Are you saying that I must disbelieve that Andromeda is hundreds of millions of light years away because it takes light a good deal of time to reach us?
No, I'm saying you must disbelieve that Andromeda exists at all unless you PERSONALLY have recorded the light coming from it and/or have documented evidence that such light has reached us within the last 41,000 years or so. Before that, you can suspect it exists due to the speed of light, but in reality you have only faith, no proof.
I mean, what level of nihilism are you willing to invoke, how much observation are you willing to dismiss?
I'm not willing to dismiss any observation- but I'm also not willing to invent observation where none exists.
Is your world view so important that you will even reject emperical inference?
Emperical inference is faith, not fact- it's not observational evidence. Thus if we require a strict interpretation of the scientific method for something to be considered science, we cannot accept emperical inference or any other type of inferred, as opposed to observed, evidence.
On the other hand you're using Wikipedia for definitions- which is a problem in and of itself since Wikipedia is just a collection of shared ignorance.
Thus the complaint still stands- evolution and thories like it are proof by consensus, which is a logical fallacy. All you did was move it from the proof of the theory and the evidence to the definition by consensus.
Before one is taught to measure conventional wisdom (whatever that means), ought children not be taught the scientific method properly, and thus can be able to grasp why the massive and overwhelming number of scientists (including ID superstar Michael Behe) accept evolution and common descent?
The way I see it, if we were truly teaching scientific method properly, then the acceptance of evolution, creationism, or anything else in the past that doesn't include direct observational evidence by modern human beings, would be even more mysterious. Anybody who actually UNDERSTANDS the scientific method instead of just paying lip service to it knows that from incomplete evidence comes incomplete conclusions, not certainty.
We could always just demand that Evolution and Speciation be taught in religious courses, but I don't think we care enough to do that. Its not like science is just going to go away if we ignore it.
The problem with this is that Evolution and Speciation aren't science. They're just more faith based explainations for things that human beings can't possibly ever know with certainty.
Where "random" means "unexplained due to overwhelming complexity of unknown, unquantified factors", no - it's not unknowable, just unknown.
Either way, it's still an appeal to faith- a cop out.
That is, of course, the definition of "random" taught in science classes. Not the sinister, purely metaphysical definition taught in pseudoscience creationism classes, to which you refer.
Anybody who claims to know what happened before the invention of the written word is using a sinister, metaphysical explaination- regardless of whether they claim to be science based, pseudoscience based, or flying spaghetti monster based means nothing. They're still making an appeal to faith in an attempt to prove what they can't explain- and all appeals to faith should be treated with equal skepticism.
Have you stopped beating your wife?
Exactly my point- an appeal to faith that should be treated with skepticism.
I dunno. Does inventing nonsense phrases like "metaphysical spirit" to notions like mutations, make those nonsense phrases meaningful or honest appraisals of the word or concept that follows?
When I see the word "metaphysical" I think "belief without proof", and when I see the word "spirit", I see "that which causes a portion of the natural world to be motivated to do something". Thus since there is no proof that mutations are truly random, the amount of importance put on random mutation by those who claim to be athiests is no more meaninfull than the Flying Spaghetti Monster Did It. Or any other god you choose to name. It's ALL faith based, and science has nothing to do with any claim of what happened before historical time.
With only a 10k users, DNS can quickly become a high-bandwidth thing. Cost is proportional to bandwidth I guess.
Yes, but done properly, the central services never see more than a few hundred users- the backbones. Who provide their own servers that see a few hundred users each- the ISPs. Who, realistically, should provide their own servers in turn that each serve a few hundred end users. The way DNS works- or at least is supposed to work- it should be very rare that an end user request would walk all the way up to a central server- no more than the number of backbones connected to that central server for each new record, because after that the information is cached at the backbone. Likewise, each backbone only gets the number of requests for a given record of the ISPs linked to that backbone- after that it's cached locally at the ISP.
What I would consider to be a truly high bandwidth service is music or video- where each END USER must hit the CENTRAL SERVER for MEGABYTES of information, not a situation where intermediate servers cache small, 512 byte records.
I'm saying that due to local caching, even a central server isn't providing direct services to millions of users. They provide DNS services to hundreds of backbone providers, who in turn run DNS servers that provide DNS services to thousands of ISPs, who in turn run DNS servers that provide DNS services to millions of users. The millions of users aren't hitting the central servers- they hit their local servers, and if the record is already there, the request goes no further. The only time the central servers get hit is during inital propagation- which is why initial propagation can take up to 72 hours.
In addition to this, we're talking 561 BYTES for a DNS record- not exactly a bandwidth buster, with most modern networking technologies that is a single packet. Running a DNS server isn't anything like running a webserver or a mail server.
So due to those two items- the whole idea of it costing tons of money to maintain central DNS Services is questionable at best.
The object browser in Visual Studio isn't a typical explorer window- it doesn't actually show all the source code files, and it's not grouped by directories. Which is more a problem for Microsoft than it is for SVN, but that's what prevents true integration for any other source code control than SourceSafe. And then they go and botch it (hidden files don't check in and out properly if they disappear or reappear, and project/group files actually need you to exit out of the language and come back in to reload changes). So it's of limited usage, which is why I'm considering SVN at home.
But more than that- to use Subversion at work would require a 6 week review process through a committee called ICARE that is made up of network engineers that have other jobs to do than just review software....
Environment being programed for: large state agency with stupid piddling buracratic rules about what we can run on the machines, where every single desktop in the whole state is Windows XP Pro and the *required* IDE is Visual Studio 6 (with.NET coming up from behind- I think we've got two projects out of an application development department of 60 programmers that use.NET so far). Thus, SourceSafe becomes the "natural" thing that is already through the buracratic process to get it installed on the boxes, as it integrates easily supposedly (I don't know, has ANYBODY ever gotten SS or SV to actually integrate with the Visual Basic IDE?). I personally am thinking about Subversion instead on my home machine, as I'm currently rebuilding after an upgrade, just because I use a wider variety of OSs and languages at home.
I consider any CS education that doesn't touch on the value of source code and documentation control to be *seriously* deficient- at my technical college we had it in MIS, CHET, Tech Writing, and SET degrees, because it's just so usefull- but that was admittedly 11 years ago.
Original article in this Ask Slashdot seems to be for a large group, and brought up Wiki (Heck, just look at the title of the page, Corporate Software Development Wiki? would indicate a corporation, not a small time software engineer with no IT department). Wiki would need a webserver to run also.
For behind-the-firewall-less-than-10-people, Sourcesafe for Windows or CVS is just fine and likely to be on any OS you're running anyway. I like SS because I do a lot of work in Windows on Microsoft tools, so it's integrated (somewhat) nicely with my IDE (for various meanings of the word "integrated" and "nicely", it seems Microsoft can't get anything quite right) and CVS isn't- but when working in non-microsoft land I prefer CVS.
As for the security issue, there are a large number of nice appliances out there that make your internal servers invisible to a broadband connection- either that or your dialup access company isn't doing their jobs properly.
Actually, on my project we're currently using SourceSafe for everybody from Project Management, to End Users. We find that it's not "Just for engineers" or even "just for source code" as it tracks changes in any text-based file format just fine, thus very useful for finding out just who made a change when. But we're not working in multiple platforms (4500 WinXP workstations in a large state organization) and we're not hiring non-engineers to work in engineering (you really have tech documenters who don't have technical degrees?!!?!?!? How the heck do they know what to document?) so I'll take your word for it.
Actually an even better suggestion than any of mine. Mine all do version control- but Subversion adds an Appache Webserver to the mix, thus a client that can run on anything with a browser.
Or at least the (pick one) CVS, SourceSafe, or Sourceforge? Why must it be Wiki when there is a perfectly good ecosystem of software that ALREADY DOES THIS JOB?!?!?!?
And what about the seven centuries before that? Even before there was a UK? In the grand scheme of things the spanish armada was just a footnote, the British have always had an interest in Ireland.
If so, it's a foolish interest- one borne out of greed and suicide. Without thr threat of Catholic Spain against Protestant England, there was no reason for England to be in Ireland. Since that threat has been gone- the English might as well leave well enough alone. Violent invaders ought to stay at home, unless they want the violence to be at home.
Depends on your point of view, I suppose- those who are stupid enough to think that North Ireland will remain outside of the Republic forever don't understand what South Ireland has gotten out of becoming EU.
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What the hell is "historical time"?
Time that we have written records for.
Are you saying that I must disbelieve that Andromeda is hundreds of millions of light years away because it takes light a good deal of time to reach us?
No, I'm saying you must disbelieve that Andromeda exists at all unless you PERSONALLY have recorded the light coming from it and/or have documented evidence that such light has reached us within the last 41,000 years or so. Before that, you can suspect it exists due to the speed of light, but in reality you have only faith, no proof.
I mean, what level of nihilism are you willing to invoke, how much observation are you willing to dismiss?
I'm not willing to dismiss any observation- but I'm also not willing to invent observation where none exists.
Is your world view so important that you will even reject emperical inference?
Emperical inference is faith, not fact- it's not observational evidence. Thus if we require a strict interpretation of the scientific method for something to be considered science, we cannot accept emperical inference or any other type of inferred, as opposed to observed, evidence.
On the other hand you're using Wikipedia for definitions- which is a problem in and of itself since Wikipedia is just a collection of shared ignorance.
Thus the complaint still stands- evolution and thories like it are proof by consensus, which is a logical fallacy. All you did was move it from the proof of the theory and the evidence to the definition by consensus.
Before one is taught to measure conventional wisdom (whatever that means), ought children not be taught the scientific method properly, and thus can be able to grasp why the massive and overwhelming number of scientists (including ID superstar Michael Behe) accept evolution and common descent?
The way I see it, if we were truly teaching scientific method properly, then the acceptance of evolution, creationism, or anything else in the past that doesn't include direct observational evidence by modern human beings, would be even more mysterious. Anybody who actually UNDERSTANDS the scientific method instead of just paying lip service to it knows that from incomplete evidence comes incomplete conclusions, not certainty.
We could always just demand that Evolution and Speciation be taught in religious courses, but I don't think we care enough to do that. Its not like science is just going to go away if we ignore it.
The problem with this is that Evolution and Speciation aren't science. They're just more faith based explainations for things that human beings can't possibly ever know with certainty.
Where "random" means "unexplained due to overwhelming complexity of unknown, unquantified factors", no - it's not unknowable, just unknown.
Either way, it's still an appeal to faith- a cop out.
That is, of course, the definition of "random" taught in science classes. Not the sinister, purely metaphysical definition taught in pseudoscience creationism classes, to which you refer.
Anybody who claims to know what happened before the invention of the written word is using a sinister, metaphysical explaination- regardless of whether they claim to be science based, pseudoscience based, or flying spaghetti monster based means nothing. They're still making an appeal to faith in an attempt to prove what they can't explain- and all appeals to faith should be treated with equal skepticism.
Have you stopped beating your wife?
Exactly my point- an appeal to faith that should be treated with skepticism.
I dunno. Does inventing nonsense phrases like "metaphysical spirit" to notions like mutations, make those nonsense phrases meaningful or honest appraisals of the word or concept that follows?
When I see the word "metaphysical" I think "belief without proof", and when I see the word "spirit", I see "that which causes a portion of the natural world to be motivated to do something". Thus since there is no proof that mutations are truly random, the amount of importance put on random mutation by those who claim to be athiests is no more meaninfull than the Flying Spaghetti Monster Did It. Or any other god you choose to name. It's ALL faith based, and science has nothing to do with any claim of what happened before historical time.
Does that include the metaphysical spirt known as "random mutation"?
With only a 10k users, DNS can quickly become a high-bandwidth thing. Cost is proportional to bandwidth I guess.
Yes, but done properly, the central services never see more than a few hundred users- the backbones. Who provide their own servers that see a few hundred users each- the ISPs. Who, realistically, should provide their own servers in turn that each serve a few hundred end users. The way DNS works- or at least is supposed to work- it should be very rare that an end user request would walk all the way up to a central server- no more than the number of backbones connected to that central server for each new record, because after that the information is cached at the backbone. Likewise, each backbone only gets the number of requests for a given record of the ISPs linked to that backbone- after that it's cached locally at the ISP.
What I would consider to be a truly high bandwidth service is music or video- where each END USER must hit the CENTRAL SERVER for MEGABYTES of information, not a situation where intermediate servers cache small, 512 byte records.
I'm saying that due to local caching, even a central server isn't providing direct services to millions of users. They provide DNS services to hundreds of backbone providers, who in turn run DNS servers that provide DNS services to thousands of ISPs, who in turn run DNS servers that provide DNS services to millions of users. The millions of users aren't hitting the central servers- they hit their local servers, and if the record is already there, the request goes no further. The only time the central servers get hit is during inital propagation- which is why initial propagation can take up to 72 hours.
In addition to this, we're talking 561 BYTES for a DNS record- not exactly a bandwidth buster, with most modern networking technologies that is a single packet. Running a DNS server isn't anything like running a webserver or a mail server.
So due to those two items- the whole idea of it costing tons of money to maintain central DNS Services is questionable at best.
Ever hear of local DNS cacheing?
First off is funding. Who would pay for the DNS servers.
Maybe anybody with $21 a month and $599 for a Lenevo Laptop? It's not like DNS Services is a high-bandwidth or high-cost service to run.
I haven't seen SourceSafe corrupt a repository since Version 4. Version 6 seems to be quite stable in that respect. But I agree with the rest.
The object browser in Visual Studio isn't a typical explorer window- it doesn't actually show all the source code files, and it's not grouped by directories. Which is more a problem for Microsoft than it is for SVN, but that's what prevents true integration for any other source code control than SourceSafe. And then they go and botch it (hidden files don't check in and out properly if they disappear or reappear, and project/group files actually need you to exit out of the language and come back in to reload changes). So it's of limited usage, which is why I'm considering SVN at home.
But more than that- to use Subversion at work would require a 6 week review process through a committee called ICARE that is made up of network engineers that have other jobs to do than just review software....
Environment being programed for: large state agency with stupid piddling buracratic rules about what we can run on the machines, where every single desktop in the whole state is Windows XP Pro and the *required* IDE is Visual Studio 6 (with .NET coming up from behind- I think we've got two projects out of an application development department of 60 programmers that use .NET so far). Thus, SourceSafe becomes the "natural" thing that is already through the buracratic process to get it installed on the boxes, as it integrates easily supposedly (I don't know, has ANYBODY ever gotten SS or SV to actually integrate with the Visual Basic IDE?). I personally am thinking about Subversion instead on my home machine, as I'm currently rebuilding after an upgrade, just because I use a wider variety of OSs and languages at home.
Your roommate isn't far off though for a standard intern's duties- learning to make the boss look good.
Too bad it got modded Troll instead of Funny...but it's so funny it's sad.
I consider any CS education that doesn't touch on the value of source code and documentation control to be *seriously* deficient- at my technical college we had it in MIS, CHET, Tech Writing, and SET degrees, because it's just so usefull- but that was admittedly 11 years ago.
Are any indicator- a birth certificate and passport from India seem to be prerequisites.
Original article in this Ask Slashdot seems to be for a large group, and brought up Wiki (Heck, just look at the title of the page, Corporate Software Development Wiki? would indicate a corporation, not a small time software engineer with no IT department). Wiki would need a webserver to run also.
For behind-the-firewall-less-than-10-people, Sourcesafe for Windows or CVS is just fine and likely to be on any OS you're running anyway. I like SS because I do a lot of work in Windows on Microsoft tools, so it's integrated (somewhat) nicely with my IDE (for various meanings of the word "integrated" and "nicely", it seems Microsoft can't get anything quite right) and CVS isn't- but when working in non-microsoft land I prefer CVS.
As for the security issue, there are a large number of nice appliances out there that make your internal servers invisible to a broadband connection- either that or your dialup access company isn't doing their jobs properly.
Actually, on my project we're currently using SourceSafe for everybody from Project Management, to End Users. We find that it's not "Just for engineers" or even "just for source code" as it tracks changes in any text-based file format just fine, thus very useful for finding out just who made a change when. But we're not working in multiple platforms (4500 WinXP workstations in a large state organization) and we're not hiring non-engineers to work in engineering (you really have tech documenters who don't have technical degrees?!!?!?!? How the heck do they know what to document?) so I'll take your word for it.
Actually an even better suggestion than any of mine. Mine all do version control- but Subversion adds an Appache Webserver to the mix, thus a client that can run on anything with a browser.
Or at least the (pick one) CVS, SourceSafe, or Sourceforge? Why must it be Wiki when there is a perfectly good ecosystem of software that ALREADY DOES THIS JOB?!?!?!?
And what about the seven centuries before that? Even before there was a UK? In the grand scheme of things the spanish armada was just a footnote, the British have always had an interest in Ireland.
If so, it's a foolish interest- one borne out of greed and suicide. Without thr threat of Catholic Spain against Protestant England, there was no reason for England to be in Ireland. Since that threat has been gone- the English might as well leave well enough alone. Violent invaders ought to stay at home, unless they want the violence to be at home.
Depends on your point of view, I suppose- those who are stupid enough to think that North Ireland will remain outside of the Republic forever don't understand what South Ireland has gotten out of becoming EU.
They don't kill them, they only destroy their house.
Which is exactly the mistake I'm pointing out- hurt somebody then leave them alive to hurt you back.