You know, we complained endlessly when Microsoft fragmented the web user experience for years...why are some of us giving Mozilla and Google a free pass when, however noble the motivation, they are trying to do the same thing?
We complained about Microsoft because they were using their browser development and bundling to make the Web as proprietary as possible - specifically, they were trying to make it hard for web designers to build services for anything that wasn't Internet Explorer and ActiveX. Complaints about H.264 are consistent with, not contrary to, the gripes many of us had with Microsoft when they were trashing the Web. Google, Opera and Mozilla are doing the right thing here because H.264, unlike XML and JavaScript, is proprietary. The Web always gets better when open standards gain wider acceptance (think RSS, Ajax, and RSA encryption). Video will be no different.
too many [scientists] demand the presumption of infallibility with the arrogance of a medieval pope.
"Too many" is just weasel words. Who are you talking about? There are surely some arrogant scientists out there - just as there are arrogant sales clerks, IT technicians, cooks, and graphic designers. But what counts as "too many?" More than half? Can you name any prominent scientists or science advocates who demand that we presume their infallibility? Your comment would be easier to agree with if you did.
"Provisional is certainly not a word given any emphasis in any IPCC report.
If you're expecting that word to appear in every scientific paper you've missed the point. PZ is saying that "provisional" is implied in all scientific thinking - that it's the way science works. No scientific question is 100% settled: new evidence will always pour in, as long as we look for it. Climate change research is no exception: we'll keep learning about both climate and weather as long as we study them. But that doesn't mean scientists are immobilized and cannot answer "settled" questions. It doesn't mean, for example, that if you ask a scientist whether the sun will rise tomorrow, she'll pause in deep thought before answering, "Well, I can't say for certain, but given what we've observed on all previous days for which we have records, as well as what we know about the fossil record and cosmology, not to mention the unlikelihood of an Earth-shattering event..."
It's ridiculous. We can't approach information in that way, or else we'd never finish prefacing our sentences. So we have these "settled" matters - answers for which we have a reasonable amount of certainty. So it is with climate change, or the heliocentric model of the solar system, or evolution. We operate within the confines of what we've learned, even though our understanding is provisional.
If people have a lot less faith in science than they used to, it might be in part because too many scientists want to have their cake and eat it too.
I'm not even sure what that metaphor means in this context. They want to learn about the universe, and talk about what they've learned? Good for them!
Given that you made the allegation that those fighting for NN are those pushing for the Fairness Doctrine, the onus is on you to present examples.
This is becoming typical of slashdot and its members.
Nice aimless slur, but your comment still didn't include a citation for your imaginary claim about the Fairness Doctrine. No one I've read about who backs Net Neutrality (whether FCC-mandated or otherwise) has advocated bringing back the broadcasting Fairness Doctrine. I'm not even clear on how the two policies are related. Post a citation, not a whiny complaint, or you're just a blowhard.
The last thing we need right now is the government getting it's hands all over the internet via some trojan called Net Neutrality.
The government's hands are already there. In fact, the government's hands put the Internet there in the first place. Net Neutrality is not a "trojan," but rather an idea to rely upon the sort of peering agreements that already exist between network providers rather than allow them to discriminate amongst content providers, since many network providers are also content providers. It would prevent, say, Comcast from impeding your Netflix streaming.
It doesn't matter if you are for or against net neutrality. The FCC creating the power to regulate the internet out of thin air is lose/lose. There are not 4 branches of government there are 3. Everyone should be against the FCC taking power away from the legitiment branches of government.
That is like saying the FBI, the Navy, and NASA are the fourth, fifth and sixth branches of government. The FCC may be an "independent agency" in the sense that it can create certain regulations within its particular focus, but that power is derived from the executive branch in a way defined by legislation (initially the Communications Act of 1934). The majority of its upper management is appointed by the President. This makes it no different from any other part of the government and is consistent with the Constitution's separation of powers.
I like how the first dozen or so comments are just about the browser compatability, and not the biological fidelity.
Right, we need to get a little less nerdy and return to the main topic: skeletons. So who do you think would win, a Kirk skeleton or a Picard skeleton?
No, he's absolutely correct: Linux is scheduled for EOL in 2011, and even now Linus is only patching critical security bugs (we'll still probably see at least a few of those every Linux Patch Tuesday until EOL, and frankly I'll be happy to see my last LPT). And look, there hasn't been a major update since Linux SP4 in 2006, and he stopped active development of Linux's integrated web browser, Firefox, years ago, so it's not like we weren't warned. I'm not sure what everyone here is complaining about - sure, this Microsoft Russia guy is itching for us to switch to Windows now that Linux is going away, but most of us upgraded to PostLinux 7 Business Premium Edition well over a year ago. This is a non-story.
Look at those dollar amounts. First trial: $220,000 Second: $1.92 million Third: $54,000 Fourth: $1.5 million... Something about the shear inconsistency of the outcomes tells me how broken this system of courts truly is.
And ask yourself: which is more serious, a non-disabled person parking in a disabled parking spot, or someone sharing 24 songs on the Internet? If stealing a disabled person's space strikes you as more serious, perhaps the song fine should be lower than whatever your local parking fine is. Does no one on these juries think of these sorts of comparisons?
Also, the individual mandate and insurance market ideas are Republican - something most Republicans are quick deny, as it has been forbidden by their religion since 2009.
Rejecting the corporate bonuses of companies on government welfare is not leftist, it's conservative: the taxpayer should not be paying bonuses to the management of failed companies. And if you think the financial bailouts themselves are leftist, you have a funny idea of what "leftist" means.
Take out your wallet and look at your ATM card. If the card bears the name of a bank rather than that of the government, the president is not a leftist.
Go-Go Instant Runoff Voting!... The only people I can imagine being against it are the most cynical of the entrenched power elite. I think we'll all be doing IRV eventually.
I doubt we ever will, and for precisely the counter-reason you suggest: that it would endanger the dominant parties. The people will never be able to accomplish anything that endangers the political status quo so fundamentally. To be more blunt, one of these two political behemoths (the one that rhymes with Shmepublican) is tremendously good at taking any benign issue and turning it into a terrible communist plot. Examples:
Campaign finance reform. Large companies that stand to benefit much from inclusion in federal budgets bribe our politicians and then wait for their kickbacks. Conservatives hate government spending, but don't seem to mind the bribes that lead to this spending.
Health Care. I live in Massachusetts and am very familiar with which party invented health insurance mandates and state insurance markets (hint: our governor at the time has also appeared on Sesame Street as a game show host).
Instant Runoff Voting is a great idea, and one entirely compatible with conservative ideas, but that doesn't matter. If it were somehow to gain a public spotlight, the Republicans would do the same sort of thing they've done to other good ideas. IRV would become Tea Party fodder; they'd ignore all specifics and call it Instant Rigged Voting. And the media, which also ignores all specifics and strives to cover controversy, would fuel it. Sorry if I'm a cynic, but I live in the United States and have been paying attention for the past decade. The country's ability to communicate effectively and think independently is broken, and we won't have things like IRV until or unless this changes.
In 2010-2011, you can write highly functional applications using HTML5 and Javascript, make them installable on your web browser, and have them work offline. Please stop assuming the Web is as it was when you were in junior high.
There was no Web when I was in junior high, you insensitive clod.:)
I'm glad you summarized all this because I've also seen and used plenty of these offline apps and they can be quite sophisticated. It will be interesting to see if the Web can become an app platform, beyond webmail and the other common cloud services we have today. Frankly, I look forward to it. Most of my life computing has been a balkanized activity, users running in one of several parallel ruts depending which hardware/software platform they happen to use. At times there has been convergence, at other times divergence. The Web has always held the promise of making the old platforms irrelevant, and in a very good way.
it is nice to see that some put their money where they believe, and not just on the bottom line
That depends on what factors influence the bottom line. Under Republican policies, which I've been assured many times are extremely "business friendly," we deregulated banks and finance companies and allowed the lines between them to blur (some of this was supported by President Clinton). Under President Bush we also depopulated the SEC, which was charged with the oversight of these businesses. In other words, we did exactly what banks and financial institutions were asking us to do. And it turns out that doing exactly what these businesses wanted was not as "business friendly" as we'd imagined, as the crash of 2008 demonstrates. It turns out that if we'd kept post-Depression era policies in place, all of the companies that lobbied for deregulation in the 1990s and 2000s would have been much better off, millions of jobless Americans wouldn't be jobless, and a lot of the tech companies that TFA mentions would be selling more cloud services and shiny devices than they currently are. The bottom line suffered tremendously for our "business friendly" policies. So these people are putting their money not just behind what they believe, but also on the bottom line.
He's sued AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube (so Google... again!). For some strange reason he did not sue Microsoft. Here are the two primary super-genius patents representing ideas no one else could have come up with:
6,263,507, "Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data"
6,757,682, "Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest"
Having alerted you users all to these items of interest, I will now proceed to pay Paul Allen.
Though [Apple] has decades more behind it, there's only about 37 transactions, in comparison with the 77 on the Google list. Google's long list is probably par for the course for giants like IBM, Intel and Microsoft's yearly acquisitions, but this being slashdot, please think of what "giants" and "par for the course" mean for Google's faltering "don't be evil" motto.
Once you have that many companies in your corporate bloodstream, your original identity starts to fade and your decisions are no longer yours --they're made in consultation with previously alien VP's who all had different directions prior to the merger. Scary times ahead.
That comparison, though true for a lot of big companies, might falter a bit because of the types and methods of business in which Google engages. The search giant's development platform is the web; their underlying operating environment is Linux with open source. Because of these choices the smaller companies they gobble up are probably very like Google in both technical compatibility and corporate culture.
But it wasn't the scientists who politicized the issue. They're knee-deep into the politics as a defensive measure
Not true in the least. Good science and documentation there of is capable of standing on its own.
The good science and documentation is there, and should stand on its own (indeed it does amongst people who appreciate good science and documentation). But the public is caught between good science and propaganda. People end up hearing reasonable "the science says the following" statements in one ear and silly "the scientists are money-grubbers trying to fill their own wallets" tripe in the other. With an extra chorus of "the scientists are trying to destroy America with communism" non-sequiturs for good measure. So for most people, no, you are wrong. The good science doesn't stand much of a chance.
climate scientists, a while ago and ever since, bought into the politics of the debate, and as far as I'm concerned they can go fuck themselves
But it wasn't the scientists who politicized the issue. They're knee-deep into the politics as a defensive measure, not because they enjoy punditry. I think they were surprised their results became a political issue at all - after all, you can't vote for or against climate change any more than you can vote down gravity. Mathematicians would get into politics, too, if politicians and pundits started saying you can't computer the square root of a million.
That's all well and good - and I agree with it - but what does it have to do with a School Board? It doesn't say anything about a School Board establishing a religion..
The School Board is a part of - or at least, derives it authority from - the state (municipalities do not exist under the Constitution; their powers are derived from the state). So the real question is, does the first amendment's establishment clause apply to the states as it does to the federal government? The answer is that the Supreme Court has held that first article of the fourteenth amendment compels states to comply with most of the Bill of Rights (relevent text in bold):
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So most of the Bill of Rights applies to states, including the First Amendment. The establishment clause therefore restricts the School Board from establishing a religion, which the courts have held can include teaching religiously-influenced non-science in a science class. (That is, until the majority on our conservative supreme court - they of "strict constructivism" - decide to pass an entirely new law taken from their collective rectum.)
Slashdot Mirror
During those good old days it was not possible to patent software. Sadly, the word has changed focus with the times.
You know, we complained endlessly when Microsoft fragmented the web user experience for years...why are some of us giving Mozilla and Google a free pass when, however noble the motivation, they are trying to do the same thing?
We complained about Microsoft because they were using their browser development and bundling to make the Web as proprietary as possible - specifically, they were trying to make it hard for web designers to build services for anything that wasn't Internet Explorer and ActiveX. Complaints about H.264 are consistent with, not contrary to, the gripes many of us had with Microsoft when they were trashing the Web. Google, Opera and Mozilla are doing the right thing here because H.264, unlike XML and JavaScript, is proprietary. The Web always gets better when open standards gain wider acceptance (think RSS, Ajax, and RSA encryption). Video will be no different.
too many [scientists] demand the presumption of infallibility with the arrogance of a medieval pope.
"Too many" is just weasel words. Who are you talking about? There are surely some arrogant scientists out there - just as there are arrogant sales clerks, IT technicians, cooks, and graphic designers. But what counts as "too many?" More than half? Can you name any prominent scientists or science advocates who demand that we presume their infallibility? Your comment would be easier to agree with if you did.
"Provisional is certainly not a word given any emphasis in any IPCC report.
If you're expecting that word to appear in every scientific paper you've missed the point. PZ is saying that "provisional" is implied in all scientific thinking - that it's the way science works. No scientific question is 100% settled: new evidence will always pour in, as long as we look for it. Climate change research is no exception: we'll keep learning about both climate and weather as long as we study them. But that doesn't mean scientists are immobilized and cannot answer "settled" questions. It doesn't mean, for example, that if you ask a scientist whether the sun will rise tomorrow, she'll pause in deep thought before answering, "Well, I can't say for certain, but given what we've observed on all previous days for which we have records, as well as what we know about the fossil record and cosmology, not to mention the unlikelihood of an Earth-shattering event ..."
It's ridiculous. We can't approach information in that way, or else we'd never finish prefacing our sentences. So we have these "settled" matters - answers for which we have a reasonable amount of certainty. So it is with climate change, or the heliocentric model of the solar system, or evolution. We operate within the confines of what we've learned, even though our understanding is provisional.
If people have a lot less faith in science than they used to, it might be in part because too many scientists want to have their cake and eat it too.
I'm not even sure what that metaphor means in this context. They want to learn about the universe, and talk about what they've learned? Good for them!
Given that you made the allegation that those fighting for NN are those pushing for the Fairness Doctrine, the onus is on you to present examples.
This is becoming typical of slashdot and its members.
Nice aimless slur, but your comment still didn't include a citation for your imaginary claim about the Fairness Doctrine. No one I've read about who backs Net Neutrality (whether FCC-mandated or otherwise) has advocated bringing back the broadcasting Fairness Doctrine. I'm not even clear on how the two policies are related. Post a citation, not a whiny complaint, or you're just a blowhard.
This is the norm in Britain. And it works. But trying to get people to do this in the States is like pulling teeth.
The last thing we need right now is the government getting it's hands all over the internet via some trojan called Net Neutrality.
The government's hands are already there. In fact, the government's hands put the Internet there in the first place. Net Neutrality is not a "trojan," but rather an idea to rely upon the sort of peering agreements that already exist between network providers rather than allow them to discriminate amongst content providers, since many network providers are also content providers. It would prevent, say, Comcast from impeding your Netflix streaming.
It doesn't matter if you are for or against net neutrality. The FCC creating the power to regulate the internet out of thin air is lose/lose. There are not 4 branches of government there are 3. Everyone should be against the FCC taking power away from the legitiment branches of government.
That is like saying the FBI, the Navy, and NASA are the fourth, fifth and sixth branches of government. The FCC may be an "independent agency" in the sense that it can create certain regulations within its particular focus, but that power is derived from the executive branch in a way defined by legislation (initially the Communications Act of 1934). The majority of its upper management is appointed by the President. This makes it no different from any other part of the government and is consistent with the Constitution's separation of powers.
I like how the first dozen or so comments are just about the browser compatability, and not the biological fidelity.
Right, we need to get a little less nerdy and return to the main topic: skeletons. So who do you think would win, a Kirk skeleton or a Picard skeleton?
I don't really think one day is really enough time to process these documents.
Yeah, two days is more like it.
Either is far too long when five minutes is enough to visit /. and read uninformed rants about them. Process, shmrocess.
No, he's absolutely correct: Linux is scheduled for EOL in 2011, and even now Linus is only patching critical security bugs (we'll still probably see at least a few of those every Linux Patch Tuesday until EOL, and frankly I'll be happy to see my last LPT). And look, there hasn't been a major update since Linux SP4 in 2006, and he stopped active development of Linux's integrated web browser, Firefox, years ago, so it's not like we weren't warned. I'm not sure what everyone here is complaining about - sure, this Microsoft Russia guy is itching for us to switch to Windows now that Linux is going away, but most of us upgraded to PostLinux 7 Business Premium Edition well over a year ago. This is a non-story.
Look at those dollar amounts. First trial: $220,000 Second: $1.92 million Third: $54,000 Fourth: $1.5 million ... Something about the shear inconsistency of the outcomes tells me how broken this system of courts truly is.
And ask yourself: which is more serious, a non-disabled person parking in a disabled parking spot, or someone sharing 24 songs on the Internet? If stealing a disabled person's space strikes you as more serious, perhaps the song fine should be lower than whatever your local parking fine is. Does no one on these juries think of these sorts of comparisons?
Do you even read what you right?
Easily one of my favorite sentences ever. :)
Also, the individual mandate and insurance market ideas are Republican - something most Republicans are quick deny, as it has been forbidden by their religion since 2009.
Rejecting the corporate bonuses of companies on government welfare is not leftist, it's conservative: the taxpayer should not be paying bonuses to the management of failed companies. And if you think the financial bailouts themselves are leftist, you have a funny idea of what "leftist" means.
Take out your wallet and look at your ATM card. If the card bears the name of a bank rather than that of the government, the president is not a leftist.
Go-Go Instant Runoff Voting! ... The only people I can imagine being against it are the most cynical of the entrenched power elite. I think we'll all be doing IRV eventually.
I doubt we ever will, and for precisely the counter-reason you suggest: that it would endanger the dominant parties. The people will never be able to accomplish anything that endangers the political status quo so fundamentally. To be more blunt, one of these two political behemoths (the one that rhymes with Shmepublican) is tremendously good at taking any benign issue and turning it into a terrible communist plot. Examples:
Instant Runoff Voting is a great idea, and one entirely compatible with conservative ideas, but that doesn't matter. If it were somehow to gain a public spotlight, the Republicans would do the same sort of thing they've done to other good ideas. IRV would become Tea Party fodder; they'd ignore all specifics and call it Instant Rigged Voting. And the media, which also ignores all specifics and strives to cover controversy, would fuel it. Sorry if I'm a cynic, but I live in the United States and have been paying attention for the past decade. The country's ability to communicate effectively and think independently is broken, and we won't have things like IRV until or unless this changes.
There was no Web when I was in junior high, you insensitive clod. :)
I'm glad you summarized all this because I've also seen and used plenty of these offline apps and they can be quite sophisticated. It will be interesting to see if the Web can become an app platform, beyond webmail and the other common cloud services we have today. Frankly, I look forward to it. Most of my life computing has been a balkanized activity, users running in one of several parallel ruts depending which hardware/software platform they happen to use. At times there has been convergence, at other times divergence. The Web has always held the promise of making the old platforms irrelevant, and in a very good way.
it is nice to see that some put their money where they believe, and not just on the bottom line
That depends on what factors influence the bottom line. Under Republican policies, which I've been assured many times are extremely "business friendly," we deregulated banks and finance companies and allowed the lines between them to blur (some of this was supported by President Clinton). Under President Bush we also depopulated the SEC, which was charged with the oversight of these businesses. In other words, we did exactly what banks and financial institutions were asking us to do. And it turns out that doing exactly what these businesses wanted was not as "business friendly" as we'd imagined, as the crash of 2008 demonstrates. It turns out that if we'd kept post-Depression era policies in place, all of the companies that lobbied for deregulation in the 1990s and 2000s would have been much better off, millions of jobless Americans wouldn't be jobless, and a lot of the tech companies that TFA mentions would be selling more cloud services and shiny devices than they currently are. The bottom line suffered tremendously for our "business friendly" policies. So these people are putting their money not just behind what they believe, but also on the bottom line.
Thanks for that. It's a great interpretation. I had wondered about the fact that he had the horn in the new loop.
He's sued AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube (so Google ... again!). For some strange reason he did not sue Microsoft. Here are the two primary super-genius patents representing ideas no one else could have come up with:
Having alerted you users all to these items of interest, I will now proceed to pay Paul Allen.
Though [Apple] has decades more behind it, there's only about 37 transactions, in comparison with the 77 on the Google list. Google's long list is probably par for the course for giants like IBM, Intel and Microsoft's yearly acquisitions, but this being slashdot, please think of what "giants" and "par for the course" mean for Google's faltering "don't be evil" motto.
Once you have that many companies in your corporate bloodstream, your original identity starts to fade and your decisions are no longer yours --they're made in consultation with previously alien VP's who all had different directions prior to the merger. Scary times ahead.
That comparison, though true for a lot of big companies, might falter a bit because of the types and methods of business in which Google engages. The search giant's development platform is the web; their underlying operating environment is Linux with open source. Because of these choices the smaller companies they gobble up are probably very like Google in both technical compatibility and corporate culture.
But it wasn't the scientists who politicized the issue. They're knee-deep into the politics as a defensive measure
Not true in the least. Good science and documentation there of is capable of standing on its own.
The good science and documentation is there, and should stand on its own (indeed it does amongst people who appreciate good science and documentation). But the public is caught between good science and propaganda. People end up hearing reasonable "the science says the following" statements in one ear and silly "the scientists are money-grubbers trying to fill their own wallets" tripe in the other. With an extra chorus of "the scientists are trying to destroy America with communism" non-sequiturs for good measure. So for most people, no, you are wrong. The good science doesn't stand much of a chance.
climate scientists, a while ago and ever since, bought into the politics of the debate, and as far as I'm concerned they can go fuck themselves
But it wasn't the scientists who politicized the issue. They're knee-deep into the politics as a defensive measure, not because they enjoy punditry. I think they were surprised their results became a political issue at all - after all, you can't vote for or against climate change any more than you can vote down gravity. Mathematicians would get into politics, too, if politicians and pundits started saying you can't computer the square root of a million.
Have patience. He's digging for links to WorldNetDaily, the New York Post, Fox News and an e-mail his uncle forwarded him.
Congress shall make no law ...
That's all well and good - and I agree with it - but what does it have to do with a School Board? It doesn't say anything about a School Board establishing a religion..
The School Board is a part of - or at least, derives it authority from - the state (municipalities do not exist under the Constitution; their powers are derived from the state). So the real question is, does the first amendment's establishment clause apply to the states as it does to the federal government? The answer is that the Supreme Court has held that first article of the fourteenth amendment compels states to comply with most of the Bill of Rights (relevent text in bold):
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So most of the Bill of Rights applies to states, including the First Amendment. The establishment clause therefore restricts the School Board from establishing a religion, which the courts have held can include teaching religiously-influenced non-science in a science class. (That is, until the majority on our conservative supreme court - they of "strict constructivism" - decide to pass an entirely new law taken from their collective rectum.)
Speaking of pedantry... your ordinal number is wrong.
Dude, you so forgot the space between the word "pedantry" and the ellipsis. Don't get me started.