I also agree that the point of view I expressed was too extreme. It's hard to present a fully balanced and moderate argument while making a strong and clear statement in a short post.
So if a person is born without legs, you say "well, it's their own fault they refuse to walk"?
Obviously not, if you read what I said at all. It's not about will or choice, it's about traits and actions, regardless of their origin.
It would be that person's fault that they are unable to walk. Who's fault could it be but his? It's just the same for someone who's unable to learn advanced physics or who has a poor singing voice or who lacks self control. Weaknesses and strengths are integral parts of a person. Our categories of blameless damage and despicable faults are entirely arbitrary.
By setting a person above (or, rather, beneath) accountability, you are essentially saying, "This person is broken and useless, no threat or offer of reward will make this person a productive member of society, he is fit only to receive our charity so the normal rules don't apply." Otherwise, you expect people to struggle along and compensate for their weaknesses the best they can with their strength and whatever crutches they can lay their hands on, and live with the honestly-earned status their performance merits.
Now, if this is an accurate evaluation, there is certainly no point in heaping miseries upon them. If it's not, it's the most horrible insult I can think of.
This award-winning AI researcher is certainly not a hopeless basket case. He can and does get along despite his problems, and the difficulties and scorn they cause goad him to find ways to minimize their impact. You think telling him, "It's not your fault, you can't do anything about it..." is going to help?
Life's a bitch for all of us. If we all coddled each others' tragic weaknesses, the human race would die out in about a week. Save your absolution of responsibility for the hopelessly incapable.
Then what would you call it? Whose fault is it? It's a clearly detrimental trait, and thus a fault, and it's obviously his...
Of course that's not what you mean. The idiom stands in for "not due to a fault of his." But how can it not be?
Most scientists would agree that all behavioral traits are a product of genetics and environment. If you use the excuse of genetics or environment for this one person and this one pattern of behavior, why not for all people, for all behaviors?
A mental illness is right at the heart of what makes up a person. It's just a bad personality trait taken to an extreme. We all know people who are a little paranoid, a little moody, or somewhat impulsive. Just because someone draws an arbitrary line and says, "This is the point at which the trait becomes an illness, which he is clearly past." is hardly a convincing reason to suddenly consider him blameless.
So by what reasoning should he not be held to account for his behavior, while another person who can function in society should?
That said, I find many of his attitudes quite reasonable. Dishonesty is the norm in human interaction. It's disgusting and frustrating. Furthermore, people include many utter irrelevancies in their decision making process. Every popular person is, to some degree, a manipulator, and most are capable of impressive self-deception. People make meaningless chatter at each other while they convey the true message with their bodies and tiniest nuances of voice. It's horribly complicated and arbitrary, and largely subconscious and automatic; a matter of instinct. Minds that reject superficiality and examine everything through conscious thought inevitably find hypocracy, and either learn to tolerate internal contradiction or suffer endlessly. I'm sure he would be quite perfectly functional in a society made up of people more like himself.
Whether that society would be better off in general is something I rather doubt. People, even geniuses, are too stupid to live by conscious decisions alone. Ancient, instinctive prejudices tend to keep our misunderstandings from being complete disasters, however absurd they seem under conscious examination.
He is what he is. We are each responsible for what we are and what we do, regardless of how helpless others consider us to change.
why couldn't this have been done cheaply 10 years ago with VHS in a vcr instead of a hard drive?
This is the part you apparently don't understand. The TIVO uses a big, fast hard drive (a small corner of which is conveniently used for holding the schedule) and a cheap, fast modem. Ten years ago, these things weren't available. Everything to do with computers was about a hundred times more expensive, and that goes for all the gear at the other end of the wire, too. You'd have to sell an awful lot of these expensive things to pay for the schedule system. Remember that people had less disposable income ten years ago, too.
Even today, the TV schedule thing doesn't and couldn't work everywhere, and it would be very expensive. The TIVO gives you all sorts of other functionality, and its main purpose is time-shifting TV shows, while a VCR's main purpose is playing rented video tapes (just as it was 10 years ago). A good programming interface is really not very important, and not going to sell a lot more VCRs.
Adding a clock and timer to a VCR is cheap, simple, works everywhere, and easy to isolate in the device itself. It's not the main point of the VCR, but it's so cheap that it's worth putting in every VCR just in case someone won't buy one without it.
Basically, the kind of technology that allows the more advanced interface also makes VCRs obsolete. If you're going to go to the trouble of making a fancy programming interface, with the on-board computer, and modem, and storage that requires, you're going to make more money going that extra step and selling a TIVO-type device. If you want a TIVO, get a TIVO, don't complain that your old VCR is not a TIVO.
Another ten years from now you likely will be able to watch any TV show at any time. It's not hard to imagine a system that would make it possible, it's just too expensive right now, and too much infrastructure would need to be built.
This isn't about being interested or not. This is about people who clearly want the result but are unwilling/unable to learn the process.
This isn't about disgust with people who say, "I don't want to program my VCR." it's about those who say, "The VCR is too hard to program, I can't learn it." Usually, this can be translated as, "I am too lazy/frightened to bother trying."
In my experience, if you have authority over these people, you can easily make them figure it out. Without authority over them, they'll make weak excuses why they shouldn't bother trying. If they have authority over you they'll get you to do it over and over again, regardless how much of both your time and theirs this wastes. 90% of what computer class teachers do is say, "You have to try."
It's a truly pathetic phenomenon. I could throw theories at you about why it is, but I'm not sure why most people's minds work that way, they just do.
Personally, I've been meaning to learn to program my computer, but it has no keyboard (lost by previous owner). It only has a few tiny buttons on it: reset, power, turbo...
Don't lead off on bitching about something's interface by complaining about how hard it is to use when you don't have the main input device.
Well, first the VCR ought to have the tv listings.
Yes, while we're at it, let's whine about the expensive and near-impossible features we'd like to have and pretend it's an interface issue! Why not complain that it doesn't just let you watch any show that's ever been aired? "What do you mean you have to record shows before you watch them?! What a terrible interface!"
It seems to me like having the first and last number the same doesn't compromise the security of the message one bit!
It compromises the security of the message exactly one bit (assuming that it's binary OTP). If the first and last bits of the ciphertext are the same, then you know that the first and last bits of the plaintext are the same, and vice versa. You gain one bit of information about it, and cut the number of possible plaintexts in half.
Cryptanalysis is based on statistical data. The attacker presumably can make reasonable guesses about the contents. So if they can guess the first bit with 70% probability, they also know the last bit with 70% certainty.
It may be little information, but mathematically enought to say it's no longer unbreakable.
You might as well claim the same thing if the attacker knows that the plaintext is sensible ASCII-encoded English. That the attacker knows the character of the plaintext (and therefore has a wealth of statistical information about the plaintext) is one of the fundamental assumptions of cryptography.
The perfect secrecy of OTP is based on the secrecy and randomness of the key alone, it doesn't require an obscure or disordered encoding of the plaintext. Knowing some key bits gives you no clue about the value of other key bits.
Of course you must account for the information that can be inferred from the length of the ciphertext (and pad your plaintext to avoid any information leak). This problem is no greater or worse for compressed plaintexts than uncompressed ones.
Basically, your key is the equivalent of a randomly shuffled deck of cards with each possible messages written on a card. Your ciphertext tells where to cut the deck to find the card with your message on it. Each deck is used for only one message, then destroyed. Hence the name.
It has the interesting property that if you don't have the deck, even if you know the plaintext exactly, any changes to the ciphertext will result in a completely random plaintext (except that it's not the same).
When I first posted the above, the ridiculous troll it was a reply to had been moderated up. Shortly afterwards, it was moderated up a second time. Then an hour or so later, a couple of moderators clued in and moderated it down to oblivion. This crack might be unfunny, or off-topic, but it's not a troll.
No significant spinal compression, so no getting shorter or bent.
Fleshy masses are not pulled downwards enough to strain and stretch the supporting tissue, so no sagging.
I believe that people on the moon would at least look much younger for much longer than people do on the Earth. I'm sure moon gravity is much healthier than free-fall, too. You'd probably still need some sort of drug treatment to keep healthy bones and the right amount of blood, though. I sure wouldn't want to live 20 years on the moon, and then come back to Earth.
-ee: "I have a job offer for a much higher salary." -er thinks "We can't lose him right now." -er: "We're prepared to match that salary if you stay with us." -ee: "Okay then, I'll stay." -er thinks "Whew! That bought us some time, but this guy is just after money, so no doubt he'll be squeezing us for more later. I'd better start looking for his replacement now."
Being willing to jump ship for a better offer is not an impressive show of loyalty. Remember that employers ideally want idiot-savants who are brilliant at their work, but neither know their value nor seek their own best interests. They don't want people who are primarily influenced by money, they want people who are easily influenced by "good management" (i.e. manipulation and security/benefit shell games).
Copying information is not and cannot be stealing. It can be illegal, it can be copyright violation, but it is simply not theft and doesn't necessary mean a loss to the "victim." This ridiculous assertion, that there is no essential difference between making an unauthorized copy of music that could be bought for $10,000 and stealing a $10,000 car, has been repeated here many times, and every time people waste effort pointing out how it's obviously wrong.
That is why you are being moderated down into oblivion. If you have no new arguments, what you're doing is the moral equivalent of stomping your feet and screaming at the people you disagree with.
The moderation category "troll" at least gives you the credit of intentionally being obnoxious and trying to start an argument, rather than being so stupid you can't recognize the obvious illogic of your position.
If you want to argue that copyright violation is wrong, go right ahead. However, don't expect any more respect for asserting that copyright violation is stealing than if you claimed it was vandalism, treason, murder, or rape.
Well, that's the usual dubious transmission cost benefit of the P2P distribution model: the pricing is based on standard practices, so let's screw the providers by deliberately choosing unanticipated uses. It's a dishonest, short term strategy that hurts the people you're relying on for service and discourages others from taking their place.
BitTorrent is also fundamentally user-hostile. By default, the user doesn't want to spend his bandwidth mirroring stuff for random strangers. You're basically relying on the program's ability to subvert the user's system into the service of the content provider and programmer; it breaks down if the users use compatible software which serves only their own interests.
Anyway, I'm not disputing that some people are interested and more will be. My problem is with the ridiculous "This changes everything!" attitude, and the claim that people without broadband access and CD-R drives will be interested.
The ease of the mod is only one half of its potential appeal. The other half is value.
The ability to play Divx on CD-R is just not a big deal. Sure, you'll probably see a few hundred or thousand video-trading geeks setting this up, so they can watch their stuff on the TV. There might even be a few who would buy an Xbox specifically to watch movies on CD. But you're just not going to see this make the difference to hundreds or millions of people.
My reaction on hearing about this was, "So what?" And I even know what Divx is, which is more than you can say for the general population.
Ordinary people don't think, "Hey, I'll go out and spend $300 so I can watch piles of the second-rate bootleg videos you can buy from that creepy kid who never goes outside!"
You should learn the difference between, "Hey, this is exactly what I was looking for!" and "Wow! Everyone is going to want one of these!"
Of course the way science really works is that the 99% of people who propose kooky ideas like this, and who don't work for a university, get labelled as cranks while this guy gets recognition and publicity based solely on some back of the envelope speculation.
So?
Those 99% propose kooky ideas with blatant errors in their math and misunderstandings of the previous theories they intend to overturn.
An interesting possibility expressed well is worth something. Incoherent rambling about a random thought is worth nothing.
Some of the most successful scientists and mathematicians were first published before ever setting foot in a university. They just don't stay outside of one for long.
An ordinary claim: My car stopped running because it ran out of gas.
An extraordinary claim: My car stopped running because last night it flew out the asteroid belt and ate three aliens, which gave it indigestion.
Why can't *all* claims be held to an equally high standard?
You go ahead and spend your life either believing that cars fly into space and eat aliens or requiring piles of solid corroborating evidence every time someone claims that cars won't run on an empty tank. The rest of us will continue to consider consistency with previous findings when evaluating new claims.
Posting a link to a book for sale once is suggesting it. Posting a link to a book for sale habitually is advertising. Posting a link to a book for sale multiple times in a single thread is SPAMMING.
Bringing up arguments like, "The fact is, 'capitalism' doesn't work when you give people artificial monopolies." against a suggestion of purely voluntary donations to reward and support development of free software is TROLLING.
As for identifying the natural monopoly of road-building, for which confiscation of land is essential and a free-market solution is virtually impossible, with the anything-goes naturally free market of software... If that's not trolling, it's so mind-numbingly stupid that I'm afraid to discuss it due to the threat of intellectual osmosis.
When you're so obviously free to give your own money to support any software development you choose, advocating government confiscation of others' money to support your preferred projects is as wicked as stealing it with your own hands. Believing that it will turn out to your benefit instead of diverting your money to support the goals of others is foolish. These are, of course, the characteristic traits of a socialist: mean-spirited idiocy under a facade of high ideals.
Slashdot Mirror
behavior rarely exceeds expectations
Those were the words I was looking for.
I also agree that the point of view I expressed was too extreme. It's hard to present a fully balanced and moderate argument while making a strong and clear statement in a short post.
So if a person is born without legs, you say "well, it's their own fault they refuse to walk"?
Obviously not, if you read what I said at all. It's not about will or choice, it's about traits and actions, regardless of their origin.
It would be that person's fault that they are unable to walk. Who's fault could it be but his? It's just the same for someone who's unable to learn advanced physics or who has a poor singing voice or who lacks self control. Weaknesses and strengths are integral parts of a person. Our categories of blameless damage and despicable faults are entirely arbitrary.
By setting a person above (or, rather, beneath) accountability, you are essentially saying, "This person is broken and useless, no threat or offer of reward will make this person a productive member of society, he is fit only to receive our charity so the normal rules don't apply." Otherwise, you expect people to struggle along and compensate for their weaknesses the best they can with their strength and whatever crutches they can lay their hands on, and live with the honestly-earned status their performance merits.
Now, if this is an accurate evaluation, there is certainly no point in heaping miseries upon them. If it's not, it's the most horrible insult I can think of.
This award-winning AI researcher is certainly not a hopeless basket case. He can and does get along despite his problems, and the difficulties and scorn they cause goad him to find ways to minimize their impact. You think telling him, "It's not your fault, you can't do anything about it..." is going to help?
Life's a bitch for all of us. If we all coddled each others' tragic weaknesses, the human race would die out in about a week. Save your absolution of responsibility for the hopelessly incapable.
...not his fault.
Then what would you call it? Whose fault is it? It's a clearly detrimental trait, and thus a fault, and it's obviously his...
Of course that's not what you mean. The idiom stands in for "not due to a fault of his." But how can it not be?
Most scientists would agree that all behavioral traits are a product of genetics and environment. If you use the excuse of genetics or environment for this one person and this one pattern of behavior, why not for all people, for all behaviors?
A mental illness is right at the heart of what makes up a person. It's just a bad personality trait taken to an extreme. We all know people who are a little paranoid, a little moody, or somewhat impulsive. Just because someone draws an arbitrary line and says, "This is the point at which the trait becomes an illness, which he is clearly past." is hardly a convincing reason to suddenly consider him blameless.
So by what reasoning should he not be held to account for his behavior, while another person who can function in society should?
That said, I find many of his attitudes quite reasonable. Dishonesty is the norm in human interaction. It's disgusting and frustrating. Furthermore, people include many utter irrelevancies in their decision making process. Every popular person is, to some degree, a manipulator, and most are capable of impressive self-deception. People make meaningless chatter at each other while they convey the true message with their bodies and tiniest nuances of voice. It's horribly complicated and arbitrary, and largely subconscious and automatic; a matter of instinct. Minds that reject superficiality and examine everything through conscious thought inevitably find hypocracy, and either learn to tolerate internal contradiction or suffer endlessly. I'm sure he would be quite perfectly functional in a society made up of people more like himself.
Whether that society would be better off in general is something I rather doubt. People, even geniuses, are too stupid to live by conscious decisions alone. Ancient, instinctive prejudices tend to keep our misunderstandings from being complete disasters, however absurd they seem under conscious examination.
He is what he is. We are each responsible for what we are and what we do, regardless of how helpless others consider us to change.
The Johnson Keyboard Layout
Sounds like someone got an OCR'd copy of Harry Potter's latest adventures.
...of a fairy hat dwarf, anyway?
Anyway, it would be well worth reading if he slew the dragon, took its treasure, then later uttered the line, "Though I badly needed to hire a wizard to change me back, I spent my reward on ale and whores."
why couldn't this have been done cheaply 10 years ago with VHS in a vcr instead of a hard drive?
This is the part you apparently don't understand. The TIVO uses a big, fast hard drive (a small corner of which is conveniently used for holding the schedule) and a cheap, fast modem. Ten years ago, these things weren't available. Everything to do with computers was about a hundred times more expensive, and that goes for all the gear at the other end of the wire, too. You'd have to sell an awful lot of these expensive things to pay for the schedule system. Remember that people had less disposable income ten years ago, too.
Even today, the TV schedule thing doesn't and couldn't work everywhere, and it would be very expensive. The TIVO gives you all sorts of other functionality, and its main purpose is time-shifting TV shows, while a VCR's main purpose is playing rented video tapes (just as it was 10 years ago). A good programming interface is really not very important, and not going to sell a lot more VCRs.
Adding a clock and timer to a VCR is cheap, simple, works everywhere, and easy to isolate in the device itself. It's not the main point of the VCR, but it's so cheap that it's worth putting in every VCR just in case someone won't buy one without it.
Basically, the kind of technology that allows the more advanced interface also makes VCRs obsolete. If you're going to go to the trouble of making a fancy programming interface, with the on-board computer, and modem, and storage that requires, you're going to make more money going that extra step and selling a TIVO-type device. If you want a TIVO, get a TIVO, don't complain that your old VCR is not a TIVO.
Another ten years from now you likely will be able to watch any TV show at any time. It's not hard to imagine a system that would make it possible, it's just too expensive right now, and too much infrastructure would need to be built.
This isn't about being interested or not. This is about people who clearly want the result but are unwilling/unable to learn the process.
This isn't about disgust with people who say, "I don't want to program my VCR." it's about those who say, "The VCR is too hard to program, I can't learn it." Usually, this can be translated as, "I am too lazy/frightened to bother trying."
In my experience, if you have authority over these people, you can easily make them figure it out. Without authority over them, they'll make weak excuses why they shouldn't bother trying. If they have authority over you they'll get you to do it over and over again, regardless how much of both your time and theirs this wastes. 90% of what computer class teachers do is say, "You have to try."
It's a truly pathetic phenomenon. I could throw theories at you about why it is, but I'm not sure why most people's minds work that way, they just do.
Personally, I've been meaning to learn to program my computer, but it has no keyboard (lost by previous owner). It only has a few tiny buttons on it: reset, power, turbo...
Don't lead off on bitching about something's interface by complaining about how hard it is to use when you don't have the main input device.
Well, first the VCR ought to have the tv listings.
Yes, while we're at it, let's whine about the expensive and near-impossible features we'd like to have and pretend it's an interface issue! Why not complain that it doesn't just let you watch any show that's ever been aired? "What do you mean you have to record shows before you watch them?! What a terrible interface!"
...it's also their income!
Does anyone else remember the whole Marvel "no-prize" thing?
It seems to me like having the first and last number the same doesn't compromise the security of the message one bit!
It compromises the security of the message exactly one bit (assuming that it's binary OTP). If the first and last bits of the ciphertext are the same, then you know that the first and last bits of the plaintext are the same, and vice versa. You gain one bit of information about it, and cut the number of possible plaintexts in half.
Cryptanalysis is based on statistical data. The attacker presumably can make reasonable guesses about the contents. So if they can guess the first bit with 70% probability, they also know the last bit with 70% certainty.
It may be little information, but mathematically enought to say it's no longer unbreakable.
You might as well claim the same thing if the attacker knows that the plaintext is sensible ASCII-encoded English. That the attacker knows the character of the plaintext (and therefore has a wealth of statistical information about the plaintext) is one of the fundamental assumptions of cryptography.
The perfect secrecy of OTP is based on the secrecy and randomness of the key alone, it doesn't require an obscure or disordered encoding of the plaintext. Knowing some key bits gives you no clue about the value of other key bits.
Of course you must account for the information that can be inferred from the length of the ciphertext (and pad your plaintext to avoid any information leak). This problem is no greater or worse for compressed plaintexts than uncompressed ones.
Check out One Time Deck: the world's most wasteful encryption scheme. The key size (in expressible values) grows with the factorial of the message size (also in expressible values, not bits).
Basically, your key is the equivalent of a randomly shuffled deck of cards with each possible messages written on a card. Your ciphertext tells where to cut the deck to find the card with your message on it. Each deck is used for only one message, then destroyed. Hence the name.
It has the interesting property that if you don't have the deck, even if you know the plaintext exactly, any changes to the ciphertext will result in a completely random plaintext (except that it's not the same).
When I first posted the above, the ridiculous troll it was a reply to had been moderated up. Shortly afterwards, it was moderated up a second time. Then an hour or so later, a couple of moderators clued in and moderated it down to oblivion. This crack might be unfunny, or off-topic, but it's not a troll.
"I will not expose the flaws in the slashdot moderation system."
And clean the brushes when you're done!
No sunlight, so no UV aging the skin.
No significant spinal compression, so no getting shorter or bent.
Fleshy masses are not pulled downwards enough to strain and stretch the supporting tissue, so no sagging.
I believe that people on the moon would at least look much younger for much longer than people do on the Earth. I'm sure moon gravity is much healthier than free-fall, too. You'd probably still need some sort of drug treatment to keep healthy bones and the right amount of blood, though. I sure wouldn't want to live 20 years on the moon, and then come back to Earth.
-ee: "I have a job offer for a much higher salary."
-er thinks "We can't lose him right now."
-er: "We're prepared to match that salary if you stay with us."
-ee: "Okay then, I'll stay."
-er thinks "Whew! That bought us some time, but this guy is just after money, so no doubt he'll be squeezing us for more later. I'd better start looking for his replacement now."
Being willing to jump ship for a better offer is not an impressive show of loyalty. Remember that employers ideally want idiot-savants who are brilliant at their work, but neither know their value nor seek their own best interests. They don't want people who are primarily influenced by money, they want people who are easily influenced by "good management" (i.e. manipulation and security/benefit shell games).
Copying information is not and cannot be stealing. It can be illegal, it can be copyright violation, but it is simply not theft and doesn't necessary mean a loss to the "victim." This ridiculous assertion, that there is no essential difference between making an unauthorized copy of music that could be bought for $10,000 and stealing a $10,000 car, has been repeated here many times, and every time people waste effort pointing out how it's obviously wrong.
That is why you are being moderated down into oblivion. If you have no new arguments, what you're doing is the moral equivalent of stomping your feet and screaming at the people you disagree with.
The moderation category "troll" at least gives you the credit of intentionally being obnoxious and trying to start an argument, rather than being so stupid you can't recognize the obvious illogic of your position.
If you want to argue that copyright violation is wrong, go right ahead. However, don't expect any more respect for asserting that copyright violation is stealing than if you claimed it was vandalism, treason, murder, or rape.
Well, that's the usual dubious transmission cost benefit of the P2P distribution model: the pricing is based on standard practices, so let's screw the providers by deliberately choosing unanticipated uses. It's a dishonest, short term strategy that hurts the people you're relying on for service and discourages others from taking their place.
BitTorrent is also fundamentally user-hostile. By default, the user doesn't want to spend his bandwidth mirroring stuff for random strangers. You're basically relying on the program's ability to subvert the user's system into the service of the content provider and programmer; it breaks down if the users use compatible software which serves only their own interests.
I don't think it's a worthwhile project.
I meant, "hundred-thousands or millions."
Anyway, I'm not disputing that some people are interested and more will be. My problem is with the ridiculous "This changes everything!" attitude, and the claim that people without broadband access and CD-R drives will be interested.
It's a small, unimportant thing.
The ease of the mod is only one half of its potential appeal. The other half is value.
The ability to play Divx on CD-R is just not a big deal. Sure, you'll probably see a few hundred or thousand video-trading geeks setting this up, so they can watch their stuff on the TV. There might even be a few who would buy an Xbox specifically to watch movies on CD. But you're just not going to see this make the difference to hundreds or millions of people.
My reaction on hearing about this was, "So what?" And I even know what Divx is, which is more than you can say for the general population.
Ordinary people don't think, "Hey, I'll go out and spend $300 so I can watch piles of the second-rate bootleg videos you can buy from that creepy kid who never goes outside!"
You should learn the difference between, "Hey, this is exactly what I was looking for!" and "Wow! Everyone is going to want one of these!"
Of course the way science really works is that the 99% of people who propose kooky ideas like this, and who don't work for a university, get labelled as cranks while this guy gets recognition and publicity based solely on some back of the envelope speculation.
So?
Those 99% propose kooky ideas with blatant errors in their math and misunderstandings of the previous theories they intend to overturn.
An interesting possibility expressed well is worth something. Incoherent rambling about a random thought is worth nothing.
Some of the most successful scientists and mathematicians were first published before ever setting foot in a university. They just don't stay outside of one for long.
An ordinary claim: My car stopped running because it ran out of gas.
An extraordinary claim: My car stopped running because last night it flew out the asteroid belt and ate three aliens, which gave it indigestion.
Why can't *all* claims be held to an equally high standard?
You go ahead and spend your life either believing that cars fly into space and eat aliens or requiring piles of solid corroborating evidence every time someone claims that cars won't run on an empty tank. The rest of us will continue to consider consistency with previous findings when evaluating new claims.
Posting a link to a book for sale once is suggesting it. Posting a link to a book for sale habitually is advertising. Posting a link to a book for sale multiple times in a single thread is SPAMMING.
Bringing up arguments like, "The fact is, 'capitalism' doesn't work when you give people artificial monopolies." against a suggestion of purely voluntary donations to reward and support development of free software is TROLLING.
As for identifying the natural monopoly of road-building, for which confiscation of land is essential and a free-market solution is virtually impossible, with the anything-goes naturally free market of software... If that's not trolling, it's so mind-numbingly stupid that I'm afraid to discuss it due to the threat of intellectual
osmosis.
When you're so obviously free to give your own money to support any software development you choose, advocating government confiscation of others' money to support your preferred projects is as wicked as stealing it with your own hands. Believing that it will turn out to your benefit instead of diverting your money to support the goals of others is foolish. These are, of course, the characteristic traits of a socialist: mean-spirited idiocy under a facade of high ideals.