I think you've gone a bit too far with that definition. Vendor lock-in is just where a single company controls a protocol and no third parties can use it in an unrestricted way.
I think I should have had a "for example" between "and" and "abuses". No argument from me:)
Well, you might be inherently forced to upgrade. When content moves to IPv6, you will need to upgrade to IPv6.
Well, you will if you want to access that content. But IPv4 addresses are a subset of IPv6, and it's likely that you'll be able to access most if not all of the current web for a long time to come. You'll probably have problems accessing the webservers built into your next-gen fridge and washing machine, but a lot of people are going to be OK with that.
I think the original poster should've said "lock in" rather than "vendor lock in".
Actually, he did. I put the word "vendor" back in there because I wanted to make the point
that when people say "lock in is a bad thing" they're generally talking about vendor lock in.
being locked into TCP/IP is not, in itself, a bad thing.
There _is_ lock-in associated with the internet since that's where a lot of content is. If you want to visit Wikipedia, for example, you have to do that using HTTP over TCP
I think it's more accurate to say that TCP/IP defines the Internet, rather than that it locks you in. Otherwise, might as well say that humans are locked into DNA and that this is bad because it will make it hard to interbreed with aliens. I mean, yes, technically you have a point. It's just that DNA is (if you like) the technology upon which human beings are founded. Change that mechanism and, biologically at least, we become something other.
There has to be, at some level, a single underlying protocol. TCP/IP is it for the internet. I don't think "lock in" really applies, and even if I were to concede that it might,
it's hard to see how TCP/IP lock-in could be a bad thing.
why switch to IPv6 when all the content is available on IPv4 anyway?
It's still not lock-in though. No one is stopping any from switching to IPv6. It's just that the problem IPv6 was designed to solve never really happened, mainly because NAT gateways became
so prevalent.
if you have no real choice in who provides your internet access you have take what they give you or choose to live without internet access.
Point taken. However, that's not a shortcoming of the way the internet is currently designed. If I wanted to get a second phone line, I could open an account with a second ISP and have two gateways into my home LAN. That would take a little more vendor support for the average user, but there's nothing in the current implementation preventing such a usage.
I do appreciate that most areas in the US don't have much in the way of competition between
providers (I'm in the UK) and I understand the concern that an ISP monopoly or duopoly may
prove just every bit as abusive as a vendor with a widely used proprietary format. But in the
ISP case, the flaw is not in the design of the internet itself. Reinventing the infrastructure is not going to solve the anti competitive nature plans of some large carriers, and at best it will only provide a feature that we already have.
perhaps a non-american competitor to the internet as most americans know it is just what the doctor ordered.
mmmm... but how are you going to access it? Unless someone feels like laying dedicated fiber across the Pacific, surely you'd end up accessing it via the Internet anyway? In which case, look for your
local ISPs to traffic-shape and/or surcharge it to death before they let it become a viable competitor.
By 2020, the current internet will have a level of lock-in that makes Windows look disposable.
You're going to have to explain that one a little, I'm afraid. "Lock in" doesn't just mean "used by a lot of people". The term, "vendor lock in" to use the full term, is where a single company controls a protocol and abuses that control to force price hikes, unnecessary upgrades and
arbitrary restrictions upon its customers.
But I don't think TCP/IP (the protocol that underlies the Internet) is owned by anyone as such,
so it's not like we're going to get forced to pay more for a protocol "upgrade". Nor could
some hypothetical owner force us all to use any such upgrade - so there's no fear there.
As for arbitrary restrictions, the Internet already lets you run any protocol you can devise over TCP/IP without the need for permission or approval. That may change if the anti-net-neutrality crowd start a program of aggressive traffic shaping, but that's hardly likely to be improved by
a new proprietary Internet; more likely we'll see DRM on every hop, and no new usages permitted without a five year committee process.
So, to summarise: please explain how can we have any meaningful lock in on the internet, and (assuming this to be possible), please also explain how this would be bad.
If he is 'belligerent' then his argumentative intent is communicated in his belligerence, not in his used of the word 'alleged'.
See, I would take the view that the context affects the meaning of the word. I think that's how new shades of meaning get started. it begins as a purely contextual thing and ends up in the dictionary.
I think Lewis Carrol might have had some sympathy for this viewpoint:
`I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
`When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.'
I suppose you could argue it either way based on that exchange, but while Humpty Dumpty's position
is a little extreme, I think I still agree with him in principle.
I think you're confusing a brand new meaning for a word... with a negative association *externally attached*... to a word which still fits the sentence in his original meaning.
I take your point, but that can't be the whole story, or else we'd never see shades of meaning evolve for words, and we do. Think about "hard" for instance. Princetown's wordnet lists over 20 meanings for that word, many of them quite similar, others quite distinct. Somebody must have once applied "hard" to liquor in a way that made sense in terms of the usage of the time. It didn't start out meaning "high alcoholic content".
Or, going back to "wicked" - that word probably gained it's meaning as "cool" as a sort of glorification of naughtiness (either juvenile or adult) - at which point you could have said "the dictionary definition fits adequately". Yet somewhere along the line, the usage became widespread enough that people accepted a new meaning.
If it helps any, my main model for this usage is Paul Merton on "Have I Got News For You", and a couple of my friends who picked up on it for a while.
I do understand how your particular interpretation occurred, if it helps any. I just can't bring myself to agree with it; to me, it's still an unnecessary leap.
Well, yes, I mis-read his post. I said that (to woomooloo rather than yourself, here) and that
happens to us all. It's easy
to misread context in a print only medium, and doubly so in an online debate where people tend
to use conversational idiom whilst forgetting that the non-verbal cues will not carry across. I like to think I'm quite good on picking up on these cases, but I obviously got it wrong on this one.
Still, at least the resource problem will go away as machines get faster.
And, uh... What about the ones that don't
Umm... do you mean the problems that don't go away, or the machines that don't
get faster? I suppose it comes to the same thing either way - for a lot of people,
Vista has problems that extend way beyond bloat. Which is pretty much what I was
getting at.
I think it is a very reasonable thing to require that any Open Source license submitted by Microsoft allow the code they release under it to be distributed in conjunction with GPL code.
Why give them the opportunity to complain of unfair treatment? Or that the OSI is showing favouritism to the GPL?
By all means let's not approve any licence that explicitly prohibits bundling with other open source licences.
Add to that the notion that we have too many licences anyway, and MS might have difficulty showing how
their licence was sufficiently different to warrant certification.
But let's not have special rules discriminating for or against specific organisations or licences.
Let's leave that sort of tactic to Microsoft.
The fact that you can't know for sure which sort of debate you are about to have, shows
that the meaning you think is contained in the word 'allegedly', actually isn't. It is dependent on later context.
mmm... but then I'm not arguing about the meaning contained in the word; I'm arguing about the
information the speaker intended to convey. That's why I'm talking about "usage" rather then
"definition".
So in that case, the word is being used as a negation, because negation is the inference that I am intended to draw.
No, nonconfirmation is the inference that you are intended to draw.
OK, I suppose the question to ask here is "intended by whom?" Certainly the compilers of the dictionary
intend that I should draw the inference as defined in the dictionary. However they are not the ones
speaking, and my belligerent bar-room friend may intend me to take a different meaning.
So why should I accept your characterisation of this remark as 'negation' when the dictionary definition captures the spirit of the remark quite adequately without your novel interpretation?
No reason at all for any specific instance, at least not assuming we ewre both there and
have substantially the same information to draw upon. But I think you have to allow the general case
that words are frequently used in ways that are not found in dictionaries. Otherwise you might
find yourself obliged to assume that every nine-year-old who said "wicked" actually meant "morally bad in
principle or practice" which clearly is not the case. This is what I mean by an informal usage:
one that is not in the dictionary, but is nevertheless part of the language.
But if you once accept the notion that informal usages exist, then the only way you can tell me that
no such use of "allegedly" exists is by questioning my interpetaton of events at which
you were not present. At which point, as I say, it's hard to see how we can sensibly advance the
argument.
You haven't insulted me in your latest post and (I hope) I've done the same. A mutual stand-down is a nice way to end, whenever you are comfortable with your last word.
That was civil enough. I'm quite happy to discuss language if we can do it politely.
I like how you proposed a whole course of action and then ridiculed it as if that has anything to do with me. Anything else you'd care to invent and then dismiss?
The ridicule is aimed at the whole of this discussion.
Look at it this way: suppose I go into a bar and say "Tony Blair is a pathological liar" and someone down the bar responds with a growled "allegedly". The way he's using the word carries a strong subtext of "I disagree" and if I continue in that vein, I can probably expect a vigorous and spirited defense our quondam Prime Minister.
So in that case, the word is being used as a negation, because negation is the inference that I am intended to
draw. I've come across this usage a few times,
and I believe it to be reasonably common. You are of course free to disagree, in which case we'll have
to agree to differ. And since you have in fact disagreed with this point over the
last few posts, this is what I propose to to do now.
But without the argument about definitions and usage, all we have left is an opportunity to
exchange spiteful put downs. And frankly, I have better things to occupy my time.
BTW there was no indication whatsoever that Wooloomooloo was being sarcastic, and even if he was it doesn't help you any.
I've already conceded that I misread wooloomooloo's post, he's explained what his point actually was,
and we moved the discussion on from there. If you're still trying to defend his honour,
I suggest your zeal may be misplaced.
Since you seem to believe that the statement 'any slow sales of Vista are due to resource hogging' implicitly concedes that sales are slow
Pardon my pointing it out, but that isn't the wording that was actually used. Since you like looking
things up so much, try typing "straw Man" into Wikipeadia.
I could cast aspersions on your intelligence the way you so liberally like to do
You haven't held back from such aspersions so far - why start now?
Look: I don't actually have a quarrel with woomooloomoo, and this little squabble we're conducting seems to hinge around whether or not there exists an informal usage of the word "allegedly". I suppose I could point out that English is a living, evolving language, and that words are frequently used in ways that are not found in the dictionary; and it might be interesting to explore the logical contradictions inherent in seeking out a definitive list of informal usages. We could even try and take the conversation back on topic and talk about Vista's
(alleged) flaws and to what extent Jim Louderback's change of heart could be taken at face value.
Sadly, fascinating as that all sounds, I have some drying paint here and
I feel I really ought to go and keep an eye on it.
'Not' is not a possible meaning of 'alleged'. 'Alleged' simply means 'not proven', nothing more
Right. It is however frequently used as an informal negation. Thus, when I write a reply,
I have to consider what the poster may have meant, and not merely what meanngs might be
found in the the dictionary.
Most people demonstrate an intuitive grasp of this concept.
Maybe you should consider spending less time coding, and more time communicating with human beings.
However, 'parent' in this context is usually meant to refer not to the poster but to the post. You know, like the little link you're seeing everywhere.
Odd. I'd have thought that someone who was insisting on a strict interpretation on the word "allegedly" would
be precise enough to write "the parent article" if that was what he meant.
Of those three, two of them require interpreting the word 'allegedly' as a negative: because without that, there is no evidence of the opinions you were countering in the post you were replying to.
Spot on. I explored the possible meanings if "allegedly" was being used as a rebuttal (as is often the case), and also the meaning if it was not being used in that sense. My point was that the meaning wasn't particularly clear in any usage. There's no point in saying "the defendant allegedly broke into a number of homes, but that was only because he was hungry" because the second part of the sentence implicitly concedes the that proposition that the first part was so careful to hold in doubt. Similarly if you say "the alleged slow sales are due to bloat". You might as well omit the word "allegedly", since the second part negates it entirely.
So to recap, I was trying to explore all the possible meanings, depending on how Wooloomooloo (the poster in question) had intended to use the word. In response you come back with "two out three of those are wrong". Astounding, Holmes. Truly remarkable.
Vista does have problems, don't get me wrong. Everyone I know that has used it has complained about the bloat, or lower performance in games, etc. Most of them have returned to XP in a couple of weeks.
Fair comment then; I mis-read your earlier post.
My point is that still, most new computers are sold with Vista installed these days, so saying that it has a low adoption rate is dangerous.
The interesting question is: how great an adoption rate does it need to be a success for Microsoft? The sales
due to new computers wasn't enough to save WindowsME, after all. And if Vista does turn out to be the train wreck
it looks as if it might become, how many will go back to XP and how many migrate to another OS?
The [allegedly] slow adoption of Vista is not due to DRM...
Allegedly? So are you saying that vista adoption is not slow?
...it's because the OS is a resource hog.
Gotcha. So it's not selling slowly, but that's only because it's a resource hog.
I guess MS have realised that what the consumer really wants is bloat,
and that if they hadn't made the OS so greedy then no one would be buying it?
Or did you just mean that it is selling slowly, and that's because it does
need too many resources, but that it's very rude of us to go around saying so.
Perhaps you meant yes it's not selling, and yes it's bloated, but don't
go around bad mouthing DRM?
The trouble is, really, that to pin Vista's woes (alleged, if you insist)
on any single factor is probably a gross oversimplification. Vista's problems
include patchy driver support, a confusing pricing scheme, the lack of any
compelling "must-have" feature for the OS, the fact that a lot of people
don't want to change from XP, dislike of the licence terms, fears of added
expense in terms of new software and hardware that may be needed to run the
damn thing.
The that fact that it's a resource hog isn't helping, either, and
neither is the DRM (because like it or not, an awful lot of XP
users also use P2P) and neither is the fact that it's had some
scathing reviews, many of them from writers normally counted
among the Redmond faithful.
Still, at least the resource problem will go away as machines get faster.
I suppose if you
had to pick a single cause that's the one that lets the OS still seem like
a viable concern. Maybe sales will take off next year if and when XP
really gets retired.
I'm not at all clear on where the idea that it's all a big secret came from.
A bit of a case of chinese whispers, looking back on it, I think.
It started out with complaints about the algorithm being kept a
secret. Then it got expanded to algorithm and data. Then
Christianson said
Scientists get grant money by analyzing data and publishing the results,
not spending the effort to make the raw data publicly available.
I responded that maybe we should look at changing that, thinking that
what this debate needs is more data and less shouting
and it rather snowballed from there.
Perhaps what I really want is to see these data sources linked to by
more of the news pages. I'd like see a higher standard of debate, and Id
like people to have a higher expectations of science reporting. I know
that's probably unrealistic, but debates like this are too important to
let them turn into shouting matches.
But you're right in that it doesn't necessarily have to be a tradeoff - obviously making source data available can be done with essentially no effort, so why not do it? I'm mostly just reminding that it's also important to give people the tools and skills they need to work with the source data.
Heh. Well, there goes my follow up point:) Yes, I agree. Having access to the data is a major step forward in
gaining the knowledge needed to interpret that data.
I keep being reminded of one of the early kernel hackers. I've been trying to remember the chap's name (and failing)
but (IIRC) he basically recounted how he started out getting caught up in the excitement of the project and submitting patches
without any understanding of what he was doing, and getting some very patient replies from Linux. And eventually he
got up to speed and wound up one of the more active kernel developers.
And I don't think that would have happened if there hadn't been the resource of the kernel source code available.
I don't know - maybe what we need is a community climatology project, with a mailing list and a forum and all the rest of it.
Lord knows there are enough people who care passionately about the issue.
I have heard of scientists refusing to do anything for people who were obviously politically motivated hacks, but even that's just rumor. Scientists are generally OK with information sharing, even if they work for corporations and can't do it "officially".
I suppose what I'd like to do is to raise the game for all these discussions. I'd like to see a study that didn't supply full data regarded with the same disdain as one that didn't cite an references. And for the same reasons.
I think we need to do something to stop science degenerating into a shouting match. And the only way that'll happen is if we have
ready access to the supporting data. Otherwise, it's always going to be a slanging match between the enlightened scientists struggling to
make the truth known, and the evil forces of pseudo-science, determined to misrepresent the truth for their own personal gain.
And the interesting thing is that I think that's true regardless of which side you think it which.
Anyone savvy enough to block ads is probably savvy enough to have their browser present its user-agent as Internet Explorer if necessary.
Of course, if the idea gains traction and a lot of people start doing that then Microsoft will be able to trumpet how Firefox is suddenly
losing ground to IE! Sounds like one of those heads-i-win-tails-you-lose scenarios they so love to set up in Redmond, too
Or they are people who, Oh don't know - run a useful and popular free-to-use Web resource and need to raise some income to maintain the service.
See, the problem there is that web sites are making bad deals with the advertisers. If web sites sold advertising by the pixel rather than the click, it wouldn't matter. Most ad campaigns want saturation; they'd pay to have the banner there for the people that were looking.
I wish I could share your optimism, but widespread peer review won't change anything.
I think it will improve matters, you think it won't change a thing. There's no reason
not to make the data available.
If the raw data is publicly available, it will give the people who want to deny basic science more ammunition for their inane babblings.
And if it's not, it gives the people who want to misrepresent scientific findings more scope to lie.
Hiding the data only helps people who have already made up their minds, and who don't want anyone
pointing out that the data doesn't fit their desired outcome. Making it available helps those who
care about the truth. In that respect, I don't care if the planet is getting hotter, staying the same
or entering into a new ice age; I want to know the truth, and that is only going to be served by more
openness, not less.
The climate studies I've worked on have always had all raw data (and models) publically available, but how many people have a share on a supercomputer to recreate our results?
Care to share a few URLs? "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness" and all that...
Not to be elitist, but do you really think you could effectively review the data?
That, I think, depends on the assertion it's being used to support. I'm quite good at
writing code to crunch large amounts of data and generate useful summaries. I wouldn't like
to try and predict global temperature averages one hundred years hence. However,
I think I could probably run up a quick sanity check as regards global average temperatures
over the last century, for instance.
it may not be that urgent to make the raw data hyper-available to every guy on the street.
Forgive my saying so, but you sound like someone from 1807. I mean at one time, publishing this data
would have involved significant effort. You'd have had to print up several telephone directory sized books
to hold it all, and then distribute it using horse drawn carriages. And if someone asked me to marshall
those sorts of resources, then I suppose that I too might enquire as the urgency of the situation.
The thing is though that this is the 21st Century, and a typical teenage girl probably uses up more
resources in an evening's download of MP3s that it would take to publish this data. Hell, it's probably
already on a networked computer; all it would probably need is a symbolic link and possibly a new entry
in a routing table. I don't think "urgency" is a concept that really applies here.
As long as interested scientists - regardless of their previous conclusions or political leanings - can get the raw data when they want to review it, I think the process should work fine.
And do you think it is working fine? It doesn't seem to be; the intensity of the argument here on
Slashdot stands as testimony to that, I feel.
Because so many people lack the highly specialized knowledge to make sense of the raw data, there are two types of information that are far more important to make widely available: 1) Education on how to be a climate scientist and 2) The conclusions that qualified climate scientists have reached.
All right - now you sound elitist. It's a bit like saying there's no need to publish computer source code
all you need to do is know where the universities are; and to have access to programs written by qualified
programmers.
Scientists get grant money by analyzing data and publishing the results, not spending the effort to make the raw data publicly available.
mmm... maybe that needs to change. Given the current tendency towards knee jerk FUD in some quarters,
the only way we're ever going to be able to settle debates like this one is if the data can be subjected to widespread peer review.
What kind of FREAK would think of taking something like a watermark and using it as a cue as to whether to play an advertisement or not? Why not just play them for ALL songs?
More likely they'll use the watermark to deliver targeted ads. Either they'll use a few bits more and encode profiling flags into the 'mark, or else they send it back when they download the ad, and the ad server can use it as a key to look up your profile data. More likely the second, since that way they can build a profile of what tracks you play most and when, and refine their profile.
So I don't think they'd use as a cue to determine whether or not to play an advert, but they might use it to determine whether or not a specific ad gets played.
And when we all get sufficiently fed up with adverts in our music, they can offer a "premium" service with fewer adverts...
I wonder... the ads only really make sense if the format is locked down to a particular player.
Otherwise, all they do is discourage use of WMP in favour of some non-advertising player. But to accomplish that lock down, they'd need some sort of DRM.
It makes me wonder if this is all intended as a distraction: "Of course there's no DRM on the file, just a watermark. If it won't play, it's just because you need a player that can handle our new watermarking technology". It wouldn't be the first time MS have tried to solve a problem by changing the words used to describe it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I should have had a "for example" between "and" and "abuses". No argument from me :)
Well, you will if you want to access that content. But IPv4 addresses are a subset of IPv6, and it's likely that you'll be able to access most if not all of the current web for a long time to come. You'll probably have problems accessing the webservers built into your next-gen fridge and washing machine, but a lot of people are going to be OK with that.
Actually, he did. I put the word "vendor" back in there because I wanted to make the point that when people say "lock in is a bad thing" they're generally talking about vendor lock in. being locked into TCP/IP is not, in itself, a bad thing.
I think it's more accurate to say that TCP/IP defines the Internet, rather than that it locks you in. Otherwise, might as well say that humans are locked into DNA and that this is bad because it will make it hard to interbreed with aliens. I mean, yes, technically you have a point. It's just that DNA is (if you like) the technology upon which human beings are founded. Change that mechanism and, biologically at least, we become something other.
There has to be, at some level, a single underlying protocol. TCP/IP is it for the internet. I don't think "lock in" really applies, and even if I were to concede that it might, it's hard to see how TCP/IP lock-in could be a bad thing.
It's still not lock-in though. No one is stopping any from switching to IPv6. It's just that the problem IPv6 was designed to solve never really happened, mainly because NAT gateways became so prevalent.
Point taken. However, that's not a shortcoming of the way the internet is currently designed. If I wanted to get a second phone line, I could open an account with a second ISP and have two gateways into my home LAN. That would take a little more vendor support for the average user, but there's nothing in the current implementation preventing such a usage.
I do appreciate that most areas in the US don't have much in the way of competition between providers (I'm in the UK) and I understand the concern that an ISP monopoly or duopoly may prove just every bit as abusive as a vendor with a widely used proprietary format. But in the ISP case, the flaw is not in the design of the internet itself. Reinventing the infrastructure is not going to solve the anti competitive nature plans of some large carriers, and at best it will only provide a feature that we already have.
mmmm... but how are you going to access it? Unless someone feels like laying dedicated fiber across the Pacific, surely you'd end up accessing it via the Internet anyway? In which case, look for your local ISPs to traffic-shape and/or surcharge it to death before they let it become a viable competitor.
You're going to have to explain that one a little, I'm afraid. "Lock in" doesn't just mean "used by a lot of people". The term, "vendor lock in" to use the full term, is where a single company controls a protocol and abuses that control to force price hikes, unnecessary upgrades and arbitrary restrictions upon its customers.
But I don't think TCP/IP (the protocol that underlies the Internet) is owned by anyone as such, so it's not like we're going to get forced to pay more for a protocol "upgrade". Nor could some hypothetical owner force us all to use any such upgrade - so there's no fear there.
As for arbitrary restrictions, the Internet already lets you run any protocol you can devise over TCP/IP without the need for permission or approval. That may change if the anti-net-neutrality crowd start a program of aggressive traffic shaping, but that's hardly likely to be improved by a new proprietary Internet; more likely we'll see DRM on every hop, and no new usages permitted without a five year committee process.
So, to summarise: please explain how can we have any meaningful lock in on the internet, and (assuming this to be possible), please also explain how this would be bad.
See, I would take the view that the context affects the meaning of the word. I think that's how new shades of meaning get started. it begins as a purely contextual thing and ends up in the dictionary.
I think Lewis Carrol might have had some sympathy for this viewpoint:
I suppose you could argue it either way based on that exchange, but while Humpty Dumpty's position is a little extreme, I think I still agree with him in principle.
I take your point, but that can't be the whole story, or else we'd never see shades of meaning evolve for words, and we do. Think about "hard" for instance. Princetown's wordnet lists over 20 meanings for that word, many of them quite similar, others quite distinct. Somebody must have once applied "hard" to liquor in a way that made sense in terms of the usage of the time. It didn't start out meaning "high alcoholic content".
Or, going back to "wicked" - that word probably gained it's meaning as "cool" as a sort of glorification of naughtiness (either juvenile or adult) - at which point you could have said "the dictionary definition fits adequately". Yet somewhere along the line, the usage became widespread enough that people accepted a new meaning.
If it helps any, my main model for this usage is Paul Merton on "Have I Got News For You", and a couple of my friends who picked up on it for a while.
Well, yes, I mis-read his post. I said that (to woomooloo rather than yourself, here) and that happens to us all. It's easy to misread context in a print only medium, and doubly so in an online debate where people tend to use conversational idiom whilst forgetting that the non-verbal cues will not carry across. I like to think I'm quite good on picking up on these cases, but I obviously got it wrong on this one.
Umm... do you mean the problems that don't go away, or the machines that don't get faster? I suppose it comes to the same thing either way - for a lot of people, Vista has problems that extend way beyond bloat. Which is pretty much what I was getting at.
Why give them the opportunity to complain of unfair treatment? Or that the OSI is showing favouritism to the GPL?
By all means let's not approve any licence that explicitly prohibits bundling with other open source licences. Add to that the notion that we have too many licences anyway, and MS might have difficulty showing how their licence was sufficiently different to warrant certification.
But let's not have special rules discriminating for or against specific organisations or licences. Let's leave that sort of tactic to Microsoft.
mmm... but then I'm not arguing about the meaning contained in the word; I'm arguing about the information the speaker intended to convey. That's why I'm talking about "usage" rather then "definition".
OK, I suppose the question to ask here is "intended by whom?" Certainly the compilers of the dictionary intend that I should draw the inference as defined in the dictionary. However they are not the ones speaking, and my belligerent bar-room friend may intend me to take a different meaning.
No reason at all for any specific instance, at least not assuming we ewre both there and have substantially the same information to draw upon. But I think you have to allow the general case that words are frequently used in ways that are not found in dictionaries. Otherwise you might find yourself obliged to assume that every nine-year-old who said "wicked" actually meant "morally bad in principle or practice" which clearly is not the case. This is what I mean by an informal usage: one that is not in the dictionary, but is nevertheless part of the language.
But if you once accept the notion that informal usages exist, then the only way you can tell me that no such use of "allegedly" exists is by questioning my interpetaton of events at which you were not present. At which point, as I say, it's hard to see how we can sensibly advance the argument.
That was civil enough. I'm quite happy to discuss language if we can do it politely.
The ridicule is aimed at the whole of this discussion.
Look at it this way: suppose I go into a bar and say "Tony Blair is a pathological liar" and someone down the bar responds with a growled "allegedly". The way he's using the word carries a strong subtext of "I disagree" and if I continue in that vein, I can probably expect a vigorous and spirited defense our quondam Prime Minister.
So in that case, the word is being used as a negation, because negation is the inference that I am intended to draw. I've come across this usage a few times, and I believe it to be reasonably common. You are of course free to disagree, in which case we'll have to agree to differ. And since you have in fact disagreed with this point over the last few posts, this is what I propose to to do now.
But without the argument about definitions and usage, all we have left is an opportunity to exchange spiteful put downs. And frankly, I have better things to occupy my time.
If so then it wouldn't be informal, would it?
I've already conceded that I misread wooloomooloo's post, he's explained what his point actually was, and we moved the discussion on from there. If you're still trying to defend his honour, I suggest your zeal may be misplaced.
Pardon my pointing it out, but that isn't the wording that was actually used. Since you like looking things up so much, try typing "straw Man" into Wikipeadia.
You haven't held back from such aspersions so far - why start now?
Look: I don't actually have a quarrel with woomooloomoo, and this little squabble we're conducting seems to hinge around whether or not there exists an informal usage of the word "allegedly". I suppose I could point out that English is a living, evolving language, and that words are frequently used in ways that are not found in the dictionary; and it might be interesting to explore the logical contradictions inherent in seeking out a definitive list of informal usages. We could even try and take the conversation back on topic and talk about Vista's (alleged) flaws and to what extent Jim Louderback's change of heart could be taken at face value.
Sadly, fascinating as that all sounds, I have some drying paint here and I feel I really ought to go and keep an eye on it.
Right. It is however frequently used as an informal negation. Thus, when I write a reply, I have to consider what the poster may have meant, and not merely what meanngs might be found in the the dictionary.
Most people demonstrate an intuitive grasp of this concept. Maybe you should consider spending less time coding, and more time communicating with human beings.
Odd. I'd have thought that someone who was insisting on a strict interpretation on the word "allegedly" would be precise enough to write "the parent article" if that was what he meant.
Spot on. I explored the possible meanings if "allegedly" was being used as a rebuttal (as is often the case), and also the meaning if it was not being used in that sense. My point was that the meaning wasn't particularly clear in any usage. There's no point in saying "the defendant allegedly broke into a number of homes, but that was only because he was hungry" because the second part of the sentence implicitly concedes the that proposition that the first part was so careful to hold in doubt. Similarly if you say "the alleged slow sales are due to bloat". You might as well omit the word "allegedly", since the second part negates it entirely.
So to recap, I was trying to explore all the possible meanings, depending on how Wooloomooloo (the poster in question) had intended to use the word. In response you come back with "two out three of those are wrong". Astounding, Holmes. Truly remarkable.
Let me have a look: arms, check; legs, check; head, check; torso, check; fingers, check; toes, check..
Nope, most of me seems to be valid. I didn't bother checking internal organs, hope that's ok.
Just out of curiosity - did you read past line two in my earlier post, at all?
Fair comment then; I mis-read your earlier post.
The interesting question is: how great an adoption rate does it need to be a success for Microsoft? The sales due to new computers wasn't enough to save WindowsME, after all. And if Vista does turn out to be the train wreck it looks as if it might become, how many will go back to XP and how many migrate to another OS?
Allegedly? So are you saying that vista adoption is not slow?
Gotcha. So it's not selling slowly, but that's only because it's a resource hog. I guess MS have realised that what the consumer really wants is bloat, and that if they hadn't made the OS so greedy then no one would be buying it?
Or did you just mean that it is selling slowly, and that's because it does need too many resources, but that it's very rude of us to go around saying so. Perhaps you meant yes it's not selling, and yes it's bloated, but don't go around bad mouthing DRM?
The trouble is, really, that to pin Vista's woes (alleged, if you insist) on any single factor is probably a gross oversimplification. Vista's problems include patchy driver support, a confusing pricing scheme, the lack of any compelling "must-have" feature for the OS, the fact that a lot of people don't want to change from XP, dislike of the licence terms, fears of added expense in terms of new software and hardware that may be needed to run the damn thing.
The that fact that it's a resource hog isn't helping, either, and neither is the DRM (because like it or not, an awful lot of XP users also use P2P) and neither is the fact that it's had some scathing reviews, many of them from writers normally counted among the Redmond faithful.
Still, at least the resource problem will go away as machines get faster. I suppose if you had to pick a single cause that's the one that lets the OS still seem like a viable concern. Maybe sales will take off next year if and when XP really gets retired.
A bit of a case of chinese whispers, looking back on it, I think. It started out with complaints about the algorithm being kept a secret. Then it got expanded to algorithm and data. Then Christianson said
I responded that maybe we should look at changing that, thinking that what this debate needs is more data and less shouting and it rather snowballed from there.
Perhaps what I really want is to see these data sources linked to by more of the news pages. I'd like see a higher standard of debate, and Id like people to have a higher expectations of science reporting. I know that's probably unrealistic, but debates like this are too important to let them turn into shouting matches.
Heh. Well, there goes my follow up point :) Yes, I agree. Having access to the data is a major step forward in
gaining the knowledge needed to interpret that data.
I keep being reminded of one of the early kernel hackers. I've been trying to remember the chap's name (and failing) but (IIRC) he basically recounted how he started out getting caught up in the excitement of the project and submitting patches without any understanding of what he was doing, and getting some very patient replies from Linux. And eventually he got up to speed and wound up one of the more active kernel developers.
And I don't think that would have happened if there hadn't been the resource of the kernel source code available.
I don't know - maybe what we need is a community climatology project, with a mailing list and a forum and all the rest of it. Lord knows there are enough people who care passionately about the issue.
I suppose what I'd like to do is to raise the game for all these discussions. I'd like to see a study that didn't supply full data regarded with the same disdain as one that didn't cite an references. And for the same reasons.
I think we need to do something to stop science degenerating into a shouting match. And the only way that'll happen is if we have ready access to the supporting data. Otherwise, it's always going to be a slanging match between the enlightened scientists struggling to make the truth known, and the evil forces of pseudo-science, determined to misrepresent the truth for their own personal gain.
And the interesting thing is that I think that's true regardless of which side you think it which.
Of course, if the idea gains traction and a lot of people start doing that then Microsoft will be able to trumpet how Firefox is suddenly losing ground to IE! Sounds like one of those heads-i-win-tails-you-lose scenarios they so love to set up in Redmond, too
You don't suppose... ?
I think it will improve matters, you think it won't change a thing. There's no reason not to make the data available.
And if it's not, it gives the people who want to misrepresent scientific findings more scope to lie. Hiding the data only helps people who have already made up their minds, and who don't want anyone pointing out that the data doesn't fit their desired outcome. Making it available helps those who care about the truth. In that respect, I don't care if the planet is getting hotter, staying the same or entering into a new ice age; I want to know the truth, and that is only going to be served by more openness, not less.
Care to share a few URLs? "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness" and all that...
That, I think, depends on the assertion it's being used to support. I'm quite good at writing code to crunch large amounts of data and generate useful summaries. I wouldn't like to try and predict global temperature averages one hundred years hence. However, I think I could probably run up a quick sanity check as regards global average temperatures over the last century, for instance.
Forgive my saying so, but you sound like someone from 1807. I mean at one time, publishing this data would have involved significant effort. You'd have had to print up several telephone directory sized books to hold it all, and then distribute it using horse drawn carriages. And if someone asked me to marshall those sorts of resources, then I suppose that I too might enquire as the urgency of the situation.
The thing is though that this is the 21st Century, and a typical teenage girl probably uses up more resources in an evening's download of MP3s that it would take to publish this data. Hell, it's probably already on a networked computer; all it would probably need is a symbolic link and possibly a new entry in a routing table. I don't think "urgency" is a concept that really applies here.
And do you think it is working fine? It doesn't seem to be; the intensity of the argument here on Slashdot stands as testimony to that, I feel.
All right - now you sound elitist. It's a bit like saying there's no need to publish computer source code all you need to do is know where the universities are; and to have access to programs written by qualified programmers.
mmm... maybe that needs to change. Given the current tendency towards knee jerk FUD in some quarters, the only way we're ever going to be able to settle debates like this one is if the data can be subjected to widespread peer review.
More likely they'll use the watermark to deliver targeted ads. Either they'll use a few bits more and encode profiling flags into the 'mark, or else they send it back when they download the ad, and the ad server can use it as a key to look up your profile data. More likely the second, since that way they can build a profile of what tracks you play most and when, and refine their profile.
So I don't think they'd use as a cue to determine whether or not to play an advert, but they might use it to determine whether or not a specific ad gets played.
And when we all get sufficiently fed up with adverts in our music, they can offer a "premium" service with fewer adverts...
I wonder ... the ads only really make sense if the format is locked down to a particular player.
Otherwise, all they do is discourage use of WMP in favour of some non-advertising player. But to accomplish that lock down, they'd need some sort of DRM.
It makes me wonder if this is all intended as a distraction: "Of course there's no DRM on the file, just a watermark. If it won't play, it's just because you need a player that can handle our new watermarking technology". It wouldn't be the first time MS have tried to solve a problem by changing the words used to describe it.
Why the quotes? Do you think I've used the word "precedent" inappropriately?
(not disagreeing with you - just confused)