This is a big moral problem for liberal Western democracies. Most European and North American states, and a good portion of nations in the rest of the world, are founded on the basis that every person is entitled to the same basic rights as the rest. The philosophical rhetoric that underlies these claims needs the postulate that all human beings are somewhat equal--nobody is so much better equipped, morally or intellectually or otherwise, that he can take away the political rights of self determination from other men.
I'm sorry, but that is pure BS. There is no nation in the world that is founded on the belief that there is no difference between Einstein and someone with a mental disability. What makes liberal democracies liberal is that they believe that even those of low (relative) intelligence should have the right to self-determination. This is ensured through a combination of restrictions on governmental authority and an open electoral system. There is an intelligence threshold at which you are self-conscious and therefore need self-determination. It doesn't matter how far other people go beyond that threshold.
It is pretty simple to prove that these new findings would have no impact on our core Liberal beliefs. It has been easy to test "IQ" for decades now. If we wanted to disallow low-IQ people from voting or controlling their own lives, we could have done so decades ago. If we find the genes for intelligence that makes it no easier to determine who is actually going to end up intelligent (as measured by IQ) after education. It would actually be less precise to use genes. And even LESS precise to use racial categories.
The foreboding threat of world disaster from explosive population growth could turn out to be overly alarmist, say the authors of a new demographic study.
Their forecast shows there's a high chance that the world's population will stop growing before the end of the 21st century. It suggests that the total number of people may peak in 70 years or so at about 9 billion people, compared with 6.1 billion today.
This is all way too reminiscent of the whole Massachusetts-forcing-Walmart-to-carry-Plan-B, most slashdotters tend to oppose the government mindset and yet when it comes to linux they fall right into that mindset.
Where in the post or the thread did someone ask for a government bill demanding Linux marketing from Dell?
Imagine that, EXECUTIVES who are overpaid and underworked are criticizing the scientists who they force to work long hours for pay that while not exactly meager, comes nowhere near theirs.
No, you totally misread the quote. They did not criticize scientists. Rather they said that there are two few: "the reluctance of some college graduates to pursue careers in science and engineering". Also: it is easy to make the case that executives are overpaid, but in my experience they are seldom underworked. Most executives do not work 9 to 5. Many work all day, every day.
And of course, when things go wrong, it's always the workers' fault, NEVER EVER the saintly executives who were only looking out for our well being,
That's also bullshit. Look at the turnover of executives at Apple during the bad days. Where is Carly Fiona now? Do a news Google for "XM Radio." You'll read about a director who stepped down just today because of mounting losses. Ultimately the executives are responsible. If the scientists fuck up (as they can, they are human) then it is the executives who hired the wrong scientists or didn't lead them correctly. The average tenure of a CEO at a big company is actually quite short. Executives at Enron may well go to jail.
Or maybe I'm just cynical:P
Yes, you are. There is plenty wrong with our system, including outrageous CEO compensation. It weakens, rather than strengthens, your case when you spout bullshit like executives are not accountable or don't work hard. They are and they do. They may not suffer financially when they screw up as the rest of us do. That may not be fair. But that doesn't mean that what they do is unimportant or unmeasured. When a company stumbles, the CEO takes the blame, not the scientists. Look at Apple. Look at Quark. Look at Dynergy. Look at Diebold. Look at C&W: "Chief executive Francesco Caio resigned from the company as it reported it would fall significantly short of profit forecasts for the coming year."
It's quite true that the CCP's efforts to protect China's conservative values, through censorship, enjoy wide support among the population--just as a majority of French and German citizens support their governments' suppression of Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial, and arguably rightly so.
How can the Chinese people have an informed view of whether the censorship is good if they do not know the scope of the suppression of information? And how can they know the scope if that itself is a subject of censorship. Furthermore, censoring information about Tianneman is only "conservative" in the sense that it "conserves" the ruling party's monopoly on power. It isn't conservative in a family values Western sense.
In response: people have a right to do what they want so long as they do not exercise force against others. This right is absolute. If the man wants not to save the child, we may call him a depraved individual with a set of values far outside the set of those which sane human beings may hold, we may. We may not however initiate the use of force against him by imprisoning him for no action. The same is true in the case of medication. If you contractually ablige yourself to save another's life, you must; if you don't, you are under no obligation to do so. Even if a law is passed allowing theft (of a drug in this case) it is still wrong.
That's an interesting set of beliefs. But that's all they are: your beliefs. The vast majority of people believe otherwise and find your belief system alien.
I don't suppose Sophos would have sold them if there was any mileage left.
This statement makes no sense economically. There was a buyer and there was a seller. Your claim is that the buyer would not have sold it unless it was worthless. According to this theory, nobody should ever buy used cars because people would not get rid of them until they are about to break down. Nobody would sell houses until the pipes are about to burst. Etc. But an economist would say merely that the buyer values the acquisition more than the seller. In this case, the buyer is a company that claims to believe that ActiveState will succeed if it is allowed to focus without the distraction of being part of an anti-spam company. The seller claims to agree. Why should we doubt them? The buyer, in particular, has no incentive to lie, and I presume that they've done more analysis of ActiveState's growth potential than a random/. poster.
"Pender Financial Group Corporation (TSX-V: PDF) announced on January 30, 2006 that it has entered into an agreement with Sophos, Inc., a subsidiary of Sophos Plc, to acquire the business, assets and liabilities of the ActiveState division of Sophos, Inc. for the purchase price of US $2.25 million."
In other words, Sophos valued the anti-spam stuff at more than $20 Million.
I wouldn't be surprised if Jobs is donating money to charity anonymously, and if so he would be wise to not take the bait.
Two thoughts.
First: one can estimate the amount of money Jobs could have donated anonymously based upon the amount of money he's taken out of his various companies as cash. If the vast majority of his money is in large blocks of stock then it is public knowledge that he hasn't given away a big proportion.
Second: I have always been discreet about my giving. I don't go to the effort of going through an anonymizer fund (and don't really see the point -- how would anyone I actually know find out about my dontations to charities?). But I don't talk about donations because I don't want to seem like a show-off. But you have to walk a fine line. If it "seems" like people around are not giving, then the level of giving in a community will drop. There is probably a good reason that churches pass around an offering tray rather than asking people to discreetly donate on their way in. Especially at the level of billionares, this is absolutely crucial. At various times in history the idea that billionaires "owe" society charity becomes more or less fashionable. When it is very fashionable, it can make a big difference (look at all of the stuff that still bears Carnegie's name). I think that it is great that this journalist is calling Jobs out. I think it was great when Ted Turner called other billionares out. A press release from one billionaire that spurs another billionaire into action could save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives. Therefore giving publically is better than giving privately. IMO, Bill Gates is doing exactly the right thing with his money.
You are incorrect when you say that giving away millions is not a sacrifice for Bill Gates. He is sacrificing power, which is really what obscene amounts of money translate into. As I understand it, the Gates foundation has 27 Billion dollars. For that amount of money he could own a much bigger chunk of Disney than Jobs does. But Jobs would rather own a chunk of Disney, and use that power to support his other ventures like iTunes. Of course Bill Gates lives in the same level of material comfort whether he gives away a dollar or 27 billion. But people like him and Jobs stopped thinking about their lives in terms of material comfort after their first few millions. Instead, they measure themselves in terms of ability to weild power and control important aspects of the economy. Gates makes sacrifices there and Jobs does not.
Does Gates sacrifice as much as Mother Theresa? Or her equivalents in our local communities? No. But is his level of giving admirable and beyond the average. Absolutely.
It is VERY counterproductive for people like you to piss on the philanthropists work. Imagine if Bill Gates sees that sort of sentiment in the world and says: "If people are going to criticize me no matter what I do, fuck em, I'll keep the money." That would lead to the deaths of billions of people. I would much rather reinforce the social norm that generous giving by billionares is admirable and expected.
I just listened to an interview with Dennett and although I agree with you that he says consciousness as something unmeasurable and distinct from processing (because it is intrinsically subjective), I didn't get the impression that he felt that a computer COULD NOT in principle have consciousness. He seemed quite open minded on those sorts of issues. Maybe rats have consciousness. Maybe not. Maybe an advanced computer could acquire consciousness. Maybe not. Maybe bacteria or chess programs have consciousness. But probably not.
I think Slashdot is informal, and therefore typos don't matter that much.
"Baseball is just a game and therefore dropped balls don't matter that much."
"Nordstroms is just a retailer and therefore cleanliness doesn't matter that much."
"The Daily Show is just a comedy show and therefore a nice set doesn't matter that much."
In this economy, we all provide services to each other. In order to show respect for each other, those providing services strive for perfection. They don't achieve it, but they strive for it. You do not. You publically state that professionalism is not important to you. You aren't striving to be like "professional" sites like the New York Times. In my opinion, that's what annoys people. That you may fail (given your limited resources available) is acceptable. That you refuse to even try is not.
I think that what bothers us complainers is the claim that professionalism just doesn't seem to matter on SlashDot. It would be one thing for you to say: "I try hard on grammar and spelling but sometimes I slip up. I keep working on it and I'm getting better every day." It's another thing for you to say: "I just don't think that being a professional-quality editor is my job."
I make computer programs. People don't buy those programs for the spelling in dialog boxes. But I try hard to make the spelling correct. That's just professionalism, and professionalism shows respect for my customers. If a customer reports a grammar or spelling mistake in my software then I apologize and correct it. I don't try to say tht professionalism isn't my job. If you're providing a service for people then you should strive to do it right rather than claiming that it is good enough to get some aspects right and ignore others.
As an aside, for awhile we actually had an editor reading Slashdot articles and correcting grammatical mistakes. Turns out it doesn't really matter much. People found other things to complain about. It's almost as if some percentage of the population wants to complain. And they will find something to complain about no matter what. Perhaps by leaving a few typos on the site, I am making their day a little easier! Leave them some low hanging fruit I guess.
Nobody is asking you to be perfect and therefore shut up the complainers. They are asking you to acknowledge that professionalism is important and that perfection is something that is worth striving for. The frustrating thing is that your opening position is that getting things right (especially spelling, grammar and dupes) is not even a goal. Nowhere in your essay did you say that it is even something you are working on or concerned about.
If you started putting effort into these areas, then over time it would become just second nature. That's what happens with "real-world" editors. Being able to instantly notice spelling and grammar mistakes is a skill to be proud of, not to denigrate. (and no, I don't have that skill, editing is not part of my job)
Job descriptions trail language popularity because they are driven by the need to replace people who were working on pre-existing projects. If every programmer decided to day to switch to Intercal, that wouldn't seriously show up in the job postings until a few years from now when the code needs to be maintained.
And the pointy-haired-bosses will continue to shout that *all* versions of Windows must be supported. That means more development, more testing, more installers, more deep sighs.
You act like this is a new problem and not just the situation that the industry has been in since the beginning. What about supporting old versions of Linux? Old versions of DOS? Old versions of Java? Old versions of Python?
The "write once run anywhere" of Java is becoming more attractive all the time.
Right: Java doesn't have a version skew problem at all. Not at all. It's never the case that a minor patch to the JVM will break a bunch of programs. Never. If you believe that you're living in a fantasy world.
In terms of evolution maybe the soceities where these things are allowed to happen should not be the ones to survive...
Evolution does not work at a societal level. Evolution works at an individual level. Wiping out a society has no value from the point of view of natural selection. There is no "allows women to be raped gene". That's culture. Even if apathy or sociopathy are genetic, those genes exist in every country and merely express themselves differently based upon the governmental system in place.
Also true enough- but you see, that raises the same problem of predictibility as ID raises. Since we don't actually know the mind of God without being God, we can't predict natural selection under ID with any accuracy. Likewise, since we don't know the random mutations ahead of time, we can't predict natural selection under evolution with any accuracy.
That is total and complete BS. Scientists predict the results of natural selection all of the time. Have you never heard them say: "If we overuse antibiotics then we will evolve a pathogen that is resistent to antibiotics?" or "If you confine large animals to an island, then they will evolve to be smaller?" Each individual mutation is random, just as every lottery ticket purchase is random. That doesn't mean the overall result is random. The lottery always makes money, because the whole system is rigged, just as with natural selection. You could do natural selection experiments in your basement. I've heard that crickets selected for longevity can evolve into a variant that lives twice as long as normal crickets.
If one was to find a kernel of roundup ready and tried to figure out how regular corn had evolved into roundup ready you'd hit a brick wall because it didn't evolve. Does that mean evolution doesn't exist? No. Does that mean a deity made roundup ready? No. I think it's worth discussing in the context of a science classroom because it illustrates the practical limits of science, that no scientist would refute.
Let me be the first to refute that you've discovered a "limit" of science. Roundup-ready corn has a scientific explanation. It was created by human beings and human beings are part of nature. You can make theories about roundup-ready corn: "if this corn was created by an intelligent being, as we suspect, then there should be a reason for it to be the way it is. Perhaps it is meant to survive contact with a pesticide. If so, then we should be able to reverse engineer the pesticide, or maybe even detect traces of it. The pesticide should be able to kill some pest that would otherwise harm the corn (otherwise why have the pesticide?). Are there such pests in nature? The society that created roundup-ready corn should have a certain level of biological and chemical proficiency. How would we detect those?" etc.
It would not be scientific to say: "we can't figure out how Roundup-ready corn came to exist and therefore it must have been created by a supernatural being outside the realm of science."
If intelligent designers are serious about their arguments then they must investigate the attributes of the designer using scientific methods. For example, the designer would have to have a very high level of biological competency and would have had to have achieved that a long time ago. The designer isn't visible in this solar system and therefore probably came from another. etc. Once you sketch out such a being and his/her motivations, evolution doesn't seem like such a bad theory.
Possibly, some external stimulus is arranging the observed phenomena to ensure a suitable environment to enable life to exist.
Fine: this is a scientific theory if it proposes a natural stimulus and a test we can use to detect it. If the stimulus is undetectable (not testable) then it isn't a scientific theory. If you use only your initial observation as "proof" of the theory then you don't have a theory. You have an observation. A theory generalizes from data to predictions.
This definition has some holes in it, but "liberal" in the US means left-leaning (more centralized government, welfare state, etc), whereas liberal in Canada and Europe and most other places means the same thing as "conservative" means in the US (or used to mean anyway), including smaller government, lower taxes, less government control, pro-business, etc.
That isn't true of Canada. There are several kinds of Liberals in Canada. Big-L Liberals are members of the Liberal party, as Big-R Republicans are members of the American Republican party. This party has a progressive ideology but tends to govern in a centrist manner, similar to Britain's Labour or America's Democrats ("an end to welfare as we know it", "don't ask, don't tell", etc.). Small-L liberal could mean one of several things in Canada, just as it does in the US:
social liberals, who are in favour of reducing governmental envolvement in personal choices like marriage, drug use, etc.
Progressive liberals, who are in favour of using government finances to "free" people from poverty.
Classic liberals, who would reduce government control in general (now more often called Libertarians or neoliberals).
I do not believe that the classic liberal sense of the term is particularly prevalent in Europe and I know it is not in Canada. In Canada, Liberal means "a political party willing to adopt any ideology that will allow it to stay in power."
For example, is padding included in the width of an element, or not? It depends on whether you're using IE or Mozilla.... Which browser complies with the standards, or do they both? Well, that's anybody's guess.
No: you could just read the standards or documents written about them:
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/box.html :
"In the W3C box model, the width of an element gives the width of the content of the box, excluding padding and border."..."Mozilla, Konqueror/Safari and Opera 6 and lower follow W3C's standards."
Google can exert considerable control over Firefox just by employing developers to add the features they want. They could even fork Firefox to have absolute control over their variant. What would they want with Opera, which costs money, has a smaller user base and has a code base that is probably less familiar to Google developers than Firefox (especially given that some Google employees work almost full-time on Firefox!).
s. But often times folks have to change their passwords so often they end up writing them on sticky notes, or choosing the same easy eight-character password over and over and over, with the only variant being the numbers stuck at the end. And this is good for security how?
Did you RTFA? It isn't about passwords "folks" use to access applications. It is about the passwords that applications use to access other applications, and the fact that changing these passwords risks downtimes but not changing them means that anyone with access to the source code or configuration has access to your data collections.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a big moral problem for liberal Western democracies. Most European and North American states, and a good portion of nations in the rest of the world, are founded on the basis that every person is entitled to the same basic rights as the rest. The philosophical rhetoric that underlies these claims needs the postulate that all human beings are somewhat equal--nobody is so much better equipped, morally or intellectually or otherwise, that he can take away the political rights of self determination from other men.
I'm sorry, but that is pure BS. There is no nation in the world that is founded on the belief that there is no difference between Einstein and someone with a mental disability. What makes liberal democracies liberal is that they believe that even those of low (relative) intelligence should have the right to self-determination. This is ensured through a combination of restrictions on governmental authority and an open electoral system. There is an intelligence threshold at which you are self-conscious and therefore need self-determination. It doesn't matter how far other people go beyond that threshold.
It is pretty simple to prove that these new findings would have no impact on our core Liberal beliefs. It has been easy to test "IQ" for decades now. If we wanted to disallow low-IQ people from voting or controlling their own lives, we could have done so decades ago. If we find the genes for intelligence that makes it no easier to determine who is actually going to end up intelligent (as measured by IQ) after education. It would actually be less precise to use genes. And even LESS precise to use racial categories.
The foreboding threat of world disaster from explosive population growth could turn out to be overly alarmist, say the authors of a new demographic study. Their forecast shows there's a high chance that the world's population will stop growing before the end of the 21st century. It suggests that the total number of people may peak in 70 years or so at about 9 billion people, compared with 6.1 billion today.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/08/0For citizens. Enemy combatants seem to have no rights whatsoever.
This is all way too reminiscent of the whole Massachusetts-forcing-Walmart-to-carry-Plan-B, most slashdotters tend to oppose the government mindset and yet when it comes to linux they fall right into that mindset.
Where in the post or the thread did someone ask for a government bill demanding Linux marketing from Dell?
Imagine that, EXECUTIVES who are overpaid and underworked are criticizing the scientists who they force to work long hours for pay that while not exactly meager, comes nowhere near theirs.
No, you totally misread the quote. They did not criticize scientists. Rather they said that there are two few: "the reluctance of some college graduates to pursue careers in science and engineering". Also: it is easy to make the case that executives are overpaid, but in my experience they are seldom underworked. Most executives do not work 9 to 5. Many work all day, every day.
And of course, when things go wrong, it's always the workers' fault, NEVER EVER the saintly executives who were only looking out for our well being,
That's also bullshit. Look at the turnover of executives at Apple during the bad days. Where is Carly Fiona now? Do a news Google for "XM Radio." You'll read about a director who stepped down just today because of mounting losses. Ultimately the executives are responsible. If the scientists fuck up (as they can, they are human) then it is the executives who hired the wrong scientists or didn't lead them correctly. The average tenure of a CEO at a big company is actually quite short. Executives at Enron may well go to jail.
Or maybe I'm just cynical :P
Yes, you are. There is plenty wrong with our system, including outrageous CEO compensation. It weakens, rather than strengthens, your case when you spout bullshit like executives are not accountable or don't work hard. They are and they do. They may not suffer financially when they screw up as the rest of us do. That may not be fair. But that doesn't mean that what they do is unimportant or unmeasured. When a company stumbles, the CEO takes the blame, not the scientists. Look at Apple. Look at Quark. Look at Dynergy. Look at Diebold. Look at C&W: "Chief executive Francesco Caio resigned from the company as it reported it would fall significantly short of profit forecasts for the coming year."
It's quite true that the CCP's efforts to protect China's conservative values, through censorship, enjoy wide support among the population--just as a majority of French and German citizens support their governments' suppression of Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial, and arguably rightly so.
How can the Chinese people have an informed view of whether the censorship is good if they do not know the scope of the suppression of information? And how can they know the scope if that itself is a subject of censorship. Furthermore, censoring information about Tianneman is only "conservative" in the sense that it "conserves" the ruling party's monopoly on power. It isn't conservative in a family values Western sense.
In response: people have a right to do what they want so long as they do not exercise force against others. This right is absolute. If the man wants not to save the child, we may call him a depraved individual with a set of values far outside the set of those which sane human beings may hold, we may. We may not however initiate the use of force against him by imprisoning him for no action. The same is true in the case of medication. If you contractually ablige yourself to save another's life, you must; if you don't, you are under no obligation to do so. Even if a law is passed allowing theft (of a drug in this case) it is still wrong.
That's an interesting set of beliefs. But that's all they are: your beliefs. The vast majority of people believe otherwise and find your belief system alien.
I don't suppose Sophos would have sold them if there was any mileage left.
This statement makes no sense economically. There was a buyer and there was a seller. Your claim is that the buyer would not have sold it unless it was worthless. According to this theory, nobody should ever buy used cars because people would not get rid of them until they are about to break down. Nobody would sell houses until the pipes are about to burst. Etc. But an economist would say merely that the buyer values the acquisition more than the seller. In this case, the buyer is a company that claims to believe that ActiveState will succeed if it is allowed to focus without the distraction of being part of an anti-spam company. The seller claims to agree. Why should we doubt them? The buyer, in particular, has no incentive to lie, and I presume that they've done more analysis of ActiveState's growth potential than a random /. poster.
"Pender Financial Group Corporation (TSX-V: PDF) announced on January 30, 2006 that it has entered into an agreement with Sophos, Inc., a subsidiary of Sophos Plc, to acquire the business, assets and liabilities of the ActiveState division of Sophos, Inc. for the purchase price of US $2.25 million."
In other words, Sophos valued the anti-spam stuff at more than $20 Million.
I wouldn't be surprised if Jobs is donating money to charity anonymously, and if so he would be wise to not take the bait.
Two thoughts.
First: one can estimate the amount of money Jobs could have donated anonymously based upon the amount of money he's taken out of his various companies as cash. If the vast majority of his money is in large blocks of stock then it is public knowledge that he hasn't given away a big proportion.
Second: I have always been discreet about my giving. I don't go to the effort of going through an anonymizer fund (and don't really see the point -- how would anyone I actually know find out about my dontations to charities?). But I don't talk about donations because I don't want to seem like a show-off. But you have to walk a fine line. If it "seems" like people around are not giving, then the level of giving in a community will drop. There is probably a good reason that churches pass around an offering tray rather than asking people to discreetly donate on their way in. Especially at the level of billionares, this is absolutely crucial. At various times in history the idea that billionaires "owe" society charity becomes more or less fashionable. When it is very fashionable, it can make a big difference (look at all of the stuff that still bears Carnegie's name). I think that it is great that this journalist is calling Jobs out. I think it was great when Ted Turner called other billionares out. A press release from one billionaire that spurs another billionaire into action could save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives. Therefore giving publically is better than giving privately. IMO, Bill Gates is doing exactly the right thing with his money.
You are incorrect when you say that giving away millions is not a sacrifice for Bill Gates. He is sacrificing power, which is really what obscene amounts of money translate into. As I understand it, the Gates foundation has 27 Billion dollars. For that amount of money he could own a much bigger chunk of Disney than Jobs does. But Jobs would rather own a chunk of Disney, and use that power to support his other ventures like iTunes. Of course Bill Gates lives in the same level of material comfort whether he gives away a dollar or 27 billion. But people like him and Jobs stopped thinking about their lives in terms of material comfort after their first few millions. Instead, they measure themselves in terms of ability to weild power and control important aspects of the economy. Gates makes sacrifices there and Jobs does not. Does Gates sacrifice as much as Mother Theresa? Or her equivalents in our local communities? No. But is his level of giving admirable and beyond the average. Absolutely. It is VERY counterproductive for people like you to piss on the philanthropists work. Imagine if Bill Gates sees that sort of sentiment in the world and says: "If people are going to criticize me no matter what I do, fuck em, I'll keep the money." That would lead to the deaths of billions of people. I would much rather reinforce the social norm that generous giving by billionares is admirable and expected.
I just listened to an interview with Dennett and although I agree with you that he says consciousness as something unmeasurable and distinct from processing (because it is intrinsically subjective), I didn't get the impression that he felt that a computer COULD NOT in principle have consciousness. He seemed quite open minded on those sorts of issues. Maybe rats have consciousness. Maybe not. Maybe an advanced computer could acquire consciousness. Maybe not. Maybe bacteria or chess programs have consciousness. But probably not.
I think Slashdot is informal, and therefore typos don't matter that much.
"Baseball is just a game and therefore dropped balls don't matter that much."
"Nordstroms is just a retailer and therefore cleanliness doesn't matter that much."
"The Daily Show is just a comedy show and therefore a nice set doesn't matter that much."
In this economy, we all provide services to each other. In order to show respect for each other, those providing services strive for perfection. They don't achieve it, but they strive for it. You do not. You publically state that professionalism is not important to you. You aren't striving to be like "professional" sites like the New York Times. In my opinion, that's what annoys people. That you may fail (given your limited resources available) is acceptable. That you refuse to even try is not.
I think that what bothers us complainers is the claim that professionalism just doesn't seem to matter on SlashDot. It would be one thing for you to say: "I try hard on grammar and spelling but sometimes I slip up. I keep working on it and I'm getting better every day." It's another thing for you to say: "I just don't think that being a professional-quality editor is my job."
I make computer programs. People don't buy those programs for the spelling in dialog boxes. But I try hard to make the spelling correct. That's just professionalism, and professionalism shows respect for my customers. If a customer reports a grammar or spelling mistake in my software then I apologize and correct it. I don't try to say tht professionalism isn't my job. If you're providing a service for people then you should strive to do it right rather than claiming that it is good enough to get some aspects right and ignore others.
As an aside, for awhile we actually had an editor reading Slashdot articles and correcting grammatical mistakes. Turns out it doesn't really matter much. People found other things to complain about. It's almost as if some percentage of the population wants to complain. And they will find something to complain about no matter what. Perhaps by leaving a few typos on the site, I am making their day a little easier! Leave them some low hanging fruit I guess.
Nobody is asking you to be perfect and therefore shut up the complainers. They are asking you to acknowledge that professionalism is important and that perfection is something that is worth striving for. The frustrating thing is that your opening position is that getting things right (especially spelling, grammar and dupes) is not even a goal. Nowhere in your essay did you say that it is even something you are working on or concerned about.
If you started putting effort into these areas, then over time it would become just second nature. That's what happens with "real-world" editors. Being able to instantly notice spelling and grammar mistakes is a skill to be proud of, not to denigrate. (and no, I don't have that skill, editing is not part of my job)
Job descriptions trail language popularity because they are driven by the need to replace people who were working on pre-existing projects. If every programmer decided to day to switch to Intercal, that wouldn't seriously show up in the job postings until a few years from now when the code needs to be maintained.
And the pointy-haired-bosses will continue to shout that *all* versions of Windows must be supported. That means more development, more testing, more installers, more deep sighs.
You act like this is a new problem and not just the situation that the industry has been in since the beginning. What about supporting old versions of Linux? Old versions of DOS? Old versions of Java? Old versions of Python?
The "write once run anywhere" of Java is becoming more attractive all the time.
Right: Java doesn't have a version skew problem at all. Not at all. It's never the case that a minor patch to the JVM will break a bunch of programs. Never. If you believe that you're living in a fantasy world.
In terms of evolution maybe the soceities where these things are allowed to happen should not be the ones to survive...
Evolution does not work at a societal level. Evolution works at an individual level. Wiping out a society has no value from the point of view of natural selection. There is no "allows women to be raped gene". That's culture. Even if apathy or sociopathy are genetic, those genes exist in every country and merely express themselves differently based upon the governmental system in place.
Also true enough- but you see, that raises the same problem of predictibility as ID raises. Since we don't actually know the mind of God without being God, we can't predict natural selection under ID with any accuracy. Likewise, since we don't know the random mutations ahead of time, we can't predict natural selection under evolution with any accuracy.
That is total and complete BS. Scientists predict the results of natural selection all of the time. Have you never heard them say: "If we overuse antibiotics then we will evolve a pathogen that is resistent to antibiotics?" or "If you confine large animals to an island, then they will evolve to be smaller?" Each individual mutation is random, just as every lottery ticket purchase is random. That doesn't mean the overall result is random. The lottery always makes money, because the whole system is rigged, just as with natural selection. You could do natural selection experiments in your basement. I've heard that crickets selected for longevity can evolve into a variant that lives twice as long as normal crickets.
If one was to find a kernel of roundup ready and tried to figure out how regular corn had evolved into roundup ready you'd hit a brick wall because it didn't evolve. Does that mean evolution doesn't exist? No. Does that mean a deity made roundup ready? No. I think it's worth discussing in the context of a science classroom because it illustrates the practical limits of science, that no scientist would refute.
Let me be the first to refute that you've discovered a "limit" of science. Roundup-ready corn has a scientific explanation. It was created by human beings and human beings are part of nature. You can make theories about roundup-ready corn: "if this corn was created by an intelligent being, as we suspect, then there should be a reason for it to be the way it is. Perhaps it is meant to survive contact with a pesticide. If so, then we should be able to reverse engineer the pesticide, or maybe even detect traces of it. The pesticide should be able to kill some pest that would otherwise harm the corn (otherwise why have the pesticide?). Are there such pests in nature? The society that created roundup-ready corn should have a certain level of biological and chemical proficiency. How would we detect those?" etc.
It would not be scientific to say: "we can't figure out how Roundup-ready corn came to exist and therefore it must have been created by a supernatural being outside the realm of science."
If intelligent designers are serious about their arguments then they must investigate the attributes of the designer using scientific methods. For example, the designer would have to have a very high level of biological competency and would have had to have achieved that a long time ago. The designer isn't visible in this solar system and therefore probably came from another. etc. Once you sketch out such a being and his/her motivations, evolution doesn't seem like such a bad theory.
Possibly, some external stimulus is arranging the observed phenomena to ensure a suitable environment to enable life to exist.
Fine: this is a scientific theory if it proposes a natural stimulus and a test we can use to detect it. If the stimulus is undetectable (not testable) then it isn't a scientific theory. If you use only your initial observation as "proof" of the theory then you don't have a theory. You have an observation. A theory generalizes from data to predictions.
This definition has some holes in it, but "liberal" in the US means left-leaning (more centralized government, welfare state, etc), whereas liberal in Canada and Europe and most other places means the same thing as "conservative" means in the US (or used to mean anyway), including smaller government, lower taxes, less government control, pro-business, etc.
That isn't true of Canada. There are several kinds of Liberals in Canada. Big-L Liberals are members of the Liberal party, as Big-R Republicans are members of the American Republican party. This party has a progressive ideology but tends to govern in a centrist manner, similar to Britain's Labour or America's Democrats ("an end to welfare as we know it", "don't ask, don't tell", etc.). Small-L liberal could mean one of several things in Canada, just as it does in the US:
I do not believe that the classic liberal sense of the term is particularly prevalent in Europe and I know it is not in Canada. In Canada, Liberal means "a political party willing to adopt any ideology that will allow it to stay in power."
For example, is padding included in the width of an element, or not? It depends on whether you're using IE or Mozilla. ... Which browser complies with the standards, or do they both? Well, that's anybody's guess.
No: you could just read the standards or documents written about them:
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/box.html : "In the W3C box model, the width of an element gives the width of the content of the box, excluding padding and border."..."Mozilla, Konqueror/Safari and Opera 6 and lower follow W3C's standards."
Google can exert considerable control over Firefox just by employing developers to add the features they want. They could even fork Firefox to have absolute control over their variant. What would they want with Opera, which costs money, has a smaller user base and has a code base that is probably less familiar to Google developers than Firefox (especially given that some Google employees work almost full-time on Firefox!).
I don't understand what scientists you are referring to. He is a religious studies professor.
s. But often times folks have to change their passwords so often they end up writing them on sticky notes, or choosing the same easy eight-character password over and over and over, with the only variant being the numbers stuck at the end. And this is good for security how?
Did you RTFA? It isn't about passwords "folks" use to access applications. It is about the passwords that applications use to access other applications, and the fact that changing these passwords risks downtimes but not changing them means that anyone with access to the source code or configuration has access to your data collections.