No. Google is just upping the ante; other companies are free to follow (or even outinnovate Google). If they can't or don't want to (or simply don't for some other reason), well... that's not really Google's fault, as long as Google does not use anticompetitive business tactics etc. do prevent or hinder competition.
Christoph (no, it's not me) is not "lkml's resident pitt-bull". He's just someone who knows a lot about filesystems and who's one of the more prolific contributors to the kernel - why Hans Reiser seems to think the he's on a personal crusade against Reiser4, I don't know, but I think it says a lot about Hans' own attitude. Christoph is trying to offer helpful suggestions and point out flaws in the current code, and he does have valid concerns. The real problem is that Hans is not a coder anymore who cares about code quality first and foremost, but rather a businessman - and he's willing to push a flawed product instead of trying to fix it, although why, I can only guess (it certainly does not seem to save him time). It seems to be some sort of ego thing, even though he admittedly can be rational and listen to concerns voiced by others at other times, too.
Obviously, no. IANAL, but most crimes are only crimes if you intentionally do whatever makes the crime (or try to, at least, but that already is something that must be specifically stated in the law, too).
Just as an example, suppose you go to a fleamarket or yard sale or so and buy something from someone. If it turns out later on that that person was actually an imposter who took the money from you when the real owner wasn't there, does that make you a thief? Of course not. You'll probably have to give back what you thought you bought (because in reality, no contract to buy it was made), and you'll be entitled to receive your money back from the imposter (same reason), but unless you knew that the imposter was not the real owner and went ahead, anyway, you didn't commit any crime.
End users won't get that speed, but even though I didn't RTFA, I assume that's not what they were talking about, anyway. Nobody seriously expects everyone to have a 1 Tbps broadband line at home in five years; it's obviously meant for big ISPs, research centres (you'd be surprised by the sheer amount of data a particle accelerator gathers/generates!) and so on. And those obviously aren't users who'll be limited by what a single standard off-the-shelf PC can do.:)
Indeed, and thus, everyone with actual skills will stay away from this, which means that if *one* person with actual skills decides to join in anyway, they're pretty much bound to win against all the amateurs.:)
In other words, it's worth it after all. Or isn't it?
Or, now that 9/11 has warped our psyche to care singlemindedly about security (almost invariably at the expense of liberty) [...]
Actually, it hasn't — 9/11 has warped our psyche(s) to single-mindedly care about *fear*, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what you need if you want security. We're all just running around like chickens scared by the hawk, and those who want to curtail our civil liberties are just using the chance to push through their legislation now, in the name of "security", and we're dumb enough to even swallow that.
There has been pretty much no legislative or administrative measure so far that has *actually* made us more secure.
That's like saying that selling software encourages the release of products that don't suck, because if the products do, then nobody would buy them (or at least not twice).
Sure, it works in theory. But somewhere, there's a flaw in that thinking, because reality doesn't match that theory.
All that being said, though, as a scientist myself my opinion is that the United States remains the best place in the world to do science bar none.
Sorry, but even though the rest of your post is very insightful indeed, I find that statement to be rather offensive. How many other countries have you actually been to? And, for that matter, not just to spend a few weeks of your holidays there, but to live there, work there, understand the culture and get a first-hand account of what being a scientist is like there?
Now, you may say that you don't need to do that - that accounts from other scientists who live and work in other countries are enough to give you at least a rough idea of what it's like there. It's debatable whether that really can count as sufficient evidence to form an opinion on these matters, but even if we do accept that it does, well... how about you tell me a bit about the obstacles a scientist might face (or not face) in Norway, for example? I'm pretty sure that you won't be able to (although there is of course a small chance that you are, purely by coincidence) - that you know nothing about what life and work is like in Norway for a scientist. The same probably goes for most other countries in the world.
In fact, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't even be able to list all the countries in the world, much less that you know anything about them at all. Can you give me a list of 50 African nations without looking up any (yes, there are that many; in fact, Africa has even more than 50 nations)? Can you tell me the name and the title of the head of Uruguay's government? If I give you a map of the world without any borders etc. drawn on it, would you be able to show me the location and shape of Myanmar?
I don't want to say that the USA is a bad place for a scientist to live and work in - but I don't want to say that it's a good place, either, because I simply don't have enough experience to compare it with other countries in the world. And without that data, neither should you.
What's really ironic about this, of course, is that you are exhibiting exactly the same kind of behaviour that you decry in other US-Americans: that we trust our instincts and gut feelings more than the experts, and that we are more than willing to judge things even when we don't know them. Think about it...
The statement that "[s]oftware is ont subject to some of the known laws of physics" is rubbish, actually. Those laws of physics that can meaningfully be applied to an abstract concept like software to apply; those that can't, well, don't, but that doesn't mean that the concept is not bound by them - it merely means that it makes no sense to talk about them in this context.
For example, saying that sofware "can travel at the speed of light" is meaningless; you could just as well assert that, for example, happiness can travel at the speed of light (or that it can't), but in reality, the concept of travelling at a certain speed only makes sense for physical representations of abstract concepts (like a CD with software on it) rather than for the abstract concepts themselves (like software - or happiness).
As for the existence of a soul and whether it makes sense to deny it... can you provide some references that describe those "tantalizing clues" you mention? It's not that I don't believe in souls myself (I certainly do), but it's more of a gut feeling, and I have never heard of any real physical evidence for it.
You mean like this? To sum up the case quickly, this is a tool for the automatic creation of fake but real-looking "science papers" (ironically enough, developed at the MIT), and one such paper ("A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy") was submitted to the 2005 World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, and actually accepted. At that point, of course, the authors of the tool wrote about it, the story hit Slashdot, and the organisers of the conference were quick to retract their acceptance...
Still, I think it goes to show that if someone is actively trying to dishonest in the scientific community, it's not hard to get past the safeguards. Fabricating data is something that is (I guess) comparatively hard to detect, compared to an entire document that was written without any human intervention and thus shouldn't really make any kind of sense at all, but even the fake document wasn't detected. It sure makes you wonder how many people fabricating data are actually not caught and instead get away with it.
Actually, no. I was speaking from personal experience here - most geeks *are* like that, whether you like it or not. Not all of them are, of course, but I still think that the percentage of those who are is big enough to justify considering these things (relatively) common traits of geeks.
But then, I'm not even sure why I am arguing with someone who posts comments like this.:) Sorry, but after reading that, I can't really see you as someone to have a serious discussion with anymore.
They want to change the government into something that supports a productive society. They want institutions to stop hiding facts and to pay attention to science. They want to change corporations, change people's day-to-day behavior, and change our own social relationships.
Don't worry about it. Some mods are more than trigger-happy, but you can at least take solace in the fact that whoever did it won't be modding again soon - Slashcode punishes you for modding down by pretty much removing your eligibility for receiving mod points (intentionally, too, one might add).
Without having to looked at the actual HTML generated in detail, what you talk about seems to be a typical problem of "Microsoft ignores standards and uses proprietary extensions instead which IE knows about but not other browsers like Mozilla/Firefox, Opera and so on".
I'm sympathetic to that problem, of course, but I do think that Mozilla can't really be blamed here. Kludges to support non-standard, vendor-specific, proprietary extensions are a bad idea, and that's in no small part because implementing them will mean that people will continue to rely on them. You may still use Powerpoint, of course, but I at least (as someone who has never used either Powerpoint or another presentation generation tool) will certainly make a mental note and avoid Powerpoint in the future if I can.
Yes, because most societies in history did not have TVs, microwaves and cell phones.:) Jokes aside, though, the question is not whether something has generally been true at all times historically; the question is whether it is desirable or not.
Historically, pretty much every society has been ruled by a monarch, high priest, dictator, emperor or whatever with often near-absolute powers; the rulers may have been forced to deal with and respect a few others, mostly the aristocracy and (in societies where the king/... was not also the high priest), the church, but there have been almost no real democracies, and even the systems of the Greek and the Romans would not qualify as real democracies by today's standards.
Still, we have successfully changed this (at least in the "Western" world), and few would argue that it's not a good thing. We should now strive to change the other issue as well and build a society that's actually based on reason rather than superstition; while everyone is free to practise and follow their religion in private, it should play no role whatsoever in how nations are governed, and things like democracy, human rights etc. should be treated as more important than religion: laïcité, if you will, not just as one part of the system but as a fundamental concept that is considered just as important as democracy.
An age of reason. Wouldn't that be nice for a change? I have little hope that there'll actually be one, but one can dream.
Slashdot Mirror
No. Google is just upping the ante; other companies are free to follow (or even outinnovate Google). If they can't or don't want to (or simply don't for some other reason), well... that's not really Google's fault, as long as Google does not use anticompetitive business tactics etc. do prevent or hinder competition.
You're thinking of Cisco.
As opposed to the usual kind and gentle root kits, I suppose?
Isn't that part of what makes a root kit?
Why, yes, it is... by my boss.
Christoph (no, it's not me) is not "lkml's resident pitt-bull". He's just someone who knows a lot about filesystems and who's one of the more prolific contributors to the kernel - why Hans Reiser seems to think the he's on a personal crusade against Reiser4, I don't know, but I think it says a lot about Hans' own attitude. Christoph is trying to offer helpful suggestions and point out flaws in the current code, and he does have valid concerns. The real problem is that Hans is not a coder anymore who cares about code quality first and foremost, but rather a businessman - and he's willing to push a flawed product instead of trying to fix it, although why, I can only guess (it certainly does not seem to save him time). It seems to be some sort of ego thing, even though he admittedly can be rational and listen to concerns voiced by others at other times, too.
Oh, and it's "pit bull" - with one "t".
Wow. That's the most diplomatic summary of the Reiser4 discussions I've ever seen, by far. :)
Obviously, no. IANAL, but most crimes are only crimes if you intentionally do whatever makes the crime (or try to, at least, but that already is something that must be specifically stated in the law, too).
Just as an example, suppose you go to a fleamarket or yard sale or so and buy something from someone. If it turns out later on that that person was actually an imposter who took the money from you when the real owner wasn't there, does that make you a thief? Of course not. You'll probably have to give back what you thought you bought (because in reality, no contract to buy it was made), and you'll be entitled to receive your money back from the imposter (same reason), but unless you knew that the imposter was not the real owner and went ahead, anyway, you didn't commit any crime.
End users won't get that speed, but even though I didn't RTFA, I assume that's not what they were talking about, anyway. Nobody seriously expects everyone to have a 1 Tbps broadband line at home in five years; it's obviously meant for big ISPs, research centres (you'd be surprised by the sheer amount of data a particle accelerator gathers/generates!) and so on. And those obviously aren't users who'll be limited by what a single standard off-the-shelf PC can do. :)
Indeed, and thus, everyone with actual skills will stay away from this, which means that if *one* person with actual skills decides to join in anyway, they're pretty much bound to win against all the amateurs. :)
In other words, it's worth it after all. Or isn't it?
Actually, it hasn't — 9/11 has warped our psyche(s) to single-mindedly care about *fear*, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what you need if you want security. We're all just running around like chickens scared by the hawk, and those who want to curtail our civil liberties are just using the chance to push through their legislation now, in the name of "security", and we're dumb enough to even swallow that.
There has been pretty much no legislative or administrative measure so far that has *actually* made us more secure.
Maybe it's just me, but an easier workaround would seem to be to get a computer that doesn't have a microphone (built-in or attached)...
That's like saying that selling software encourages the release of products that don't suck, because if the products do, then nobody would buy them (or at least not twice).
Sure, it works in theory. But somewhere, there's a flaw in that thinking, because reality doesn't match that theory.
Sorry, but even though the rest of your post is very insightful indeed, I find that statement to be rather offensive. How many other countries have you actually been to? And, for that matter, not just to spend a few weeks of your holidays there, but to live there, work there, understand the culture and get a first-hand account of what being a scientist is like there?
Now, you may say that you don't need to do that - that accounts from other scientists who live and work in other countries are enough to give you at least a rough idea of what it's like there. It's debatable whether that really can count as sufficient evidence to form an opinion on these matters, but even if we do accept that it does, well... how about you tell me a bit about the obstacles a scientist might face (or not face) in Norway, for example? I'm pretty sure that you won't be able to (although there is of course a small chance that you are, purely by coincidence) - that you know nothing about what life and work is like in Norway for a scientist. The same probably goes for most other countries in the world.
In fact, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't even be able to list all the countries in the world, much less that you know anything about them at all. Can you give me a list of 50 African nations without looking up any (yes, there are that many; in fact, Africa has even more than 50 nations)? Can you tell me the name and the title of the head of Uruguay's government? If I give you a map of the world without any borders etc. drawn on it, would you be able to show me the location and shape of Myanmar?
I don't want to say that the USA is a bad place for a scientist to live and work in - but I don't want to say that it's a good place, either, because I simply don't have enough experience to compare it with other countries in the world. And without that data, neither should you.
What's really ironic about this, of course, is that you are exhibiting exactly the same kind of behaviour that you decry in other US-Americans: that we trust our instincts and gut feelings more than the experts, and that we are more than willing to judge things even when we don't know them. Think about it...
The statement that "[s]oftware is ont subject to some of the known laws of physics" is rubbish, actually. Those laws of physics that can meaningfully be applied to an abstract concept like software to apply; those that can't, well, don't, but that doesn't mean that the concept is not bound by them - it merely means that it makes no sense to talk about them in this context.
:)
For example, saying that sofware "can travel at the speed of light" is meaningless; you could just as well assert that, for example, happiness can travel at the speed of light (or that it can't), but in reality, the concept of travelling at a certain speed only makes sense for physical representations of abstract concepts (like a CD with software on it) rather than for the abstract concepts themselves (like software - or happiness).
As for the existence of a soul and whether it makes sense to deny it... can you provide some references that describe those "tantalizing clues" you mention? It's not that I don't believe in souls myself (I certainly do), but it's more of a gut feeling, and I have never heard of any real physical evidence for it.
Thanks.
Use AdBlock, and block everything from intellitext.com.
Actually, I think "A Tragic Farce" (think Ionesco - IIRC, this was the subtitle of "Les Chaises") would be even more appropriate...
You mean like this? To sum up the case quickly, this is a tool for the automatic creation of fake but real-looking "science papers" (ironically enough, developed at the MIT), and one such paper ("A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy") was submitted to the 2005 World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, and actually accepted. At that point, of course, the authors of the tool wrote about it, the story hit Slashdot, and the organisers of the conference were quick to retract their acceptance...
Still, I think it goes to show that if someone is actively trying to dishonest in the scientific community, it's not hard to get past the safeguards. Fabricating data is something that is (I guess) comparatively hard to detect, compared to an entire document that was written without any human intervention and thus shouldn't really make any kind of sense at all, but even the fake document wasn't detected. It sure makes you wonder how many people fabricating data are actually not caught and instead get away with it.
Actually, no. I was speaking from personal experience here - most geeks *are* like that, whether you like it or not. Not all of them are, of course, but I still think that the percentage of those who are is big enough to justify considering these things (relatively) common traits of geeks.
:) Sorry, but after reading that, I can't really see you as someone to have a serious discussion with anymore.
But then, I'm not even sure why I am arguing with someone who posts comments like this.
In other words, they're geeks.
Don't worry about it. Some mods are more than trigger-happy, but you can at least take solace in the fact that whoever did it won't be modding again soon - Slashcode punishes you for modding down by pretty much removing your eligibility for receiving mod points (intentionally, too, one might add).
You may think it's funny, but the article is actually (to stay within Slashdot terminology) quite interesting and informative.
It can already be both. Do check it out - it's quite amazing.
Without having to looked at the actual HTML generated in detail, what you talk about seems to be a typical problem of "Microsoft ignores standards and uses proprietary extensions instead which IE knows about but not other browsers like Mozilla/Firefox, Opera and so on".
I'm sympathetic to that problem, of course, but I do think that Mozilla can't really be blamed here. Kludges to support non-standard, vendor-specific, proprietary extensions are a bad idea, and that's in no small part because implementing them will mean that people will continue to rely on them. You may still use Powerpoint, of course, but I at least (as someone who has never used either Powerpoint or another presentation generation tool) will certainly make a mental note and avoid Powerpoint in the future if I can.
Arrrrr! Be spreadin' the gospel, me matey!
Yes, because most societies in history did not have TVs, microwaves and cell phones. :) Jokes aside, though, the question is not whether something has generally been true at all times historically; the question is whether it is desirable or not.
Historically, pretty much every society has been ruled by a monarch, high priest, dictator, emperor or whatever with often near-absolute powers; the rulers may have been forced to deal with and respect a few others, mostly the aristocracy and (in societies where the king/... was not also the high priest), the church, but there have been almost no real democracies, and even the systems of the Greek and the Romans would not qualify as real democracies by today's standards.
Still, we have successfully changed this (at least in the "Western" world), and few would argue that it's not a good thing. We should now strive to change the other issue as well and build a society that's actually based on reason rather than superstition; while everyone is free to practise and follow their religion in private, it should play no role whatsoever in how nations are governed, and things like democracy, human rights etc. should be treated as more important than religion: laïcité, if you will, not just as one part of the system but as a fundamental concept that is considered just as important as democracy.
An age of reason. Wouldn't that be nice for a change? I have little hope that there'll actually be one, but one can dream.