It shouldn't be the ubiquitous browser because it's riddled with long-standing security holes, is irrevocably tied to a ubiquitous operating system that is plagued by those same holes, is not standards-compliant, employs proprietary extensions of standards that have forced people into using it simply to maintain compatibility, gives its company an unfair advantage in the market, lacks basic features that most modern browsers consider essential (ad blocking, pop-up blocking) and simply just isn't that good of a browser. Against all good market sense, Internet Explorer has prevailed because it has a monopolistic mongrel of a company behind it. This is why monopolies are generally illegal. They allow shitty products to become dominant.
I've flipped my share of negative signs, and I make sure to call myself a dumb-ass after realizing I've done so. I should expect the same kind of reinforcement from other people.
Hm... I'm Joe PC User. I want music. What?! Kazaa is charging me for downloading music from other users? When that music could very well come in the form of a crappy 96 kbps, non-LAME MP3? When the download rate sucks ass most of the time? Goodbye, Kazaa. Hello iTunes Music Service, eMusic and whatever other big company has quality and bandwidth guarantees.
Disabling auto-run is also a violation of the DMCA.
Does anyone know how this thing works under Mac OS X? Supposedly it does, but I can't figure out how it would do it without first asking for administrator authentication to load a new kernel extension (if it uses a custom driver to read itself).
Apple are releasing iTunes for Windows very soon. So Windows users will be able to play.m4p's, and I assume that you'll be able to authorize both Macs and PC's for the same file.
And as for it being Apple's "fault" for using DRM, please learn something about how business is done. Apple are a company, and they need permission from the RIAA to distribute their shit for a fee. The RIAA wouldn't give them that permission if Apple didn't use DRM.
Um... no, you can't. Apple's iTunes doesn't even generate protected MP4's, nor is there an option for it to. It makes MP4's which can be played on any OS capable of playing them.
Ever heard of a little thing called Steam? All mention of CD authentication and so forth aside, Steam was supposed to be the big thing to stop cheating.
Now it's all exposed. People were going to give their credit card numbers to this thing. Now it's open for all to see and anyone can exploit/spoof it.
Ever heard of a little thing called OpenSSL? It's always been exposed, and people still trust their information with it. If the code is well-written and secure, it won't be exploitable, or at least not very easily.
You're missing the point. This little portion of the commentary was started because someone brought up the fact that in a standard Linux distro, an E-mail attachment could only possibly wipe out the home folder. Your illustration of the difference isolates these scenarios, which is not the case. You're saying that a virus would actually wipe out your system stuff without touching your home directory, which doesn't really make sense from a virus writer's perspective. If you go to all the trouble to write an exploit that can gain root privileges, why limit your actions to the system directory? Root-level viruses can delete anything. How is this a better situation that only being able to delete a certain portion of the drive?
I'd have to contest your portrayal of Apple in the circles of people that write virus software. Many viruses have come from VBScript Kiddies who think that Macs aren't "real" computers and generally hate the 1-button mice they're forced to use in a Mac computer lab. They'd probably love to bomb the crap out of Macs, but they don't have the first clue as to how to do it, so they stick with destroying the "real" computers and leaving the "toys" alone.
Except when the average person's system gets wiped out by the Latest Windows Virus/Worm. Then the average person suddenly starts giving a shit about security procedures like patching and virus definition updates (though the latter usually come around after the virus has begun spreading).
Honestly, what would be so hard about having a dialog pop up saying, "This program wants to run with administration privileges. This is highly suspect behavior for an E-mail attachment, and it is recommended that you do not allow it to run unless you know for certain that it was sent to you in good faith," then having the user click "Okay," (or "Cancel, of course) then having a password prompt come up?
If your home directory gets wiped out, you can still run your system. If your system gets wiped out, you can't run your system and you have to spend hours reinstalling all your system software and applications. Since applications aren't stored in the home directory, you save yourself the tedium of having to reinstall them. You may have to re-register them depending upon how the application stores registration information (settings file or actually in the binary) and retool your settings again, but please explain how this is equivalent to digging out the application install disk or hunting on the internet for a the download, installing it again and then re-registering and retooling your preferences. Don't forget to repeat for every application you had. You save yourself time. And let's not forget the people that compile everything from source, either. Stick "configure the build," "set appropriate flags," "download dependencies" and "wait around for it to compile" right before "installing it again."
Home directories are also far easier and faster to backup than the system itself. Copying a bunch of XML files containing your user settings is not a big deal at all (you could put most of your settings on a single floppy disk). Copying thousands of system files and binaries is a big deal, and they most certainly will not fit on a single floppy and could require some compression to fit on a CD. That means you waste time decompressing and then recopying if your system gets wiped out.
Furthermore, if it's difficult for a malicious piece of software to get to your system, that means that it can't get to the backup of your home directory, either (unless you're stupid enough to back it up to your home directory). What's more, if you have applications that must be run as root, their settings are left intact (unless you're stupid enough to log into the GUI as root, which some Mac OS X users insist on doing so they can recapture the "glory" days of the Classic Mac OS). Seriously, there's a world of difference between having your home folder wiped out and having your system wiped out. If you are "still" arguing this position, it implies that you've held this view for a while. I think it's time for you to probably revise your position.
We're talking about a consumer context. Consumers and even most prosumers don't use the software you listed. There is certainly still a place for Windows workstations (probably always will be due to Microsoft's monopoly), but for the average user, Macs can do everything a Windows box can. Hell, Linux can, as well. The point is that the alternatives to Windows are gaining credibility and becoming more viable on the desktop, despite the fact that they have a long way to go before they can even think about making a dent in Microsoft's monopoly.
It's clear that we need to begin boycotting these so-called "libraries" and their monopoly on books. It's gone too far. Boycott libraries! Get your information from the internet! No one can track you there!
Translation: "Macs don't have many games." Unfortunately for you, there are entire markets of software that (get ready for this) have no entertainment value whatsoever! What essential commercial software out there is completely unavailable for and has no open-source alternatives for the Mac? Macs have Office and plenty of software that can run under the X11 environment. In reality, there is very little Windows software out there that either isn't available for the Mac or does not have some sort of Mac equivalent.
Read the context, dumb-ass. Arbitrarily scanning students' computers on a whim is a violation of privacy. If the government isn't allowed to do such a thing, public institutions most certainly are not. So take your free speech strawman and cram it up your ass.
The University of Florida is a public institution and therefore does not have the power to arbitrarily violate its students' civil rights whether it's the "steward of that bandwidth" or not. Please see the Constitution of the United States.
Your boss is not a public institution. Where do you think that the government grant money comes from? Gee Dubya Bush's Magic Money Tree? No, it comes from tax payers. Public institutions are not free to violate civil rights on a whim because they are institutions of the government, and despite what John Ashcroft would have everyone believe, the government must respect civil rights. The issue is not whose money it is. So everyone can stop pretending that public institutions can shamelessly step all over their employees and students like private ones can.
I think it depends on the area you're working in. It's next to impossible to unify theories of personality because they start out from rather different philosophical angles. Maybe trying to combine semantics and syntax would be a decent analogy for the scope of the problem. In the more technical area of cognitive psychology the main problems are again more technical. For instance, trying to unify qualitative flow-diagram models or even quantitative models with meaningful nodes on the one hand and parallel distributed neural networks on the other hand is AFAIK technically possible, but very tricky. That said, there is also the problem of fundamental, unresolved conflicts concerning the architecture of cognition, like the question whether "representations" are necessary.
Before those models can be unified with anything, they must be tested. How would you test whether or not memories are stored in every brain cell for example?
even the Gerrig and Zimbardo "Psychology and Life" -and you can't get more basic than that- touches on the idea, admittedly only in passing. I'm sorry, but as someone who has had the concept of falsifiability pushed in his face from day 1 of my study I find it somewhat hard to imagine it is not taught at your place. I'm inclined to believe either (a) the teaching you had was particularly shoddy or (b) you never went to a methodology course.
The methodology should be included in the introductory course. The course shouldn't leave you wondering about the methods psychologists use to come up with their conclusions.
LOL. Neuropsychology has only recently begun to realise that simple additive or subtractive reasoning (Donders subtraction method, Sternberg's additive factors logic) won't get you far in cognition. And they are still prone to point to a correlate (magnetic measurement of blood flow) (that is measuring at a resolution of 1-2 images/per second) of a potential correlate (blood flow=oxygen flow=brain activity) that might correlate with the phenomenon of interest (brain activity=thinking) hoping to derive something meaningful about millisecond processes in a highly networked system from that. Doesn't mean there isn't some decent research done in that area of course.
I say that the field is better-pursued because it deals with linking behaviors to physical things, i.e. the brain. This makes the study much more open to testing and falsifiability. As for correlations, the entire field seems to have the problem of equating correlation to causation, if what I've seen is any indication.
Newton accomplished more in one summer than psychologists have in decades. Even when physics was in its infancy, the scientific method was still being followed. I don't necessarily have a problem with psychology as a field, but I do think that the basic methodology in the field is flawed.
Those qualifiers aside, as far as I know Maslow used to check his theory against available evidence (and self-actualisation isn't the same as reaching your full potential), though of course not in a rigourous fashion.
Then my professor is either lying or incompetent.
IMHO however, his lasting fame is justified by his idea that we should study successful people and not only mental illness and brain damage. Since you seem to be sympathetic to the latter approach, may I ask you to consider (a) how you justify generalising from the functioning of a damaged brain to normal functioning
I don't justify that generalization. I said that it was possible to test hypotheses in that field scientifically.
and (b) in what ways the reasoning from specific impairments to specific functions is superior to Maslow's reasoning from characteristics found in outstanding persons to a general need in all of us.
Because "outstanding" is subjective. "Removing this part of the brain does this" is not.
S, see Jacobs A. M. & Grainger J. (1994). Models of visual word recognition: Sampling the state of the art. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 20(6): 1311-1334.
I'm going off what my psychology professor told me. He explicitly said that the proponents of each model just stick to their own little area rather than trying to unify their observations with others.
as for your other points: yes, admittedly all is not well and a lot of psychologists are rather weak on maths. But your sweeping generalisations are just plain wrong, especially since the standard of hypothesis testing in psychology is the Popperian notion of falsifiability. (see e.g. Jacobs, A. M., Graf, R. & Kinder, A. (2003). Receiver operating characteristics in the lexical decision task: Evidence for a simple signal-detection process simulated by the multiple read-out model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory & Cognition, 29(3), 481-488.)* I suggest you learn some nuance from psychologists, since this seems something _you_ are incapable of.
When a basic introductory psychology course routinely displays the kind of methodology I'm seeing, I make judgments based on that, and never once was this notion of falsifiability covered. Should students in a physics class have to read journal articles to get an indication of the method being used by physicists? Of course not. The parts of psychology dealing specifically with the brain (i.e. removing parts of the brain and seeing what happens) are pursued pretty well, but there are others which simply aren't. The hierarchy of needs, for example. "Self-actualization" is pure philosophical bullshit. The rest of the hierarchy can be tested objectively, but how can you measure or judge whether an individual has reached his full potential? That's absurdly subjective and can't be falsified. Paying lip service to the scientific method does not mean that you follow it.
There aren't actually that many different models of human cognition (or other things). The reason why there are different ones is, that models are models, simplifications, they can't explain everything. At the same time, one model may explain the same thing as another, only from a different angle. And at the same time, one of them is just as valid as the other.
I was, of course, exaggerating. The problem is that no effort has been made or apparently will be made to develop a complete model for how perception works. The proponents of each model just keep finding things which prove them right, rather than trying to truly test their model by actually finding a way to disprove it.
The reasons why the situation is as it is are many. One of them is the complexity of the matter researched - psychology is supposed to be the science of human mind, but it's not even clear what exactly is the object it is studying.
This does not excuse psychologists from completely ignoring basic scientific methodology in their studies. Any theory in science must carry the capacity to be disproved, which necessarily means that it must carry certain predictions. By far, the best way to test a prediction is through mathematics, because numbers are objective. However, objective descriptions (such as evolutionary theory predicting that a creature should have wings) can also be used. Psychologists would rather smugly collect evidence that supports their personal views while completely ignoring any other observations made by anyone else that might lend credence to another theory. This is not how science works. Science judges competing theories by their ability to explain observations with the least amount of terms. I see psychologists just lumping all sorts of extraneous terms into their theories and then getting published without question. That's just pathetic.
The other reason (connected with the first) may be, that psychology (and other "soft" sciences) haven't exactly had a fundamental basis to what they are studying, whereas the "hard" sciences could rely on physics (and mathematics?) as the basis to everything. Some claim that semiotics (the study of signs) could be the "physics of the 21st century", I wouldn't mind at all if it were so.
I'm not familiar with semiotics, so I can't comment. Psychologists only make a minimal effort to minimize subjectivity in an experiment, and they can't even analyze the curves they produce properly. I've stumped my psychology professor on concepts that any physics undergrad would learn his first week in calculus! When he was talking about our "sensory experience" as humans, he improperly lumped together all senses and didn't understand what I meant when I said that the senses take in information at different refresh rates (and incidentally didn't believe me when I said that the eye refreshed), and then questioned as to how he was combining all the senses to come up with a finite instant that was "the present." He finally said that it didn't matter how long this finite instant was. Um... yeah, it does.
If you are wondering how rocket propulsion can work if Newton's laws dictate that every force generates an equal and opposite force, you're not distinguishing between force and acceleration. If you mass roughly 50 kg, and I hit you with a 500 kg Acme weight with a force of 1 000 N, you'll accelerate at 20 m/s^2, but the Acme weight will only accelerate at 2 m/s^2. Equal force != equal acceleration.
Slashdot Mirror
It shouldn't be the ubiquitous browser because it's riddled with long-standing security holes, is irrevocably tied to a ubiquitous operating system that is plagued by those same holes, is not standards-compliant, employs proprietary extensions of standards that have forced people into using it simply to maintain compatibility, gives its company an unfair advantage in the market, lacks basic features that most modern browsers consider essential (ad blocking, pop-up blocking) and simply just isn't that good of a browser. Against all good market sense, Internet Explorer has prevailed because it has a monopolistic mongrel of a company behind it. This is why monopolies are generally illegal. They allow shitty products to become dominant.
I've flipped my share of negative signs, and I make sure to call myself a dumb-ass after realizing I've done so. I should expect the same kind of reinforcement from other people.
Because people who can't perform basic arithmetic deserve all the ridicule they get.
Hm ... I'm Joe PC User. I want music. What?! Kazaa is charging me for downloading music from other users? When that music could very well come in the form of a crappy 96 kbps, non-LAME MP3? When the download rate sucks ass most of the time? Goodbye, Kazaa. Hello iTunes Music Service, eMusic and whatever other big company has quality and bandwidth guarantees.
Are they really that stupid?
How? There's nothing like that in the prefs.
Disabling auto-run is also a violation of the DMCA.
Does anyone know how this thing works under Mac OS X? Supposedly it does, but I can't figure out how it would do it without first asking for administrator authentication to load a new kernel extension (if it uses a custom driver to read itself).
Apple are releasing iTunes for Windows very soon. So Windows users will be able to play .m4p's, and I assume that you'll be able to authorize both Macs and PC's for the same file.
And as for it being Apple's "fault" for using DRM, please learn something about how business is done. Apple are a company, and they need permission from the RIAA to distribute their shit for a fee. The RIAA wouldn't give them that permission if Apple didn't use DRM.
Um ... no, you can't. Apple's iTunes doesn't even generate protected MP4's, nor is there an option for it to. It makes MP4's which can be played on any OS capable of playing them.
Since when is Half Life 2 making it to the Mac?
Yes, the words that every SlashDotter wants to hear a CEO in the IT industry utter ... "Dammit! I should've listened to that guy on SlashDot!"
You're missing the point. This little portion of the commentary was started because someone brought up the fact that in a standard Linux distro, an E-mail attachment could only possibly wipe out the home folder. Your illustration of the difference isolates these scenarios, which is not the case. You're saying that a virus would actually wipe out your system stuff without touching your home directory, which doesn't really make sense from a virus writer's perspective. If you go to all the trouble to write an exploit that can gain root privileges, why limit your actions to the system directory? Root-level viruses can delete anything. How is this a better situation that only being able to delete a certain portion of the drive?
I'd have to contest your portrayal of Apple in the circles of people that write virus software. Many viruses have come from VBScript Kiddies who think that Macs aren't "real" computers and generally hate the 1-button mice they're forced to use in a Mac computer lab. They'd probably love to bomb the crap out of Macs, but they don't have the first clue as to how to do it, so they stick with destroying the "real" computers and leaving the "toys" alone.
Except when the average person's system gets wiped out by the Latest Windows Virus/Worm. Then the average person suddenly starts giving a shit about security procedures like patching and virus definition updates (though the latter usually come around after the virus has begun spreading).
Honestly, what would be so hard about having a dialog pop up saying, "This program wants to run with administration privileges. This is highly suspect behavior for an E-mail attachment, and it is recommended that you do not allow it to run unless you know for certain that it was sent to you in good faith," then having the user click "Okay," (or "Cancel, of course) then having a password prompt come up?
If your home directory gets wiped out, you can still run your system. If your system gets wiped out, you can't run your system and you have to spend hours reinstalling all your system software and applications. Since applications aren't stored in the home directory, you save yourself the tedium of having to reinstall them. You may have to re-register them depending upon how the application stores registration information (settings file or actually in the binary) and retool your settings again, but please explain how this is equivalent to digging out the application install disk or hunting on the internet for a the download, installing it again and then re-registering and retooling your preferences. Don't forget to repeat for every application you had. You save yourself time. And let's not forget the people that compile everything from source, either. Stick "configure the build," "set appropriate flags," "download dependencies" and "wait around for it to compile" right before "installing it again."
Home directories are also far easier and faster to backup than the system itself. Copying a bunch of XML files containing your user settings is not a big deal at all (you could put most of your settings on a single floppy disk). Copying thousands of system files and binaries is a big deal, and they most certainly will not fit on a single floppy and could require some compression to fit on a CD. That means you waste time decompressing and then recopying if your system gets wiped out.
Furthermore, if it's difficult for a malicious piece of software to get to your system, that means that it can't get to the backup of your home directory, either (unless you're stupid enough to back it up to your home directory). What's more, if you have applications that must be run as root, their settings are left intact (unless you're stupid enough to log into the GUI as root, which some Mac OS X users insist on doing so they can recapture the "glory" days of the Classic Mac OS). Seriously, there's a world of difference between having your home folder wiped out and having your system wiped out. If you are "still" arguing this position, it implies that you've held this view for a while. I think it's time for you to probably revise your position.
We're talking about a consumer context. Consumers and even most prosumers don't use the software you listed. There is certainly still a place for Windows workstations (probably always will be due to Microsoft's monopoly), but for the average user, Macs can do everything a Windows box can. Hell, Linux can, as well. The point is that the alternatives to Windows are gaining credibility and becoming more viable on the desktop, despite the fact that they have a long way to go before they can even think about making a dent in Microsoft's monopoly.
It's clear that we need to begin boycotting these so-called "libraries" and their monopoly on books. It's gone too far. Boycott libraries! Get your information from the internet! No one can track you there!
Translation: "Macs don't have many games." Unfortunately for you, there are entire markets of software that (get ready for this) have no entertainment value whatsoever! What essential commercial software out there is completely unavailable for and has no open-source alternatives for the Mac? Macs have Office and plenty of software that can run under the X11 environment. In reality, there is very little Windows software out there that either isn't available for the Mac or does not have some sort of Mac equivalent.
Read the context, dumb-ass. Arbitrarily scanning students' computers on a whim is a violation of privacy. If the government isn't allowed to do such a thing, public institutions most certainly are not. So take your free speech strawman and cram it up your ass.
The University of Florida is a public institution and therefore does not have the power to arbitrarily violate its students' civil rights whether it's the "steward of that bandwidth" or not. Please see the Constitution of the United States.
Your boss is not a public institution. Where do you think that the government grant money comes from? Gee Dubya Bush's Magic Money Tree? No, it comes from tax payers. Public institutions are not free to violate civil rights on a whim because they are institutions of the government, and despite what John Ashcroft would have everyone believe, the government must respect civil rights. The issue is not whose money it is. So everyone can stop pretending that public institutions can shamelessly step all over their employees and students like private ones can.
Before those models can be unified with anything, they must be tested. How would you test whether or not memories are stored in every brain cell for example?
The methodology should be included in the introductory course. The course shouldn't leave you wondering about the methods psychologists use to come up with their conclusions.
I say that the field is better-pursued because it deals with linking behaviors to physical things, i.e. the brain. This makes the study much more open to testing and falsifiability. As for correlations, the entire field seems to have the problem of equating correlation to causation, if what I've seen is any indication.
If you are wondering how rocket propulsion can work if Newton's laws dictate that every force generates an equal and opposite force, you're not distinguishing between force and acceleration. If you mass roughly 50 kg, and I hit you with a 500 kg Acme weight with a force of 1 000 N, you'll accelerate at 20 m/s^2, but the Acme weight will only accelerate at 2 m/s^2. Equal force != equal acceleration.