Basically, work to a level where you consistently feel like you're exerting yourself - that's how you get feedback on your exertion level.
I think one of the problems in gym class is that the teacher can't tell your exertion level, and may yell at you if you don't look like you're putting in the effort. I remember reading about a gym teacher introducing heart-rate monitoring mid-semester, only to find out that a bunch of kids he'd been yelling at for "slacking" were actually exerting themselves as hard as they could reasonably be expected to do. I imagine that most of those kids end up hating fitness and thinking they can't do it (or they have years of bad associations with it). With an objective measure to say, "No, you really are exerting yourself reasonably", they can learn how to exercise in a way that's effective for them.
The main problem is that the research is something it took a grad student at least 6 years to begin to understand (4 years of undergrad + 2 years of grad), and then another 3 years to actually understand and get a result, but the task of the U public relations is to summarize it in 2 sentences in a way accessible to my grandmother. It's just not possible to do it with any degree of accuracy.
Now, when I was working on my thesis, I developed a 5-minute explanation, that I could adapt so that most people could get the basic idea of what I was doing. It even had 3 levels of detail, for the computer-savvy, the computer-OK, and the I-sometimes-use-Word crowd, so I could adjust based on visual feedback from the person listening. But you can't put that in a press release. The press release relating to my research said something about a "virtual security camera", which was so misleading as far as the *mechanism* that I winced every time I heard it. I'm pretty sure no one, not even another CompSci PhD student, could have learned anything useful from the press release.
I think what really drives Facebook is that it reached the critical mass to get a strong network effect.
...while being actually useful to a large number of people. Tons of networking sites started but didn't go anywhere because it was all about "add as many friends as you can", which turned out to be "annoy as many people as you can". I put off joining Facebook for a long time because I thought it was just another thing. But I use it every day now, and get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
As for "chaotic wrt which site would get the crown", MySpace had a big head start of Facebook, but is now behind. I haven't used MySpace, but if there weren't something better about Facebook, it wouldn't have surpassed MySpace.
I certainly benefited a lot from having it required in my school -- two consecutive years, in fact. I was always a bit mystified that my computer-geek friends, who planned on writing programs for a living, just slacked off in class and didn't even bother (and now program with just two fingers on each hand). Maybe the teacher didn't motivate students well enough, who knows. Maybe it was because the school still had mechanical typewriters.:-)
There are some things that kids don't like when they're young, but if they're pushed to do it (within reason), they appreciate it later. I've never heard someone say, "I wish my parents hadn't pushed me to stick with piano lessons when I was younger". I hear lots of people, seeing their friends who now can just sit down and play something enjoyable, say, "I wish my parents had pushed me to stick with piano lessons when I was younger." I'm sure there are examples of parents who pushed kids who now resent it, but that doesn't change the fact that a little pushing, within reason and with love, can be good in the long run.
But if someone writes something for consumption by the general public (or even in a more limited context where universal clarity is a requirement, such as preparing assignments in school) and insists on doing so in a way that deviates so far from standard English that it's comprehensible only with significant effort, then I have no problem saying that their use of the language is "wrong".
Do you agree that our positions are basically the same? It seems that way to me.
I think so. The general principle being, there are contexts where "Standard English" (American or British) is the proper language to use, and so it's right to insist on Standard English rules being used in those contexts. I absolutely agree.
I think any difference a matter of emphasis: there is no shortage of people who will insist on Standard English being used in those contexts. But there are plenty of people who refuse to recognize that non-standard dialects are perfectly valid linguistically and culturally, and will look down on people who use them, even in an appropriate context. I think that attitude is closed-minded and unhelpful.
But on the other hand, there are some people who take things too far the other way, and refuse to teach and use Standard English. That's unhelpful as well, but I think it's often a reaction to people who look down on those who use non-standard dialects. So the best way to tone down this set of people (IMHO) is to tone down the first set of people.:-)
On the contrary, to me language is most exciting when it communicates.
And what do you think people are doing when they talk to each other using various sub-dialects? If people speaking "Ebonics" to each other didn't communicate, they wouldn't bother speaking. The fact is that they communicate better to each other by speaking a comfortable dialect they're all fluent in, rather than speaking Standard English.
But don't forget that, yes, there is such a thing as "Good English" and, most of the time, it's the preferred method of communication hereabouts.
Yes there is, and needs to be, a Standard English (American) that everyone learns to speak and to write. But telling people who are speaking their own dialect, the dialect they grew up speaking, that they feel comfortable with and that their closest friends and family speak, is "wrong" and "murdering English" is counterproductive. I think it would be much better if we said, "You're speaking a valid dialect of English, and one you should continue to use and enjoy. But it's also important for you to learn to write and to speak Standard English."
Re the book you mentioned, I think you're right that using phrases from his local dialect really limits the accessibility to other readers. But I wonder if the whole "your English is wrong" attitude contributes to that, by making people respond, "There's nothing wrong with my English; it's just as good as yours." It's not about good or bad, but as you say, about accessibility.
I think you mean un-educated people. Language is defined by its speakers, not by some book somewhere. If you sent a linguist who had never learned "English" to listen to some of these "semi-literate tards", they wouldn't be able to tell that they were breaking the rules of Standard English (American). On the contrary, they would find a complex set of grammar rules consistently followed, just like every other language on the planet. As far as I'm concerned, that makes it an English dialect, as valid as the one you speak.
Now, I certainly agree that we need to have a Standard English, that it should be taught in schools, and people should be expected to use it in public forums. But denigrating people who speak a native dialect (or who speak Standard English poorly) as intellectually inferior (as opposed to simply less educated) is bigoted and ignorant.
They're usually writing what they would speak anyway. Before they were simply hearing what you call "grammatical errors"* and reproducing them in vocal form; now they're reading them and producing them in written form. I don't see how that's any worse, really.
* I'm of the opinion that language is defined by its speakers, not by a rulebook somewhere. Obviously we need to have and to teach a "Standard English" so that we can communicate effectively. But if a native speaker of English uses words in a way that differs with the grammar of Standard English, I object to calling that a "grammatical error", unless it's in a context where Standard English should be expected, like a school assignment, a book, a newspaper article, &c. Texting, IM, e-mail, and social networking with family and friends is a context where people should be allowed to use a dialect comfortable to them.
I wonder then if the amount of drivel you see is more about the fact that the internet exposes what's there, rather than bringing the level down. The fact is that 50 years ago you wouldn't read something that wasn't written by someone who had specifically developed their literacy. I'm always surprised at how much more ignorant some of my relatives sound on Facebook than they ever did in person. My relatives closer to my own age, however, are very articulate online.
So the internet makes the world seem less literate (by exposing the lack of literacy that otherwise would never be seen), but in fact on average makes the world in fact more literate (by encouraging people to express themselves in words and thus get more practice doing so).
MS is only playing nicely because it has to, for the time being. Namely:
World Domination will fail if virtualization is near-ubiquitous and MS isn't involved. MS had to enter the virtualization market.
Entering the market gives them a chance to do their "embrace, extend, extinguish" tricks to make sure they're dictating the rules (see RTF, IE, OOXML, C#, &c &c) instead of being dictated to.
However, they aren't as strong in the server market as they'd like. Namely, they know that if Hyper-V won't run Linux servers well, large segments of the market won't use it -- even people who are normally of the "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" persuasion. That means limited market penetration, which means no market leverage, which means they're being told what to do instead of telling others what to do.
Therefore, they have to make Linux run well on Hyper-V.
At least for now. If history is a guide, if MS does get established in this market, it will be using all of its old dirty tricks to fight against non-Microsoft servers, just as it's been consistently doing in other areas for the last 25 years.
This is a digression, but the thing I find amusing about Window's hypervisor validation program is that Hyper-V wouldn't pass it (at least, as of N months ago when Citrix XenServer was going through the process of being validated). The validation requires and emulated HPET timer in the hypervisor, which Hyper-V does not have.
Forget even porn collection. I'm married, and sometimes I do "online research" for continual improvement of the bedroom experience (informational, not pornographic). But it's not necessarily the kind of thing I want popping up when I'm typing an unrelated search at work. I feel weird going through and deleting the stuff from my history, because it's not like I have anything to hide... just stuff I don't want popping up at random times.
That might work, except that the exact list of resources and the order they're acquired are usually particular to the function. They may include incrementing reference counts, grabbing spinlocks or mutexes, allocating memory, mapping memory, even copying data from / to userspace (which may fail). You'd have to write an acquire_any() individually for each function you're writing. Generally, having the chiastic structure makes it easy to double-check that you've handled all of the releases properly.
In OS code, it's pretty common to have to acquire several resources which may or may not be available, before doing something, and then releasing all of them. If you acquire some of your resources and one of them fails, you have to release the ones you've acquired so far. Since all the release code is the same, it makes sense (and it's easier to read) to just share the release code, thus (replace '.' with ' ' in your head):
int* foo(int arg1, char *arg2)
..int * ret=NULL;
..resource *r1, *r2, *r3;
..if(!(r1=acquire(1)))
....goto out;
..if(!(r2=acquire(2)))
....goto out_release_r1;
..if(!(r3=acquire(3)))
....goto out_release_r2;
..ret=use_resource(r1, r2, r3);
..release(r3);
.out_release_r2:
..release(r2);
.out_release_r1:
..release(r1);
.out:
..return ret;
}
It's a logical fallacy called begging the question, where what you are trying to prove is assumed somewhere in the premises of the argument.
Really, from a logical standpoint, it's the same as people who say, "The Bible is God's word", and if you ask, "How do you know?" they say, "Because the Bible says in verse xxx..." Sorry, you can't use the Bible as an authority to prove that the Bible is an authority. For the same reason, you can't define science to exclude the supernatural and then use science to disprove the supernatural.
Your example of unicorns not existing is not a philosophical assumption. It sounds to me like you are perfectly willing to believe in fairies and unicorns if there can be shown sufficient evidence for them. And perhaps you're perfectly willing to believe in God if you can be shown sufficient evidence as well. If so, "there is no supernatural" is not a philosophical assumption for you.
But GP was specifically saying that the problem with ID was that they will accept supernatural explanations. That is a philosophical assumption: it sounds like he would refuse to believe in Creationism regardless of evidence, for the simple reason that it has a supernatural component.
I have no problem with scientist saying, "ID is junk science because they don't follow the scientific method, use faulty logic, and ignore lots of evidence." That's absolutely true of some ID arguments I've heard. (Not well-versed enough in ID and evolutionary science to know if all ID arguments are guilty of that or not.) I also wouldn't have a problem with a scientist saying, "Science is based on the assumption that there is no supernatural; if it turns out there is a supernatural, many of our conclusions may be false."
The problem is that many people want to have it both ways: they want to define "science" as "no supernatural", but still assert that scientific conclusions are 100% true, and sometimes try to say "science has proven the supernatural false". Sorry, you can either define science as "no supernatural", or assert that science is 100% accurate and try to use science to show that there is no supernatural, but you can't do both.
A supernatural explanation may be true and it would still not be science. This is a necessary limit of science.
That's kind of what I was getting at when I said, "It's OK to make assumptions, but it's better if you're honest." If in science class they said up-front, "Science starts with the assumption that there is no supernatural, and bases all of its conclusions on that. If there is a supernatural, then some of those conclusions may be false," and if then every time someone said, "But the Bible says..." the teacher answered, "This class is based on the assumption that there is no God. If there is a God, a lot of this stuff I'm teaching now may be wrong. Now, back to...", then there wouldn't be an ID movement.
Obviously, no scientist would ever say that; and that's the problem. You can't have it both ways: you can either define science as "no supernatural" and admit that it may be wrong on certain points if there is, or you can say that "science" is just the "scientific method" (which can and has been used on God) and allow the possibility of supernatural hypotheses.
Only a God who actually behaved in an arbitrary and random way would affect the predictive success of scientific models.
I'm not sure I quite follow. I doubt anyone, even my wife, could build a 100% accurate predictive model of how I would act in a given situation. Does that mean I'm "arbitrary and random"? When it comes to stories, art, and music, having something fresh and unpredictable, but still pleasing, is precisely what we do want. I think even friendships and relationships are like that: obviously you need some predictability for trust, but you also relish the difference and unpredictability of the other person.
So if (hypothetically) God were interfering and directing evolution, I'd expect him to be as predictable and as unpredictable as any other rational creature in the universe.
The issue with ID is that science doesn't accept 'magic' as an answer.
Here you have just given away that you start with the philosophical assumption of naturalism: that is, everything that is (or everything that affects the universe) happens inside the universe. There is not, cannot be, any supernatural. That's not a proof you have, it's an assumption that you start with. And that's fine, we all make assumptions (e.g., logic works), but it's better if you're honest about it.
Let's try an analogy. Computers operate by rules, right? Everything in the computer can be defined by the state of its memory, registers, and disk (toss in whatever extra motherboard or micro-architectural state you want). How it transitions from one state to another depends only on what the state before it was, and any inputs into the system. The vast majority of those state transitions are 100% deterministic. (I know, I did my PhD thesis on this stuff.) Only a relatively small amount of input when you boot up determines whether you're playing Quake with friends or writing posts on Slashdot. In fact, for a running system overall, the less input needed to make the whole run smoothly the better designed it was.
Now, suppose there were a self-aware program living in your computer, looking at the state of the system, and trying to determine if there were such things as these mysterious "users", and if so, how they affected the state of the system. All you know is "data"; you can't see the physical world. Since these mysterious "users" don't live in data, to you they're essentially super-natural. Now ask your question: How is it that these "users" affect data?
If you do, you'll see that in this case "magic" (meaning, "something not described in the rules of the system") is an acceptable answer; in fact, "magic" is by definition the only answer. Users create the input from the keyboard, mouse, network, &c that feed into the system. Users really can decide which processes live and die; but what does that look like to a program? Some random data came in on a certain line which fed into a program, which when certain data hits inside a certain area on the screen (the "X" button on the upper right-hand-side of a window), the program sends a signal to another program which sends a signal to another program which tells it to exit. An atheist program might say those inputs were random, like states in quantum physics. Furthermore, really technical humans may have even more control: They can use in-circuit-emulators to directly change state on the CPU and use PCI bus devices hidden from the cpu to directly read and write memory. They can rewrite the register after an ADD instruction to make it look like it added 2 and 2 and got 5.
People who believe in the Judeo-Christian God believes that God has that kind of access to the universe. If he can feed 5000 people from five loaves of bread and 2 fishes, turn water into wine, and come back from the dead, surely he can twiddle some DNA at key points in history. By definition, a "miracle" is a temporary suspension or contravention of the normal laws of the universe. And thus, by definition, the "force being used" may not be detectable or describable under the laws of physics, any more than changes a programmer makes using an in-circuit-emulator would be detectable or describable by a program inside the computer trying to determine if the universe consisted only of data, or if there was a "supernatural" outside of the data.
Note that my point is not to defend any particular ID theories or people who promote them. I have a lot of biologist friends who are Christians, and think that the evidence pretty clearly supports the current scientific understanding of the development of life here on Earth. Believing that God can intervene in the natural world doesn't mean that you can't believe in and shouldn't look for natural laws and natural explanations for things. But your logic of "ID is bad because it will accept a supernatural explanation (i.e., magic)" isn't sound.
First of all, he said that people who brought cameras were given really specific training ("enculturation") to let them know what behavioral expectations are at the festival. I'd be surprised if this didn't include a deeper explanation of the rights they're being asked to hand over, and how they've been used in the past. (After all, it's a lot easier to convince someone not to do something than to have to enforce it after the fact.)
Re copyright: the main thing is that copyright, for good or for ill, is very strong. That's in part what makes the GPL so powerful (powerful enough to force MS to release source code under the GPL). The DMCA makes this even more powerful; which can obviously be abused, but in this case it allows them to quickly and effectively police "misused" images.
The article actually talks about other possibilities: using a CC license, using contract law, pursuing the fact that the person in the image didn't sign a model release, &c. The fact is that all of those other ways of doing things are less effective, more costly, and a lot slower (e.g., years). In the end, you may be able to punish the photog for breach of contract, but (according to the article) you can't bring back the image once it's out there. With the DMCA, you can issue a take-down notice and it disappears very quickly -- and that's all they really care about.
You forgot, "Just look at our record; we've been doing this for a long time and never abused our rights. Furthermore, the minute we do, next years' attendance drops significantly, so we have a financial incentive not to abuse our power."
On the contrary, society only works based on trust. Rules are only there for when trust breaks down.
The "enforcer" is promising people coming to the event (1) no commercial exploitation and (2) a certain level of privacy (for those who want to express themselves by being nude). To fulfill this promise, he "enforcer" is asking photographers to voluntarily give them over-arching powers over their work. They ask attendees and artists to trust them to protect them from exploitation, and they ask photographers to trust them to only use their power over their work for good. Since the assignment of trust is limited in duration (it lasts only the one year) and the event is repetitive, giving a feedback mechanism and incentive for the enforcer to keep their promises.
Either way, the bottom line is that if you don't trust the Burning Man enforcement team, you don't have to come.
I'm not quite sure I understand why you think that allowing "supernatural explanations" would prevent prediction or understanding anything of the past. Perhaps you could give an example?
The problem is that "science" can mean several things. One is the "scientific method": propose a hypothesis, run an experiment that could prove that hypothesis wrong, repeat. This method does not need to be restricted to the natural world; it was used, for instance, by Gideon to prove to himself that God really was talking to him (see Judges 6:33-39).
But a lot of people (including scientists) define "science" to include the assumption that there is no supernatural: i.e., the activity of looking exclusively for natural explanations. That is the philosophical assumption of naturalism. Then they circularly say that science has proven that the supernatural does not exist.
Think about it this way: what evidence would it take for you to believe that a miracle took place -- e.g., that an angel had appeared to someone / a group of people, or that someone had been supernaturally healed? If there is no evidence that could possibly be produced to convince you, I submit that you have accepted the philosophical assumption of naturalism. And that's fine (we all make assumptions), but it's better if you're honest about it.
It turns out that it's not simple to map NULL, but unfortunately (from a security standpoint) not impossible. It's normally disallowed, but since there are programs that sometimes need it (namely domemu-style programs). See this LWN article describing the previous NULL-dereference exploit. Presumably the seriousness of this NULL pointer exploit inspired others to look for exploitable NULL pointer bugs as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I think one of the problems in gym class is that the teacher can't tell your exertion level, and may yell at you if you don't look like you're putting in the effort. I remember reading about a gym teacher introducing heart-rate monitoring mid-semester, only to find out that a bunch of kids he'd been yelling at for "slacking" were actually exerting themselves as hard as they could reasonably be expected to do. I imagine that most of those kids end up hating fitness and thinking they can't do it (or they have years of bad associations with it). With an objective measure to say, "No, you really are exerting yourself reasonably", they can learn how to exercise in a way that's effective for them.
The main problem is that the research is something it took a grad student at least 6 years to begin to understand (4 years of undergrad + 2 years of grad), and then another 3 years to actually understand and get a result, but the task of the U public relations is to summarize it in 2 sentences in a way accessible to my grandmother. It's just not possible to do it with any degree of accuracy.
Now, when I was working on my thesis, I developed a 5-minute explanation, that I could adapt so that most people could get the basic idea of what I was doing. It even had 3 levels of detail, for the computer-savvy, the computer-OK, and the I-sometimes-use-Word crowd, so I could adjust based on visual feedback from the person listening. But you can't put that in a press release. The press release relating to my research said something about a "virtual security camera", which was so misleading as far as the *mechanism* that I winced every time I heard it. I'm pretty sure no one, not even another CompSci PhD student, could have learned anything useful from the press release.
...while being actually useful to a large number of people. Tons of networking sites started but didn't go anywhere because it was all about "add as many friends as you can", which turned out to be "annoy as many people as you can". I put off joining Facebook for a long time because I thought it was just another thing. But I use it every day now, and get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
As for "chaotic wrt which site would get the crown", MySpace had a big head start of Facebook, but is now behind. I haven't used MySpace, but if there weren't something better about Facebook, it wouldn't have surpassed MySpace.
I certainly benefited a lot from having it required in my school -- two consecutive years, in fact. I was always a bit mystified that my computer-geek friends, who planned on writing programs for a living, just slacked off in class and didn't even bother (and now program with just two fingers on each hand). Maybe the teacher didn't motivate students well enough, who knows. Maybe it was because the school still had mechanical typewriters. :-)
There are some things that kids don't like when they're young, but if they're pushed to do it (within reason), they appreciate it later. I've never heard someone say, "I wish my parents hadn't pushed me to stick with piano lessons when I was younger". I hear lots of people, seeing their friends who now can just sit down and play something enjoyable, say, "I wish my parents had pushed me to stick with piano lessons when I was younger." I'm sure there are examples of parents who pushed kids who now resent it, but that doesn't change the fact that a little pushing, within reason and with love, can be good in the long run.
I think so. The general principle being, there are contexts where "Standard English" (American or British) is the proper language to use, and so it's right to insist on Standard English rules being used in those contexts. I absolutely agree.
I think any difference a matter of emphasis: there is no shortage of people who will insist on Standard English being used in those contexts. But there are plenty of people who refuse to recognize that non-standard dialects are perfectly valid linguistically and culturally, and will look down on people who use them, even in an appropriate context. I think that attitude is closed-minded and unhelpful.
But on the other hand, there are some people who take things too far the other way, and refuse to teach and use Standard English. That's unhelpful as well, but I think it's often a reaction to people who look down on those who use non-standard dialects. So the best way to tone down this set of people (IMHO) is to tone down the first set of people. :-)
And what do you think people are doing when they talk to each other using various sub-dialects? If people speaking "Ebonics" to each other didn't communicate, they wouldn't bother speaking. The fact is that they communicate better to each other by speaking a comfortable dialect they're all fluent in, rather than speaking Standard English.
Yes there is, and needs to be, a Standard English (American) that everyone learns to speak and to write. But telling people who are speaking their own dialect, the dialect they grew up speaking, that they feel comfortable with and that their closest friends and family speak, is "wrong" and "murdering English" is counterproductive. I think it would be much better if we said, "You're speaking a valid dialect of English, and one you should continue to use and enjoy. But it's also important for you to learn to write and to speak Standard English."
Re the book you mentioned, I think you're right that using phrases from his local dialect really limits the accessibility to other readers. But I wonder if the whole "your English is wrong" attitude contributes to that, by making people respond, "There's nothing wrong with my English; it's just as good as yours." It's not about good or bad, but as you say, about accessibility.
I think you mean un-educated people. Language is defined by its speakers, not by some book somewhere. If you sent a linguist who had never learned "English" to listen to some of these "semi-literate tards", they wouldn't be able to tell that they were breaking the rules of Standard English (American). On the contrary, they would find a complex set of grammar rules consistently followed, just like every other language on the planet. As far as I'm concerned, that makes it an English dialect, as valid as the one you speak.
Now, I certainly agree that we need to have a Standard English, that it should be taught in schools, and people should be expected to use it in public forums. But denigrating people who speak a native dialect (or who speak Standard English poorly) as intellectually inferior (as opposed to simply less educated) is bigoted and ignorant.
They're usually writing what they would speak anyway. Before they were simply hearing what you call "grammatical errors"* and reproducing them in vocal form; now they're reading them and producing them in written form. I don't see how that's any worse, really.
* I'm of the opinion that language is defined by its speakers, not by a rulebook somewhere. Obviously we need to have and to teach a "Standard English" so that we can communicate effectively. But if a native speaker of English uses words in a way that differs with the grammar of Standard English, I object to calling that a "grammatical error", unless it's in a context where Standard English should be expected, like a school assignment, a book, a newspaper article, &c. Texting, IM, e-mail, and social networking with family and friends is a context where people should be allowed to use a dialect comfortable to them.
I wonder then if the amount of drivel you see is more about the fact that the internet exposes what's there, rather than bringing the level down. The fact is that 50 years ago you wouldn't read something that wasn't written by someone who had specifically developed their literacy. I'm always surprised at how much more ignorant some of my relatives sound on Facebook than they ever did in person. My relatives closer to my own age, however, are very articulate online.
So the internet makes the world seem less literate (by exposing the lack of literacy that otherwise would never be seen), but in fact on average makes the world in fact more literate (by encouraging people to express themselves in words and thus get more practice doing so).
At least for now. If history is a guide, if MS does get established in this market, it will be using all of its old dirty tricks to fight against non-Microsoft servers, just as it's been consistently doing in other areas for the last 25 years.
This is a digression, but the thing I find amusing about Window's hypervisor validation program is that Hyper-V wouldn't pass it (at least, as of N months ago when Citrix XenServer was going through the process of being validated). The validation requires and emulated HPET timer in the hypervisor, which Hyper-V does not have.
Except for the 2% of us that are exactly the right weight.
Forget even porn collection. I'm married, and sometimes I do "online research" for continual improvement of the bedroom experience (informational, not pornographic). But it's not necessarily the kind of thing I want popping up when I'm typing an unrelated search at work. I feel weird going through and deleting the stuff from my history, because it's not like I have anything to hide... just stuff I don't want popping up at random times.
That might work, except that the exact list of resources and the order they're acquired are usually particular to the function. They may include incrementing reference counts, grabbing spinlocks or mutexes, allocating memory, mapping memory, even copying data from / to userspace (which may fail). You'd have to write an acquire_any() individually for each function you're writing. Generally, having the chiastic structure makes it easy to double-check that you've handled all of the releases properly.
In OS code, it's pretty common to have to acquire several resources which may or may not be available, before doing something, and then releasing all of them. If you acquire some of your resources and one of them fails, you have to release the ones you've acquired so far. Since all the release code is the same, it makes sense (and it's easier to read) to just share the release code, thus (replace '.' with ' ' in your head):
int* foo(int arg1, char *arg2)
..int * ret=NULL;
..resource *r1, *r2, *r3;
..if(!(r1=acquire(1)))
....goto out;
..if(!(r2=acquire(2)))
....goto out_release_r1;
..if(!(r3=acquire(3)))
....goto out_release_r2;
..ret=use_resource(r1, r2, r3);
..release(r3);
.out_release_r2:
..release(r2);
.out_release_r1:
..release(r1);
.out:
..return ret;
}
It's a logical fallacy called begging the question, where what you are trying to prove is assumed somewhere in the premises of the argument.
Really, from a logical standpoint, it's the same as people who say, "The Bible is God's word", and if you ask, "How do you know?" they say, "Because the Bible says in verse xxx..." Sorry, you can't use the Bible as an authority to prove that the Bible is an authority. For the same reason, you can't define science to exclude the supernatural and then use science to disprove the supernatural.
Your example of unicorns not existing is not a philosophical assumption. It sounds to me like you are perfectly willing to believe in fairies and unicorns if there can be shown sufficient evidence for them. And perhaps you're perfectly willing to believe in God if you can be shown sufficient evidence as well. If so, "there is no supernatural" is not a philosophical assumption for you.
But GP was specifically saying that the problem with ID was that they will accept supernatural explanations. That is a philosophical assumption: it sounds like he would refuse to believe in Creationism regardless of evidence, for the simple reason that it has a supernatural component.
I have no problem with scientist saying, "ID is junk science because they don't follow the scientific method, use faulty logic, and ignore lots of evidence." That's absolutely true of some ID arguments I've heard. (Not well-versed enough in ID and evolutionary science to know if all ID arguments are guilty of that or not.) I also wouldn't have a problem with a scientist saying, "Science is based on the assumption that there is no supernatural; if it turns out there is a supernatural, many of our conclusions may be false."
The problem is that many people want to have it both ways: they want to define "science" as "no supernatural", but still assert that scientific conclusions are 100% true, and sometimes try to say "science has proven the supernatural false". Sorry, you can either define science as "no supernatural", or assert that science is 100% accurate and try to use science to show that there is no supernatural, but you can't do both.
That's kind of what I was getting at when I said, "It's OK to make assumptions, but it's better if you're honest." If in science class they said up-front, "Science starts with the assumption that there is no supernatural, and bases all of its conclusions on that. If there is a supernatural, then some of those conclusions may be false," and if then every time someone said, "But the Bible says..." the teacher answered, "This class is based on the assumption that there is no God. If there is a God, a lot of this stuff I'm teaching now may be wrong. Now, back to...", then there wouldn't be an ID movement.
Obviously, no scientist would ever say that; and that's the problem. You can't have it both ways: you can either define science as "no supernatural" and admit that it may be wrong on certain points if there is, or you can say that "science" is just the "scientific method" (which can and has been used on God) and allow the possibility of supernatural hypotheses.
I'm not sure I quite follow. I doubt anyone, even my wife, could build a 100% accurate predictive model of how I would act in a given situation. Does that mean I'm "arbitrary and random"? When it comes to stories, art, and music, having something fresh and unpredictable, but still pleasing, is precisely what we do want. I think even friendships and relationships are like that: obviously you need some predictability for trust, but you also relish the difference and unpredictability of the other person.
So if (hypothetically) God were interfering and directing evolution, I'd expect him to be as predictable and as unpredictable as any other rational creature in the universe.
Here you have just given away that you start with the philosophical assumption of naturalism: that is, everything that is (or everything that affects the universe) happens inside the universe. There is not, cannot be, any supernatural. That's not a proof you have, it's an assumption that you start with. And that's fine, we all make assumptions (e.g., logic works), but it's better if you're honest about it.
Let's try an analogy. Computers operate by rules, right? Everything in the computer can be defined by the state of its memory, registers, and disk (toss in whatever extra motherboard or micro-architectural state you want). How it transitions from one state to another depends only on what the state before it was, and any inputs into the system. The vast majority of those state transitions are 100% deterministic. (I know, I did my PhD thesis on this stuff.) Only a relatively small amount of input when you boot up determines whether you're playing Quake with friends or writing posts on Slashdot. In fact, for a running system overall, the less input needed to make the whole run smoothly the better designed it was.
Now, suppose there were a self-aware program living in your computer, looking at the state of the system, and trying to determine if there were such things as these mysterious "users", and if so, how they affected the state of the system. All you know is "data"; you can't see the physical world. Since these mysterious "users" don't live in data, to you they're essentially super-natural. Now ask your question: How is it that these "users" affect data?
If you do, you'll see that in this case "magic" (meaning, "something not described in the rules of the system") is an acceptable answer; in fact, "magic" is by definition the only answer. Users create the input from the keyboard, mouse, network, &c that feed into the system. Users really can decide which processes live and die; but what does that look like to a program? Some random data came in on a certain line which fed into a program, which when certain data hits inside a certain area on the screen (the "X" button on the upper right-hand-side of a window), the program sends a signal to another program which sends a signal to another program which tells it to exit. An atheist program might say those inputs were random, like states in quantum physics. Furthermore, really technical humans may have even more control: They can use in-circuit-emulators to directly change state on the CPU and use PCI bus devices hidden from the cpu to directly read and write memory. They can rewrite the register after an ADD instruction to make it look like it added 2 and 2 and got 5.
People who believe in the Judeo-Christian God believes that God has that kind of access to the universe. If he can feed 5000 people from five loaves of bread and 2 fishes, turn water into wine, and come back from the dead, surely he can twiddle some DNA at key points in history. By definition, a "miracle" is a temporary suspension or contravention of the normal laws of the universe. And thus, by definition, the "force being used" may not be detectable or describable under the laws of physics, any more than changes a programmer makes using an in-circuit-emulator would be detectable or describable by a program inside the computer trying to determine if the universe consisted only of data, or if there was a "supernatural" outside of the data.
Note that my point is not to defend any particular ID theories or people who promote them. I have a lot of biologist friends who are Christians, and think that the evidence pretty clearly supports the current scientific understanding of the development of life here on Earth. Believing that God can intervene in the natural world doesn't mean that you can't believe in and shouldn't look for natural laws and natural explanations for things. But your logic of "ID is bad because it will accept a supernatural explanation (i.e., magic)" isn't sound.
Did you read TFA? It's probably worth your time.
First of all, he said that people who brought cameras were given really specific training ("enculturation") to let them know what behavioral expectations are at the festival. I'd be surprised if this didn't include a deeper explanation of the rights they're being asked to hand over, and how they've been used in the past. (After all, it's a lot easier to convince someone not to do something than to have to enforce it after the fact.)
Re copyright: the main thing is that copyright, for good or for ill, is very strong. That's in part what makes the GPL so powerful (powerful enough to force MS to release source code under the GPL). The DMCA makes this even more powerful; which can obviously be abused, but in this case it allows them to quickly and effectively police "misused" images.
The article actually talks about other possibilities: using a CC license, using contract law, pursuing the fact that the person in the image didn't sign a model release, &c. The fact is that all of those other ways of doing things are less effective, more costly, and a lot slower (e.g., years). In the end, you may be able to punish the photog for breach of contract, but (according to the article) you can't bring back the image once it's out there. With the DMCA, you can issue a take-down notice and it disappears very quickly -- and that's all they really care about.
You forgot, "Just look at our record; we've been doing this for a long time and never abused our rights. Furthermore, the minute we do, next years' attendance drops significantly, so we have a financial incentive not to abuse our power."
On the contrary, society only works based on trust. Rules are only there for when trust breaks down.
The "enforcer" is promising people coming to the event (1) no commercial exploitation and (2) a certain level of privacy (for those who want to express themselves by being nude). To fulfill this promise, he "enforcer" is asking photographers to voluntarily give them over-arching powers over their work. They ask attendees and artists to trust them to protect them from exploitation, and they ask photographers to trust them to only use their power over their work for good. Since the assignment of trust is limited in duration (it lasts only the one year) and the event is repetitive, giving a feedback mechanism and incentive for the enforcer to keep their promises.
Either way, the bottom line is that if you don't trust the Burning Man enforcement team, you don't have to come.
I'm not quite sure I understand why you think that allowing "supernatural explanations" would prevent prediction or understanding anything of the past. Perhaps you could give an example?
The problem is that "science" can mean several things. One is the "scientific method": propose a hypothesis, run an experiment that could prove that hypothesis wrong, repeat. This method does not need to be restricted to the natural world; it was used, for instance, by Gideon to prove to himself that God really was talking to him (see Judges 6:33-39).
But a lot of people (including scientists) define "science" to include the assumption that there is no supernatural: i.e., the activity of looking exclusively for natural explanations. That is the philosophical assumption of naturalism. Then they circularly say that science has proven that the supernatural does not exist.
Think about it this way: what evidence would it take for you to believe that a miracle took place -- e.g., that an angel had appeared to someone / a group of people, or that someone had been supernaturally healed? If there is no evidence that could possibly be produced to convince you, I submit that you have accepted the philosophical assumption of naturalism. And that's fine (we all make assumptions), but it's better if you're honest about it.
It turns out that it's not simple to map NULL, but unfortunately (from a security standpoint) not impossible. It's normally disallowed, but since there are programs that sometimes need it (namely domemu-style programs). See this LWN article describing the previous NULL-dereference exploit. Presumably the seriousness of this NULL pointer exploit inspired others to look for exploitable NULL pointer bugs as well.