Most readers will realize that the true intent was "we're good, BUT we are not psychic," but the lack of a conjunction does leave it slightly open to interpretation.
That's why some genius invented the semicolon; I noticed its conspicuous absence, as well!
The reason that this is in the Constitution is that the founders saw great injustice being perpetrated by laws passed to make prior behavior *illegal*
Exactly. The "immunity" part of this certainly isn't unconstitutional from an "ex post facto" standpoint. For example, consider the following scenario: during the Civil Rights Movement, an African-American sits in at a white lunch counter. He's convicted under Jim Crow laws, but during the trial, those laws are repealed/superseded. Should that person still go to jail for a crime that the legislative branch has now decided is no crime at all? Turns out that in America, we don't tend to think so.
In this case, it's a little bit different, because we're not strictly repealing or replacing the laws in question -- and the telecom lobbyists want to make sure their bases are covered. That may be deplorable, illegal, and tragic, but I don't think it's unconstitutional.
Adjective vs. noun usage? You are completely re-orienting the sentences. If you wanted those compound adjectives to be proper, every single one should be hyphenated. So it would be: "After a 6.2-kilometer run yesterday, I was feeling thirsty. So I had a 1.6-liter drink of water. It was a 37-minute walk back to my car. I fired it up, and saw it already had a 52-degree engine temperature from sitting in the hot sun. I got home, and collapsed from exhaustion. I had a 9-hour sleep."
Regardless, you can't just move subjects and objects willy-nilly and try to feign parity. Compound adjectives are always singular, because verbs are formed as singular indicators.
Or perhaps he was assuming a normal distribution because real, empirical evidence has proven it out time and time again. What evidence do you have of skew or kurtosis? It's certainly easier to make a positive case that intelligence very closely resembles a normal distribution than a significantly abnormal one.
Today, at 25, he is the international business development manager for a Chinese software outsourcing company, MaesInfo Corp., speaks the language and lives in a high-rise apartment in Chengdu. Now with soothing massage?
Living in a Chengdu high-rise doesn't strike me as the pinnacle of accomplishment here =P.
in the wars the US has fought since WWII massive strategic air campaigns weren't used. You're right, all of that napalming in Vietnam wasn't a strategic air campaign at all...
In truth, Vietnam was probably the most massive strategic air campaign of all time. Korea was also a huge air campaign. Maybe what you mean is "sub-wars in the War on Terror". And to be honest, if we thought we could justify it, we would. Lovely world, innit?
Whenever I read about the US in Der Spiegel or The Guardian, the America I read about is not the place I know, but some strange construct seemingly created to make the readers feel smug and self satisfied. Well, to be fair, how long have you lived in Europe? As an American and student of history, I would say that things have taken a dramatic turn for the worse since the late nineties -- at least from an international relations standpoint. We've spent almost all of the goodwill we built up since the 1940s.
I remember many years ago when PGP first appeared and how much effort the NSA put into trying to get Congress to stuff the genie back into the bottle. Then, all of a sudden, they stopped resisting. This was also pushed strongly by the FBI, particularly under Louis Freeh. I've often (very often, actually) come to the exact conclusion you have. Isn't it "funny" that the hoopla didn't begin again after 9/11? One would think that it would have re-ignited the crusade against strong encryption. Oddly, it didn't.
The NSA is the largest mathematical research and code-breaking entity in the world, and somehow we're arrogant enough to think that our little homebrew scheme is nigh-on uncrackable. They've got the infrastructure, the manpower, and the intellectual concentration -- I would be scared if they hadn't cracked it by now.
As for the predicting all events... to be pedantic, at least part of the functioning of the universe is probabilistic, and symmetric. Thus predicting back in time will be as problematic as predicting forward.
No, that's not necessarily or even likely true -- more likely, we just don't understand the processes that govern events we currently model as "probabilistic". It's funny how we chip away at those things as we find more well-defined theories that deterministically prove cause and effect. And symmetry in physics in no way creates a problem for predicting back in time -- if we're able to understand and account for the phenomenon with our underdeveloped understanding of physics, it would probably be even easier with a more advanced understanding.
I think part of the reason people get so heated with this issue is that there is a large emotional investment. An attack on free-will can be taken as an attack on the very nature of self-hood.
I agree -- but that's exactly why I think it has value. Yes, people may continue to act as if they were free even with an understanding of/belief in determinism, but there's obviously another level of rationalization at work. It's similar to arguments of skepticism or existentialism -- yet they end up meaning something to people too, and still inform our popularly accepted epistemology.
I'm not sure if it is falsifiable. An equation will never be as internally valid as our perception of self. I can get 5000 people to choose a number, and all will state a choice, and I can get brainscans of 5000 people saying it was determined. Which wins?
Yeah, that's the "reasonably sure" I was talking about. The brainscan study is immaterial -- such things don't have any real effect on the philosophy of determinism. There are scant few Cartesian dualists left, and those who are pigheaded enough to hold onto it certainly can adapt these findings to their system. But we can be just as "certain" of determinism or free will as we are of gravity, magnetism, or conservation of energy. Certainly, any of those things could be falsified -- tomorrow, perhaps, gravity will cease to function, and life as we know it will end. Seems unlikely, though, doesn't it? (Even though we certainly can't measure that probability).
Science is a system, and has no guarantees of being capable of understanding everything. Not to say it isn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were objects completely outside of its scope and possible comprehension. Can science be complete?
Definitely not. There's no way that any empirically-founded system can be 100% complete -- see any reasonable critique of inductive reasoning. The only kind of knowledge that science handles is inductive, and we have no idea when the rules will change, if there even are rules; science can certainly only be a description of a certain set of phenomena, nothing more. It so happens that it's been a very effective description, but that in no terms means it's correct, and it definitely can't ever be "complete" in the way many people think it can.
What if all of science is wrong? Don't take that at face value, but it is an interesting philosophical question. How could we prove it is wrong? How can we prove it is correct?
This is what undergraduate degrees in philosophy are all about =P -- sweeping questions that seem deep, but in fact aren't. If science is wrong, then we pick up the pieces and move on -- find a new mode of understanding the world around us. How do we prove science wrong? That's easy -- any truly scientific knowledge is falsifiable, as it is determined by the real phenomena around us. Any scientific theory could be disproved tomorrow. Proving it, on the other hand, is quite a bit trickier. As it's inductive, we can't _prove_ it in the logical sense. Fortunately, that's not really what we mean by "prove" anyway -- we just want a reasonable assurance that science's theories and pr
To your comments about some blacks being able to adapt and talk or act white -- you're still missing the point, there. Yes, some minorities have done it, and will continue to do it. Some people have become and can become pro athletes, but most of us never will. Yes, you had to cut your hair and stop swearing, but I bet your parents basically spoke in a "business acceptable" style -- and you had a good role model or two to emulate. I bet YOU never had to stand in front of a mirror practicing your English, did you?
I take great offence to that. If that was your intention you've succeeded. FWIW though, you're completely wrong.
I apologize that I have offended you, but I stand by my comment. Your argument is basically this: there are successful minorities, therefore being a minority is not an impediment to success. What a horribly fallacious and racist argument! Lance Armstrong was a successful athlete after surviving cancer, therefore cancer was not an impediment to his success. And, ironically, I think that argument holds more water than the one about minorities!
Or could it be that the privileged were already living under the rules of our society and didn't have to change quite so drastically?[. ..] Put this another way; if you moved to China or France, you refused to speak the local dialect and insisted on observing your own cultural nuances on great public display without regard for the local culture - how successful do you believe you'd be?
Yes, exactly -- you're already living under that society's general rules, so you have a distinct advantage. In your China/France scenario, you've successfully identified another instance of unworthy bias. However, it is (IMO) much more forgivable -- after all, you did move there of your own volition. But if you're BORN into a society that rejects the very fabric of your culture, and no other society is realistically a better fit, what are you to do? It's not a matter of "refusing to adapt" -- it's a matter of being forced to do that much work that your competitors don't have to.
What if you were born with one hand, and wanted to be a computer programmer? Eventually, you work out a one-handed typing system, after working on it for countless hours. In the end, you're almost as fast as your peers. But you always know that, if you'd had 2 hands, you would be almost twice as fast as your peers. That's fair?
Then you know some introverted, uncultured white people.
That's funny, but doesn't begin to address my point. Regardless of whether people I know are uncultured, I would say 90+% of white Americans are basically the same. Whether that's RIGHT or not is immaterial -- if it's true, which it is, it has a detrimental effect on the lives of affected minorities.
So end affirmative action and all other forms of biased hiring practises and enforce a purely merit-based system of hirings, promotions and bonuses.
Or maybe bigots should realize that people have inherent disadvantages/advantages due to race and other characteristics. Also, perhaps those same bigots should realize that an "underqualified" (by white-dominated society's definition) minority could certainly develop into an effective member of society if given the appropriate opportunity to succeed. Whereas their acclimated status quo counterparts might have already achieved social acceptability, minorities are much more likely to have untapped potential; once a disadvantaged person "figures out the game", he or she has much more room to grow than likely competitors.
I felt the exact same way as you until I actually studied the sociology and psychology of race and ethnicity for two years, focusing on inter-group conflict. If you actually examine your opportunities and those of your peers, you'll realize that white males DO have a lot of advantages, and our collective societal handling of people from different backgrounds is wildly unfair.
I think the freewill/not-freewill debate is just like the "God doesn't exist" debate, trite, and the grounds for amateur philosophers. It makes a good argument, but not much truth value. For one it isn't falsifiable. I was with you until there. While I agree that the arguments are often trite, I think there is obviously value, or people wouldn't be so upset about the prospect of determinism. As for falsifiability, free will/determinism is just as falsifiable (in many forms) as anything else we know about. Say, for example, that material monism is correct, and I somehow decipher all of physics. Then, working backward or forward, I am able to determine, mathematically, any past or future event (let's say I've got a really nice computer).
This would, for all reasonable purposes, prove determinism. If such a system existed, and encountered some sort of magic field around rational human decisions that its predictions could not penetrate, that would be pretty good evidence of free will, wouldn't it? Now, maybe free will can't be proven absolutely, but determinism could definitely be established with as much scientific rigor as any other of our dearly-held theories. As such, it would certainly also be falsifiable -- if we DID have the perfect physics system and an accompanying superdupercocmputer, and we could prove that any event was NOT subject to its predictions, then that formulation of determinism is certainly wrong.
You mean I should be able to approach a client and ask them "Yo mo'fucker, what's up wit' choo today niggah?" Really? Amazing. I had no idea how deeply I was involved in this systematic persecution. You're missing the point. Why is YOUR mode of speech the "accepted" one? I'm guessing you didn't grow up speaking like that -- rather, you grew up speaking something like how you might speak to your client. You may find the "black" mode of address deplorable, but is it any less effective than: "Well hello Charles, cheerio, and a lovely day to you sir"?
Here's the point: your perspective is that of the modern, enlightened racist. OK, so some blacks you knew were or are able to adapt to society's rules. The privileged never had to. It's just one more hurdle to jump over. Here are some other ones:
The fact that most whites I know seem to be terrified of blacks in person
The fact that people are too afraid to confront you directly, lest they seem 'racist'
Every time you get a good grade, or a promotion, everyone around you thinks "it's only because he's black"
You have to tolerate "good-natured joshing" from white people like you who seem to think they "get it", but in fact, are clueless
Everyone around you thinking that YOUR cultural artifacts (art, music) are "rural" or "rustic" or "barbarian" -- when everything they seem to love is bland and contentless
This list goes on and on. I wish you had the opportunity to be looked down upon for 20+ years, explicitly or implicitly, so you could see how deeply it affects the fabric of a person's self. People like you are the worst; you think that because people CAN rise up, that everyone should be able to. Well, guess what -- you could probably be a world-class doctor, or astronaut, or artist, or whatever it is you prefer here -- but I'm guessing you aren't. Very few are, because it's exceptionally difficult. When you're black, I guarantee you have to try harder, be better, and through it all, maintain a really thick shell; you just don't get the benefit of the doubt, because your "default" societal behavior is always "wrong".
While others have explained it thoroughly, here's a better way to conceptualize it: the game cheats. The game KNOWS where the car is, and CHEATS to open a goat door. When you make your original selection, you have a 1/3 chance of getting the right door. However, NO MATTER WHAT THE GAME DOES, your chance of choosing the right door the first time REMAINS 1 in 3. Why, you ask?
Because the door opening to show you the goat gives you no new information! No matter what you chose, be it car or goat, there's at least one goat left to "reveal" to you. The game cheats, and shows you the goat -- all that does is restrict your selection possibilities; it doesn't actually give you any more information. By showing you the goat, monty isn't opening a door at random; he's opening the door with the goat. So he's not equally limiting your selection possibilities, he's only eliminating a WRONG selection possibility.
I really think that's a foolish perspective. Asking the question "how much was the drug" is the same kind of doubt that can exist with anything. Here are some similar questions:
How much of it was the foods (which contain drugs anyway) that I ate?
How much of it was my being genetically lucky?
How much of it was my obsessive workout, or lack thereof?
How much of it was my random, lucky upbringing?
How much of it was the pure chance of my skill filling a need?
No matter the answer to any of these questions, the point is moot.
You're right, Google doesn't have any resources or developers. Very sharp insight. How, exactly, are those working in Apple's favor? They have momentum. That's all. I'll reserve further evaluation of Android until we actually have a real version of it.
When was Newtonian physics proven "wrong?" Maybe you missed this chapter in history, but that's one of the major reasons relativity theory even exists -- because Newtonian physics needed modification to accurately predict how objects behave in non-"normal" circumstances. Doesn't seem like an insightful question to me...
It's easy to catch the cheaters: if they cheat on homework, they have to cheat to pass on the exams as well. That's absurd, and completely illogical. What if someone asked you to do, say, 100,000 simple additions (two random numbers from 1 to 1000, say), but all you needed to submit was the answers. You're not allowed to use a calculator or write a script, or get answers from anyone else, of course. It would be very tempting to cheat, wouldn't it? Not because you HAVE to, but because you know you have better things to do than 100,000 simple addition problems.
I never cheated, simply because I never cared enough about grades, but I certainly understand the impetus behind a lot of cheating. In fact, of people I knew that DID cheat, I would say they were on average MORE capable than their classmates, and quite often outscored them on exams. I would venture a guess that at least 90% of cheating is due to laziness, not because the material is too challenging. Education through the undergraduate level is far too easy and well-formulated for anyone with half a brain to have real trouble if they are dedicated; it's the dedication that is the problem. And once you get to graduate studies, there usually aren't TOO many people that could really help you cheat, so the problem decreases sharply.
That's silly talk. I think that at that point, the pilots, crew, or certainly the passengers with cell phones would immediately notify the authorities. Simple matter: "I'm on such and such a flight, and several armed masked men have boarded with apparent ill intent." Even if the planes could get off the ground (which I highly doubt), there's no way that the hijackers could achieve anything more than destruction of those airliners. Even then, it might be extremely difficult for them to get inside.
More dangerous still, in my opinion, is the idea that some commercial or military pilot could go off the reservation/be subverted by some group. Sure, there are checks and balances, but they hardly seem insurmountable. After all, many extremists have shown an alarming willingness to die, so a few years of subterfuge doesn't sound so problematic.
The stupidest thing about all of this travel security is this: the weaknesses that led to 9/11 were mostly a lack of understanding and preparation, not a lack of capability. Now that we KNOW hijacked planes can be used as they were, I would be surprised if any hijacked plane in America survived more than 5 minutes before being shot down. Not to mention the fact that passengers and crew would be mighty hard to contain, as well. NONE of this has been influenced by any policy changes.
Any future attacks will come where we're vulnerable, where there's a hole in our understanding -- just as it was 6 years ago. There are still plenty of spots where that's the case. It's fine to keep pouring our money and liberties down the drain, though... all in the name of countering a threat that has, for all realistic purposes, been nullified.
How did this get modded so highly? It's a reference to a movie. Albeit, a bad movie, but such it is. The poster misspelled the name (Lloyd Dobler). You can read about it, including synopsis, at IMDB: Say Anything (1989).
Ask any English teacher over the age of 50 what they think of today's literacy rates. They'll generally tell you that kids today are idiots, and most can't comprehend Shakespeare let alone the newspaper. As proof of this: the idiom generally goes in reverse, my friend. It would be "[. ..]most can't comprehend the newspaper, let alone Shakespeare." The not-so-subtle meaning of this phrase is: "they can't even understand the simple, how are they to understand the complex?" It's a shame your generation's education didn't stress reading comprehension...
Furthermore, your point is absurd. If you're over 30, what do you think of pop music today? Brilliant art, or crap? What do you think of the fashions you see 13-year-olds sporting? Humans have a natural egoistic tendency -- we think that everything we've done, or had, is the best. More often than not, the change isn't in the object of perception, but in the perceiver himself.
Rereading the thread, it's clear that I misapprehended what was going on in your thread -- you actually were talking about the popularity of software. I apologize. But that said, I don't agree with some of your rebuttals, and think you raise some interesting points in others. To wit:
if the barriers are so low, then why are people using proprietary software more widely, if it has higher barriers?
Truth is, people use a ton of free software. It's under a lot of the devices and programs we use every single day. Mobile devices, internet technology, cell phone networks, network and communication protocols/delivery methods, the very foundations of this whole intarweb thing -- a good many of them are free software. Ever heard of ARPANET? That's basically the foundation of the FOSS movement. I imagine Wikipedia would back me up on that. However, you're right that most recognizable software is closed-source, and I don't think it takes a genius to figure out why -- those companies have historically had the dollars to do what they want. FOSS is fickle, spending money here, there, but rarely consistent enough to drive a concerted, well-orchestrated effort. It's cool to be a coder/hacker, but it's kinda lame to be a project manager, in the traditional sense. Professional naggers. But that's necessary for most complex projects, and difficult to come by without a wad of cash to buy someone's work.
This instability is also a large barrier to adoption. Notably, most corporations won't commit to open source because of the fear of "hey, all the developers might just up and leave, and we'd be in the lurch!" Of course, it's true for proprietary software too, but the threat seems much more real for "volunteers" than "pros". I would argue that there are some barriers that are lower, and some that are higher. Vendor lock-in is also huge. Anyway, you could easily write a novel. I won't. Suffice to say: lack of barriers isn't the only purchasing consideration. On we move:
As far as innnovation goes how about the whole WIMP/GUI interface paradigm? That was certainly not the result of open source
Of course not, the term "open source" wasn't even logical back then -- it was first used, in a mostly different sense, in 1987. The Alto, the first WIMP/GUI interface, debuted in 1973. Regardless, a lot of good GUI interface enhancements have been driven by OSS -- but I'm no GUI geek. And yet further:
because [Photoshop] got there first, and changed the whole way we work with images. It transformed entire industries.
Bleh. That's just not really correct. Paint Shop Pro and other programs were neck and neck with Photoshop for a while, but eventually, as Photoshop started to dominate the market through good marketing and usability compared to its peers (though not overwhelming features), Photoshop became THE image editor, and as technology advanced, it was the image editor to watch. If you've ever used any of its competitive peers, you'll note that on the same historical timeline, they have identical features (barring third-party plugins). It really didn't get there first, any more than Henry Ford got there first. It just did it best, and won the game on price and marketing.
So, you're saying there's a link between profit-seeking and creativity? That would imply that most FOSS developers don't have ideas worth any money.
No, there's a link between profit-seeking and being human. Thus, when we have a creative idea that can lead to profits, we tend to use whatever means we can to capitalize. Most people (often rightly) think that the only way to do that is in a closed source deployment. If FOSS developers have ideas that are worth money, they've even been known to develop closed-source applications. Shocker, eh.
Indeed. But people around here are saying that FOSS is some sort of unique fountainhead of creativity and innovation. I
I think you missed a key point in my comment: "I don't like how copyright and patents have been applied in this country, but[. ..]".
I wrote patents professionally for a while (it's a good living, and easy). I agree that patents are completely mishandled and misregulated in this country -- patent examiners can't possibly be expert enough in every field to see what is truly novel and what is just written to make them THINK it's novel.
And the intersection between granted patents and prosecution of those patents is pretty close to ridiculous. The legal system and the patent application examination process do not play well together.
THAT SAID -- I don't think we would be better off without some sort of IP protection. The post I responded to argued that innovation would thrive on a completely open market. I don't agree. Those markets become PRODUCTION markets -- India might be the perfect example. Exceptionally good at producing things, not a great track record of innovating them. And companies aren't jumping ship to India nonstop -- there's just no protection for their expensive innovations, there.
Otherwise, though, I agree with you almost 100%. IP needs a big overhaul, but I don't think it should go away entirely. Cheers, and thanks.
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I understand that a secret race of benevolent canned lunch meat products are furious, too.
Maybe they should start a massive goodwill e-mail campaign -- what do you think?
That's why some genius invented the semicolon; I noticed its conspicuous absence, as well!
The reason that this is in the Constitution is that the founders saw great injustice being perpetrated by laws passed to make prior behavior *illegal*
Exactly. The "immunity" part of this certainly isn't unconstitutional from an "ex post facto" standpoint. For example, consider the following scenario: during the Civil Rights Movement, an African-American sits in at a white lunch counter. He's convicted under Jim Crow laws, but during the trial, those laws are repealed/superseded. Should that person still go to jail for a crime that the legislative branch has now decided is no crime at all? Turns out that in America, we don't tend to think so.
In this case, it's a little bit different, because we're not strictly repealing or replacing the laws in question -- and the telecom lobbyists want to make sure their bases are covered. That may be deplorable, illegal, and tragic, but I don't think it's unconstitutional.
Regardless, you can't just move subjects and objects willy-nilly and try to feign parity. Compound adjectives are always singular, because verbs are formed as singular indicators.
Or perhaps he was assuming a normal distribution because real, empirical evidence has proven it out time and time again. What evidence do you have of skew or kurtosis? It's certainly easier to make a positive case that intelligence very closely resembles a normal distribution than a significantly abnormal one.
Living in a Chengdu high-rise doesn't strike me as the pinnacle of accomplishment here =P.
In truth, Vietnam was probably the most massive strategic air campaign of all time. Korea was also a huge air campaign. Maybe what you mean is "sub-wars in the War on Terror". And to be honest, if we thought we could justify it, we would. Lovely world, innit?
The NSA is the largest mathematical research and code-breaking entity in the world, and somehow we're arrogant enough to think that our little homebrew scheme is nigh-on uncrackable. They've got the infrastructure, the manpower, and the intellectual concentration -- I would be scared if they hadn't cracked it by now.
As for the predicting all events... to be pedantic, at least part of the functioning of the universe is probabilistic, and symmetric. Thus predicting back in time will be as problematic as predicting forward.
No, that's not necessarily or even likely true -- more likely, we just don't understand the processes that govern events we currently model as "probabilistic". It's funny how we chip away at those things as we find more well-defined theories that deterministically prove cause and effect. And symmetry in physics in no way creates a problem for predicting back in time -- if we're able to understand and account for the phenomenon with our underdeveloped understanding of physics, it would probably be even easier with a more advanced understanding.
I think part of the reason people get so heated with this issue is that there is a large emotional investment. An attack on free-will can be taken as an attack on the very nature of self-hood.
I agree -- but that's exactly why I think it has value. Yes, people may continue to act as if they were free even with an understanding of/belief in determinism, but there's obviously another level of rationalization at work. It's similar to arguments of skepticism or existentialism -- yet they end up meaning something to people too, and still inform our popularly accepted epistemology.
I'm not sure if it is falsifiable. An equation will never be as internally valid as our perception of self. I can get 5000 people to choose a number, and all will state a choice, and I can get brainscans of 5000 people saying it was determined. Which wins?
Yeah, that's the "reasonably sure" I was talking about. The brainscan study is immaterial -- such things don't have any real effect on the philosophy of determinism. There are scant few Cartesian dualists left, and those who are pigheaded enough to hold onto it certainly can adapt these findings to their system. But we can be just as "certain" of determinism or free will as we are of gravity, magnetism, or conservation of energy. Certainly, any of those things could be falsified -- tomorrow, perhaps, gravity will cease to function, and life as we know it will end. Seems unlikely, though, doesn't it? (Even though we certainly can't measure that probability).
Science is a system, and has no guarantees of being capable of understanding everything. Not to say it isn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were objects completely outside of its scope and possible comprehension. Can science be complete?
Definitely not. There's no way that any empirically-founded system can be 100% complete -- see any reasonable critique of inductive reasoning. The only kind of knowledge that science handles is inductive, and we have no idea when the rules will change, if there even are rules; science can certainly only be a description of a certain set of phenomena, nothing more. It so happens that it's been a very effective description, but that in no terms means it's correct, and it definitely can't ever be "complete" in the way many people think it can.
What if all of science is wrong? Don't take that at face value, but it is an interesting philosophical question. How could we prove it is wrong? How can we prove it is correct?
This is what undergraduate degrees in philosophy are all about =P -- sweeping questions that seem deep, but in fact aren't. If science is wrong, then we pick up the pieces and move on -- find a new mode of understanding the world around us. How do we prove science wrong? That's easy -- any truly scientific knowledge is falsifiable, as it is determined by the real phenomena around us. Any scientific theory could be disproved tomorrow. Proving it, on the other hand, is quite a bit trickier. As it's inductive, we can't _prove_ it in the logical sense. Fortunately, that's not really what we mean by "prove" anyway -- we just want a reasonable assurance that science's theories and pr
I take great offence to that. If that was your intention you've succeeded. FWIW though, you're completely wrong.
I apologize that I have offended you, but I stand by my comment. Your argument is basically this: there are successful minorities, therefore being a minority is not an impediment to success. What a horribly fallacious and racist argument! Lance Armstrong was a successful athlete after surviving cancer, therefore cancer was not an impediment to his success. And, ironically, I think that argument holds more water than the one about minorities!
Or could it be that the privileged were already living under the rules of our society and didn't have to change quite so drastically?[. . .] Put this another way; if you moved to China or France, you refused to speak the local dialect and insisted on observing your own cultural nuances on great public display without regard for the local culture - how successful do you believe you'd be?
Yes, exactly -- you're already living under that society's general rules, so you have a distinct advantage. In your China/France scenario, you've successfully identified another instance of unworthy bias. However, it is (IMO) much more forgivable -- after all, you did move there of your own volition. But if you're BORN into a society that rejects the very fabric of your culture, and no other society is realistically a better fit, what are you to do? It's not a matter of "refusing to adapt" -- it's a matter of being forced to do that much work that your competitors don't have to.
What if you were born with one hand, and wanted to be a computer programmer? Eventually, you work out a one-handed typing system, after working on it for countless hours. In the end, you're almost as fast as your peers. But you always know that, if you'd had 2 hands, you would be almost twice as fast as your peers. That's fair?
Then you know some introverted, uncultured white people.
That's funny, but doesn't begin to address my point. Regardless of whether people I know are uncultured, I would say 90+% of white Americans are basically the same. Whether that's RIGHT or not is immaterial -- if it's true, which it is, it has a detrimental effect on the lives of affected minorities.
So end affirmative action and all other forms of biased hiring practises and enforce a purely merit-based system of hirings, promotions and bonuses.
Or maybe bigots should realize that people have inherent disadvantages/advantages due to race and other characteristics. Also, perhaps those same bigots should realize that an "underqualified" (by white-dominated society's definition) minority could certainly develop into an effective member of society if given the appropriate opportunity to succeed. Whereas their acclimated status quo counterparts might have already achieved social acceptability, minorities are much more likely to have untapped potential; once a disadvantaged person "figures out the game", he or she has much more room to grow than likely competitors.
I felt the exact same way as you until I actually studied the sociology and psychology of race and ethnicity for two years, focusing on inter-group conflict. If you actually examine your opportunities and those of your peers, you'll realize that white males DO have a lot of advantages, and our collective societal handling of people from different backgrounds is wildly unfair.
This would, for all reasonable purposes, prove determinism. If such a system existed, and encountered some sort of magic field around rational human decisions that its predictions could not penetrate, that would be pretty good evidence of free will, wouldn't it? Now, maybe free will can't be proven absolutely, but determinism could definitely be established with as much scientific rigor as any other of our dearly-held theories. As such, it would certainly also be falsifiable -- if we DID have the perfect physics system and an accompanying superdupercocmputer, and we could prove that any event was NOT subject to its predictions, then that formulation of determinism is certainly wrong.
Here's the point: your perspective is that of the modern, enlightened racist. OK, so some blacks you knew were or are able to adapt to society's rules. The privileged never had to. It's just one more hurdle to jump over. Here are some other ones:
- The fact that most whites I know seem to be terrified of blacks in person
- The fact that people are too afraid to confront you directly, lest they seem 'racist'
- Every time you get a good grade, or a promotion, everyone around you thinks "it's only because he's black"
- You have to tolerate "good-natured joshing" from white people like you who seem to think they "get it", but in fact, are clueless
- Everyone around you thinking that YOUR cultural artifacts (art, music) are "rural" or "rustic" or "barbarian" -- when everything they seem to love is bland and contentless
This list goes on and on. I wish you had the opportunity to be looked down upon for 20+ years, explicitly or implicitly, so you could see how deeply it affects the fabric of a person's self. People like you are the worst; you think that because people CAN rise up, that everyone should be able to. Well, guess what -- you could probably be a world-class doctor, or astronaut, or artist, or whatever it is you prefer here -- but I'm guessing you aren't. Very few are, because it's exceptionally difficult. When you're black, I guarantee you have to try harder, be better, and through it all, maintain a really thick shell; you just don't get the benefit of the doubt, because your "default" societal behavior is always "wrong".Get it now?
While others have explained it thoroughly, here's a better way to conceptualize it: the game cheats. The game KNOWS where the car is, and CHEATS to open a goat door. When you make your original selection, you have a 1/3 chance of getting the right door. However, NO MATTER WHAT THE GAME DOES, your chance of choosing the right door the first time REMAINS 1 in 3. Why, you ask?
Because the door opening to show you the goat gives you no new information! No matter what you chose, be it car or goat, there's at least one goat left to "reveal" to you. The game cheats, and shows you the goat -- all that does is restrict your selection possibilities; it doesn't actually give you any more information. By showing you the goat, monty isn't opening a door at random; he's opening the door with the goat. So he's not equally limiting your selection possibilities, he's only eliminating a WRONG selection possibility.
- How much of it was the foods (which contain drugs anyway) that I ate?
- How much of it was my being genetically lucky?
- How much of it was my obsessive workout, or lack thereof?
- How much of it was my random, lucky upbringing?
- How much of it was the pure chance of my skill filling a need?
No matter the answer to any of these questions, the point is moot.-
Resources
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Developers
You're right, Google doesn't have any resources or developers. Very sharp insight. How, exactly, are those working in Apple's favor? They have momentum. That's all. I'll reserve further evaluation of Android until we actually have a real version of it.I never cheated, simply because I never cared enough about grades, but I certainly understand the impetus behind a lot of cheating. In fact, of people I knew that DID cheat, I would say they were on average MORE capable than their classmates, and quite often outscored them on exams. I would venture a guess that at least 90% of cheating is due to laziness, not because the material is too challenging. Education through the undergraduate level is far too easy and well-formulated for anyone with half a brain to have real trouble if they are dedicated; it's the dedication that is the problem. And once you get to graduate studies, there usually aren't TOO many people that could really help you cheat, so the problem decreases sharply.
Or..... you could just remove your battery from your phone? Surely they can't believe that Americans can track their inert lump of metal...
That's silly talk. I think that at that point, the pilots, crew, or certainly the passengers with cell phones would immediately notify the authorities. Simple matter: "I'm on such and such a flight, and several armed masked men have boarded with apparent ill intent." Even if the planes could get off the ground (which I highly doubt), there's no way that the hijackers could achieve anything more than destruction of those airliners. Even then, it might be extremely difficult for them to get inside.
More dangerous still, in my opinion, is the idea that some commercial or military pilot could go off the reservation/be subverted by some group. Sure, there are checks and balances, but they hardly seem insurmountable. After all, many extremists have shown an alarming willingness to die, so a few years of subterfuge doesn't sound so problematic.
The stupidest thing about all of this travel security is this: the weaknesses that led to 9/11 were mostly a lack of understanding and preparation, not a lack of capability. Now that we KNOW hijacked planes can be used as they were, I would be surprised if any hijacked plane in America survived more than 5 minutes before being shot down. Not to mention the fact that passengers and crew would be mighty hard to contain, as well. NONE of this has been influenced by any policy changes.
Any future attacks will come where we're vulnerable, where there's a hole in our understanding -- just as it was 6 years ago. There are still plenty of spots where that's the case. It's fine to keep pouring our money and liberties down the drain, though... all in the name of countering a threat that has, for all realistic purposes, been nullified.
Furthermore, your point is absurd. If you're over 30, what do you think of pop music today? Brilliant art, or crap? What do you think of the fashions you see 13-year-olds sporting? Humans have a natural egoistic tendency -- we think that everything we've done, or had, is the best. More often than not, the change isn't in the object of perception, but in the perceiver himself.
Ahahaha -- that is absolute genius. Best joke in weeks, hands-down.
if the barriers are so low, then why are people using proprietary software more widely, if it has higher barriers?
Truth is, people use a ton of free software. It's under a lot of the devices and programs we use every single day. Mobile devices, internet technology, cell phone networks, network and communication protocols/delivery methods, the very foundations of this whole intarweb thing -- a good many of them are free software. Ever heard of ARPANET? That's basically the foundation of the FOSS movement. I imagine Wikipedia would back me up on that. However, you're right that most recognizable software is closed-source, and I don't think it takes a genius to figure out why -- those companies have historically had the dollars to do what they want. FOSS is fickle, spending money here, there, but rarely consistent enough to drive a concerted, well-orchestrated effort. It's cool to be a coder/hacker, but it's kinda lame to be a project manager, in the traditional sense. Professional naggers. But that's necessary for most complex projects, and difficult to come by without a wad of cash to buy someone's work.
This instability is also a large barrier to adoption. Notably, most corporations won't commit to open source because of the fear of "hey, all the developers might just up and leave, and we'd be in the lurch!" Of course, it's true for proprietary software too, but the threat seems much more real for "volunteers" than "pros". I would argue that there are some barriers that are lower, and some that are higher. Vendor lock-in is also huge. Anyway, you could easily write a novel. I won't. Suffice to say: lack of barriers isn't the only purchasing consideration. On we move:
As far as innnovation goes how about the whole WIMP/GUI interface paradigm? That was certainly not the result of open source
Of course not, the term "open source" wasn't even logical back then -- it was first used, in a mostly different sense, in 1987. The Alto, the first WIMP/GUI interface, debuted in 1973. Regardless, a lot of good GUI interface enhancements have been driven by OSS -- but I'm no GUI geek. And yet further:
because [Photoshop] got there first, and changed the whole way we work with images. It transformed entire industries.
Bleh. That's just not really correct. Paint Shop Pro and other programs were neck and neck with Photoshop for a while, but eventually, as Photoshop started to dominate the market through good marketing and usability compared to its peers (though not overwhelming features), Photoshop became THE image editor, and as technology advanced, it was the image editor to watch. If you've ever used any of its competitive peers, you'll note that on the same historical timeline, they have identical features (barring third-party plugins). It really didn't get there first, any more than Henry Ford got there first. It just did it best, and won the game on price and marketing.
So, you're saying there's a link between profit-seeking and creativity? That would imply that most FOSS developers don't have ideas worth any money.
No, there's a link between profit-seeking and being human. Thus, when we have a creative idea that can lead to profits, we tend to use whatever means we can to capitalize. Most people (often rightly) think that the only way to do that is in a closed source deployment. If FOSS developers have ideas that are worth money, they've even been known to develop closed-source applications. Shocker, eh.
Indeed. But people around here are saying that FOSS is some sort of unique fountainhead of creativity and innovation. I
I think you missed a key point in my comment: "I don't like how copyright and patents have been applied in this country, but[. . .]".
I wrote patents professionally for a while (it's a good living, and easy). I agree that patents are completely mishandled and misregulated in this country -- patent examiners can't possibly be expert enough in every field to see what is truly novel and what is just written to make them THINK it's novel.
And the intersection between granted patents and prosecution of those patents is pretty close to ridiculous. The legal system and the patent application examination process do not play well together.
THAT SAID -- I don't think we would be better off without some sort of IP protection. The post I responded to argued that innovation would thrive on a completely open market. I don't agree. Those markets become PRODUCTION markets -- India might be the perfect example. Exceptionally good at producing things, not a great track record of innovating them. And companies aren't jumping ship to India nonstop -- there's just no protection for their expensive innovations, there.
Otherwise, though, I agree with you almost 100%. IP needs a big overhaul, but I don't think it should go away entirely. Cheers, and thanks.