As others have pointed out implied consent doesn't matter. Anyone who has ever actually attended college better than to think that having to write 10,000 original papers is a bar that is going to somehow make your degree more valuable (and it certainly isn't going to improve your actual eduction). Quite frankly I do not think it good for schools to have a perfect cheater catcher. Teachers own radar makes cheating difficult enough to yield an education.
If you actually want to improve education then put a firm cap of 5 papers in non-language/composition courses and force the teachers to actually interactively teach the students. Stop including artificial difficulty in the process of learning by allowing teachers to assign dozens of essays in lieu of actually cramming information in students minds.
Instead of reforming the educational process to be about learning instead of being able to write papers well, you might want to patch this stupid paper checker to work. If so, just make a non-profit resource operated by a University that does the same thing. If you remove the commercial entity from the equation then it becomes fair use for educational purposes and is exempt from the copyright restrictions.
More vulnerabilities is bad, but more reported vulnerabilities is not. More reported vulnerabilities is good as long as the vulnerabilities are being patched. I would be happy to hear that they ironed out a thousand vulnerabilities in FireFox this month.
No software is without vulnerabilities, but the more vigorously they are hunted out and patched the more obscure the ones left will be. If a thousand vulnerabilities are found and fixed in FireFox this month they will probably be the thousand that are easiest to find, effectively raising the bar for those looking to exploit FireFox.
The idea that more reported vulnerabilities is a bad thing hurts everyone. This idea causes commercial vendors to shy away from admitting vulnerabilities, or to try to hide vulnerabilities while they put them on a list and ignore them.
"This is (IMHO) a very well-reasoned critique of WinXP, although it does fail to credit XP as being markedly better than its predecessors."
I have heard this claim again and again. Perhaps from a pure stability standpoint it is true (unless you are comparing to win2k which is roughly the same). From a security standpoint I am not so sure. In theory XP is more secure but in practice... In fact, I can't recall anything actively exploited on win98 that approached the severity of the RPC holes. Those holes allowed millions of computers to be shutdown remotely overnight.
"In fact, they have less right to look at these papers than the school janitor (at least he or she could claim they were reading it to make sure it wasn't something that was accidently tossed in the recycling bin)."
Just to nit-pick use does not fall within the realm of copyright. The me, you, the janitor, and Barbara Bush can all read these papers without violating copyright. What we can not do is make copies of the papers.
Who cares? The article also says that ipod owners were shown to be more likely to buy music in general. That means that regardless of how much of their music collections is pirated the music industry is alienating their best customers with DRM.
Dude the ears of old audio nuts claim that DIGITAL data sounds different when sent through fiber optic digital links rather than other digital links. It is a figment of their imagination. It is not like one has to guess. You do a checksum of the file before encryption, and you do a checksum after encryption, either the number has changed or not. Most encryptions are fully reversable.
"The US throws more money per student than ever, yet we get worse and worse results each year."
According to whom? This problem is severely overrated and I believe is largely spouted as political propoganda. If I recall there is a political group out there that always claims schools get too much money and don't deliver real educations and that group has said the same thing for at least the past 20 years.
The reality is that 12 year olds are successful stock traders now, students learn advanced math at younger ages and the number of perfect aptitude test scores continues to increase despite making the tests more and more challenging. The average IQ score also has to continually be adjusted (anyone who has taken an IQ test knows that education is not even close to ruled out in those tests).
School funding is the result of inner city schools crying out for funding. This prompts funding bills to be passed, but the bills always increase funding the schools that are already well funded leaving those inner city schools behind. The result is schools that have computer labs full of LCDs while inner city schools don't have the funds to replace broken desks.
The law should stipulate that copy protection mechanisms are an alternative to legal copy protections, therefore a company should have a choice between technical measures to prevent usages and copying the company would like to restrict and legal protections that grant limited protections afforded in pre-dmca copyright law.
Either companies work within the bounds of the law and the legal controls granted by copyright and make no attempt to gain greater control or they go vigiliante. There is no reason to let them have their cake and eat it to.
Am I the only one sitting here and wondering if anyone on this forum ever used a C64? They need a 5 1/4 floppy drive and a C64 emulator. The C64 stores all the data and programs on floppies, if the system has even been powered off they aren't going to get anything from the machine itself.
Personally I suspect the investigators just have a bunch of MCSE's who run prepackaged forensic tools and have never seen a C64 and don't know how one works.
Programs that depend on the mouse are for idiots. Power users remove their hands from the keyboards as little as possible and worthwhile applications require the use of the mouse as little as possible. A well designed application can be operated MUCH faster with the keyboard than with the mouse.
Seriously man, there is no such thing as a power mouser. You can pretty up the interface and make it mouse accessible but you still need the keyboard interface to match. The same keystrokes should produce the same result.
"If library developers want to make their library *the* library for that particular function, why not use LGPL or better, the GPL with header/linking exception? I can and have used these libraries and can and have contributed back; but the same cannot be said about GPL'd libraries."
I happen to agree with you. Although I think there are exceptions. If a library or set of libraries is vast and complex enough that a complete application could merely be a wrapper around the functionality in the library then the GPL should apply. Or at least the license needs to make clear that if the library provides core functionality to your application then the GPL applies. I am not sure the LGPL does.
In any case. An author's choice between the GPL and LGPL are not flaws in the GPL. They are disagreements over licensing terms. Choosing a license that does not require those who benefit from the code to give back as much is an option for a developer but some prefer not to take that option. Just as Adobe chooses not to put a price on their product that is this side of reason, despite the fact that it would increase sales.
The only time you get to choose the license is when you are the one developer writing the software that will be under that license. If you license the software under the GPL YOU aren't bound to the terms, you hold the copyright and can use the code however you want. It is only those who would like to use your software under those terms who are bound to the GPL.
There is nothing preventing the original author from using code he GPL'd in a closed source program. It is his code to release under as many different licenses as he pleases or even under bare copyright without any license. If you are a secondary author the GPL has terms, it grants freedoms and removes none. Without the GPL you have NO right to use the code and NO right to redistribute at all. The GPL sets forth conditions under which you may do those things. If the terms are inappropriate you can still contact the program author and ask him to utilize his authority to license under different terms.
"It is like a chef having to give up his secret recipe just because he used GPL Spices."
It's like having a chef give up his secret sauce recipe because he really only modifed a GPL sauce recipe. If the Chef wants to come up with his own recipe from scratch he can keep it secret all he wants. If the chef only wants to prepare the sauce for use at home he can keep the recipe secret, but if he wants to start selling that sauce he can't have a secret recipe simply because he adds pepper to a GPL recipe.
Lets face it, the only time the terms of the GPL are bad for someone is when the someone is a commercial developer wants to be paid for development work done by others without giving anything back in turn. If you are commercial developer you can write your own jpg library, pay someone to write you a jpg library, pay the author of a GPL'd jpg library to license to you under different terms, or you can comply with the GPL and contribute something back. There is no free lunch development is work, GPL author development is just as valuable as commercial development and must be paid for, either in cash or code. GPL authors are not slaves who are content to essentially work as your employees without pay while developing code you need.
It is about priority. The additions to XP are changes in eyecandy, multimedia, and of course drivers. Actual security changes have been backported to 2k of course. If you don't care about your computer being pretty or aren't a gamer then the XP specific changes are just a load of bloat.
I think you are probably correct about the intended meaning. The bit about the kernel option gives it away. I really only answered what he said (as opposed to what he meant) to cast a wider net.
I probably could have thrown my own general rule of thumb for swap as well. 2x memory if you have less than 256mb memory and then 50% of physical memory above that. I have found that this configuration minimizes swapping. With a larger swap file the system seems to need more free physical memory to enable swap (or to enable it sooner). At least that is my rule of thumb on linux. On windows you should generally allow the system to manage swap.
4GB of memory is about $400+, $400 is the cost of the entire computer for most users. How could you possibly claim that everyone should have 4GB?
"I'm quite certain a regular 32-bit PC w/ 4GB of RAM doesn't need a swapfile unless you're running Linux"
Running Linux does not require more memory, actually it is the opposite.
I would however have to agree that avoiding swap is a way to bypass the worst bottleneck in modern computers. Right now the harddrive extremely limits performance on windows where swap is an all or none issue rather than a none unless needed issue. I hear people discount drive performance all the time as if it has no significant effect on performance but when your computer is running swap all the time then your memory speed is effectively reduced to the speed of a drive that is drastically slower.
"You didn't read the article; nor did I until just now."
I still haven't. I will remain a proper and upstanding member of the slashdot community.;)
"First, the reasons for OSI not evaluating licenses that aren't formally submitted by the license authors are detailed in the article."
I haven't read the article but I have read some of Russ' comments here and also John (the submitter) reply'd to me as well. It certainly seems that my post is due an overrated mod.
With that said I still think the OSI should evaluate publically available licenses regardless of who they are submitted by when the author is claiming or implying that the licenses are open. A good example of this is the shared source license that came before this particular discussion. Having a list of licenses that have been evaluated and failed to meet OSI criteria publically available is more than just a way point a finger at the author and say "HA!". If a license is not on the list then it only means that license has not been evaluated but the terms might be safe to use. If a license is on the rejected list it means that the license should not be used, period.
I also think the OSI should seriously reconsider revising their definition if it allows EULAs, since they fall outside the scope of the rights granted the author by copyright law.
If you are the John Cowan then I hope someone mods you up as informative.
With that said I would only change my post to read "the best reason for submitting" instead of "undoubtedly the reason for submitting".
Whether this license meets the letter of the definition is something best left to the lawyers but this EULA (or any EULA) is definately a violation of the spirit of open source.
I also still maintain that OSI evaluation of a license should not be dependant upon consent by the author. Either a license is OSI compliant or not and people have a right to know that.
Undoubtedly the reason it was submitted is so that the license will be officially recognized as not achieving OSI compliance. I don't think they should have asked Microsoft at all.
"This is a hoax and it's unconscionable to encourage scientists to interrupt research which could decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. This is nothing more than a publicity stunt to attract investors."
That sounded like an unfounded assertion. In the past century physics has been turned on its head repeatedly, the idea that a widely accepted principle of physics won't be turned on its head because it has held during a mere 50 years is rather naive. That may be a great deal of time to an individual human but isn't much in terms of mankind, geologic time, and certainly is not of much significance on a cosmic scale.
I agree that a free energy source or virtually free energy source is a discovery that many are motivated to falsely accept credit for, but given the wide range of potential plentiful sources for virtually free energy and the number of people looking for them someone will probably come up with one sooner or later.
With that said, I suspect these guys see nothing but dollar signs whether it is a hoax or not.
Scientists should prioritize and pursue likely claims first or they would never get anything done. This does not mean they should dismiss claims they can't or haven't disproven.
"The pressure of presenting extraordinary evidence to support an extraordinary claim is on the presenter of said claim."
Well actually extraordinary claims scientifically should require no more evidence than any other claim to support them. Requiring more evidence in support of claims that people have trouble believing is one of the faults of humanity, not a scientific principle. Fortunately for the topic, what is required to prove claims is irrelevant. We are not discussing the proving of claims, we are talking about the dismissal of claims.
"If there's no evidence, there's nothing to refute."
If there is sound logic then there is in fact something to refute. Any solution to a problem that is consistent with the evidence is called a hypothesis and can not be rightfully dismissed out of hand. If you have an opposing hypothesis or theory you must systematically eliminate all other possibilities. There is nothing wrong with prioritizing the more likely possibilities, but that doesn't mean you actually dismiss the possibilities that don't seem likely to you.
If one troubleshoots complex problems where an objective answer is ultimately found (like computer issues) then one will find that the unlikely solution is correct a fair amount of time. When you troubleshoot, you start with the most likely cause of the problem. For instance, if the system is powering itself off in the middle of usage the most likely cause are heat and an unreliable power supply. A smart technician will replace the CPU fan and the entire power supply in one shot. If the system continues to fail you suddenly are moving into less sure territory. The problem could be caused by a faulty motherboard or even a faulty processor. I have even seen faulty sound cards and video cards cause this issue.
Now, if this were a theoretical issue that was more difficult to test it would be a different story. If someone came to me and said that the system reboots itself because the video card is faulty I would laugh. After all, I can load up 3D games on the computer without any problems. This ridiculous and unsubstantiated claim that defies common sense(something that is NOT part of science) can be dismissed. Until you already have all the answers, like we do with computers, you can't test thoroughly enough to discover what is likely and unlikely. Until that point, you have only the tests you can manage and common sense, neither of which is an adequate basis for dismissing claims if you are actually trying to pursue truth.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have pointed out implied consent doesn't matter. Anyone who has ever actually attended college better than to think that having to write 10,000 original papers is a bar that is going to somehow make your degree more valuable (and it certainly isn't going to improve your actual eduction). Quite frankly I do not think it good for schools to have a perfect cheater catcher. Teachers own radar makes cheating difficult enough to yield an education.
If you actually want to improve education then put a firm cap of 5 papers in non-language/composition courses and force the teachers to actually interactively teach the students. Stop including artificial difficulty in the process of learning by allowing teachers to assign dozens of essays in lieu of actually cramming information in students minds.
Instead of reforming the educational process to be about learning instead of being able to write papers well, you might want to patch this stupid paper checker to work. If so, just make a non-profit resource operated by a University that does the same thing. If you remove the commercial entity from the equation then it becomes fair use for educational purposes and is exempt from the copyright restrictions.
"Sure, more vulnerabilities is bad,"
More vulnerabilities is bad, but more reported vulnerabilities is not. More reported vulnerabilities is good as long as the vulnerabilities are being patched. I would be happy to hear that they ironed out a thousand vulnerabilities in FireFox this month.
No software is without vulnerabilities, but the more vigorously they are hunted out and patched the more obscure the ones left will be. If a thousand vulnerabilities are found and fixed in FireFox this month they will probably be the thousand that are easiest to find, effectively raising the bar for those looking to exploit FireFox.
The idea that more reported vulnerabilities is a bad thing hurts everyone. This idea causes commercial vendors to shy away from admitting vulnerabilities, or to try to hide vulnerabilities while they put them on a list and ignore them.
"This is (IMHO) a very well-reasoned critique of WinXP, although it does fail to credit XP as being markedly better than its predecessors."
I have heard this claim again and again. Perhaps from a pure stability standpoint it is true (unless you are comparing to win2k which is roughly the same). From a security standpoint I am not so sure. In theory XP is more secure but in practice... In fact, I can't recall anything actively exploited on win98 that approached the severity of the RPC holes. Those holes allowed millions of computers to be shutdown remotely overnight.
"In fact, they have less right to look at these papers than the school janitor (at least he or she could claim they were reading it to make sure it wasn't something that was accidently tossed in the recycling bin)."
Just to nit-pick use does not fall within the realm of copyright. The me, you, the janitor, and Barbara Bush can all read these papers without violating copyright. What we can not do is make copies of the papers.
Either they released the exploit code before the hole was patched or not.
Does that 80-90% include allofmp3.com? After all, they are technically legal.
Who cares? The article also says that ipod owners were shown to be more likely to buy music in general. That means that regardless of how much of their music collections is pirated the music industry is alienating their best customers with DRM.
Dude the ears of old audio nuts claim that DIGITAL data sounds different when sent through fiber optic digital links rather than other digital links. It is a figment of their imagination. It is not like one has to guess. You do a checksum of the file before encryption, and you do a checksum after encryption, either the number has changed or not. Most encryptions are fully reversable.
"The US throws more money per student than ever, yet we get worse and worse results each year."
According to whom? This problem is severely overrated and I believe is largely spouted as political propoganda. If I recall there is a political group out there that always claims schools get too much money and don't deliver real educations and that group has said the same thing for at least the past 20 years.
The reality is that 12 year olds are successful stock traders now, students learn advanced math at younger ages and the number of perfect aptitude test scores continues to increase despite making the tests more and more challenging. The average IQ score also has to continually be adjusted (anyone who has taken an IQ test knows that education is not even close to ruled out in those tests).
School funding is the result of inner city schools crying out for funding. This prompts funding bills to be passed, but the bills always increase funding the schools that are already well funded leaving those inner city schools behind. The result is schools that have computer labs full of LCDs while inner city schools don't have the funds to replace broken desks.
The law should stipulate that copy protection mechanisms are an alternative to legal copy protections, therefore a company should have a choice between technical measures to prevent usages and copying the company would like to restrict and legal protections that grant limited protections afforded in pre-dmca copyright law.
Either companies work within the bounds of the law and the legal controls granted by copyright and make no attempt to gain greater control or they go vigiliante. There is no reason to let them have their cake and eat it to.
I am seriously considering changing my position on the DRM thing now. No britney... could there be such bliss in life?
Well, we can probably keep Britney, just so long as we don't have to hear her anymore.
Am I the only one sitting here and wondering if anyone on this forum ever used a C64? They need a 5 1/4 floppy drive and a C64 emulator. The C64 stores all the data and programs on floppies, if the system has even been powered off they aren't going to get anything from the machine itself.
Personally I suspect the investigators just have a bunch of MCSE's who run prepackaged forensic tools and have never seen a C64 and don't know how one works.
Programs that depend on the mouse are for idiots. Power users remove their hands from the keyboards as little as possible and worthwhile applications require the use of the mouse as little as possible. A well designed application can be operated MUCH faster with the keyboard than with the mouse.
Seriously man, there is no such thing as a power mouser. You can pretty up the interface and make it mouse accessible but you still need the keyboard interface to match. The same keystrokes should produce the same result.
"If library developers want to make their library *the* library for that particular function, why not use LGPL or better, the GPL with header/linking exception? I can and have used these libraries and can and have contributed back; but the same cannot be said about GPL'd libraries."
I happen to agree with you. Although I think there are exceptions. If a library or set of libraries is vast and complex enough that a complete application could merely be a wrapper around the functionality in the library then the GPL should apply. Or at least the license needs to make clear that if the library provides core functionality to your application then the GPL applies. I am not sure the LGPL does.
In any case. An author's choice between the GPL and LGPL are not flaws in the GPL. They are disagreements over licensing terms. Choosing a license that does not require those who benefit from the code to give back as much is an option for a developer but some prefer not to take that option. Just as Adobe chooses not to put a price on their product that is this side of reason, despite the fact that it would increase sales.
The only time you get to choose the license is when you are the one developer writing the software that will be under that license. If you license the software under the GPL YOU aren't bound to the terms, you hold the copyright and can use the code however you want. It is only those who would like to use your software under those terms who are bound to the GPL.
There is nothing preventing the original author from using code he GPL'd in a closed source program. It is his code to release under as many different licenses as he pleases or even under bare copyright without any license. If you are a secondary author the GPL has terms, it grants freedoms and removes none. Without the GPL you have NO right to use the code and NO right to redistribute at all. The GPL sets forth conditions under which you may do those things. If the terms are inappropriate you can still contact the program author and ask him to utilize his authority to license under different terms.
"It is like a chef having to give up his secret recipe just because he used GPL Spices."
It's like having a chef give up his secret sauce recipe because he really only modifed a GPL sauce recipe. If the Chef wants to come up with his own recipe from scratch he can keep it secret all he wants. If the chef only wants to prepare the sauce for use at home he can keep the recipe secret, but if he wants to start selling that sauce he can't have a secret recipe simply because he adds pepper to a GPL recipe.
Lets face it, the only time the terms of the GPL are bad for someone is when the someone is a commercial developer wants to be paid for development work done by others without giving anything back in turn. If you are commercial developer you can write your own jpg library, pay someone to write you a jpg library, pay the author of a GPL'd jpg library to license to you under different terms, or you can comply with the GPL and contribute something back. There is no free lunch development is work, GPL author development is just as valuable as commercial development and must be paid for, either in cash or code. GPL authors are not slaves who are content to essentially work as your employees without pay while developing code you need.
It is about priority. The additions to XP are changes in eyecandy, multimedia, and of course drivers. Actual security changes have been backported to 2k of course. If you don't care about your computer being pretty or aren't a gamer then the XP specific changes are just a load of bloat.
I think you are probably correct about the intended meaning. The bit about the kernel option gives it away. I really only answered what he said (as opposed to what he meant) to cast a wider net.
I probably could have thrown my own general rule of thumb for swap as well. 2x memory if you have less than 256mb memory and then 50% of physical memory above that. I have found that this configuration minimizes swapping. With a larger swap file the system seems to need more free physical memory to enable swap (or to enable it sooner). At least that is my rule of thumb on linux. On windows you should generally allow the system to manage swap.
4GB of memory is about $400+, $400 is the cost of the entire computer for most users. How could you possibly claim that everyone should have 4GB?
"I'm quite certain a regular 32-bit PC w/ 4GB of RAM doesn't need a swapfile unless you're running Linux"
Running Linux does not require more memory, actually it is the opposite.
I would however have to agree that avoiding swap is a way to bypass the worst bottleneck in modern computers. Right now the harddrive extremely limits performance on windows where swap is an all or none issue rather than a none unless needed issue. I hear people discount drive performance all the time as if it has no significant effect on performance but when your computer is running swap all the time then your memory speed is effectively reduced to the speed of a drive that is drastically slower.
"You didn't read the article; nor did I until just now."
;)
I still haven't. I will remain a proper and upstanding member of the slashdot community.
"First, the reasons for OSI not evaluating licenses that aren't formally submitted by the license authors are detailed in the article."
I haven't read the article but I have read some of Russ' comments here and also John (the submitter) reply'd to me as well. It certainly seems that my post is due an overrated mod.
With that said I still think the OSI should evaluate publically available licenses regardless of who they are submitted by when the author is claiming or implying that the licenses are open. A good example of this is the shared source license that came before this particular discussion. Having a list of licenses that have been evaluated and failed to meet OSI criteria publically available is more than just a way point a finger at the author and say "HA!". If a license is not on the list then it only means that license has not been evaluated but the terms might be safe to use. If a license is on the rejected list it means that the license should not be used, period.
I also think the OSI should seriously reconsider revising their definition if it allows EULAs, since they fall outside the scope of the rights granted the author by copyright law.
If you are the John Cowan then I hope someone mods you up as informative.
With that said I would only change my post to read "the best reason for submitting" instead of "undoubtedly the reason for submitting".
Whether this license meets the letter of the definition is something best left to the lawyers but this EULA (or any EULA) is definately a violation of the spirit of open source.
I also still maintain that OSI evaluation of a license should not be dependant upon consent by the author. Either a license is OSI compliant or not and people have a right to know that.
Undoubtedly the reason it was submitted is so that the license will be officially recognized as not achieving OSI compliance. I don't think they should have asked Microsoft at all.
"This is a hoax and it's unconscionable to encourage scientists to interrupt research which could decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. This is nothing more than a publicity stunt to attract investors."
That sounded like an unfounded assertion. In the past century physics has been turned on its head repeatedly, the idea that a widely accepted principle of physics won't be turned on its head because it has held during a mere 50 years is rather naive. That may be a great deal of time to an individual human but isn't much in terms of mankind, geologic time, and certainly is not of much significance on a cosmic scale.
I agree that a free energy source or virtually free energy source is a discovery that many are motivated to falsely accept credit for, but given the wide range of potential plentiful sources for virtually free energy and the number of people looking for them someone will probably come up with one sooner or later.
With that said, I suspect these guys see nothing but dollar signs whether it is a hoax or not.
Scientists should prioritize and pursue likely claims first or they would never get anything done. This does not mean they should dismiss claims they can't or haven't disproven.
"The pressure of presenting extraordinary evidence to support an extraordinary claim is on the presenter of said claim."
Well actually extraordinary claims scientifically should require no more evidence than any other claim to support them. Requiring more evidence in support of claims that people have trouble believing is one of the faults of humanity, not a scientific principle. Fortunately for the topic, what is required to prove claims is irrelevant. We are not discussing the proving of claims, we are talking about the dismissal of claims.
"If there's no evidence, there's nothing to refute."
If there is sound logic then there is in fact something to refute. Any solution to a problem that is consistent with the evidence is called a hypothesis and can not be rightfully dismissed out of hand. If you have an opposing hypothesis or theory you must systematically eliminate all other possibilities. There is nothing wrong with prioritizing the more likely possibilities, but that doesn't mean you actually dismiss the possibilities that don't seem likely to you.
If one troubleshoots complex problems where an objective answer is ultimately found (like computer issues) then one will find that the unlikely solution is correct a fair amount of time. When you troubleshoot, you start with the most likely cause of the problem. For instance, if the system is powering itself off in the middle of usage the most likely cause are heat and an unreliable power supply. A smart technician will replace the CPU fan and the entire power supply in one shot. If the system continues to fail you suddenly are moving into less sure territory. The problem could be caused by a faulty motherboard or even a faulty processor. I have even seen faulty sound cards and video cards cause this issue.
Now, if this were a theoretical issue that was more difficult to test it would be a different story. If someone came to me and said that the system reboots itself because the video card is faulty I would laugh. After all, I can load up 3D games on the computer without any problems. This ridiculous and unsubstantiated claim that defies common sense(something that is NOT part of science) can be dismissed. Until you already have all the answers, like we do with computers, you can't test thoroughly enough to discover what is likely and unlikely. Until that point, you have only the tests you can manage and common sense, neither of which is an adequate basis for dismissing claims if you are actually trying to pursue truth.