Good point. I've heard that it was the combination of amendments I and XIV that people apply to this issue. Thanks for posting it.
The problem is, I read the non-establishment clause not as a protection of individual citizen's rights, but as a protection of states' rights. I read the non-establishment clause as a restriction on what the federal government can shove down the states' throats. I don't read the clause as a guarantee to individual citizens that they will be completely free from such legislation.
FYI, here's the text of the first amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Unless you've shown that for all (and I mean *all*) distinct states of a system, some event B happens only after some other event A. And even then, you run into some hard realities about the tenuous definition of "causality".
My Karma is ranked too high, so I may as well fix that with this posting...
1. In my reading of the constitution, it's the Congress (that is the FEDERAL legislature) that's barred from establishing religion. This was intended to preserve the rights of individual states to do what that wanted in this area. So IMO, Kansas may as a state decide to teach whatever the hell it wants, even if (gasp) the citizenries of other states disagree.
2. It's practically speaking impossible to completely avoid the influence of religion on legislation, even if you want to. The teachings of different religions and of different atheiesm philosophies lead to significantly different, mutually exclusive views of both the ideal scope and the ideal content of laws.
So in my opinion, this is NOT a separation-of-church-and-state issue, because the Constitution restrains the Federal congress in this area, not state legislators. And if you don't like the preservation of states' rights, I urge you to reconsider your position if Bush and Congress try to force the inclusion of intelligent design in the national testing standards that are part of the No Child Left Behind act.
IIRC, IBM tried to do just this with OS/360, which was developed in the 1960's IIRC. What they eventually found was that despite their most concerted efforts, they reached a point where trying to fix old bugs introduced at least as many, or more, new bugs.
Now consider that IBM's systems are meant to run for a LONG time, so their OS/360 team probably wasn't facing the pressure to divide their time between fixing old bugs and introducing new features. Fixing old bugs was probably key.
Contrast this to Microsoft, who (for whatever reason) seems powerfully drawn towards modifying Windows, Office, etc. to introduce new features. Not only does this reduce their attention span for fixing old bugs, but it also introduces new bugs with the new features.
As far as why they can't just throw more people at the problem: Software development teams seem to have an optimal size, beyond which adding people introduces so much chaos that it actually slows development. This effect is described in the book, "The Mythical Man Month" by Frederick Brooks.
1. Give me your machine. 2. You have more free time. 3. ??? 4. Profit!
But what about fixes?
on
GCC 4.1 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
About a month ago, I submitted a bug report for an internal compiler error. The GCC guys jumped on it, but I don't see in that change log a mention of what particular bugs got fixed in GCC 4.1.
Is the changelog just oddly incomplete, or am I looking in the wrong place for the list of bugs that got fixed in this release?
I disagree. I assume you specifically mean that you can't prove the non-existence of a physical object, right? Perhaps you mean something more specific than what you stated.
Consider this counter-example, which I think you'll aggree can be proven: "No object that is both a square and not a square, at the same time and in the same way, exists."
You may feel that such a statement is trivially obvious, but it at least demonstrates that the extreme interpretation of your claim about proofs doesn't seem right. I suggest we dig a little deeper to get at what you're trying to say.
We don't need to look at MS's file formats to verify that they support accessibility requirements. We already know they must, because handicapped people can get by with Word + (whatever add-on software/hardware is required).
Having a file format that supports accessibility is a necessary, but insufficient, requirement in order for handicapped people to make good use of the format.
The ultimate requirement is that a combination of file format, application, and accessibility-features/add-ons exists that works well enough for the handicapped user to get by.
If blind people (for example) can use MS Word successfully, then we know that one way or another, MS has gotten all three of those factors to align.
In contrast, we open-sourcers are still verifying that ODF is sufficiently expressive to support handicapped users. Even if it is, we still need to ensure that we can offer at least one ODF-ready application with compatible accessibility-features/add-ons. If not, we have more work to do.
It basically lets you run multiple instances of the OS concurrently, where each instance thinks it's the only one running on the computer, right?
But then what do you when two or more OS instances want to monkey around with hardware that has state? For example, if one OS wants the screen resolution to be 640x480, and another OS wants the screen resolution to be 1024x768, you can't very well keep switching the screen between those two resolutions every time you change which OS is getting CPU time. Or another example is with printing: you can't very well interleave the print data streams from two OS's to the printer without hosing the print jobs.
I think the registry's origin was related to, or motivated by, the introduction of OLE (now ActiveX) controls.
Theoretically, when you register an OLE / ActiveX control, any application in the system should be able to use it. I believe registring the control tells Windows what the mapping is between a short identifier (GUID) for the control, and the DLL that contains its code. When an application wants to use an OLE/ActiveX control, it supplies the GUID to the Win32 API, and Windows then consults the registry to hunt down the corresponding DLL.
I could be wrong, but I think applications' use of the Registry may have come after that.
The problem with market forces is that, when unchecked, tend to lead to just one company being a monopoly and having pricing freedom, because it actually kills every competitor.
Here's an example: In the town where I grew up, there was a nice floral shop. Then in came a huge chain supermarket that offered lower prices on cut flowers. After a while, the local mom-and-pop florists died under price pressure. Once they were dead, the supermarket raised its prices on cut flowers.
So what you get is a temporary price reduction while the big company kills the little one. And perhaps whenever it needs to kill a competitor. But most of the time the prices stay high.
Any time I'm forced to drop to a command line, you as a developer have failed. Back 10 years ago, this may have been acceptable. In this day and age, it isn't. Furthermore, while once in a blue moon I may change a text file in Windows, in Linux it's a constant occurence. Again, you have failed.
Several points:
(1) Unless you know what the author's intentions were for a program, you don't know whether or not he failed to meet his goals.
(2) Some tasks are far easier on the command line than via GUI, because of stdin / stdout piping. It's also far easier to script together a set of command-line programs than a set of gui programs. You really should read Eric Raymond's great book, "The Art of Unix Programming".
(3) Actually, YOU failed because someone gave you something for free, and you bitched rather than put your should to the wheel and helped fix it, you ungrateful self-centered ass.
I've known two people connected with the entertainment business. - One does the ship rigging for movies like Master and Commander and Pirates of the Carribean. - The other is friends with a screen writer who worked on that post-Seinfeld comedy starring Michael Richards (Kramer).
Same story from both of them: the studio's MBAs think they know what makes a good movie better than the directors / actors do. So unless you have a strong director, you get this formula:
- Start with decent script - Add in decent director and actors - Insert Harvard MBA jerk who's both divorced from reality ("Can we move that island over there?") and doesn't know how to entertain people. - ??? - Loss!
(Obviously this doesn't cover the cases where the script is just boring or stupid.)
If it doesn't hurt for a while, there's less of a disincentive for you to avoid the behavior in the future.
Prolonged pain after the damage is done (like from a burn) should perhaps be interpreted as "I mean REALLY don't touch fire, dammit!!!", not "Take your hand off the flame. Take your hand off the flame. Take your hand off the flame."
And lets face it: sometimes our instincts make better decisions for us than our intellects. what we intellectually do. For example, a programmer just out of college may WANT to work 110 hours / week, but that's genuinely not good for him. He needs the sleep to do things like transfer short-term memories into long-term memory. Also to repair DNA damage (I think). But because he's not aware of those reasons to get sleep, he might (foolishly) choose to stay awake if only he could take the drug that this article talks about.
Scientifically, an embryo is, strictly speaking "human life"
I think this is actually a question that touches on both science and metaphysics / ontology. I.e., there's the question of "What do we mean by a 'human life'" (ontologic) and then, "Does an embryo seem to meet that definition?" (science).
I think this is an important distinction, because there's the question of which definition of 'human life' is relevant for the discussion. I listen to a lot of Christian talk radio, and I've never heard this discussed:
It seems to me that the real question is, if God said "Don't murder", then the real question for Christians regarding killing an embryo is, "When God gave that commandment, did He intend embryos to be covered by that command?" From that perspective, it's kind of irrelevant what scientists (no offence intended), or dead Greek philosophers, or George Bush, mean when they say 'human life'. If the question is whether or not killing embryos is going against what God wants, then one should use the categories He used in His commandments.
I realize that the follow on question might be, "We're talking about what's ethical, not about what God wants." That's too huge to deal with in this post, but I think most Christians believe that what God wants == what's moral.
so, when and why is it ok to end such life, regardless of the state it may be in? Why should we not examine the important ethical questions?
This goes to the question of "Why does it matter to do good vs. wrong?" I know that Christians tend to have their own answer to this (which includes its own philosophical difficulties). I've never heard a good answer for this though, beyond (ultimately) the Hedonistic one: "Doing good feels good, and you want to feel good, don't you?" Does anyone know a secular answer that's more satisfyingly grounded?
Slashdot Mirror
I think we're in violent agreement.
Good point. I've heard that it was the combination of amendments I and XIV that people apply to this issue. Thanks for posting it.
The problem is, I read the non-establishment clause not as a protection of individual citizen's rights, but as a protection of states' rights. I read the non-establishment clause as a restriction on what the federal government can shove down the states' throats. I don't read the clause as a guarantee to individual citizens that they will be completely free from such legislation.
FYI, here's the text of the first amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
NO evidence can *prove* causation.
Unless you've shown that for all (and I mean *all*) distinct states of a system, some event B happens only after some other event A. And even then, you run into some hard realities about the tenuous definition of "causality".
My Karma is ranked too high, so I may as well fix that with this posting...
1. In my reading of the constitution, it's the Congress (that is the FEDERAL legislature) that's barred from establishing religion. This was intended to preserve the rights of individual states to do what that wanted in this area. So IMO, Kansas may as a state decide to teach whatever the hell it wants, even if (gasp) the citizenries of other states disagree.
2. It's practically speaking impossible to completely avoid the influence of religion on legislation, even if you want to. The teachings of different religions and of different atheiesm philosophies lead to significantly different, mutually exclusive views of both the ideal scope and the ideal content of laws.
So in my opinion, this is NOT a separation-of-church-and-state issue, because the Constitution restrains the Federal congress in this area, not state legislators. And if you don't like the preservation of states' rights, I urge you to reconsider your position if Bush and Congress try to force the inclusion of intelligent design in the national testing standards that are part of the No Child Left Behind act.
IIRC, IBM tried to do just this with OS/360, which was developed in the 1960's IIRC. What they eventually found was that despite their most concerted efforts, they reached a point where trying to fix old bugs introduced at least as many, or more, new bugs.
Now consider that IBM's systems are meant to run for a LONG time, so their OS/360 team probably wasn't facing the pressure to divide their time between fixing old bugs and introducing new features. Fixing old bugs was probably key.
Contrast this to Microsoft, who (for whatever reason) seems powerfully drawn towards modifying Windows, Office, etc. to introduce new features. Not only does this reduce their attention span for fixing old bugs, but it also introduces new bugs with the new features.
As far as why they can't just throw more people at the problem: Software development teams seem to have an optimal size, beyond which adding people introduces so much chaos that it actually slows development. This effect is described in the book, "The Mythical Man Month" by Frederick Brooks.
Don't expect an official Ubuntu package right away - it's seen as a complicated upgrade:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=96595
1. Give me your machine.
2. You have more free time.
3. ???
4. Profit!
About a month ago, I submitted a bug report for an internal compiler error. The GCC guys jumped on it, but I don't see in that change log a mention of what particular bugs got fixed in GCC 4.1.
Is the changelog just oddly incomplete, or am I looking in the wrong place for the list of bugs that got fixed in this release?
I disagree. I assume you specifically mean that you can't prove the non-existence of a physical object, right? Perhaps you mean something more specific than what you stated.
Consider this counter-example, which I think you'll aggree can be proven: "No object that is both a square and not a square, at the same time and in the same way, exists."
You may feel that such a statement is trivially obvious, but it at least demonstrates that the extreme interpretation of your claim about proofs doesn't seem right. I suggest we dig a little deeper to get at what you're trying to say.
OK, SOME Mr. Grumpy needs a hugsy wugsy :)
We don't need to look at MS's file formats to verify that they support accessibility requirements. We already know they must, because handicapped people can get by with Word + (whatever add-on software/hardware is required).
Having a file format that supports accessibility is a necessary, but insufficient, requirement in order for handicapped people to make good use of the format.
The ultimate requirement is that a combination of file format, application, and accessibility-features/add-ons exists that works well enough for the handicapped user to get by.
If blind people (for example) can use MS Word successfully, then we know that one way or another, MS has gotten all three of those factors to align.
In contrast, we open-sourcers are still verifying that ODF is sufficiently expressive to support handicapped users. Even if it is, we still need to ensure that we can offer at least one ODF-ready application with compatible accessibility-features/add-ons. If not, we have more work to do.
Look at the wonderful things the federal govt. can do when Bush is distracted!
Maybe if he gets even MORE distracted, our budget will balance and drug use will go down! Quick, someone get a small, sparkly object to show him!
(If I as a conservative feel this way one year into his term, I can't imagine how you pinko liberals feel.)
It basically lets you run multiple instances of the OS concurrently, where each instance thinks it's the only one running on the computer, right?
But then what do you when two or more OS instances want to monkey around with hardware that has state? For example, if one OS wants the screen resolution to be 640x480, and another OS wants the screen resolution to be 1024x768, you can't very well keep switching the screen between those two resolutions every time you change which OS is getting CPU time. Or another example is with printing: you can't very well interleave the print data streams from two OS's to the printer without hosing the print jobs.
I think the registry's origin was related to, or motivated by, the introduction of OLE (now ActiveX) controls.
Theoretically, when you register an OLE / ActiveX control, any application in the system should be able to use it. I believe registring the control tells Windows what the mapping is between a short identifier (GUID) for the control, and the DLL that contains its code. When an application wants to use an OLE/ActiveX control, it supplies the GUID to the Win32 API, and Windows then consults the registry to hunt down the corresponding DLL.
I could be wrong, but I think applications' use of the Registry may have come after that.
Yeah, it's the fsck'ing system! They're always getting you down.
It's just another case of the man sticking it to us. They're so fricking square.
At Brown we have a rating system in which students rate the professors+courses, and the results are put online. Student comments are also summarized.
I don't know the dept. heads look at this, but at least the school has formalized the concept of teaching quality, and records it. That's a start.
I tried to view the CSS version, but it was Slashdotted!
(I'm joking and serious.)
The problem with market forces is that, when unchecked, tend to lead to just one company being a monopoly and having pricing freedom, because it actually kills every competitor.
Here's an example: In the town where I grew up, there was a nice floral shop. Then in came a huge chain supermarket that offered lower prices on cut flowers. After a while, the local mom-and-pop florists died under price pressure. Once they were dead, the supermarket raised its prices on cut flowers.
So what you get is a temporary price reduction while the big company kills the little one. And perhaps whenever it needs to kill a competitor. But most of the time the prices stay high.
No way, it's ALL waterfront :)
I think for now he'd better focus on developing sea-water powered computers :)
(1) Unless you know what the author's intentions were for a program, you don't know whether or not he failed to meet his goals.
(2) Some tasks are far easier on the command line than via GUI, because of stdin / stdout piping. It's also far easier to script together a set of command-line programs than a set of gui programs. You really should read Eric Raymond's great book, "The Art of Unix Programming".
(3) Actually, YOU failed because someone gave you something for free, and you bitched rather than put your should to the wheel and helped fix it, you ungrateful self-centered ass.
I've known two people connected with the entertainment business.
- One does the ship rigging for movies like Master and Commander and Pirates of the Carribean.
- The other is friends with a screen writer who worked on that post-Seinfeld comedy starring Michael Richards (Kramer).
Same story from both of them: the studio's MBAs think they know what makes a good movie better than the directors / actors do. So unless you have a strong director, you get this formula:
- Start with decent script
- Add in decent director and actors
- Insert Harvard MBA jerk who's both divorced from reality ("Can we move that island over there?") and doesn't know how to entertain people.
- ???
- Loss!
(Obviously this doesn't cover the cases where the script is just boring or stupid.)
If it doesn't hurt for a while, there's less of a disincentive for you to avoid the behavior in the future.
Prolonged pain after the damage is done (like from a burn) should perhaps be interpreted as "I mean REALLY don't touch fire, dammit!!!", not "Take your hand off the flame. Take your hand off the flame. Take your hand off the flame."
And lets face it: sometimes our instincts make better decisions for us than our intellects. what we intellectually do. For example, a programmer just out of college may WANT to work 110 hours / week, but that's genuinely not good for him. He needs the sleep to do things like transfer short-term memories into long-term memory. Also to repair DNA damage (I think). But because he's not aware of those reasons to get sleep, he might (foolishly) choose to stay awake if only he could take the drug that this article talks about.
At 4 AM, it's a good idea to have implicit transactions turned off ;)
I think this is an important distinction, because there's the question of which definition of 'human life' is relevant for the discussion. I listen to a lot of Christian talk radio, and I've never heard this discussed:
It seems to me that the real question is, if God said "Don't murder", then the real question for Christians regarding killing an embryo is, "When God gave that commandment, did He intend embryos to be covered by that command?" From that perspective, it's kind of irrelevant what scientists (no offence intended), or dead Greek philosophers, or George Bush, mean when they say 'human life'. If the question is whether or not killing embryos is going against what God wants, then one should use the categories He used in His commandments.
I realize that the follow on question might be, "We're talking about what's ethical, not about what God wants." That's too huge to deal with in this post, but I think most Christians believe that what God wants == what's moral.
This goes to the question of "Why does it matter to do good vs. wrong?" I know that Christians tend to have their own answer to this (which includes its own philosophical difficulties). I've never heard a good answer for this though, beyond (ultimately) the Hedonistic one: "Doing good feels good, and you want to feel good, don't you?" Does anyone know a secular answer that's more satisfyingly grounded?