I agree - opinion at best, flamebait at worst. It probably made the front page because it praises OS X and the Iphone, whilst criticising Vista and Windows Mobile...
I agree about no research, he even thinks that "Symbian" (which he seems to think is a company) was "stopped in their tracks" by the Iphone, which he thinks is the winner(!)
As someone else points out, this isn't even an actual columnist - it's just a random blog, and by the looks of it anyone can sign up. Check out his not-very-active profile: http://www.itworld.com/tomhenderson .
What next? Are opinion pieces on Slashdot journal entries going to start appearing on the front page?
Indeed - and don't forget that Windows XP, which is so praised by Vista haters, had the same teething problems. For years people preferred to stick with 2000, and XP had the same driver troubles at first. The general rule of thumb with MS OSs has been to wait until service pack 1. The other problem with Vista was at the time of its release, many laptops still came with 1 GB. Unless you're getting a netbook, that's not been an issue for a long time. (FWIW, I don't run Vista or 7, my laptop still runs XP, and I've even got 2000 on the desktop - but I'm not pretending people should avoid upgrading anymore.)
So this blogger thinks OS X is great and Vista is pants - good for him, but why is his opinion better than any other OS fan? I stopped reading his OS X section at the "It just works." mantra. My computers work too, and do a lot more besides. What next - "Best and worst editors of the decade" where he praises Vi and slags off Emacs? He's entitled to his opinion, but let's not pretend it's anything but an opinion.
There's also this gem:
Palm, RIM, Symbian, and other rivals raced forward only to be stopped in their tracks (like Asimov's 'Mule' in the Foundation Trilogy) by Apple's iPhone. Now iPhone is the one to beat, and Windows Mobile lags behind dramatically.
Yeah right, Symbian with 40% market share is just rushing to beat the Iphone with its few percent share! (Not to mention that he seems to think that "Symbian" is a company...) Even RIM are ahead of them last time I checked. But yeah, this basically answers your question about why the Vista bashing - he's an Apple fan. To him, the Iphone is the market leader in phones, and Vista is crap because it isn't OS X.
Whilst there doesn't seem to have been much "new" sounding mainstream music in the last 10-15 years, I've wondered how much this was due to changes in technology.
Think about it - the 50s and 60s sounded new not because there was some new musical theory (musically a lot of it was quite basic), but because of the electric guitar. The 70s had the appearance of synths, which developed through the 80s, giving us those sounds. In the late 80s and early 90s, synths and computer technology allowed the development of any kind of sound conceivable, which gave genres such as electronic dance and industrial. Where do you go from there?
Musically, mainstream pop and rock has been pretty much the same for at least 40 years. There have been developments in less mainstream genres - but then that's still the case today, anyway.
Note that there are many different alternatives to FPTP voting, not just instant runoff - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system . It's a shame that IRV gets all the attention, as whilst it would still be an improvement to FPTP, there are many other interesting systems.
What the AC said - in the UK, we also have a simple plurality voting system that has led to a two party system. The main difference is that we have a significantly sized third party (Liberal Democrats), but unfortunately the Government has been a two party system for a long while. Furthermore, the Government has a majority, so they can force whatever laws they like through even if both the opposition parties disagree (the only hope is our 2nd house, the House of Lords). The opposition party and the Lib Dems can only really influence matters when there is disagreement within the Government itself.
Condorcet voting would be a lot better for both nations.
At least if they did that retroactively, we could laugh as Disney get sued the hell out of for all the (then) public domain stories they ripped off. The problem with the way it's being done at the moment, companies like Disney get to have it both ways.
Oh, the UK already started. Though when they realised they couldn't censor, they just criminalised possession instead - of what they consider "extreme" material (i.e., it only affects a minority of people, so they can get a way with it). Liz Longhurst should piss off to China, she'd find it a much nicer place, and where murders obviously never happen as there are no non-Government approved images for potential criminals to look at.
Philosophers! Artists! Legislators! Gather round! The age old debate of art versus porn has finally been solved:
Nobody in their right mind has any difficulty distinguishing between depictions of nudity and pornography - the fundamental problem with porn is not that it depicts naked people engaged in the natural activity of copulation, but that it is so obviously false and artificial.
So if two people film themselves shagging all night long, and then post it on YouTube, everyone would agree it's not porn? Porn is only when it's pretend, but if you do it for real, it stops being porn?
Porn, in my view, does not make people obsessed with sex - it turns you off from it; especially if you imagine this is the way it should be.
Sex is equivalent to people actually getting murdered?
So yes, pro-censorship is good sometimes as long as it's not abused.
Well let's start with you. I'd get affected if I saw goatse everyday of the year, so I'm going to say that you're not allowed to read Slashdot anymore. It's as valid as your logic!
And please don't try the "it's the parent's job to monitor their kids" argument; when the kids are surrounded by restricted materials 24/7 parents would have to hold their kids eyes shut 24/7 to stand a chance. With Internet access being as ubiquitous as it is, there's no way to guarantee young Johnny or little Billy won't get some quality alone-time with Google before they're ready for it.
Really? So how exactly does your 8 year old obtain Internet access? Sign up for an ISP himself? Buy a phone or 3G data card with laptop? Walk into an Internet cafe on his own? Even if these things were possible for an 8 year old, I have no problem with restricting them to adults - that's still not a reason for censoring the Internet for adults.
If he uses your Internet connection, then yes, it is your job. And you are free to use filtering software to do the job for you (which may not do a perfect job, but then neither would any adult censoring scheme).
Type "vagina" into your google search bar. Click on the first link.
Er yes, I get Wikipedia, which has a medical picture of a vagina. You do realise that most schools will teach children these "shocking" adult images in biology lessons?
I fear for the future generations. I really do.
Yeah, we're still waiting for the alleged apocalypse that will come from having uncensored cinema, video, TV, rock music, computer games and the Internet.
And I'll also plug Nokia's low end smartphone, the 5800 - way cheaper than an Iphone (I picked mine up PAYG, so no contract). And as you say, it's an actual smartphone (being able to multitask, can run any applications you want), where as the Iphone is really just a high end feature phone (it does Internet access, email, can run apps, has a touch screen - but these have long been standard in feature phones).
There's a nasty flipside to that - what if I'm a GPL author, someone ports it to the Iphone before me, charging a load of money from it. They're now making money from my work, which normally would be fine - except now neither I nor anyone else is able to release an Iphone port, as Apple will ban it for being a similar to an existing product.
In fact I believe this did actually happen, and was reported on Slashdot some time ago.
God knows why the article is talking about Google - Apple's locked down platform is a far greater threat to openness. In this case, Apple have the power to grant software developers a monopoly over a product, even if they weren't the ones who originally wrote it!
I guess my point was nobody would have bought the RATM single without the campaign, and therefore they are just as influenced by media/trends/hype/fashion
But that's a straw man - who's making these claims that it's bad to do anything as a result of any kind of organisation or hearing about something whatsoever? No one is claiming that, and it would be a stupid claim to make.
Clearly it's not about that, otherwise why pick X Factor? There are large numbers of products that people buy, that are advertised. There are an even larger number of things that people do, having heard about them from other people. Indeed, it's well understood that awareness of non-mainstream music is still spread through word of mouth, even if there are no adverts. Trying to make an argument of "But you're still hearing about it, therefore it's just as bad" makes no sense to me.
The only thing in common with the campaign is that people wanted something other than Yet Another X-Factor single for number 1. I feel you're reading too much into it. For the record, I suspect that most people who buy the X Factor song do decide that they like the single and so I wouldn't consider them sheep - but it's just nice to see that X Factor doesn't have a complete monopoly on the charts.
As well as simply being funny:) You're just taking it too seriously.
I agree, but note that with X Factor it's not simply a case where you have a team of separate songwriter and performer, but also that it's just cover versions. So we've already heard the song anyway. Now sure, there have been plenty of great songs that were actually covers, but the point is in those cases, the band does it in a new style. AFAICS, X Factor covers are pretty much repeats of the original. And to top it all, in this case the original song isn't even a year old.
Don't get me wrong, I play the piano and for the most part that involves me trying to play other people's music without any creative input of my own, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. But the point is, I wouldn't expect to be number 1 in the charts by doing this.
Well they had to choose something - there's been no end of "But why not this song instead?" The point is that if you tried to get 500,000 to agree on a song first, the campaign would never have worked. A lot of people have made the "not a Christmas song" argument, but neither was the X Factor one. I think the fact that the RATM song sounds the most unlikely Christmas song to me just made the point of it even more so - showing how arbitrary the charts could be, as well as simply being all the more funny.
I imagine the won't-do-what-you-tell-us was meant to be symbolic against X Factor. But even if we took it to mean the original meaning of the song, I don't believe the song was meant to be anti-corporate (RATM are signed to Sony, after all), rather anti-authoritarianism. I'm not sure how paying 29p to Sony is promoting authoritarianism.
If you have a better idea for a song, feel free to do it yourself next year - let us know how successful you are:)
I'm no fan of X Factor, but even with 20 million viewers (presumably the number of voters was less than that), the number of people who voted in the 2005 election was still higher. So how do you know that these people don't vote?
And for the million people who bought either of the singles, clearly the number of voters in elections is far higher.
Tell me, have you ever bought a single? Or took part in something trivial? Is it therefore valid for me to say "How dare you do that! There are more important things to worry about!"
I could say the same argument to you here: as much as I find things like the Digital Economy Bill serious, there are still worse things in the world. In fact, people do make those criticisms ("in other countries, people are get murdered, why do you waste your effort on some UK bill?"). And I find it very frustrating. So I find it depressing to see you using the same argument against something in turn more trivial.
What are you doing posting to Slashdot btw? Aren't there better things to be doing? And why did you pick this story? What about the endless stories we get about various computer or phone products - shouldn't those be dropped to make way for more coverage on important bills?
Yes, exactly! I just thought it would be funny too.
It's hilarious to see all these ludicrous straw man arguments trotted out, talking as if all 500,000 people had the same viewpoint, by people who are evidently getting so worked up about it. Makes me all the more glad that I took part:) (It reminds me of the Atheist Bus Campaign - there was much the same response in the media, with people making straw man arguments against those who donated, as if unable to accept that someone should spend their money how they choose.)
Depressing to see that such arguments are happening even here on Slashdot - but I suspect that's just the anti-Facebook bias shining through.
In this case by showing Sony we won't take their crap
And there's your straw man. Everyone else new about Sony long before you - who said it was a campaign against Sony in any way?
Yes, I agree it shows how silly the charts are, but that itself was part of the point for some of us:
In fact what this shows is that the system WORKS. Hype a song to a group and voila, instant hit.
You're missing the point - yes it played by the same rules, but it did so in a way that was so ludicrious, it becomes obvious how silly it is. A single from 17 years ago? That wasn't even rereleased? That wasn't in the shops? That didn't have any paid for advertising? Yes, suddenly it is apparently how silly it is that an organised campaign can get any song they like to number 1, even at the most difficult week of the year.
(Also the RATM "system" didn't involve spending large sums of money on marketing, or being accompanied with a TV show watched by millions of viewers, so not really the same.)
Now if you REALLY wanted to show you could change mass marketing, you would have gotten NOBODY to buy ANY song.
Which is a lot harder of course. Feel free to have a go yourself next year.
Well that thought did go through my mind, but I haven't abstained from all RIAA labels yet.
And I was pleased to see how easy and cheap it was to get high quality mp3s without DRM - which I wasn't really aware of before. So now they've finally given us what we want, I am pleased to support that. (If the only available downloads were DRMed, I certainly would not have bought it.)
I generally agree, but OTOH don't downplay Facebook too much - one useful property of Facebook is that if someone joins a group, it advertises it to all that persons friends. With many people typically having hundreds of friends. So just by joining the group, it's quickly advertised across the network to a large number of people.
Mainstream sites like the BBC gave it a boost of course, but they only reported that because of the large number of people joining on Facebook. Otherwise it simply wouldn't have been newsworthy. Personally I heard about it from a friend, but who had seen it on Facebook.
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
Presenting and refuting a weakened form of an opponent's argument can be a part of a valid argument. For example, one can argue that the opposing position implies that at least one other statement - being presumably easier to refute than the original position - must be true. If one refutes this weaker proposition, the refutation is valid and does not fit the above definition of a "straw man" argument. [[citation needed]]
Slashdot Mirror
Windows 98 wasn't released in this decade ;)
I agree - opinion at best, flamebait at worst. It probably made the front page because it praises OS X and the Iphone, whilst criticising Vista and Windows Mobile...
I agree about no research, he even thinks that "Symbian" (which he seems to think is a company) was "stopped in their tracks" by the Iphone, which he thinks is the winner(!)
As someone else points out, this isn't even an actual columnist - it's just a random blog, and by the looks of it anyone can sign up. Check out his not-very-active profile: http://www.itworld.com/tomhenderson .
What next? Are opinion pieces on Slashdot journal entries going to start appearing on the front page?
Andoid, though based in Linux, is enough of a variant is deserved inclusion, but not without mention of iPhone OS somehwere as well.
Why? There are plenty of other phone OSs too...
Indeed - and don't forget that Windows XP, which is so praised by Vista haters, had the same teething problems. For years people preferred to stick with 2000, and XP had the same driver troubles at first. The general rule of thumb with MS OSs has been to wait until service pack 1. The other problem with Vista was at the time of its release, many laptops still came with 1 GB. Unless you're getting a netbook, that's not been an issue for a long time. (FWIW, I don't run Vista or 7, my laptop still runs XP, and I've even got 2000 on the desktop - but I'm not pretending people should avoid upgrading anymore.)
So this blogger thinks OS X is great and Vista is pants - good for him, but why is his opinion better than any other OS fan? I stopped reading his OS X section at the "It just works." mantra. My computers work too, and do a lot more besides. What next - "Best and worst editors of the decade" where he praises Vi and slags off Emacs? He's entitled to his opinion, but let's not pretend it's anything but an opinion.
There's also this gem:
Palm, RIM, Symbian, and other rivals raced forward only to be stopped in their tracks (like Asimov's 'Mule' in the Foundation Trilogy) by Apple's iPhone. Now iPhone is the one to beat, and Windows Mobile lags behind dramatically.
Yeah right, Symbian with 40% market share is just rushing to beat the Iphone with its few percent share! (Not to mention that he seems to think that "Symbian" is a company...) Even RIM are ahead of them last time I checked. But yeah, this basically answers your question about why the Vista bashing - he's an Apple fan. To him, the Iphone is the market leader in phones, and Vista is crap because it isn't OS X.
Whilst there doesn't seem to have been much "new" sounding mainstream music in the last 10-15 years, I've wondered how much this was due to changes in technology.
Think about it - the 50s and 60s sounded new not because there was some new musical theory (musically a lot of it was quite basic), but because of the electric guitar. The 70s had the appearance of synths, which developed through the 80s, giving us those sounds. In the late 80s and early 90s, synths and computer technology allowed the development of any kind of sound conceivable, which gave genres such as electronic dance and industrial. Where do you go from there?
Musically, mainstream pop and rock has been pretty much the same for at least 40 years. There have been developments in less mainstream genres - but then that's still the case today, anyway.
Note that there are many different alternatives to FPTP voting, not just instant runoff - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system . It's a shame that IRV gets all the attention, as whilst it would still be an improvement to FPTP, there are many other interesting systems.
What the AC said - in the UK, we also have a simple plurality voting system that has led to a two party system. The main difference is that we have a significantly sized third party (Liberal Democrats), but unfortunately the Government has been a two party system for a long while. Furthermore, the Government has a majority, so they can force whatever laws they like through even if both the opposition parties disagree (the only hope is our 2nd house, the House of Lords). The opposition party and the Lib Dems can only really influence matters when there is disagreement within the Government itself.
Condorcet voting would be a lot better for both nations.
At least if they did that retroactively, we could laugh as Disney get sued the hell out of for all the (then) public domain stories they ripped off. The problem with the way it's being done at the moment, companies like Disney get to have it both ways.
Remind me how many processors, not to mention operating systems, graphics chipsets and so on has the Mac been across, again?
Oh, the UK already started. Though when they realised they couldn't censor, they just criminalised possession instead - of what they consider "extreme" material (i.e., it only affects a minority of people, so they can get a way with it). Liz Longhurst should piss off to China, she'd find it a much nicer place, and where murders obviously never happen as there are no non-Government approved images for potential criminals to look at.
Philosophers! Artists! Legislators! Gather round! The age old debate of art versus porn has finally been solved:
Nobody in their right mind has any difficulty distinguishing between depictions of nudity and pornography - the fundamental problem with porn is not that it depicts naked people engaged in the natural activity of copulation, but that it is so obviously false and artificial.
So if two people film themselves shagging all night long, and then post it on YouTube, everyone would agree it's not porn? Porn is only when it's pretend, but if you do it for real, it stops being porn?
Porn, in my view, does not make people obsessed with sex - it turns you off from it; especially if you imagine this is the way it should be.
If only the legislators agreed...
Sex is equivalent to people actually getting murdered?
So yes, pro-censorship is good sometimes as long as it's not abused.
Well let's start with you. I'd get affected if I saw goatse everyday of the year, so I'm going to say that you're not allowed to read Slashdot anymore. It's as valid as your logic!
And please don't try the "it's the parent's job to monitor their kids" argument; when the kids are surrounded by restricted materials 24/7 parents would have to hold their kids eyes shut 24/7 to stand a chance. With Internet access being as ubiquitous as it is, there's no way to guarantee young Johnny or little Billy won't get some quality alone-time with Google before they're ready for it.
Really? So how exactly does your 8 year old obtain Internet access? Sign up for an ISP himself? Buy a phone or 3G data card with laptop? Walk into an Internet cafe on his own? Even if these things were possible for an 8 year old, I have no problem with restricting them to adults - that's still not a reason for censoring the Internet for adults.
If he uses your Internet connection, then yes, it is your job. And you are free to use filtering software to do the job for you (which may not do a perfect job, but then neither would any adult censoring scheme).
Type "vagina" into your google search bar. Click on the first link.
Er yes, I get Wikipedia, which has a medical picture of a vagina. You do realise that most schools will teach children these "shocking" adult images in biology lessons?
I fear for the future generations. I really do.
Yeah, we're still waiting for the alleged apocalypse that will come from having uncensored cinema, video, TV, rock music, computer games and the Internet.
And I'll also plug Nokia's low end smartphone, the 5800 - way cheaper than an Iphone (I picked mine up PAYG, so no contract). And as you say, it's an actual smartphone (being able to multitask, can run any applications you want), where as the Iphone is really just a high end feature phone (it does Internet access, email, can run apps, has a touch screen - but these have long been standard in feature phones).
And "Mac" OS is BSD, right?
There's a nasty flipside to that - what if I'm a GPL author, someone ports it to the Iphone before me, charging a load of money from it. They're now making money from my work, which normally would be fine - except now neither I nor anyone else is able to release an Iphone port, as Apple will ban it for being a similar to an existing product.
In fact I believe this did actually happen, and was reported on Slashdot some time ago.
God knows why the article is talking about Google - Apple's locked down platform is a far greater threat to openness. In this case, Apple have the power to grant software developers a monopoly over a product, even if they weren't the ones who originally wrote it!
I guess my point was nobody would have bought the RATM single without the campaign, and therefore they are just as influenced by media/trends/hype/fashion
But that's a straw man - who's making these claims that it's bad to do anything as a result of any kind of organisation or hearing about something whatsoever? No one is claiming that, and it would be a stupid claim to make.
Clearly it's not about that, otherwise why pick X Factor? There are large numbers of products that people buy, that are advertised. There are an even larger number of things that people do, having heard about them from other people. Indeed, it's well understood that awareness of non-mainstream music is still spread through word of mouth, even if there are no adverts. Trying to make an argument of "But you're still hearing about it, therefore it's just as bad" makes no sense to me.
The only thing in common with the campaign is that people wanted something other than Yet Another X-Factor single for number 1. I feel you're reading too much into it. For the record, I suspect that most people who buy the X Factor song do decide that they like the single and so I wouldn't consider them sheep - but it's just nice to see that X Factor doesn't have a complete monopoly on the charts.
As well as simply being funny :) You're just taking it too seriously.
(Mod abuse yet again - how is "1" overrated...)
I agree, but note that with X Factor it's not simply a case where you have a team of separate songwriter and performer, but also that it's just cover versions. So we've already heard the song anyway. Now sure, there have been plenty of great songs that were actually covers, but the point is in those cases, the band does it in a new style. AFAICS, X Factor covers are pretty much repeats of the original. And to top it all, in this case the original song isn't even a year old.
Don't get me wrong, I play the piano and for the most part that involves me trying to play other people's music without any creative input of my own, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. But the point is, I wouldn't expect to be number 1 in the charts by doing this.
Well they had to choose something - there's been no end of "But why not this song instead?" The point is that if you tried to get 500,000 to agree on a song first, the campaign would never have worked. A lot of people have made the "not a Christmas song" argument, but neither was the X Factor one. I think the fact that the RATM song sounds the most unlikely Christmas song to me just made the point of it even more so - showing how arbitrary the charts could be, as well as simply being all the more funny.
I imagine the won't-do-what-you-tell-us was meant to be symbolic against X Factor. But even if we took it to mean the original meaning of the song, I don't believe the song was meant to be anti-corporate (RATM are signed to Sony, after all), rather anti-authoritarianism. I'm not sure how paying 29p to Sony is promoting authoritarianism.
If you have a better idea for a song, feel free to do it yourself next year - let us know how successful you are :)
I'm no fan of X Factor, but even with 20 million viewers (presumably the number of voters was less than that), the number of people who voted in the 2005 election was still higher. So how do you know that these people don't vote?
And for the million people who bought either of the singles, clearly the number of voters in elections is far higher.
Tell me, have you ever bought a single? Or took part in something trivial? Is it therefore valid for me to say "How dare you do that! There are more important things to worry about!"
I could say the same argument to you here: as much as I find things like the Digital Economy Bill serious, there are still worse things in the world. In fact, people do make those criticisms ("in other countries, people are get murdered, why do you waste your effort on some UK bill?"). And I find it very frustrating. So I find it depressing to see you using the same argument against something in turn more trivial.
What are you doing posting to Slashdot btw? Aren't there better things to be doing? And why did you pick this story? What about the endless stories we get about various computer or phone products - shouldn't those be dropped to make way for more coverage on important bills?
Yes, exactly! I just thought it would be funny too.
It's hilarious to see all these ludicrous straw man arguments trotted out, talking as if all 500,000 people had the same viewpoint, by people who are evidently getting so worked up about it. Makes me all the more glad that I took part :) (It reminds me of the Atheist Bus Campaign - there was much the same response in the media, with people making straw man arguments against those who donated, as if unable to accept that someone should spend their money how they choose.)
Depressing to see that such arguments are happening even here on Slashdot - but I suspect that's just the anti-Facebook bias shining through.
In this case by showing Sony we won't take their crap
And there's your straw man. Everyone else new about Sony long before you - who said it was a campaign against Sony in any way?
Yes, I agree it shows how silly the charts are, but that itself was part of the point for some of us:
In fact what this shows is that the system WORKS. Hype a song to a group and voila, instant hit.
You're missing the point - yes it played by the same rules, but it did so in a way that was so ludicrious, it becomes obvious how silly it is. A single from 17 years ago? That wasn't even rereleased? That wasn't in the shops? That didn't have any paid for advertising? Yes, suddenly it is apparently how silly it is that an organised campaign can get any song they like to number 1, even at the most difficult week of the year.
(Also the RATM "system" didn't involve spending large sums of money on marketing, or being accompanied with a TV show watched by millions of viewers, so not really the same.)
Now if you REALLY wanted to show you could change mass marketing, you would have gotten NOBODY to buy ANY song.
Which is a lot harder of course. Feel free to have a go yourself next year.
Well that thought did go through my mind, but I haven't abstained from all RIAA labels yet.
And I was pleased to see how easy and cheap it was to get high quality mp3s without DRM - which I wasn't really aware of before. So now they've finally given us what we want, I am pleased to support that. (If the only available downloads were DRMed, I certainly would not have bought it.)
I generally agree, but OTOH don't downplay Facebook too much - one useful property of Facebook is that if someone joins a group, it advertises it to all that persons friends. With many people typically having hundreds of friends. So just by joining the group, it's quickly advertised across the network to a large number of people. Mainstream sites like the BBC gave it a boost of course, but they only reported that because of the large number of people joining on Facebook. Otherwise it simply wouldn't have been newsworthy. Personally I heard about it from a friend, but who had seen it on Facebook.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
Presenting and refuting a weakened form of an opponent's argument can be a part of a valid argument. For example, one can argue that the opposing position implies that at least one other statement - being presumably easier to refute than the original position - must be true. If one refutes this weaker proposition, the refutation is valid and does not fit the above definition of a "straw man" argument. [[citation needed]]