"Fear the day they stop thinking it is good to look nice."
Yeah, who knows what google may do with their evil free WiFi.
Seriously though, I tend to reward those who deserve my trust. That way I ensure that my money, admiration, time, etc, is an investment to try and promote that kind of reasoning.
"If you connect to Google's WiFi, then they know where you are. Then they can target you with location-specific advertising."
They get more benefits than just that though. By offering their WiFi service for free they are investing on their image. They are telling people that Google cares about them. Many people think that it all comes down to making money today whatever it takes, but Google's stance goes more along the lines of maintaining their reputation and gaining people's trust. Sometimes at the expense of short term advantages.
And not only this is good for us, it's even better for Google to be perceived as a friendly company in a pool of sharks. No wonder they are what they are today.
If I say that the existence of irreducibly complex structures or systems in nature proves that some features of nature were designed, that claim can be falsified by showing that there are in fact no irreducibly complex structures or systems in nature."
First of all you would have to provide a valid scientific theory regarding irreducibly complex systems... on that can be tested. But then you would have to explain to me how on earth you could come to the conclusion that irreducibly complex means designed by an intelligent being. And most importantly you would have to provide scientific means to test that theory. And of course you would then need to explain that if irreducibly complex means designed, then how could our supreme intelligence exist itself without being designed by some other intelligence in the first place. After all if we are irreducibly complex, then an intelligence far superior to us should even be more complex.
"I find it irritating that science is supposed to be about arriving at conclusions through empirical evidence. We're all supposed to be pro-science here, but the despite the lack of evidence to the contrary, the noisy majority around here believes certain ideas are untrue."
No. The noisy majority believes that the lack of evidence to the contrary does not turn certain ideas into scientific theories, which has nothing to do with truth. For instance I could tell you that elephants can perfectly hide behind flowers when they really want to and you could not prove me wrong. It could be true, but it's not science. This is not an attempt to be unpolite nor sarcastic.
The mistake you make is to believe that science equals truth, which is a huge and enormous misconception. God could exists, but science can't test it: hence it's not a scientific theory. Does it mean it's not true? No, it just means it's not a scientify theory.
If you fail to aknowledge this, then you are simply trying to change the objectives of science.
I am not debating about structures being irreducibly complex. You can come up with a theory regarding that topic if you want to. The issue here is that the existance of an intelligent being cannot be tested and cannot be proven wrong. It can't be tested, And if it can't be tested, it can't be falsified. And if it can't be falsified then it's simply not a theory. This is what science is about, and this is the reason why ID can't hope to be taught as science (unless you change the meaning of science to be able to merge it with faith).
Except that science is not meant to prove anything (in fact I never mentioned it). It's about continously testing theories to see if they still hold water under any circumstances you come across. It's about attempting through all means to prove your own theory wrong. Hence if ID can't be tested by trying to prove it wrong, it's not a theory, by definition.
Ugh. No offense but that's completely untrue, even though I agree with your view of ID. It's not that ID is not science because it's not provable. Science is not meant to prove anything. The main reason why ID is not science is because it's not testable. Basically you can't prove it wrong.
It's not been falsified because it's not possible to test it at all. For example: if I told you that I am some weird god there would be no way you could prove me wrong, but that wouldn't make it a theory and it sure as hell wouldn't make it science.
"...Experts said that by addressing the open source community, Microsoft hopes to promote its position that software should continue to be developed in the traditional "closed" way, while at the same time attempting to cash in on the community development phenomenon......Matusow said opening up software can add value, "but you need to understand why you want to open certain software. We are building intellectual property into software and trying to sell it. We throw code over the wall for the community to build on it...."
By reading those comments I get an odd sensation that Microsoft is trying to use "developers, developers, developers" like a bunch of highly exploitable hippie enthusiasts.
"It's just that nobody's decided to go after the mac market trying to turn shareware into adware or negotiating bundle deals, or even learning to write mac malware yet. Maybe that's the "excellence" you're talking about. But there's a big emphasis to be put on the "yet" part of that.
The mac platform is not without its security holes, and those things that compromise a high privilege process don't NEED to prompt you to install themselves everywhere."
Maybe. But if people were to make their decisions based on "maybes" then everyone would keep running Windows with a ton of spyware and viruses since it's theoretically just as safe as any other system.
But, whatever the reason, running OS X right now is safer that running Windows.
"I want to be able to compile an app and run it from my home directory. Why should I have to register it with the OS in order to do so?"
Very good point. Abstraction can sometimes be great. In this particular case there is no technical reason why the OS needs to know that an application has been installed (unless of course the OS has not been properly designed), so why bother in creating this kind of virtual dependency?
As an example of what I consider an optimal mechanism you can look at how OS X handles applications (maybe other systems too, but not Windows).
Oh but I do have an interest in no software patents. So I do have a place to vote there. If you think otherwise then that's your problem, but since I don't live in europe I see no reason why I should know about the other topics.
Making it mandatory for people voting to vote in each and every cathegory is a good way to create junk results in my opinion. Can someone tell me how I can vote if I have no clue of what most of those people did?
"Okay, so what's wrong if Microsoft does not want to sell Windows to the Korean market? If I make a product, I don't have to sell it to you.
I think this is a great chance for Linux on the desktop to get a toe hold. All those complaining sound like the people who wish for something, then complain when they get it."
Of course they are free to do as they will. But that doesn't mean we are supposed to accept it.
Until, of course, the situation is reversed and it is YOU who need help. Then the world is supposed to either be with you or against you.
Other countries going for their own DNS system is much harder to implement than you imply. It will eventually happen, the way things are going. But it's in the best interest of everyone that things do not go down this road.
By the way, nice concept you have of democracy in the US.
"Neither you nor anyone else here on/. has explained how *any* other country is dependent on the US running their portion of the internet. Any country can put up servers and point all their users to those rather than the ones here in the US. Other countries run their own phone systems, radio and TV stations etc, so why couldn't they run their own computer network also? This all has the makings of a tempest in a teapot."
Because other countries depend on the current DNS system as much as the US does. And on top of that this split you talk about is what will eventually happen if the US doesn't let other countries have a voice. Avoiding the split would be better, of course.
But if that's what it takes I suppose I will be more than happy to support those who choose go for a system that is not as prone to abuse.
"The core of the internet and it's underlying technology was largely developed in the United States. Even most of the hardware is created by U.S. based companies. Other than infrastructure, other nations did little to "create" the internet - although you could argue that the infrastructure is the internet - but then we wouldn't be arguing about the US keeping control of it, would we?
In any event, if there was a flaw with the current system, or it was broken for other nations, I could understand such action. But as it currently stands, their sole reasoning for wanting control is because 1) America "controls" it (despite it ICANN being an international group) and 2) The Bush administration doesn't like.xxx or.sex TLDs (note that not liking them is NOT the same as saying you can't have them). If France, Germany, or England was running it as well as it's being run right now, *I* wouldn't care. China, or say, North Korea, running it would be another story entirerly."
The point is that who created it is not in discussion here. We are talking about the Internet as a whole. And DNS is a big part of that. You are afraid of other countries controlling the internet just as much as the rest of the world is afraid of the US doing so, with the difference that the US would not have anyone to tell them not to do it, while the rest of the world would take care of regulating each other in that respect.
The question is: will the US take into account my rights as a foreinger when they make their decisions? Or would they promptly ignore them if my rights collided with the rights of some american or with the government? Is freedom only important when US citizens are involved: why shouldn't the rest of the world be free to choose wether they want an.xxx domain or not?
Seriously, this is not about making decisions for Americans. We don't care about censoring you... we don't want you to censor us. IMO we have the tools to bring forward a decentralized DNS system in which each government has the right to filter what they don't want for their citizens, while not having any power at all when it comes to other countries. How can this be bad for you?
After all the US government is not sovereign where I live, so why should I live by their rules.
Just sit down for a second and think about it. You even agree with what I'm saying to some extent when you declare that you don't want other governments messing with what you do online. Guess what: we don't want that either.
"As for other nations not being as democratic as the United States, that is in a sense true. Other nations certainly don't enjoy the freedoms that American's enjoy (despite their continued non-sensical bitching about the Patriot Act)."
Care to explain this to me? Seriously, I fail to see what makes a US citizen "more free" than I am, but it seems like you know better... so I guess you can give me some examples that clearly demonstrate your point.
"This is just simply not true. Some slashdotters here wish that was the case, but repeating it enough times doesn't make it fact. The core foundations of the Internet were invented in the US and is still being used today.
Here's one short history.
It's politically correct and nice to say "oh the whole world and everyone helped to invent it" but it's just PC bullshit. The lion's share of the credit goes to the US."
Quite the opposite. As I said the Internet is based on the work of the US government on ARPANET, but ARPANET is hardly the Internet. The key word here is "evolution", as the Internet is not what it was ARPANET, even though some of the structures may still be in use.
In any case the creation of the Internet is not the topic under discussion here, but rather what the Internet is today. No matter how much you twist it, it's not an US network any longer, and has not been for quite some time already. Even the name is a simple demonstration that this network is the whole world's network.
In any case take it easy. This is not about being cooler or more powerful. It's about sharing control of something that's too big for ANY single country to control. I would like to see how much you'd like to depend on some foreign country yourself on a similar matter.
"How did this ever even become a controversy? Isn't the internet as we know it an outgrowth and result of DARPA work? And didn't the internet essentially grow from those efforts and work?"
No, the Internet as we know it is the result of the work of programers, engineers and other profesionals from all over the world. It may be based on DARPA's work but there's a lot in it that has nothing to do with it. Simply discarding other contributions as irrelevant to make Internet what it is today is simply an attempt to give the US more credit than they actually have.
"This feels like envy and jealousy, the United States created a neat and shiny toy unnoticed by the world until it "became" the internet, and now the rest of the world wants some stewardship, whether it is warranted or not (in my opinion, not)."
The reason why other countries want more control has nothing to do with jealousy or envy. They simply don't want to be dependent on the US in something as important as this network is. I am quite sure that if the situation was reverted, the US would be requesting the same.
What really scares me a bit is the notion some US citizens have that other democracies in the world are not as democratic than theirs. On top of that I find it quite interesting that out of all possible motivations you could have seen behind the request of other countries to have more control, you decided that the most plausible one was jelousy and envy. That kind of reasoning can lead to no good.
"I think some of the threats made by the U.N., et. al., in these attempts to wrest the internet from the United States are misguided, immmature, and more seriously jeapordize the cohesive internet world wide as we know it today."
That's completely subjective. I personally feel like the Internet is too big for the US alone.
Heh. My point was simply that if no-one created it or made it available in some way, no-one can really expect to be paid for it. Expecting to be paid for software, is thus not the same as expecting to be paid for air.
Unless, of course, these life forms want compensation. = P
Slashdot Mirror
I never really liked those damned trees anyway.
Yeah, who knows what google may do with their evil free WiFi.
Seriously though, I tend to reward those who deserve my trust. That way I ensure that my money, admiration, time, etc, is an investment to try and promote that kind of reasoning.
They get more benefits than just that though. By offering their WiFi service for free they are investing on their image. They are telling people that Google cares about them. Many people think that it all comes down to making money today whatever it takes, but Google's stance goes more along the lines of maintaining their reputation and gaining people's trust. Sometimes at the expense of short term advantages.
And not only this is good for us, it's even better for Google to be perceived as a friendly company in a pool of sharks. No wonder they are what they are today.
First of all you would have to provide a valid scientific theory regarding irreducibly complex systems... on that can be tested. But then you would have to explain to me how on earth you could come to the conclusion that irreducibly complex means designed by an intelligent being. And most importantly you would have to provide scientific means to test that theory. And of course you would then need to explain that if irreducibly complex means designed, then how could our supreme intelligence exist itself without being designed by some other intelligence in the first place. After all if we are irreducibly complex, then an intelligence far superior to us should even be more complex.
Yeah, I noticed only after I posted... sorry for that. = )
No. The noisy majority believes that the lack of evidence to the contrary does not turn certain ideas into scientific theories, which has nothing to do with truth. For instance I could tell you that elephants can perfectly hide behind flowers when they really want to and you could not prove me wrong. It could be true, but it's not science. This is not an attempt to be unpolite nor sarcastic.
The mistake you make is to believe that science equals truth, which is a huge and enormous misconception. God could exists, but science can't test it: hence it's not a scientific theory. Does it mean it's not true? No, it just means it's not a scientify theory.
If you fail to aknowledge this, then you are simply trying to change the objectives of science.
I am not debating about structures being irreducibly complex. You can come up with a theory regarding that topic if you want to. The issue here is that the existance of an intelligent being cannot be tested and cannot be proven wrong. It can't be tested, And if it can't be tested, it can't be falsified. And if it can't be falsified then it's simply not a theory. This is what science is about, and this is the reason why ID can't hope to be taught as science (unless you change the meaning of science to be able to merge it with faith).
Except that science is not meant to prove anything (in fact I never mentioned it). It's about continously testing theories to see if they still hold water under any circumstances you come across. It's about attempting through all means to prove your own theory wrong. Hence if ID can't be tested by trying to prove it wrong, it's not a theory, by definition.
And once again this is not subjective.
Ugh. No offense but that's completely untrue, even though I agree with your view of ID. It's not that ID is not science because it's not provable. Science is not meant to prove anything. The main reason why ID is not science is because it's not testable. Basically you can't prove it wrong.
It's not been falsified because it's not possible to test it at all. For example: if I told you that I am some weird god there would be no way you could prove me wrong, but that wouldn't make it a theory and it sure as hell wouldn't make it science.
Except that Intelligent Design is not a theory. It's a belief. And no, this is not subjective... there is a clear and simple meaning for theory.
Didn't you know? Microsoft invented open source...
You must be new here.
By reading those comments I get an odd sensation that Microsoft is trying to use "developers, developers, developers" like a bunch of highly exploitable hippie enthusiasts.
...then I am glad I purchased some land while I was on time!
What a lucky bastard I am... 8-D
Maybe. But if people were to make their decisions based on "maybes" then everyone would keep running Windows with a ton of spyware and viruses since it's theoretically just as safe as any other system.
But, whatever the reason, running OS X right now is safer that running Windows.
Very good point. Abstraction can sometimes be great. In this particular case there is no technical reason why the OS needs to know that an application has been installed (unless of course the OS has not been properly designed), so why bother in creating this kind of virtual dependency?
As an example of what I consider an optimal mechanism you can look at how OS X handles applications (maybe other systems too, but not Windows).
Oh but I do have an interest in no software patents. So I do have a place to vote there. If you think otherwise then that's your problem, but since I don't live in europe I see no reason why I should know about the other topics.
Btw, nice display of your moronic points of view.
Making it mandatory for people voting to vote in each and every cathegory is a good way to create junk results in my opinion. Can someone tell me how I can vote if I have no clue of what most of those people did?
Of course they are free to do as they will. But that doesn't mean we are supposed to accept it.
Right. "It's either our way or no way."
Until, of course, the situation is reversed and it is YOU who need help. Then the world is supposed to either be with you or against you.
Other countries going for their own DNS system is much harder to implement than you imply. It will eventually happen, the way things are going. But it's in the best interest of everyone that things do not go down this road.
By the way, nice concept you have of democracy in the US.
Because other countries depend on the current DNS system as much as the US does. And on top of that this split you talk about is what will eventually happen if the US doesn't let other countries have a voice. Avoiding the split would be better, of course.
But if that's what it takes I suppose I will be more than happy to support those who choose go for a system that is not as prone to abuse.
The point is that who created it is not in discussion here. We are talking about the Internet as a whole. And DNS is a big part of that. You are afraid of other countries controlling the internet just as much as the rest of the world is afraid of the US doing so, with the difference that the US would not have anyone to tell them not to do it, while the rest of the world would take care of regulating each other in that respect.
The question is: will the US take into account my rights as a foreinger when they make their decisions? Or would they promptly ignore them if my rights collided with the rights of some american or with the government? Is freedom only important when US citizens are involved: why shouldn't the rest of the world be free to choose wether they want an
Seriously, this is not about making decisions for Americans. We don't care about censoring you... we don't want you to censor us. IMO we have the tools to bring forward a decentralized DNS system in which each government has the right to filter what they don't want for their citizens, while not having any power at all when it comes to other countries. How can this be bad for you?
After all the US government is not sovereign where I live, so why should I live by their rules.
Just sit down for a second and think about it. You even agree with what I'm saying to some extent when you declare that you don't want other governments messing with what you do online. Guess what: we don't want that either.
Care to explain this to me? Seriously, I fail to see what makes a US citizen "more free" than I am, but it seems like you know better... so I guess you can give me some examples that clearly demonstrate your point.
Quite the opposite. As I said the Internet is based on the work of the US government on ARPANET, but ARPANET is hardly the Internet. The key word here is "evolution", as the Internet is not what it was ARPANET, even though some of the structures may still be in use.
In any case the creation of the Internet is not the topic under discussion here, but rather what the Internet is today. No matter how much you twist it, it's not an US network any longer, and has not been for quite some time already. Even the name is a simple demonstration that this network is the whole world's network.
In any case take it easy. This is not about being cooler or more powerful. It's about sharing control of something that's too big for ANY single country to control. I would like to see how much you'd like to depend on some foreign country yourself on a similar matter.
No, the Internet as we know it is the result of the work of programers, engineers and other profesionals from all over the world. It may be based on DARPA's work but there's a lot in it that has nothing to do with it. Simply discarding other contributions as irrelevant to make Internet what it is today is simply an attempt to give the US more credit than they actually have.
The reason why other countries want more control has nothing to do with jealousy or envy. They simply don't want to be dependent on the US in something as important as this network is. I am quite sure that if the situation was reverted, the US would be requesting the same.
What really scares me a bit is the notion some US citizens have that other democracies in the world are not as democratic than theirs. On top of that I find it quite interesting that out of all possible motivations you could have seen behind the request of other countries to have more control, you decided that the most plausible one was jelousy and envy. That kind of reasoning can lead to no good.
That's completely subjective. I personally feel like the Internet is too big for the US alone.
Heh. My point was simply that if no-one created it or made it available in some way, no-one can really expect to be paid for it. Expecting to be paid for software, is thus not the same as expecting to be paid for air.
Unless, of course, these life forms want compensation. = P