Mythical Man-Month is pretty much dated by now. While Brooks had a lot of excellent insights, he had some clinkers too, and most of his insights have become common knowledge. There's a few chapters still worth reading, but most of the book is either common knowledge or wrong or irrelevant. Lots of people still haven't absorbed its lessons, but if they haven't by now they aren't going to be helped by any book.
There was a Silver Anniversary edition twenty-five years after initial publication that had his essay "No Silver Bullet", which is also very insightful for its time. It also contains some notes on what in the original was right and wrong. If you're going to read the book, try to get this edition.
A lot of the charm of the book is simply the writing. Brooks is an excellent writer, and doesn't even try to have excuses for the mistakes he made.
In fiction, about the closest thing you'll find is formula fiction, with romance novels being an excellent example. The same book is written over and over again, with different characters and settings. Alternatively, things like Lester Dent's formula (which allowed him to write most of the Doc Savage books).
In non-fiction, books sometimes come in different editions, and sometimes the difference will be a rewrite.
Total rewrites don't happen often in books or software, but they do.
If I want to use a low-tech method of crashing a plane, I have to get on the plane, and can crash at most one plane. If I want to use a method to subvert an Internet voting system, I can sit in another country and subvert an entire system.
Where I live, the voting machines count paper ballots. That gives an approximate count right off, which is good enough for all but the closest elections. There will be some precincts randomly chosen for hand counts to verify the voting machines. The result is that, if someone ditched a carton of ballots, the numbers would be way off and the meddling detected.
I have an iPhone 5S, bought shortly after it came out. It's about five and a half years old now. The battery works well. If I have to get the battery changed, and want Apple to do it, it's under $100. That's less than $20/year, far less than I pay for connectivity.
So, yes, I understood what I was getting into. I fully expected to have to get a new battery before this, and I was aware of the cost. My only misunderstanding was that I expected it to be more cost and hassle than it actually was.
If you're my neighbor, I'd really appreciate it if you wouldn't try to make major repairs to your natural gas lines. Finding that it's functioning unsafely could cause me serious problems.
Skepticism is fine. I have no problem with skeptics.
However, I do have a problem with people with fixed opinions who call themselves skeptics. If you're honest-to-FSM skeptical about something, you neither fully believe it nor fully disbelieve it. There's a lot of people who have made it very clear that they aren't skeptical about global warming, but are absolutely convinced it isn't happening. To that end, they'll believe anything else, no matter how improbable. Those are deniers, and members of a cult of ignorance.
Nobody's right to free speech is being curtailed. Some platforms are deciding that you can't say certain things on their podium. That's all. Free speech never included the right to make anyone else say what you want them to say, and freedom of the press doesn't mean government-supplied printing presses for all. You want to spew anti-vax nonsense? Get your own website. It doesn't appeal to very many people? There may be a lesson there.
The Oh-My-God particle wasn't quite the equivalent of a hundred-mph fastball, closer to half of that. It was going about 99.[21 9s].5% of the speed of light.
You know what's really dangerous to free speech? Forced speech. If I can be forced to say what you want, how can I get my own thoughts out? Your criterion seems to be that I can be forced to say anything that's not positively illegal.
And I agree. Forced speech is a terrible practice and should be loudly decried.
It isn't a public forum. It's a private forum open to the public for certain purposes. The web itself is pretty much an open public forum, and you can peddle your nonsense there all you like.
Who decides what information is good then? Think for one second.
Whoever's publishing stuff. If you don't like it, get your own website and use it to push what you want pushed. Don't dictate to others what they can and cannot say.
Your first problem is that you can't tell truth from lies. It's an important skill. You'll never be perfect at it, but right now you're using bogus logic and outright lies.
Your second problem is that you want to force private organizations to do what you want, not what they want.
It's pretty well established that sitting down and reasoning with people and using facts doesn't convince people. There are ways to convince people, but it isn't easy and it can't be done en masse. It involves one-on-one engagement.
Suppressing the anti-vaxxers does serve the purpose of limiting their audience and, therefore, their harm. The fact that they can get their own websites means this isn't a restriction on free speech.
Now, forcing private sites to publish what they don't want to is an infringement on free speech with lots of dangerous consequences.
The solution is to allow anyone who wants to set up their own site, rather than to force site owners to publish what they don't want to. In other words, the problem is already solved, except for fascists who want to order others to do stuff they don't want to do.
Freedom of the press has never involved the government handing out free printing presses. What it means is that, if you get your own, you get to do pretty much what you want with it. As long as you can get your own website and the government doesn't crack down on it, freedom of speech is maintained. The government should not be in the business of telling websites what to publish, and the danger from requiring websites to publish anything they're told to is much greater than what we've got now.
It's easy to get hosting for what you want to say. The Nazis were kicked off a few sites, but eventually got one. With government censorship, they couldn't have. You'll have no problem setting up an anti-vaxxer site if you're stupid enough to believe that crap.
Have you thought about what it would mean if private sites were required to publish anything someone wanted them to? That's what you're advocating.
There is a gap between "works for everybody" and "doesn't work", and that gap is largely covered by herd immunity when enough people are vaccinated. Why do you think there's lots of unrecorded side effects and injuries? Got any evidence?
That's more of a WWI thing. I'm into WWII naval camouflage and I haven't seen an example of zebra dazzle camouflage then. The later war USN patterns, while you could call them dazzle patterns, were not the WWI jagged black and white stripes.
Slashdot Mirror
Mythical Man-Month is pretty much dated by now. While Brooks had a lot of excellent insights, he had some clinkers too, and most of his insights have become common knowledge. There's a few chapters still worth reading, but most of the book is either common knowledge or wrong or irrelevant. Lots of people still haven't absorbed its lessons, but if they haven't by now they aren't going to be helped by any book.
There was a Silver Anniversary edition twenty-five years after initial publication that had his essay "No Silver Bullet", which is also very insightful for its time. It also contains some notes on what in the original was right and wrong. If you're going to read the book, try to get this edition.
A lot of the charm of the book is simply the writing. Brooks is an excellent writer, and doesn't even try to have excuses for the mistakes he made.
In fiction, about the closest thing you'll find is formula fiction, with romance novels being an excellent example. The same book is written over and over again, with different characters and settings. Alternatively, things like Lester Dent's formula (which allowed him to write most of the Doc Savage books).
In non-fiction, books sometimes come in different editions, and sometimes the difference will be a rewrite.
Total rewrites don't happen often in books or software, but they do.
Does anyone really understand a complicated real-world situation without trying things to see what happens?
If I want to use a low-tech method of crashing a plane, I have to get on the plane, and can crash at most one plane. If I want to use a method to subvert an Internet voting system, I can sit in another country and subvert an entire system.
Where I live, the voting machines count paper ballots. That gives an approximate count right off, which is good enough for all but the closest elections. There will be some precincts randomly chosen for hand counts to verify the voting machines. The result is that, if someone ditched a carton of ballots, the numbers would be way off and the meddling detected.
Guess how I know you're not from around where I live.
I can't shake the feeling that they may have dropped a word from that principle.
I have an iPhone 5S, bought shortly after it came out. It's about five and a half years old now. The battery works well. If I have to get the battery changed, and want Apple to do it, it's under $100. That's less than $20/year, far less than I pay for connectivity.
So, yes, I understood what I was getting into. I fully expected to have to get a new battery before this, and I was aware of the cost. My only misunderstanding was that I expected it to be more cost and hassle than it actually was.
If you're my neighbor, I'd really appreciate it if you wouldn't try to make major repairs to your natural gas lines. Finding that it's functioning unsafely could cause me serious problems.
Skepticism is fine. I have no problem with skeptics.
However, I do have a problem with people with fixed opinions who call themselves skeptics. If you're honest-to-FSM skeptical about something, you neither fully believe it nor fully disbelieve it. There's a lot of people who have made it very clear that they aren't skeptical about global warming, but are absolutely convinced it isn't happening. To that end, they'll believe anything else, no matter how improbable. Those are deniers, and members of a cult of ignorance.
Nobody's right to free speech is being curtailed. Some platforms are deciding that you can't say certain things on their podium. That's all. Free speech never included the right to make anyone else say what you want them to say, and freedom of the press doesn't mean government-supplied printing presses for all. You want to spew anti-vax nonsense? Get your own website. It doesn't appeal to very many people? There may be a lesson there.
The Oh-My-God particle wasn't quite the equivalent of a hundred-mph fastball, closer to half of that. It was going about 99.[21 9s].5% of the speed of light.
Okay, use Firefox with NoScript. That prevents all scripts from running, unless you allow them by domain.
Go ahead and use the web without enabling anything. Find anything you can use? Anything?
If you don't want to allow unsigned, unreviewed, unverified, and untrusted code in your browser, you can. No problem.
Now try to do anything on the web.
You know what's really dangerous to free speech? Forced speech. If I can be forced to say what you want, how can I get my own thoughts out? Your criterion seems to be that I can be forced to say anything that's not positively illegal.
And I agree. Forced speech is a terrible practice and should be loudly decried.
It isn't a public forum. It's a private forum open to the public for certain purposes. The web itself is pretty much an open public forum, and you can peddle your nonsense there all you like.
Whoever's publishing stuff. If you don't like it, get your own website and use it to push what you want pushed. Don't dictate to others what they can and cannot say.
You are attempting to destroy free speech by making anybody have to say anything you like.
Your first problem is that you can't tell truth from lies. It's an important skill. You'll never be perfect at it, but right now you're using bogus logic and outright lies.
Your second problem is that you want to force private organizations to do what you want, not what they want.
It's pretty well established that sitting down and reasoning with people and using facts doesn't convince people. There are ways to convince people, but it isn't easy and it can't be done en masse. It involves one-on-one engagement.
Suppressing the anti-vaxxers does serve the purpose of limiting their audience and, therefore, their harm. The fact that they can get their own websites means this isn't a restriction on free speech.
Now, forcing private sites to publish what they don't want to is an infringement on free speech with lots of dangerous consequences.
The solution is to allow anyone who wants to set up their own site, rather than to force site owners to publish what they don't want to. In other words, the problem is already solved, except for fascists who want to order others to do stuff they don't want to do.
Freedom of the press has never involved the government handing out free printing presses. What it means is that, if you get your own, you get to do pretty much what you want with it. As long as you can get your own website and the government doesn't crack down on it, freedom of speech is maintained. The government should not be in the business of telling websites what to publish, and the danger from requiring websites to publish anything they're told to is much greater than what we've got now.
It's easy to get hosting for what you want to say. The Nazis were kicked off a few sites, but eventually got one. With government censorship, they couldn't have. You'll have no problem setting up an anti-vaxxer site if you're stupid enough to believe that crap.
Have you thought about what it would mean if private sites were required to publish anything someone wanted them to? That's what you're advocating.
There is a gap between "works for everybody" and "doesn't work", and that gap is largely covered by herd immunity when enough people are vaccinated. Why do you think there's lots of unrecorded side effects and injuries? Got any evidence?
Arguably, this would be a bad thing in your fantasy world.
That's more of a WWI thing. I'm into WWII naval camouflage and I haven't seen an example of zebra dazzle camouflage then. The later war USN patterns, while you could call them dazzle patterns, were not the WWI jagged black and white stripes.