandrake. So they might actually be shipping all that stuff now. We've all suspected that they have a time machine in their shop someplace...
A sales tax is a "regressive" tax because it taxes the poor more than the rich.
This argument assumes that wealthy people and poor people purchase relatively the same number of items. This isn't true. It's not even true that, for example, "somebody twice as rich buys twice as much stuff."
In reality, the wealthy spend rediculously more than the poor. A lower income person might own an inexpensive 10-year-old auto (or else uses public transit), probably rents, buy groceries (which aren't sales-taxed), eat's out occasionally at inexpensive restaurants, and buys some consumer goods. A wealthy person, on the other hand, owns a late-model $30k car (probably 2, which may get replaced every couple of years), owns a 3-4 bedroom home and has at least part share in a cabin in out in Bend, eat's out frequently at expensive restaurants, and buys many, many more consumer goods.
The whole "Progressive/Regressive" thing has never been more than a theory used to justify higher income taxes. My opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
If the 6.2beta is any indication, this one's gonna rock. Been using the beta since day-1: love it.
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You have a very narrow definition of reason, and an equally narrow definition of faith. What is reasonable to someone is largely a function of that person's presupposition. And what someone has faith in is not necessarily without reason.
Either one supposes that their is a God or one does not. There is not a particularly good evidential reason for believing either. So, whether one believes in God or not is largely a matter of what you call "faith" in either case.
If on believes in God, then it might be reasonable to believe also in miracles. Otherwise, believing in miracles would be quite unreasonable. Both conclusions rely on reason, but they are based on different presuppositions. Just because something can't be subjected to repeatable experimentation does not mean that there is no reason to believe it.
If you have a reasonable argument for believing in something (as in: there it is, I can see/touch/hear it), you don't require any faith.
Perhaps, but I doubt that you have ever seen/touched/heard the origin of life. Yet you probably believe that there was one. Perhaps the sum of your reason for believing this is the fact that there is life now, and the (perfectly reasonable) assumption that there must have been a time when there was no life. The logical conclusion is of course that, somewhere in between, something happened that marked the beginning of life as we know it. So what was that something? If you believe in God, then God could be that something. If you don't believe in God, then it must be something else; maybe it was random molecular recombination, or another thing. You're arguing that one requires faith while the other does not. Which is likely to be true is a matter of opinion and presupposition, not science, and not reason.
And if you rely on faith to believe in something, it is only because you have no good reason (I can't see/touch/hear/measure/understand it, but the bible tells me so).
I'm not going to belabor my argument. But I find it interesting that you included understanding in this second list. Do you perhaps reason that if you can't understand something that someone else believes, then they must also have no understanding of it?
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Worse: It would have to boot the virtual machine. Booting WinXX is not a speedy process even without virtualization.
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I've always considered the main features of RAID to be redundancy and striping. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say, "We're going with RAID because of the cost-effectiveness!"
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You're the second person I've heard recently call it that (the other not on /.), so I guess I can call it a trend.
Up until now, I've always understood it as, "Redundant Array of Independent Disks." The other (new??) definition seems to suggest that if I stack up a bunch of Quantum Ultra-10K drives then I no longer have RAID because the disks are no longer inexpensive. RAED, maybe?
Anyway, I don't know which is right. Can somebody in the know clarify?
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When did you ever have the source code to Borland C++? At what point was it taken away from you?
Probably the number one reason I won't join the ranks of the Free Software zealots is that one can never give them anything without them complaining that it wasn't enough.
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Well, the definition of "compelling evidence" is subjective, so what I find compelling you may not. The editorial itself was merely commentary, but there were a number of references to URLs which contained a wealth of data (which I found compelling).
I disagree with the argument that the labor shortage is a "hoax".
You are free to do so. What data do you provide to support your position? "Unemployment figures" is a bit too vague.
Low unemployment is equivalent to a labor shortage -- it is indicative of a low supply of job seekers.
But it's only one indicator. And it's too broad a category. Unemployment can be very low even though the number of "unemployed MS-degreed computer scientists, age 35-50" is very high. Consider that an individual who has taken a temporary job outside his intended field while looking for an appropriate position is not considered unemployed.
In general, unemployment is only one part of a very big statistical picture. And statistics frequently don't tell the whole truth.
If there is such a dramatic shortage of workers, companies wouldn't be disregarding all but the most stellar resumes. Perhaps this isn't the case for young college grads, but for those of us in our thirties who are trying to find a decent job that will support a family is a real challenge. This is one of the reasons that I'm presently starting my own business.
Blaming the immigrants is nothing but a cheap copout, and ignores the real problems.
I don't recall making the assertion that immigrants were to blame. The editorial doesn't say that either. It's just something that I read recently and thought was topical to the current thread.
In short, Jonathan Erickson disagrees with you and points to some fairly compelling evidence that the labor shortage is a hoax concocted by the industry so that it can favor cheaper college grads and foreign workers over retraining expensive midcareer professionals. The editorial also has some interesting insights into the probable long-term effects.
Indeed.
It is also important to consider the security advantage of a separate /var partition, Since this is where logs go. Allowing an attacker to fill your root partition with log info would likely be very bad.
This doesn't necessarily mean that it is more risky to buy online. It would only if the number of stolen card numbers per purchase is greater in the case of online transactions than in real-world transactions.
For the individual consumer, it doesn't make any difference how the number is stolen, or the scale of the crime. The only concern for the consumer is the chance that this one transaction will result in his/her number being compromised.
There is also the factor that, online, making multiple purchases from the same vendor probably does not expose the consumer to greater risk. Not true in the real world.
I hope that this speaks for itself. How could driving out the competition not benefit Microsoft?
The problem is not with driving out the competition. This is what every company ultimately wants. The problem is using an existing monopoly position to strong-arm their way into another market, and choking the life out of their new competitors by weilding the power of the existing monopoly.
[As an aside, I'm not buying the story that Netscape lost to Internet Explorer based on product quality. Internet Explorer won because the consumer usually had no choice but to have it. (Can somebody explain to me why I was required to install Internet Explorer before installing Visual C++?) If I've already got a web browser soaking up multiple hundreds of megabytes of my hard disk then why would I install another, regardless of quality? The average user will just put up with the one that MUST be there.
Microsoft can easily pay several hundred people full-time salaries to develop Internet Explorer because that's pocket change to their existing monopoly. Netscape can only do this until they run out of money, which isn't very long given the above situation. In the end, the quality of Netscape's product fell behind as a result. But product quality is not why Netscape lost; poor product quality was the result of their losing.]
I'm amazed at the ability of slashdotters to interpret everything Microsoft does as evil. If any other company gave a product away for free, Slashdotters would be happy about it. But when MS does it, it's "predatory."
There's a big difference between giving something away for free and being predatory. Don't even get me started on the list of underhanded things Microsoft has done to further their dynasty.
There are already several competing OS's.
Apparently I wasn't being clear here. I was speaking of the possibility for a compatible Windows alternative, like DR-DOS was to MS-DOS. DR-DOS was possible, by and large, because the DOS API was known, even the undocumented part.
Since the application group will have the same documentation as everybody else regarding the OS API, no more secret hooks into the OS that make it impossible for a would-be competitor to write a decent office suite.
Similarly, it is now possible to develop a competing OS, since the only requirement is providing a fully functional API. This will be possible because the API would be fully documented.
Also, no more squashing a competing application by extending the OS to include the equivalent of their application.
Whether one thinks this is the best solution is largely a matter of taste, it seems. After reading about, discussing, and considering all of the options that were available, I'm inclined to believe that this is the best (as in, least among the list of evils) that could be hoped for.
It would seem that this story is on it's way.
I lived in the UK for a couple of years in the mid-90's and I'm still laughing. Can anyone there tell me if they are still showing that commercial before the movies?
Honestly, I would like to hear him explain that to his children:
"Yeah, I remember the day you were born, but that didn't hold a candle to what I missed on new year's eve."
Please.
Chessmaster once had versions based on the chess engine's play rating. Up to about 2100 or something; after that, 3000, 4000, ... 7000 (or whatever it is now), the numbers were merely marketing hype. This inspired a competing product called 'Chess Maniac 5.1 Billion' or some such which was just trying to have the ultimate version number.
Does 'Windows 2005' really make less sense than, say, 'Mandrake 7.0'?
These kids might be smarter than we give them credit for.
Please excuse this (short) off-topic detour. You may be interested to know that "Xmas" is actually an ancient reverent form of the word. It turns out that the first letter of the word "Christ" is, in fact, "X" in Greek (or maybe it was Latin; can't recall off the top of my head, and I don't really know either language). "Xmas" was originally used by the religious zealots. I remember all this because I got it wrong in some trivia quiz when I was a kid.
On the other hand, it is Mandrake. So they might actually be shipping all that stuff now. We've all suspected that they have a time machine in their shop someplace...
Perhaps you could just point me to the URL that has these detailed instructions.
This argument assumes that wealthy people and poor people purchase relatively the same number of items. This isn't true. It's not even true that, for example, "somebody twice as rich buys twice as much stuff."
In reality, the wealthy spend rediculously more than the poor. A lower income person might own an inexpensive 10-year-old auto (or else uses public transit), probably rents, buy groceries (which aren't sales-taxed), eat's out occasionally at inexpensive restaurants, and buys some consumer goods. A wealthy person, on the other hand, owns a late-model $30k car (probably 2, which may get replaced every couple of years), owns a 3-4 bedroom home and has at least part share in a cabin in out in Bend, eat's out frequently at expensive restaurants, and buys many, many more consumer goods.
The whole "Progressive/Regressive" thing has never been more than a theory used to justify higher income taxes. My opinion.