But Murray was paid to produce a book that is very much in line with certain conservative views...
Do you have any proof of that assertion? How do you know that he isn't writing the very same books he would have if he were a tenured professor somewhere? But again, you're attacking the person and his motivations instead of dealing with his data and arguments.
By the way, pointing out someone's funding source and possible motivations isn't an ad hominem attack.
My online dictionary describes an ad hominem attack as "marked by an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made." How this is different from attacking someone's "possible" motivations?
By the way, you claim that Murray is "funded by the ultra-conservative Bradley Institute." Leaving aside your nebulous scientific criteria for distinguishing between ultra conservatives and ordinary conservatives, this statement is just plain wrong. The Bradley Institute is named after Rev. John P. Bradley and concerned with Christian culture. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute. Different organizations, different agendas.
But why bother with facts if all you're doing is debunking those ultra-conservatives, right?
If you'd already decided Murray was wrong, perhaps. Some of us require a little more scientific rigor for "debunking" than a journalism professor's article on Slate.
Nicholas Lemann, the Slate author, also wrote The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, and it's hardly a surprise that he disagrees with Murray on social policy. He admits to describing Murray's research -- three years before it was published -- as being about "black genetic intellectual inferiority." Yep, there's a dispassionate, neutral observer for you.
To call his article debunking is hyperbole, however. One of his "Case Studies" concerns the numbers for how much IQ increased for each year of education. It was around 1 point in the hardback edition. Lemann cites a followup study which showed the increase at 2.5 points, and acknowledges that the paperback edition of book revised the number upwards. We might argue back and forth on how much, if at all, this should affect Murray's conclusions. But debunking of the book? Not hardly.
Murray, by the way, is funded by the ultra-conservative Bradley Institute. He is not an objective source...
Nice ad hominem attack. You make it sound like Murray's wearing a tin-foil cap and ranting about floridation of the water supply. Turn the tactic around. Should we automatically discount Lemann because he writes for the "ultra-liberal" Atlantic magazine? One of the Amazon reviews of The Big Test points out how he apparently ignored the bulk of SAT-related research in writing his book -- isn't possible that Lemann has been cherry-picking his data and studies as much or more than Murray?
What ever happened to free speech?...
Case in point would be the lawsuit to overturn McCain-Feingold.
I find it ironic you would see a legal challenge to McCain-Feingold as being an attempt to subvert free speech. As many pointed out during the bill's debate, the Supreme Court has consistently held that political spending is a Constitutionally protected form of free speech. So those challenging M-F can justly claim to be proponents of free speech.
Just because an idea is popular doesn't mean it's a good idea, or that it's legal.
BTW, our Constitutional guarantee of free speech doesn't give us a free pass for slander and defamation.
Check with Mark Hulbert's magazine for a better description of his failures.
According to this copy of a July 2002 CBS Marketwatch column the Elliot Wave Financial Forecast was one of only five newsletters to beat the market. If Hulbert's critique of Prechter's predictions is available on the Web, please post a link.
Certainly, Prechter's forecast of a deflationary crash should be hard to miss, and the lack of same can't go into his "win" column.
But I was surprised that Hulbert's list didn't include Bob Brinker's Market Timer newsletter. On his radio show Brinker told people to move to cash and out of stocks just weeks before the 2000 crash started!
Cringely contradicts himself in space of a few sentences:
"It takes just as many nerds to support 100 Linux boxes as 100 Windows boxes, yet Linux boxes are cheaper and can support more users. The organization is better off while the IT department is unscathed and unchallenged. ....
Macs reduce IT head count while Linux probably increases IT head count, simple as that."
Linux is cheaper and supports more users (per IT person)... so it requires as much IT support as Windows. No, wait, it requires more support!
With logic like that, I foresee a bright Cringely future in politics. Especially the way he alludes to Macs requiring half the maintenance at one point, then says they "probably" have a lower TCO.
What Cringely overlooks is the cost of and resistance to making IT changes. Spending lots of IT money is a tough sell right now. Rolling out a trial Linux program is very inexpensive in terms of hardware (reusing older boxes), and probably inexpensive in time because some Linux zealot will put in the extra effort to make a point. A Mac zealot still has to get past the capital expenditure hurdle.
But here's a thought: if Mac servers really do require half the maintenance of Windows boxes, then why not just load FreeBSD (or Linux) on the existing Windows machines? Then you'd have all that reliability without having to buy new hardware from Jobs. Oh, wait, that's exactly what Cringely admits some IT shops are doing!
Despite the "New! New! New!" conclusion of the original article, this concept has been around for quite a while in print publishing.
Back in the 1980s, for example, science fiction bookstores would have to deal with people who found a previously undiscovered JRR Tolkien novel by browsing through Books in Print. The book didn't exist, however; it was merely an artifact added to provide evidence of someone stealing the BIP publisher's data.
If memory serves, Tom Clancy touched on a similar idea in one of his novels, having slightly different phrasings to key parts of intelligence documents which would allow investigators to better determine the route of leaked information.
Folks in magazine publishing used to use a similar ruse to track how subscriber info was being sold by competitors. You'd subscribe to one magazine as "Elvis J. Presley", for example, and another as "Elvis Q. Presley." By checking the middle initial of incoming junk mail, you could tell who had been selling your name and to whom they'd sold it.
Like I said, the idea's been around a while. The honeypot aspect is merely a new context and tracking mechanism.
At the risk of feeding a troll, might I suggest a visit to Google or your local library for books that have gone out of print?
Both MacLeod's oeuvre (word for the day) and The Killing Star were easily found in my local library's online catalog -- guess where I'm headed after logging off Slashdot?
Ah, we have a scholar among us! Truly, a knowledge of the classics is a comfort in these perilous times.
I was referring to John Milius, of course. He's quite a student of the manly arts and histories, so he's probably well aware that Jenghis Khan said something similar:
Jenghis Khan was a man who cared nothing for Buddhism's spirit of loving compassion; he was interested only in conquest. He was a man who believed that the greatest happiness is "to crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet--to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women." [Harold Lamb, Genghis Khan: The Emperor of All Men, Robert McBride & Co., 1927 pp. 106-107]
Found with the obGoogle search in this interesting article about Inner Mongolia
Tyler
Slashdot Mirror
But Murray was paid to produce a book that is very much in line with certain conservative views...
Do you have any proof of that assertion? How do you know that he isn't writing the very same books he would have if he were a tenured professor somewhere? But again, you're attacking the person and his motivations instead of dealing with his data and arguments.
By the way, pointing out someone's funding source and possible motivations isn't an ad hominem attack.
My online dictionary describes an ad hominem attack as "marked by an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made." How this is different from attacking someone's "possible" motivations?
By the way, you claim that Murray is "funded by the ultra-conservative Bradley Institute." Leaving aside your nebulous scientific criteria for distinguishing between ultra conservatives and ordinary conservatives, this statement is just plain wrong. The Bradley Institute is named after Rev. John P. Bradley and concerned with Christian culture. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute. Different organizations, different agendas.
But why bother with facts if all you're doing is debunking those ultra-conservatives, right?
TylerIf you'd already decided Murray was wrong, perhaps. Some of us require a little more scientific rigor for "debunking" than a journalism professor's article on Slate.
Nicholas Lemann, the Slate author, also wrote The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, and it's hardly a surprise that he disagrees with Murray on social policy. He admits to describing Murray's research -- three years before it was published -- as being about "black genetic intellectual inferiority." Yep, there's a dispassionate, neutral observer for you.
To call his article debunking is hyperbole, however. One of his "Case Studies" concerns the numbers for how much IQ increased for each year of education. It was around 1 point in the hardback edition. Lemann cites a followup study which showed the increase at 2.5 points, and acknowledges that the paperback edition of book revised the number upwards. We might argue back and forth on how much, if at all, this should affect Murray's conclusions. But debunking of the book? Not hardly.
Murray, by the way, is funded by the ultra-conservative Bradley Institute. He is not an objective source...
Nice ad hominem attack. You make it sound like Murray's wearing a tin-foil cap and ranting about floridation of the water supply. Turn the tactic around. Should we automatically discount Lemann because he writes for the "ultra-liberal" Atlantic magazine? One of the Amazon reviews of The Big Test points out how he apparently ignored the bulk of SAT-related research in writing his book -- isn't possible that Lemann has been cherry-picking his data and studies as much or more than Murray?
TylerWhat ever happened to free speech? ...
Case in point would be the lawsuit to overturn McCain-Feingold.
I find it ironic you would see a legal challenge to McCain-Feingold as being an attempt to subvert free speech. As many pointed out during the bill's debate, the Supreme Court has consistently held that political spending is a Constitutionally protected form of free speech. So those challenging M-F can justly claim to be proponents of free speech.
Just because an idea is popular doesn't mean it's a good idea, or that it's legal.
BTW, our Constitutional guarantee of free speech doesn't give us a free pass for slander and defamation.
Tyler
Check with Mark Hulbert's magazine for a better description of his failures.
According to this copy of a July 2002 CBS Marketwatch column the Elliot Wave Financial Forecast was one of only five newsletters to beat the market. If Hulbert's critique of Prechter's predictions is available on the Web, please post a link.
Certainly, Prechter's forecast of a deflationary crash should be hard to miss, and the lack of same can't go into his "win" column.
But I was surprised that Hulbert's list didn't include Bob Brinker's Market Timer newsletter. On his radio show Brinker told people to move to cash and out of stocks just weeks before the 2000 crash started!
TylerLinux is cheaper and supports more users (per IT person) ... so it requires as much IT support as Windows. No, wait, it requires more support!
With logic like that, I foresee a bright Cringely future in politics. Especially the way he alludes to Macs requiring half the maintenance at one point, then says they "probably" have a lower TCO.
What Cringely overlooks is the cost of and resistance to making IT changes. Spending lots of IT money is a tough sell right now. Rolling out a trial Linux program is very inexpensive in terms of hardware (reusing older boxes), and probably inexpensive in time because some Linux zealot will put in the extra effort to make a point. A Mac zealot still has to get past the capital expenditure hurdle.
But here's a thought: if Mac servers really do require half the maintenance of Windows boxes, then why not just load FreeBSD (or Linux) on the existing Windows machines? Then you'd have all that reliability without having to buy new hardware from Jobs. Oh, wait, that's exactly what Cringely admits some IT shops are doing!
Tyler
Back in the 1980s, for example, science fiction bookstores would have to deal with people who found a previously undiscovered JRR Tolkien novel by browsing through Books in Print. The book didn't exist, however; it was merely an artifact added to provide evidence of someone stealing the BIP publisher's data.
If memory serves, Tom Clancy touched on a similar idea in one of his novels, having slightly different phrasings to key parts of intelligence documents which would allow investigators to better determine the route of leaked information.
Folks in magazine publishing used to use a similar ruse to track how subscriber info was being sold by competitors. You'd subscribe to one magazine as "Elvis J. Presley", for example, and another as "Elvis Q. Presley." By checking the middle initial of incoming junk mail, you could tell who had been selling your name and to whom they'd sold it.
Like I said, the idea's been around a while. The honeypot aspect is merely a new context and tracking mechanism.
Tyler
Both MacLeod's oeuvre (word for the day) and The Killing Star were easily found in my local library's online catalog -- guess where I'm headed after logging off Slashdot?
Tyler