I think the burden of proof is on the side of those trying to get you to believe in their omnipotent diety
Perhaps you missed the point of my last post. You are the one that is claiming that faith is insufficient as a mechanism for establishing a thing as true. Therefore, if you wish to claim, definatively that God does not exist, you must prove it because you're the one who doesn't accept beliefs on faith. A believer who challenges you on this is only asking you to follow your own standards.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that ALL evidence points to there not being a god, and NO evidence points to there being a god.
Really, ALL evidence? To support that claim, then you have to explain how we got here. And I don't mean how we as humans came into being. I mean, that there is existence at all. Isn't the fact that there is stuff in the world evidence for the existence of an originator of the stuff?
I'm not really interested in pursuing that argument, though. The argument that I'm interested in following is this: if I see something that you don't, does it mean that it didn't happen? So for example, imagine I get together with a group of people and we have a meeting. During this meeting we agree on some issue. On the way home, everyone except me gets killed in a car accident. What you are suggestinng is that since I'm the only one left who experienced the meeting, the meeting didnt' happen.
Now it is certainly the case, that I may not be able to adequatly convince you that the meeting happened. And I may also not be able to convince you of the things that transacted in that meeting. But the reality is that the meeting happened, you just didn't experience it. Therefore you discount its existence in its entirty? You don't even hold out the possibility that the meeting existed and that you just aren't able to collect the evidence?
The point is this: are you sure that you can you discount faith experiences as legitimate experiences? Perhaps you haven't had one, but does that mean that no one in the world can possibly have had one? And just because you haven't had one, does that mean that they aren't real?
"Ah hah!" you might say. "Faith experiences are not repeatable and can't be independantly reviewed." Very true. But there are lots of things that *ARE* true, that are not repeatable and not capable of being independantly (e.g. the agreement in the meeting above). To claim that you're not convinced is one thing. To claim that they are false is another thing. The latter takes an act of faith.
I lose respect for someone who believes in god. It indicates a lack of judgement.
This is a sensible statement if and only if God doesn't exist. If on the other hand, God exists, then the people who believe in Him, actually demonstrate better judgement than those who, wrongly, claimed he didn't exist.
Now, of course, you can't prove that God exists. You also can't prove that He doesn't exist. If you accept the latter statement, then people who believe that God doesn't exist, hold this belief on faith - at least in part. If you claim that such a belief is not held on any faith at all, then kindly produce your proof of His non-existence.
There are only 3 positions that you can have w.r.t. belief in God. You either believe He exists, believe that He doesn't exist, or you don't know. I'm guessing, from your statement, that you believe that God doesn't exist. Certainly you wouldn't make that statement if you believed in God. If you didn't know, then you'd have to hold out the possibility of belief in God being accurate, and thus the possibilty that the people who believe in God being worthy of respect. Thus I'm concluding that you believe that God doesn't exist.
If that's true, then you're in a somewhat difficult position. You are neccessarily saying that faith is insufficient for holding a belief. You thus put yourself in the position of believing that faith is not enough, and yet claim that God doesn't exist - a statement made without proof. This means that by your own standards, you must prove your belief that God doesn't exist, or cease to hold it because holding it on faith is not sufficient.
Personally, I can respect people who believe in God. I understand people who say they don't know. But I have a very difficult time with people who claim that God definately does not exist. That is such a difficult proposition to logically justify. And if that person can't see the difficulty... well that calls into question that person's judgement.
I think the article missed something. Either that or I missed something in the article.
Developing Linux is important. But to me, and most people I know, eating is more important. Having a job that supports me and allows me to eat is critical to my ability to hack on Linux in my free time. ESR talks about the "gift culture". This culture supports Linux because most of the developers of Linux have other jobs which feed them. For most people, those other jobs don't have Linux as the central focus, if it's even used at all. Linux is something done in spare time, for pleasure's sake. It isn't something that helps put food on the table.
But, if the economy were to get tighter, and fewer jobs became available for developers, those who would be willing to spend personal time on work related projects, would have a competitive market advantage over those who weren't. Thus the development of Linux would slow down, because fewer developers would be spending time on it. In that scenario, the market would not be able to support Linux as a hobby.
Linux in the business environment can only help to dedicate more minds to thinking about Linux and deploying applications for Linux, not as a hobby, but as a critical part of our economic infrastructure. This is why (IMHO) supporting Linux in commercial settings is so important, and why an announcement from IBM (et al) is such big news.
Simply making a better product won't win the war, as so many dead software companies have proven.
This is true for anyone who competes with Microsoft, but it's not true for the intra-Linux competition (i.e. RedHat vs Caldera vs SUSE, etc).
The only thing that distinguishes one distro from another is happy users. It's just too easy to download a different distro if the one you have doesn't suit you.
Not too long ago I was shopping for another distro. I had been a slackware user, but I was getting tired of.tgz packaging. I started with Caldera because they were the easiest to download off the net and install off the net. I created the boot floppies, and then did an NFS install over the net.
But I soon discovered that the number of packages available for Caldera were few in comparison to the number available for Red Hat. So, I downloaded a new set of boot floppies, and rebuilt. I used Red Hat 5.2 for a few months until I tried to install gnome and enlightenment. I was able to do this, but keeping it up to date was an incredible pain!
I have settled on Debian. Not because I think that Debian has great PR. And not because I think that Debian's image in the community is immaculate, but because it is by far the easiest distro to use and keep up to date.
My point is this: product quality is the only thing that matters when price is not a factor. I respect your ideas, but I think you're really stuck in the microsoft model for getting users, and I don't think it applies to Linux.
I don't like package systems because they are only valid if you never stray, and there are too many programs out there that offer compile options other than what the packages use. And as soon as you install a tarball, it's outside the package system, and unknown to the package system, and the rot sets in.
I agree that this is the case. But the problem with this solution is that if you don't use the package system, you have to manually manage which files are installed and where they all are. 'make install' works great, but it is rare that 'make uninstall' works, and even if it does, it won't remind you that you've put in another package the depends on the one that you're trying to uninstall.
What I've done to get around this situation is to repackage everything that I want to use. Debian makes this relatively easy with the debhelper package. So I create a package that has all of the custom compile time options that I want, but also plays with the rest of the packaging system.
This is important to me because I want to be able to easily remove packages later on, and I don't want to have to keep track of where files are, what depends on this package, etc. I use computers to relieve my need to keep track of mundane stuff like this.
But don't let me stop you from managing your system however you like. Maybe not using a package system doesn't give you the type of headaches that I used to get when I managed my system like that.
A guilty MS should only be required to open the file formats it uses. That's it.
This sounds like a good idea, but this is what the congressman referred to as a "behavioral remedy". Unless someone is closely watching, M$ can easily change their behavior, and force another trial before their file formats are opened. I really don't want the.gov trying to regulate the industry - just the blatant abusers.
I believe that M$ was given a chance in 1995 to clean up their act. But they haven't done so. Now they should pay the price, since they clearly won't do it on their own.
Basically, he knows his business is doomed because Cable Modems are so good and he only has crummy DSL
I have cable modem, and I love it. But I disagree with your assertion. Cable Modem internet access desperatley needs to be opened up. As it is now, I only have one choice for ISP, and that's my cable provider - who currently is performing extremely well for me - but I can't choose another provider, because the cable company has closed access to the physical infrastructure.
One thing that xDSL has going for it is that you can choose from multiple ISP's (at least the way the local telco has implemented it around here). I would like to see the same thing happen for cable modem, too.
It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do. My current cable provider simply has reserved 2 cable channels for data: one for upstream data and one for downstream data. To add another ISP, you simply supply that ISP with two different channels.
This is important because Cable Companies need to be held to the same standard that telco's are held to. Specifically, that access to the physical infrastructure should be opened to other providers for competitive reasons.
Ok. I'm a Linux user. I have Debian installed at home and at work. I've never used *BSD. But so what? If Linux, for some unforseeable reason, started really sucking the big one, I would probably look at *BSD.
Why? Because both are stable versions of operating systems that will accomplish the tasks that I need to have accomplised.
This in fighting between Linux and *BSD is juvenile. Does any Linux or *BSD user really believe that their OS of choice is the only solution for everyone? I certainly hope not.
Remember, this whole movement is about being free to choose an alternative. Let's stop beating each other up because we didn't all make the same choice. Please? (Maybe it'll help if I ask nicely.)
in the longer run the graduate degree does pay much much more than what a bachelor could ever think of..
This is tempting to think. Certainly a starting salary for a graduate degree is higher than the starting salary for a bachelor's degree. However, that's not really a fair comparison. More interesting than that is taking into account how long it takes to get a Masters or a Ph.D. And whether or not that time is better spent gaining experience.
I've been in the work place for 7 years with a bachelor's degree in CS. After only 3 years in the market place, my salary had doubled. By that point, I had already surpassed the starting salary of some of the candidates with Ph.D's.
In my current position where I am responsible for hiring people, I can tell you that real world experience counts for a *LOT* more than education. In fact, we look for competance in the areas that we need much more than educational background. Some of the most successful people I've hired have no college degree at all.
Now, if you're thinking that employees with graduate degrees advance their salaries quicker than those without, you'd better think again. Once you're in the salary pool, you are competing with everyone around you based on your performance only. The helps you with two things and only two things:
To get the interview - but experience counts for more than education.
To help determine the starting salary of your first job out of school.
I'm sorry to say this, but the only thing that I can think of that a Masters or a Ph.D are good for are going into teaching. Currently, IT is experiencing negative unemployment. Until that changes, experience will count for more than education.
When I speak of STO, passwords don't count. They are information points. Yes, they are obscured. But generally, STO to me refers to architecture, not information points.
So the test that I use, is this: If the thing that I'm obscuring should be made public, how difficult is it to change that thing? If a password gets out, it is very easy to change it and retain the same level of security that we had prior to the disclosure of the information.
But if the security of the thing I'm trying to build is based on secret knowledge of how its built, then I'm in trouble. If the only security that I use is architectural obscurity, then if knowledge of the architecture becomes public, I have to completely rebuild in order to improve security.
For example, imagine a bank puts its electronic vault on a very specific IP address, and using a very specific port, which speaks some strange heretofore unknown protocol, and that's the only security used to protect access to the electronic vault... well that's a bank I'd be pulling my money from. Because if someone found the IP address and found the port, and reverse engineered the protocol, the amount of effort it would take to re-architect that electronic vault is about equivalent to what it took to build it. That bank would be left with few choices.
The latter, to me, is what is meant by STO. Certainly hiding things that people don't need to know about is a good thing, but it better not be the only thing. And part of the other stuff that you use must be easily changed in the event of disclosure of information.
AC wrote: >What about the assumption that people SHOULD get >things (like OS's) for free? That has no >logic, and verges on delusional.
That's certainly one way of looking at it. I see it as an ubelievable affirmation of capitalism. Capitalism is so successful that it can afford the time of people to give back to the community, without those people dying off from lack of food.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you missed the point of my last post. You are the one that is claiming that faith is insufficient as a mechanism for establishing a thing as true. Therefore, if you wish to claim, definatively that God does not exist, you must prove it because you're the one who doesn't accept beliefs on faith. A believer who challenges you on this is only asking you to follow your own standards.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that ALL evidence points to there not being a god, and NO evidence points to there being a god.
Really, ALL evidence? To support that claim, then you have to explain how we got here. And I don't mean how we as humans came into being. I mean, that there is existence at all. Isn't the fact that there is stuff in the world evidence for the existence of an originator of the stuff?
I'm not really interested in pursuing that argument, though. The argument that I'm interested in following is this: if I see something that you don't, does it mean that it didn't happen? So for example, imagine I get together with a group of people and we have a meeting. During this meeting we agree on some issue. On the way home, everyone except me gets killed in a car accident. What you are suggestinng is that since I'm the only one left who experienced the meeting, the meeting didnt' happen.
Now it is certainly the case, that I may not be able to adequatly convince you that the meeting happened. And I may also not be able to convince you of the things that transacted in that meeting. But the reality is that the meeting happened, you just didn't experience it. Therefore you discount its existence in its entirty? You don't even hold out the possibility that the meeting existed and that you just aren't able to collect the evidence?
The point is this: are you sure that you can you discount faith experiences as legitimate experiences? Perhaps you haven't had one, but does that mean that no one in the world can possibly have had one? And just because you haven't had one, does that mean that they aren't real?
"Ah hah!" you might say. "Faith experiences are not repeatable and can't be independantly reviewed." Very true. But there are lots of things that *ARE* true, that are not repeatable and not capable of being independantly (e.g. the agreement in the meeting above). To claim that you're not convinced is one thing. To claim that they are false is another thing. The latter takes an act of faith.
This is a sensible statement if and only if God doesn't exist. If on the other hand, God exists, then the people who believe in Him, actually demonstrate better judgement than those who, wrongly, claimed he didn't exist.
Now, of course, you can't prove that God exists. You also can't prove that He doesn't exist. If you accept the latter statement, then people who believe that God doesn't exist, hold this belief on faith - at least in part. If you claim that such a belief is not held on any faith at all, then kindly produce your proof of His non-existence.
There are only 3 positions that you can have w.r.t. belief in God. You either believe He exists, believe that He doesn't exist, or you don't know. I'm guessing, from your statement, that you believe that God doesn't exist. Certainly you wouldn't make that statement if you believed in God. If you didn't know, then you'd have to hold out the possibility of belief in God being accurate, and thus the possibilty that the people who believe in God being worthy of respect. Thus I'm concluding that you believe that God doesn't exist.
If that's true, then you're in a somewhat difficult position. You are neccessarily saying that faith is insufficient for holding a belief. You thus put yourself in the position of believing that faith is not enough, and yet claim that God doesn't exist - a statement made without proof. This means that by your own standards, you must prove your belief that God doesn't exist, or cease to hold it because holding it on faith is not sufficient.
Personally, I can respect people who believe in God. I understand people who say they don't know. But I have a very difficult time with people who claim that God definately does not exist. That is such a difficult proposition to logically justify. And if that person can't see the difficulty... well that calls into question that person's judgement.
Cheers.
- Mark
Developing Linux is important. But to me, and most people I know, eating is more important. Having a job that supports me and allows me to eat is critical to my ability to hack on Linux in my free time. ESR talks about the "gift culture". This culture supports Linux because most of the developers of Linux have other jobs which feed them. For most people, those other jobs don't have Linux as the central focus, if it's even used at all. Linux is something done in spare time, for pleasure's sake. It isn't something that helps put food on the table.
But, if the economy were to get tighter, and fewer jobs became available for developers, those who would be willing to spend personal time on work related projects, would have a competitive market advantage over those who weren't. Thus the development of Linux would slow down, because fewer developers would be spending time on it. In that scenario, the market would not be able to support Linux as a hobby.
Linux in the business environment can only help to dedicate more minds to thinking about Linux and deploying applications for Linux, not as a hobby, but as a critical part of our economic infrastructure. This is why (IMHO) supporting Linux in commercial settings is so important, and why an announcement from IBM (et al) is such big news.
This is true for anyone who competes with Microsoft, but it's not true for the intra-Linux competition (i.e. RedHat vs Caldera vs SUSE, etc).
The only thing that distinguishes one distro from another is happy users. It's just too easy to download a different distro if the one you have doesn't suit you.
Not too long ago I was shopping for another distro. I had been a slackware user, but I was getting tired of .tgz packaging. I started with Caldera because they were the easiest to download off the net and install off the net. I created the boot floppies, and then did an NFS install over the net.
But I soon discovered that the number of packages available for Caldera were few in comparison to the number available for Red Hat. So, I downloaded a new set of boot floppies, and rebuilt. I used Red Hat 5.2 for a few months until I tried to install gnome and enlightenment. I was able to do this, but keeping it up to date was an incredible pain!
I have settled on Debian. Not because I think that Debian has great PR. And not because I think that Debian's image in the community is immaculate, but because it is by far the easiest distro to use and keep up to date.
My point is this: product quality is the only thing that matters when price is not a factor. I respect your ideas, but I think you're really stuck in the microsoft model for getting users, and I don't think it applies to Linux.
I agree that this is the case. But the problem with this solution is that if you don't use the package system, you have to manually manage which files are installed and where they all are. 'make install' works great, but it is rare that 'make uninstall' works, and even if it does, it won't remind you that you've put in another package the depends on the one that you're trying to uninstall.
What I've done to get around this situation is to repackage everything that I want to use. Debian makes this relatively easy with the debhelper package. So I create a package that has all of the custom compile time options that I want, but also plays with the rest of the packaging system.
This is important to me because I want to be able to easily remove packages later on, and I don't want to have to keep track of where files are, what depends on this package, etc. I use computers to relieve my need to keep track of mundane stuff like this.
But don't let me stop you from managing your system however you like. Maybe not using a package system doesn't give you the type of headaches that I used to get when I managed my system like that.
Good luck!
This sounds like a good idea, but this is what the congressman referred to as a "behavioral remedy". Unless someone is closely watching, M$ can easily change their behavior, and force another trial before their file formats are opened. I really don't want the .gov trying to regulate the industry - just the blatant abusers.
I believe that M$ was given a chance in 1995 to clean up their act. But they haven't done so. Now they should pay the price, since they clearly won't do it on their own.
I have cable modem, and I love it. But I disagree with your assertion. Cable Modem internet access desperatley needs to be opened up. As it is now, I only have one choice for ISP, and that's my cable provider - who currently is performing extremely well for me - but I can't choose another provider, because the cable company has closed access to the physical infrastructure.
One thing that xDSL has going for it is that you can choose from multiple ISP's (at least the way the local telco has implemented it around here). I would like to see the same thing happen for cable modem, too.
It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do. My current cable provider simply has reserved 2 cable channels for data: one for upstream data and one for downstream data. To add another ISP, you simply supply that ISP with two different channels.
This is important because Cable Companies need to be held to the same standard that telco's are held to. Specifically, that access to the physical infrastructure should be opened to other providers for competitive reasons.
$.02
Ok. I'm a Linux user. I have Debian installed at home and at work. I've never used *BSD. But so what? If Linux, for some unforseeable reason, started really sucking the big one, I would probably look at *BSD.
Why? Because both are stable versions of operating systems that will accomplish the tasks that I need to have accomplised.
This in fighting between Linux and *BSD is juvenile. Does any Linux or *BSD user really believe that their OS of choice is the only solution for everyone? I certainly hope not.
Remember, this whole movement is about being free to choose an alternative. Let's stop beating each other up because we didn't all make the same choice. Please? (Maybe it'll help if I ask nicely.)
This is tempting to think. Certainly a starting salary for a graduate degree is higher than the starting salary for a bachelor's degree. However, that's not really a fair comparison. More interesting than that is taking into account how long it takes to get a Masters or a Ph.D. And whether or not that time is better spent gaining experience.
I've been in the work place for 7 years with a bachelor's degree in CS. After only 3 years in the market place, my salary had doubled. By that point, I had already surpassed the starting salary of some of the candidates with Ph.D's.
In my current position where I am responsible for hiring people, I can tell you that real world experience counts for a *LOT* more than education. In fact, we look for competance in the areas that we need much more than educational background. Some of the most successful people I've hired have no college degree at all.
Now, if you're thinking that employees with graduate degrees advance their salaries quicker than those without, you'd better think again. Once you're in the salary pool, you are competing with everyone around you based on your performance only . The helps you with two things and only two things:
To get the interview - but experience counts for more than education.
To help determine the starting salary of your first job out of school.
I'm sorry to say this, but the only thing that I can think of that a Masters or a Ph.D are good for are going into teaching. Currently, IT is experiencing negative unemployment. Until that changes, experience will count for more than education.
So the test that I use, is this: If the thing that I'm obscuring should be made public, how difficult is it to change that thing? If a password gets out, it is very easy to change it and retain the same level of security that we had prior to the disclosure of the information.
But if the security of the thing I'm trying to build is based on secret knowledge of how its built, then I'm in trouble. If the only security that I use is architectural obscurity, then if knowledge of the architecture becomes public, I have to completely rebuild in order to improve security.
For example, imagine a bank puts its electronic vault on a very specific IP address, and using a very specific port, which speaks some strange heretofore unknown protocol, and that's the only security used to protect access to the electronic vault... well that's a bank I'd be pulling my money from. Because if someone found the IP address and found the port, and reverse engineered the protocol, the amount of effort it would take to re-architect that electronic vault is about equivalent to what it took to build it. That bank would be left with few choices.
The latter, to me, is what is meant by STO. Certainly hiding things that people don't need to know about is a good thing, but it better not be the only thing. And part of the other stuff that you use must be easily changed in the event of disclosure of information.
AC wrote:
>What about the assumption that people SHOULD get
>things (like OS's) for free? That has no
>logic, and verges on delusional.
That's certainly one way of looking at it. I see it as an ubelievable affirmation of capitalism. Capitalism is so successful that it can afford the time of people to give back to the community, without those people dying off from lack of food.