Dark matter and dark energy are just our versions of the epicycles. Convent for expressing what we see but no basis in reality.
You can only be confident about something like that if you're incredibly impatient, and don't know much about how hard this stuff is. The earliest observational evidence of dark matter came from the 1930s, when Fritz Zwicky measured the line-of-sight velocities of galaxies in clusters and realized that there had to be more mass in clusters than could be attributed to the galaxies alone, or there wouldn't be enough gravity to keep them together as a cluster. It was another 30+ years later that we observed with X-ray telescopes a decent-sized chunk of that missing mass in clusters, in the form of a hot intracluster plasma at temperatures of tens of millions of degrees that fills the space between galaxies in clusters and, in rich clusters of galaxies, contributes several times more mass to the cluster than the galaxies within it. Thirty-plus years, for something that's fairly easy to see once you have the technology that can look there (X-ray telescopes); it took us a while to get it.
All our cosmological theories may turn out to be complete crap. But it's absurd to say so now on the basis of complaints like 'we haven't solved the dark matter problem yet' or 'we can't explain a nonzero vacuum energy.' There was a fair amount of time between Oersted and Maxwell, as well. In the meantime, the most plausible theories will get pursued, and we'll see.
By the "underclass," I presume you mean 13-17 year old kids from middle class families, since that's apparently the makeup of most of the looters.
Citation?
Uh, pretty much every single article in the BBC, the Guardian, or the Times today? That's why Tim Godwin was repeatedly quoted and shown on TV Monday night as saying that the most essential thing to control Tuesday night's rioting was for parents to keep their kids at home.
Looking at the footage reveals that most of the looters are black.
Not what I'm seeing on BBC or ITN. Stuff like the two white teenage girls speaking here is a lot more typical.
Furthermore the rioting all started in the poor areas of London - Tottenham, Toxteth, Lewisham etc.
It started in Tottenham because the Duggan shooting was in Tottenham. Since then it's happened everywhere. Crouch End and Catford, as just two examples, don't exactly strike me as warrens of council housing.
This would make sense if it wasn't for the fact that both arrests, and interviews granted to the media, indicate that the majority of the looters appear to be 13-17 year old boys and girls. That's why a major push towards parents to keep their kids home has been taking place during the last 24 hours -- because it's the kids that have been doing the damage.
I was a graduate student in Ann Arbor at the beginning of the 90s. At the time, the Borders brothers still owned Borders, and there were just two Borders stores: one in (I think) Plainfield (a Detroit suburb), and the original store on State Street. I loved that store like I've never loved a bookstore. The best thing about it was the staff that worked there. To get a job there, you had to pass a written test; and if you showed expertise in a particular subject area, you got to take some responsibility for ordering and stocking that subject area. The result was that if you walked in looking for a book on numerical thermodynamics, or differences in translations of The Inferno, you had a pretty good chance of being able to ask questions of someone who knew about the topic and had ordered the books and could provide you with useful info. Under no circumstances at all were you being helped by a high school kid who didn't know much of anything about the merchandise.
Then the brand got sold (to Waldenbooks/K-Mart, I believe), the State Street store moved into larger quarters (the old Jacobsen's store), they exploded coast-to-coast, and I found myself wandering into Borders in other cities that were certainly big, but didn't have the single biggest thing I liked about Borders: an exceptionally competent staff. Their newer owners had decided to compete purely on price and selection; it was inevitable that an internet vendor was eventually going to be able to beat them on those.
Which leaves me missing what I liked about them in the first place, something no internet vendor (even Amazon) has really replaced.
Not such a good idea to appeal to "the people" in a discussion sub-thread where Rosa Parks or Selma was mentioned. When the U.S. judiciary in the 1950s, and the executive in the early 1960s, acted to protect the civil rights of blacks, "the people" were not yet in favor. For instance, the majority of Americans thought Brown v. Board of Education was decided wrongly. Sometimes the U.S. government acts against the popular will of the people -- and thank goodness for it.
That's not to say that your appeal to "the people" is off-base -- not at all. Just that the world has more shades of gray than you seem to be allowing. Similarly, many people here on/. are adamantly opposed to government secrecy of any kind, even though it's easy to point to cases where government secrecy saved lives or prevented horrible things from happening. Those cases are almost always historical -- that is, they happened decades ago -- because at the time such events occur (or are prevented from occurring), the secrets are, well, secrets, so most people don't know about the positive role secrecy played until a long time later when the need for secrecy is no longer present. But that doesn't mean there aren't secrets being kept right now that aren't necessary, despite the black-and-white worldview of a lot of people here.
Not in climate science you don't. If you apply such skepticism to something like the Greenhiuse effect or the utility of climte models, you grt called a Denier and worse.
Well, yeah, if you doubt the greenhouse effect, you'll get called worse -- like, say, stunningly ignorant -- since not only is the presence of a greenhouse effect on Earth well-established since the mid-1800s, but human habitation on Earth would be hard-pressed if it didn't exist. The terrestrial greenhouse effect is why the average temperature on Earth is something like 15 degrees C and not -18 degrees C.
Hint: "greenhouse effect" is not a synonym for global warming. Anthropogenic global warming is thought to involve an increase in magnitude of the greenhouse effect. But even if there's no anthropogenic global warming, the greenhouse effect would still be around -- and thank goodness, too.
I left cosmology ten years ago after the dreaded third postdoc, so I've no doubt I'm out of the loop on a lot of things. But still, I'm surprised by a lot of your post. There's a bunch I feel like agreeing with/disagreeing with/asking about, but I don't have the kind of years it must have taken you to write that to reply! So I'll just pick out a couple of things:
A priori there's no reason to actually connect the dark matter needed for galaxies and clusters with the dark matter employed in cosmology. Cosmology is based on the Friedman equations -- one saying how fast the universe expands and the other saying whether it's accelerating. The "dark matter" in cosmology is just a number that appears in these equations. Identifying it with the dark matter in clusters appears to make sense... but only if you believe the equations are seriously physically meaningful.
Sure, logically you can make that argument. But you have a strong hint, don't you, from the fact that the numbers seem to work out. You have a number of independent ways of getting at the dark matter in clusters of galaxies -- (M/L), the cluster baryon fraction, weak lensing, etc. -- which are fairly consistent with each other. (we'll ignore stuff like the luminosity/temperature/mass functions of clusters, which also seem consistent with everything I'm going to say, but introduce new assumptions about density fluctuations etc.) In the first two -- (M/L) and the baryon fraction -- your method for deriving Omega_matter doesn't depend on the Friedmann eqns, or even the Robertson-Walker metric. I then take that value for Omega_matter, the flatness result from WMAP, and get a value for Omega_lambda. Now I *have* introduced cosmology, because in looking at the power spectrum of temperature fluctuations on the surface of last scattering, my relation of angular scale to redshift depends on the RW metric. And maybe, as you say, those equations don't mean anything physical, so that value of Omega_lambda doesn't really mean anything. But if that's true, then why does the hypothetical universe described by those values of (Omega_matter, Omega_lambda) do so well with observations on a broad range of scales -- such the high-z supernova data or the morphology distribution of clusters at low redshift -- things that wouldn't have to be consistent with each other if the Friedmann equations were meaningless?
(snip)
But all this is built on standard cosmology - the Friedman equations. And here's the rub: these describe the behaviour of the universe on average and come from assuming that the universe is composed of homogeneous and isotropic 3D slices. But the universe isn't homogeneous and isotropic! If it was we wouldn't be here. Instead we're like a loaf of wholemeal bread, filled with chasms and filaments.
From my (admittedly dated) experience, nobody ignores the large scale structure of the universe in arguing for homogeneity/isotropy. They argue instead that we converge to it as larger volumes are considered. The surface of last scattering gives you an opportunity to test this idea, and it doesn't seem crazy. And we've gotten a long, long way with the Robertson-Walker metric, the derivation of which is built on homogeneity and isotropy. Granted that there have been surprises in the application of the redshift-distance relation (derivable from the RW metric), such as the Type Ia SNe data that got the whole "dark energy" mess rolling (I've always wanted to slap Mike Turner for coining that phrase -- can't think of one I hate more); but I can't see how inhomogeneity-induced perturbations to the RW metric would manifest themselves on large scales exactly the opposite from how they manifest themselves on smaller scales, in the near vicinity of structures.
Would someone mind explaining (for those of us who have some C experience, but aren't kernel hackers) what the Big Kernel Lock is? In particular, is this something that will impact the desktop user?
If PJ regularly featured tough challenges to her worldview and responded to them with reason and nuance, then she might be credited with merely trying to create a high S/N discussion site. The impression I get from many posters to this discussion is that she simply removes the side of the debate she doesn't agree with. I'm not capable of proving that's the case. Any evidence of that would be deleted from her site. Lacking any transparency in moderation it's difficult to just take her word that nothing she deleted had any value to begin with. Those charging her with tyrannical moderation seem to be disaffected supporters more than sockpuppet trolls. There could be a conspiracy there, but we'd need evidence to believe that. Maybe if all the post IP addresses came from Darl McBride's house that would be believable. Otherwise I regard it as fanciful.
Sorry for the time it's taken me to reply reply.
Anyway, I ask you to look more carefully at your response. You are criticizing her for something for which you admit you have no evidence; in fact, by explaining this away with "Any evidence of that would be deleted from her site," you're effectively using that lack of evidence as evidence. Your comment later dismissing claims of sockpuppetry as a conspiracy theory lacking evidence is thus ironic, because your own assertion lacks evidence, and the throwing of suspicion on missing evidence is a standard argument technique of people who push conspiracy theories.
Slashdot has managed to get by fine for more than a decade without a similar deletion policy. I would prefer the distinction between troll and serious debater be left up to the reader, and not the admin. I don't want to be a part of any site that can only deal with trolls through heavy handed moderation. I think many here feel the same way. If she's been deleting posts, where is the exact line? Are we even able to see what posts were deleted to see if they deserved deletion? I doubt it. It's this lack of transparency and seeming lack of interest in open discussion that turns me off of any community she may head.
Now, PJ is hardly alone in running her site this way. But I'm a free software supporter with strong ideals and high expectations. Slashdot, for all its flaws, manages to meet these ideals. Groklaw has fallen short.
"Managed to get by fine"? "Managed to meet these ideals"? One must also consider what the intended purpose of each site is. If you think Slashdot is taken as seriously as Groklaw in the respective community of each, you're way off. And that's not meant as a criticism of/., btw; Taco and Hemos decided early on what the point of this place was, and there's nothing wrong with the choice that was made. But the S/N here is very, very low; and there's a place in the world for fora with more restrictive policies meant to achieve a high S/N and to facilitate actual work. Not everything needs to be a free-for-all, especially when free-for-all fora already exist elsewhere.
By "displaying here", I meant "in this thread on Slashdot". I'm assuming you only read my post, and didn't read the numerous posts from the poster to whom I replied. If you had, you wouldn't need to ask your question.
Meanwhile, as mentioned by others who have served, this fixation on "coed showers" is hilarious because once you're out of boot camp, there aren't group showers. The fact that so many people with anti-gay views think first of group showers, of hot male bodies soaping up together, tells us multiple things about them.
I think Assange's point is more that it is much easier to keep a small number of secrets than a large number and that this is incompatible with a manifestly unjust system.
I think that's a perfectly reasonable statement, from which most of the rest of what you wrote logically follows. However, I don't think your statement of Assange's point is consistent with the quote from him linked-to and cited above.
Wikileaks' target is unjust secretive material. They have been selective in their publishing and concentrated on revealing two-faced politics and outright corruption.
Putting aside for a moment the question of whether they have been as selective as you say -- as someone would argue that they haven't -- my point is that while you say their target is "unjust secretive material," Assange's public statement above indicates that his target is *all* secretive material -- that *all* keeping of secrets is bad.
The question is essentially whether one believes that governments should ever keep secrets. The position of Assange, and most people here, appears to be "no, they shouldn't, ever." The kindest thing I can say about that position is that it's naive.
If that were their position, why would they redact anything at all?
That's a fair point. But it's also interesting, because such redaction seems at odds with the 'statement of purpose' quoted above, to which I originally replied. There, Assange doesn't say that his intent is to inhibit the keeping of secrets that shouldn't be kept; he explicitly states his intent to inhibit the keeping of secrets *at all*.
The kindest thing I can say about that position is that it's naive.
Just like in the movies:
ROOKIE COP: Don't we need a search warrant?
EXPERIENCE COP: Don't be naive, how could we do our job if we went around collecting search warrants for everyone? Are you saying we should just let this murdering bastard get away?
ROOKIE COP: Of course not.
EXPERIENCED COP: Yes, of course not. Ideals are wonderful when you're not the guy on the street dodging bullets. I know what's right and what's wrong, I don't need a judge's permission to uphold the law.
See the hypocrisy?
No, sorry, I see an analogy that doesn't seem to me to be relevant instead. What am I missing? How does this relate?
No, governments should not keep secrets. You may ask, then how does one conduct warfare without secrets? But I ask you, why should a government in this day and age be conducting warfare? The U.S. military hasn't defended the country from an invading army once in the last one hundred years, yet we've been at war multiple times. If the government wasn't able to keep secrets, we never would have invaded Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place.
This example doesn't make much sense to me. Government secrecy did not hide a poor justification for the invasion of Iraq. There was a wealth of information in the public sphere that made it quite clear that the invasion of Iraq was both unjustified and a bad idea. We just failed, as a population, to consider it. The invasion of Iraq does indeed necessitate some finger-pointing; but most of that finger-pointing is at you and at me.
I understand that there are small exceptions to this. When one is searching for a fugitive, it's best not to publish all the information the investigation has unfolded. But when that investigation is over there is no reason to keep the information secret.
I'm not sure where this example is coming from, but it doesn't seem to apply. What are you talking about that isn't addressed by the Rules of Discovery?
Files become declassified over time, but as of now there's no assurance that ALL files will become declassified over time.
In the U.S., declassification is codified as required to occur within 25 years, unless certain narrowly-defined criteria apply.
Classified status should not be given to a file for the sake of saving the government from embarrassment.
I agree, and I think most other people do too -- which is why that's already illegal, in the U.S. anyway.
I'm not suggesting a conclusion to draw -- I'm suggesting drawing no conclusion at all.
In which case you could have a rogue government that did obvious evil things, claimed to do secret good things, and was not subject to whatever cures democracy could provide, since everyone would be paralyzed by the claims -- which might very well be false, in keeping with the known evils of the government -- of good.
That doesn't follow at all. In the scenario you describe, my conclusion would be "I don't know the status of what, if anything, they're doing behind the scenes; but I know they're doing bad things right in front of my face. So the kindest thing I can say is that maybe, *maybe*, it's a wash. Time to go."
Believing that the government should never, ever keep secrets? That point-of-view seems unrealistic.
Oh, I don't think that it is realistic to expect a totally transparent government. OTOH, I do think that deviation from total transparency is at least not good, when justified, and usually bad, as it isn't.
If it's "justified", then by definition, how is it "not good"? That seems a contradiction.
So I see nothing wrong with condemning a government that keeps secrets from its people, and spitting upon the officials who engage in this. If they've done something wrong, and are cowering behind the claim of secrecy, they deserve it. And if they've done something good, but are tragically forced to conceal it, and are condemned nevertheless, the Super Chicken rule applies: They knew the job was dangerous when they took it.
I bolded the part to which I wanted to reply. Your statement here suggests that the only harm of considering all secret-keeping bad and applying the "cures democracy can provide" is to those who (as part of their jobs) keep secrets that'd you'd agree are justifiably kept secret if you were in the know. I'd argue that there's significantly more harm than just that -- that in fact, that's the least of the harms caused.
This, chiefly. I am an American citizen. I have the right to judge how well the government that works for me is doing. And, since it only is legitimately empowered to govern if it has the consent of the governed, I have the right to grant or withdraw my consent as I see fit. All Americans have these rights.
I'm obviously not going to just trust them. The entire structure of the government is founded on distrust of power. If they keep secrets, then not only is it wholly appropriate to judge them on the basis of what information we do have, it is also fair to condemn them for keeping secrets.
I think it's perfectly sensible to say that you can only judge on the information you have. I think it's also important to consider the possibility that you may have incomplete information, particularly given that we're talking about organizations that we already know keep secrets. That doesn't require "just trusting them" -- not at all. I'm not suggesting a conclusion to draw -- I'm suggesting drawing no conclusion at all.
On the other hand, I think it's naive at best to "condemn (the government) for keeping secrets". I can understand being upset with the government about the keeping of some specific secret or secrets. But any secret? Believing that the government should never, ever keep secrets? That point-of-view seems unrealistic. You don't have to work hard to think of secrets the U.S. government has kept in the past where keeping those secrets was the right thing to do, and revealing them at the time could have been catastrophic.
It is in the best interests of all those anti-terrorism organisations to announce any success they have. Vocally.
This is not true. While you're correct that announcing thwarted terrorist actions, and attributing those successes to your efforts, can have the effects you describe -- "justifies their future funding and expansion, and furthers the careers of those in charge" -- it can have other, bad, effects as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Dark matter and dark energy are just our versions of the epicycles. Convent for expressing what we see but no basis in reality.
You can only be confident about something like that if you're incredibly impatient, and don't know much about how hard this stuff is. The earliest observational evidence of dark matter came from the 1930s, when Fritz Zwicky measured the line-of-sight velocities of galaxies in clusters and realized that there had to be more mass in clusters than could be attributed to the galaxies alone, or there wouldn't be enough gravity to keep them together as a cluster. It was another 30+ years later that we observed with X-ray telescopes a decent-sized chunk of that missing mass in clusters, in the form of a hot intracluster plasma at temperatures of tens of millions of degrees that fills the space between galaxies in clusters and, in rich clusters of galaxies, contributes several times more mass to the cluster than the galaxies within it. Thirty-plus years, for something that's fairly easy to see once you have the technology that can look there (X-ray telescopes); it took us a while to get it.
All our cosmological theories may turn out to be complete crap. But it's absurd to say so now on the basis of complaints like 'we haven't solved the dark matter problem yet' or 'we can't explain a nonzero vacuum energy.' There was a fair amount of time between Oersted and Maxwell, as well. In the meantime, the most plausible theories will get pursued, and we'll see.
There's too many to read. You won't read them all. But it makes me feel better to say this: thanks. Your work has meant a lot to me.
By the "underclass," I presume you mean 13-17 year old kids from middle class families, since that's apparently the makeup of most of the looters.
Citation?
Uh, pretty much every single article in the BBC, the Guardian, or the Times today? That's why Tim Godwin was repeatedly quoted and shown on TV Monday night as saying that the most essential thing to control Tuesday night's rioting was for parents to keep their kids at home.
Looking at the footage reveals that most of the looters are black.
Not what I'm seeing on BBC or ITN. Stuff like the two white teenage girls speaking here is a lot more typical.
Furthermore the rioting all started in the poor areas of London - Tottenham, Toxteth, Lewisham etc.
It started in Tottenham because the Duggan shooting was in Tottenham. Since then it's happened everywhere. Crouch End and Catford, as just two examples, don't exactly strike me as warrens of council housing.
By the "underclass," I presume you mean 13-17 year old kids from middle class families, since that's apparently the makeup of most of the looters.
It's hard to feel much sympathy for the plight of that underclass.
This would make sense if it wasn't for the fact that both arrests, and interviews granted to the media, indicate that the majority of the looters appear to be 13-17 year old boys and girls. That's why a major push towards parents to keep their kids home has been taking place during the last 24 hours -- because it's the kids that have been doing the damage.
I was a graduate student in Ann Arbor at the beginning of the 90s. At the time, the Borders brothers still owned Borders, and there were just two Borders stores: one in (I think) Plainfield (a Detroit suburb), and the original store on State Street. I loved that store like I've never loved a bookstore. The best thing about it was the staff that worked there. To get a job there, you had to pass a written test; and if you showed expertise in a particular subject area, you got to take some responsibility for ordering and stocking that subject area. The result was that if you walked in looking for a book on numerical thermodynamics, or differences in translations of The Inferno, you had a pretty good chance of being able to ask questions of someone who knew about the topic and had ordered the books and could provide you with useful info. Under no circumstances at all were you being helped by a high school kid who didn't know much of anything about the merchandise.
Then the brand got sold (to Waldenbooks/K-Mart, I believe), the State Street store moved into larger quarters (the old Jacobsen's store), they exploded coast-to-coast, and I found myself wandering into Borders in other cities that were certainly big, but didn't have the single biggest thing I liked about Borders: an exceptionally competent staff. Their newer owners had decided to compete purely on price and selection; it was inevitable that an internet vendor was eventually going to be able to beat them on those.
Which leaves me missing what I liked about them in the first place, something no internet vendor (even Amazon) has really replaced.
You're probably going to get modded down for that; but it illustrates the error in the original assertion quite succinctly.
Not such a good idea to appeal to "the people" in a discussion sub-thread where Rosa Parks or Selma was mentioned. When the U.S. judiciary in the 1950s, and the executive in the early 1960s, acted to protect the civil rights of blacks, "the people" were not yet in favor. For instance, the majority of Americans thought Brown v. Board of Education was decided wrongly. Sometimes the U.S. government acts against the popular will of the people -- and thank goodness for it.
That's not to say that your appeal to "the people" is off-base -- not at all. Just that the world has more shades of gray than you seem to be allowing. Similarly, many people here on /. are adamantly opposed to government secrecy of any kind, even though it's easy to point to cases where government secrecy saved lives or prevented horrible things from happening. Those cases are almost always historical -- that is, they happened decades ago -- because at the time such events occur (or are prevented from occurring), the secrets are, well, secrets, so most people don't know about the positive role secrecy played until a long time later when the need for secrecy is no longer present. But that doesn't mean there aren't secrets being kept right now that aren't necessary, despite the black-and-white worldview of a lot of people here.
This has been asked-for many, many times on /.
Nobody here ever makes the effort to substantiate this claim.
However, lots and lots of people here repeat it, nonetheless.
Not in climate science you don't. If you apply such skepticism to something like the Greenhiuse effect or the utility of climte models, you grt called a Denier and worse.
Well, yeah, if you doubt the greenhouse effect, you'll get called worse -- like, say, stunningly ignorant -- since not only is the presence of a greenhouse effect on Earth well-established since the mid-1800s, but human habitation on Earth would be hard-pressed if it didn't exist. The terrestrial greenhouse effect is why the average temperature on Earth is something like 15 degrees C and not -18 degrees C.
Hint: "greenhouse effect" is not a synonym for global warming. Anthropogenic global warming is thought to involve an increase in magnitude of the greenhouse effect. But even if there's no anthropogenic global warming, the greenhouse effect would still be around -- and thank goodness, too.
A priori there's no reason to actually connect the dark matter needed for galaxies and clusters with the dark matter employed in cosmology. Cosmology is based on the Friedman equations -- one saying how fast the universe expands and the other saying whether it's accelerating. The "dark matter" in cosmology is just a number that appears in these equations. Identifying it with the dark matter in clusters appears to make sense... but only if you believe the equations are seriously physically meaningful.
Sure, logically you can make that argument. But you have a strong hint, don't you, from the fact that the numbers seem to work out. You have a number of independent ways of getting at the dark matter in clusters of galaxies -- (M/L), the cluster baryon fraction, weak lensing, etc. -- which are fairly consistent with each other. (we'll ignore stuff like the luminosity/temperature/mass functions of clusters, which also seem consistent with everything I'm going to say, but introduce new assumptions about density fluctuations etc.) In the first two -- (M/L) and the baryon fraction -- your method for deriving Omega_matter doesn't depend on the Friedmann eqns, or even the Robertson-Walker metric. I then take that value for Omega_matter, the flatness result from WMAP, and get a value for Omega_lambda. Now I *have* introduced cosmology, because in looking at the power spectrum of temperature fluctuations on the surface of last scattering, my relation of angular scale to redshift depends on the RW metric. And maybe, as you say, those equations don't mean anything physical, so that value of Omega_lambda doesn't really mean anything. But if that's true, then why does the hypothetical universe described by those values of (Omega_matter, Omega_lambda) do so well with observations on a broad range of scales -- such the high-z supernova data or the morphology distribution of clusters at low redshift -- things that wouldn't have to be consistent with each other if the Friedmann equations were meaningless?
(snip) But all this is built on standard cosmology - the Friedman equations. And here's the rub: these describe the behaviour of the universe on average and come from assuming that the universe is composed of homogeneous and isotropic 3D slices. But the universe isn't homogeneous and isotropic! If it was we wouldn't be here. Instead we're like a loaf of wholemeal bread, filled with chasms and filaments.
From my (admittedly dated) experience, nobody ignores the large scale structure of the universe in arguing for homogeneity/isotropy. They argue instead that we converge to it as larger volumes are considered. The surface of last scattering gives you an opportunity to test this idea, and it doesn't seem crazy. And we've gotten a long, long way with the Robertson-Walker metric, the derivation of which is built on homogeneity and isotropy. Granted that there have been surprises in the application of the redshift-distance relation (derivable from the RW metric), such as the Type Ia SNe data that got the whole "dark energy" mess rolling (I've always wanted to slap Mike Turner for coining that phrase -- can't think of one I hate more); but I can't see how inhomogeneity-induced perturbations to the RW metric would manifest themselves on large scales exactly the opposite from how they manifest themselves on smaller scales, in the near vicinity of structures.
Would someone mind explaining (for those of us who have some C experience, but aren't kernel hackers) what the Big Kernel Lock is? In particular, is this something that will impact the desktop user?
If PJ regularly featured tough challenges to her worldview and responded to them with reason and nuance, then she might be credited with merely trying to create a high S/N discussion site. The impression I get from many posters to this discussion is that she simply removes the side of the debate she doesn't agree with. I'm not capable of proving that's the case. Any evidence of that would be deleted from her site. Lacking any transparency in moderation it's difficult to just take her word that nothing she deleted had any value to begin with. Those charging her with tyrannical moderation seem to be disaffected supporters more than sockpuppet trolls. There could be a conspiracy there, but we'd need evidence to believe that. Maybe if all the post IP addresses came from Darl McBride's house that would be believable. Otherwise I regard it as fanciful.
Sorry for the time it's taken me to reply reply.
Anyway, I ask you to look more carefully at your response. You are criticizing her for something for which you admit you have no evidence; in fact, by explaining this away with "Any evidence of that would be deleted from her site," you're effectively using that lack of evidence as evidence. Your comment later dismissing claims of sockpuppetry as a conspiracy theory lacking evidence is thus ironic, because your own assertion lacks evidence, and the throwing of suspicion on missing evidence is a standard argument technique of people who push conspiracy theories.
Slashdot has managed to get by fine for more than a decade without a similar deletion policy. I would prefer the distinction between troll and serious debater be left up to the reader, and not the admin. I don't want to be a part of any site that can only deal with trolls through heavy handed moderation. I think many here feel the same way. If she's been deleting posts, where is the exact line? Are we even able to see what posts were deleted to see if they deserved deletion? I doubt it. It's this lack of transparency and seeming lack of interest in open discussion that turns me off of any community she may head.
Now, PJ is hardly alone in running her site this way. But I'm a free software supporter with strong ideals and high expectations. Slashdot, for all its flaws, manages to meet these ideals. Groklaw has fallen short.
"Managed to get by fine"? "Managed to meet these ideals"? One must also consider what the intended purpose of each site is. If you think Slashdot is taken as seriously as Groklaw in the respective community of each, you're way off. And that's not meant as a criticism of /., btw; Taco and Hemos decided early on what the point of this place was, and there's nothing wrong with the choice that was made. But the S/N here is very, very low; and there's a place in the world for fora with more restrictive policies meant to achieve a high S/N and to facilitate actual work. Not everything needs to be a free-for-all, especially when free-for-all fora already exist elsewhere.
So you were opposed to many countries' economic sanctions against South Africa during the apartheid era?
I never said or implied there were group showers, simply pointing out female and male showers are still separate.
As are male and male showers, so it's irrelevant.
I read the whole thread, and still have to conclude you have no cause to call parent juvenile.
That tells me everything I need to know about continuing this conversation with you, then. Thanks for keeping me from wasting my time!
By "displaying here", I meant "in this thread on Slashdot". I'm assuming you only read my post, and didn't read the numerous posts from the poster to whom I replied. If you had, you wouldn't need to ask your question.
Meanwhile, as mentioned by others who have served, this fixation on "coed showers" is hilarious because once you're out of boot camp, there aren't group showers. The fact that so many people with anti-gay views think first of group showers, of hot male bodies soaping up together, tells us multiple things about them.
Why in the world would you think any gay soldiers would be sexually attracted to you?
Quite frankly, given the juvenile perspective on sexuality you're displaying here, I'd be stunned if anyone would be sexually attracted to you.
I think Assange's point is more that it is much easier to keep a small number of secrets than a large number and that this is incompatible with a manifestly unjust system.
I think that's a perfectly reasonable statement, from which most of the rest of what you wrote logically follows. However, I don't think your statement of Assange's point is consistent with the quote from him linked-to and cited above.
Wikileaks' target is unjust secretive material. They have been selective in their publishing and concentrated on revealing two-faced politics and outright corruption.
Putting aside for a moment the question of whether they have been as selective as you say -- as someone would argue that they haven't -- my point is that while you say their target is "unjust secretive material," Assange's public statement above indicates that his target is *all* secretive material -- that *all* keeping of secrets is bad.
The question is essentially whether one believes that governments should ever keep secrets. The position of Assange, and most people here, appears to be "no, they shouldn't, ever." The kindest thing I can say about that position is that it's naive.
If that were their position, why would they redact anything at all?
That's a fair point. But it's also interesting, because such redaction seems at odds with the 'statement of purpose' quoted above, to which I originally replied. There, Assange doesn't say that his intent is to inhibit the keeping of secrets that shouldn't be kept; he explicitly states his intent to inhibit the keeping of secrets *at all*.
The kindest thing I can say about that position is that it's naive.
Just like in the movies:
ROOKIE COP: Don't we need a search warrant?
EXPERIENCE COP: Don't be naive, how could we do our job if we went around collecting search warrants for everyone? Are you saying we should just let this murdering bastard get away?
ROOKIE COP: Of course not.
EXPERIENCED COP: Yes, of course not. Ideals are wonderful when you're not the guy on the street dodging bullets. I know what's right and what's wrong, I don't need a judge's permission to uphold the law.
See the hypocrisy?
No, sorry, I see an analogy that doesn't seem to me to be relevant instead. What am I missing? How does this relate?
No, governments should not keep secrets. You may ask, then how does one conduct warfare without secrets? But I ask you, why should a government in this day and age be conducting warfare? The U.S. military hasn't defended the country from an invading army once in the last one hundred years, yet we've been at war multiple times. If the government wasn't able to keep secrets, we never would have invaded Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place.
This example doesn't make much sense to me. Government secrecy did not hide a poor justification for the invasion of Iraq. There was a wealth of information in the public sphere that made it quite clear that the invasion of Iraq was both unjustified and a bad idea. We just failed, as a population, to consider it. The invasion of Iraq does indeed necessitate some finger-pointing; but most of that finger-pointing is at you and at me.
I understand that there are small exceptions to this. When one is searching for a fugitive, it's best not to publish all the information the investigation has unfolded. But when that investigation is over there is no reason to keep the information secret.
I'm not sure where this example is coming from, but it doesn't seem to apply. What are you talking about that isn't addressed by the Rules of Discovery?
Files become declassified over time, but as of now there's no assurance that ALL files will become declassified over time.
In the U.S., declassification is codified as required to occur within 25 years, unless certain narrowly-defined criteria apply.
Classified status should not be given to a file for the sake of saving the government from embarrassment.
I agree, and I think most other people do too -- which is why that's already illegal, in the U.S. anyway.
I'm not suggesting a conclusion to draw -- I'm suggesting drawing no conclusion at all.
In which case you could have a rogue government that did obvious evil things, claimed to do secret good things, and was not subject to whatever cures democracy could provide, since everyone would be paralyzed by the claims -- which might very well be false, in keeping with the known evils of the government -- of good.
That doesn't follow at all. In the scenario you describe, my conclusion would be "I don't know the status of what, if anything, they're doing behind the scenes; but I know they're doing bad things right in front of my face. So the kindest thing I can say is that maybe, *maybe*, it's a wash. Time to go."
Believing that the government should never, ever keep secrets? That point-of-view seems unrealistic.
Oh, I don't think that it is realistic to expect a totally transparent government. OTOH, I do think that deviation from total transparency is at least not good, when justified, and usually bad, as it isn't.
If it's "justified", then by definition, how is it "not good"? That seems a contradiction.
So I see nothing wrong with condemning a government that keeps secrets from its people, and spitting upon the officials who engage in this. If they've done something wrong, and are cowering behind the claim of secrecy, they deserve it. And if they've done something good, but are tragically forced to conceal it, and are condemned nevertheless, the Super Chicken rule applies: They knew the job was dangerous when they took it.
I bolded the part to which I wanted to reply. Your statement here suggests that the only harm of considering all secret-keeping bad and applying the "cures democracy can provide" is to those who (as part of their jobs) keep secrets that'd you'd agree are justifiably kept secret if you were in the know. I'd argue that there's significantly more harm than just that -- that in fact, that's the least of the harms caused.
This, chiefly. I am an American citizen. I have the right to judge how well the government that works for me is doing. And, since it only is legitimately empowered to govern if it has the consent of the governed, I have the right to grant or withdraw my consent as I see fit. All Americans have these rights.
I'm obviously not going to just trust them. The entire structure of the government is founded on distrust of power. If they keep secrets, then not only is it wholly appropriate to judge them on the basis of what information we do have, it is also fair to condemn them for keeping secrets.
I think it's perfectly sensible to say that you can only judge on the information you have. I think it's also important to consider the possibility that you may have incomplete information, particularly given that we're talking about organizations that we already know keep secrets. That doesn't require "just trusting them" -- not at all. I'm not suggesting a conclusion to draw -- I'm suggesting drawing no conclusion at all.
On the other hand, I think it's naive at best to "condemn (the government) for keeping secrets". I can understand being upset with the government about the keeping of some specific secret or secrets. But any secret? Believing that the government should never, ever keep secrets? That point-of-view seems unrealistic. You don't have to work hard to think of secrets the U.S. government has kept in the past where keeping those secrets was the right thing to do, and revealing them at the time could have been catastrophic.
It is in the best interests of all those anti-terrorism organisations to announce any success they have. Vocally.
This is not true. While you're correct that announcing thwarted terrorist actions, and attributing those successes to your efforts, can have the effects you describe -- "justifies their future funding and expansion, and furthers the careers of those in charge" -- it can have other, bad, effects as well.