The problem with philosophy is that it does not have a lossless formalized language structure in which ideas can be expressed and even more important; proved. The sciences at least have mathematics while philosophy has symbolic logic which is under utilized but also not expressive enough to describe many important philosophical topics. You read a David Chalmers paper and you think "this might be true but most of it is unprovable". You read a physics paper and you say "this is might be true and here is how it could be proved". In essence Wittgenstein was right in the sense philosophy is nothing but confusion over trying to describe things that are indescribable.
There is of course a Dark Side to all this. For example Beryl is a fork of compiz (a branch of compiz really) which came into existence because the maintainer of compiz would not apply some of the community's patches. So Beryl is basically compiz but with a more liberal policy on accepting patches and implementing code. The problem is when you are too liberal and your project loses a clear achievable goal. So instead of doing a few tasks really well it becomes doing a lot of tasks good enough. Eventually many of these "all-for-one" projects collapse under their own weight. Remember Enlightenment? It wanted to be the one WM/DE to rule of them all but because it tried to be everything to everyone it only achieved minimal success.
So Linus is right in one regard that having community input is important. But also on the other hand having too much input and being too lenient with feature implementations will only bog your project down. As a person who is the leader of a successful and well maintained project you'd think he would take this into account before his rant.
Re:Wikipedias problem is that they want to be more
on
Is Wikipedia Failing?
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· Score: 1
I wholeheartedly agree. And it's not so much that Wikipedia is not reputable but that humans themselves are not reputable. And since Wikipedia is more human its articles will only reflect that fact.
In general, you shouldn't even go looking for security holes without permission. If you notice my door is hanging open and tell me, I'll be appreciative, however if I catch you jiggling the door knobs, checking the windows, etc I'm likely to interpret that has malicious, even if you intent is just to check for vulnerabilities. Ask first. Same with computers. If you run across something, by all means tell the person in charge. However don't sniff around looking for holes unless they've given you the OK.
I'm sorry a computer is not like a house. If your neighbor's house is broken into there isn't a chance afterwards it will become a base of operations for thieves to break into your house. The house-computer equivalence fails because houses are not interconnected as tightly as a network of computers. The security of another person's computer can be very important to the security of your computer. Those who have a deep knowledge of computer networks recognize this immediately. This is why looking for bugs in other computer systems and networks in the end is good for everyone. Then again to the outsider who thinks their computer is like their house this will seem like an intrusion and malicious but again a house is a not a computer.
Explain to me how point 4 is feasible? A convicted monopolist suing non-customers. Yes they could technically do it but is it worth it to Microsoft? And what would be the government's response? Could higher courts overturn a favorable Microsoft decision? Is there some precedent for companies suing non-customers? Also who specifically would Microsoft sue? I think many quickly gloss over these contingencies and in the end overlook the fact how HARD point 4 would be for Microsoft.
Also on point 1 there has been no indication from Novell that they will now knowingly start using patented Microsoft code. Even if Novell is lying how could they get away with it? Would Novell coders be willing to perjure themselves in court?
AIGLX is different than Beryl and you don't need AIGLX to run Beryl or Compiz. AIGLX is the open source method to achieve accelerated indirect GLX. XGL is another method and Nvidia uses it's own method. The thing that ties all this together is the GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap extension.
As far as the thumbnail plugin it should be noted that to achieve Vista like behavior you have to use awkward hacks. This is until input redirection is pushed into the xorg tree.
There is no real difference between Beryl and Compiz except for user configurations. If you did a little detective work you would find out most of the new features in Beryl actually come from Compiz. Also in the case of plugins, the vast majority of Beryl specific plugins have been ported to Compiz.
Yes, but they emerge necessarily; they have to be part of the theory.
Not true it would be possible to have a string theory without strings. Of course it might be some trivial theory but the fact that it is possible should be enough to understand that "strings" are by themselves not necessary.
As far as somehow observing strings it is true we could directly observe empirical data which is implied by "stringy physics" but the concept of a string is a philosophical concept. It has no real existence other than it exists in mathematical formulas. Not to say mathematics doesn't have a physical existence but rather what the word/concept "string" points towards is not a "physical" thing in the Cartesian sense. It is more likely it has some sort of informatic-theoretical existence.
We could imagine some experiment in the distance future where the energy required to reach Planck level physics is accessible. What would be observed is empirical data that matches a mathematical formula where the variable for "string" is isolated. It's not like the concept of a rock where you can pick one up and actually confirm its existence.
I guess in a way you could say this about all scientific entities. I think Bas van Fraassen says something along these lines. However an electron is surely more "real" than a string.
Well he said that "strings" are not fundamental to the theory but emergent phenomena. And as far as observing strings how do you independently observe the smallest thing in the universe?
Actually by definition superstrings could never be observed. Also it's interesting to note that Edward Witten even declared that it's not even necessary to the theory that these strings exist.
The point is not the lack of experimental data but rather string theory as a theory lends none to be discovered.
I think it's more about us as human beings reaching our "biological" limit on how much we can understand the nature of universe. It's somewhat naive to think that human beings could ever truly grasp the totality of the universe. So in the end we have a somewhat unsatisfying theory that does not explain/predict everything.
Your example of AI is very telling in that previous AI theorists believed that you could create something as complex as yourself with a few simple rules. Yet this is not the case, you have to "grow" an AI not create one. So again this goes back to our biological and physical limits of what we can actually understand. And therefore what theories we can create.
So to me String Theory (as it now currently stands with near infinite string vacua) is a denial of science being "Newtonian" in which there is no limit to what we can understand. Also along the lines of Descartes who believed human thought is universal and infinite. So you have scientists who still grasp to these concepts of the limitless potential of human understanding and see String theory as a threat to this idea. So they attack it and declare that it's not "Science". When in the end it is them who don't really understand the meaning of "Science".
I guarantee you that Novell will be able to distribute GPLv3 software. Even assuming the Microsoft-Novell deal as it stands now will infringe on GPLv3 I'm more than confident that it can be tweaked so Novell can distribute GPLv3 software. Everyone and their mother is screaming about GPLv3 and all this time Microsoft/Novell have not changed the deal. Either they're stupid or they already planned for GPLv3.
It's easy enough to say that, but Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank AG, and AIG Technologies are not likely to be very happy when the next version of Samba rolls out and they can't use it because it is licensed under version 3 of the GPL and Novell can't distribute GPLv3 apps and still maintain its deal with Microsoft.
You sure about this in that GPLv3 will include retroactive clauses? My impression from Eben Moglen's comments is that GPLv3 will try to prevent these types of deals in the future but not ones in the past.
However let's assume Eben Moglen meant a retroactive clause, there is nothing stopping Novell/MS from tweaking their deal to fit into GPLv3 parameters. The Novell/MS lawyers were smart enough to sidestep GPLv2 and from their current posture it looks like they could do the same with GPLv3.
The rich and powerful need the State more than anyone else. That's the big secret. The rich introduce the State as protection from the poor. It's not normally the poor and weak who create the State but the rich and powerful. See hundreds of years of history.
I don't think guns have ever been a politically effective way to control a crowd. Mainly because the political fallout that follows; by using lethal force you legitimatize whatever political cause you were trying to stop. Also depending on the crowd they might start firing back or overrun the outnumbered police.
The Boston Massacre, Bloody Sunday (1905 and 1972), and Kent State shootings are all examples of such shootings that resulted is a major political loss. This new nonlethal energy weapon based method allows for effective crowd control without the political nastiness. Which if anything is why it's dangerous because it allows the powerful to stay powerful.
Crowd control in an of itself is not a bad idea if that's what you're getting at.
I think the problem is if "crowd control" is as simple as flipping a switch then it becomes much more susceptible to abuse. Imagine an oppressive government using such a device on a crowd of protesters. Then again to circumvent such a device might be easier than we think. If anything it might just make "crowd control" more violent. Instead of an angry mob throwing back cans of tear gas they might start using RPGs and mortars.
If anything Novell is jumping the gun and getting ahead of the competition by including it into their version of OpenOffice before it hits upstream. I wouldn't call such a thing a fork.
Red Hat has undoubtedly the most number of open source developers. Novell is most likely second and then maybe IBM/Intel are tied for third. But Novell contributions shouldn't be discounted. XGL/compiz/GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap are all from the same man, David Reveman who was hired by Novell. His Novell backed push for a 3D desktop pretty much forced Red Hat to respond with AIGLX which again uses GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap. Also Robert Love of Novell was essential in implementing inotify into the 2.6.x kernel.
The idea that Novell is just working on Mono and OpenOffice is simply incorrect.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with philosophy is that it does not have a lossless formalized language structure in which ideas can be expressed and even more important; proved. The sciences at least have mathematics while philosophy has symbolic logic which is under utilized but also not expressive enough to describe many important philosophical topics. You read a David Chalmers paper and you think "this might be true but most of it is unprovable". You read a physics paper and you say "this is might be true and here is how it could be proved". In essence Wittgenstein was right in the sense philosophy is nothing but confusion over trying to describe things that are indescribable.
Doesn't point 3 of the "teacher-life-cycle" explain when your Dad feels this way i.e. "all kids are lazy"?
There is of course a Dark Side to all this. For example Beryl is a fork of compiz (a branch of compiz really) which came into existence because the maintainer of compiz would not apply some of the community's patches. So Beryl is basically compiz but with a more liberal policy on accepting patches and implementing code. The problem is when you are too liberal and your project loses a clear achievable goal. So instead of doing a few tasks really well it becomes doing a lot of tasks good enough. Eventually many of these "all-for-one" projects collapse under their own weight. Remember Enlightenment? It wanted to be the one WM/DE to rule of them all but because it tried to be everything to everyone it only achieved minimal success.
So Linus is right in one regard that having community input is important. But also on the other hand having too much input and being too lenient with feature implementations will only bog your project down. As a person who is the leader of a successful and well maintained project you'd think he would take this into account before his rant.
I wholeheartedly agree. And it's not so much that Wikipedia is not reputable but that humans themselves are not reputable. And since Wikipedia is more human its articles will only reflect that fact.
In general, you shouldn't even go looking for security holes without permission. If you notice my door is hanging open and tell me, I'll be appreciative, however if I catch you jiggling the door knobs, checking the windows, etc I'm likely to interpret that has malicious, even if you intent is just to check for vulnerabilities. Ask first. Same with computers. If you run across something, by all means tell the person in charge. However don't sniff around looking for holes unless they've given you the OK.
I'm sorry a computer is not like a house. If your neighbor's house is broken into there isn't a chance afterwards it will become a base of operations for thieves to break into your house. The house-computer equivalence fails because houses are not interconnected as tightly as a network of computers. The security of another person's computer can be very important to the security of your computer. Those who have a deep knowledge of computer networks recognize this immediately. This is why looking for bugs in other computer systems and networks in the end is good for everyone. Then again to the outsider who thinks their computer is like their house this will seem like an intrusion and malicious but again a house is a not a computer.
Explain to me how point 4 is feasible? A convicted monopolist suing non-customers. Yes they could technically do it but is it worth it to Microsoft? And what would be the government's response? Could higher courts overturn a favorable Microsoft decision? Is there some precedent for companies suing non-customers? Also who specifically would Microsoft sue? I think many quickly gloss over these contingencies and in the end overlook the fact how HARD point 4 would be for Microsoft.
Also on point 1 there has been no indication from Novell that they will now knowingly start using patented Microsoft code. Even if Novell is lying how could they get away with it? Would Novell coders be willing to perjure themselves in court?
AIGLX is different than Beryl and you don't need AIGLX to run Beryl or Compiz. AIGLX is the open source method to achieve accelerated indirect GLX. XGL is another method and Nvidia uses it's own method. The thing that ties all this together is the GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap extension.
As far as the thumbnail plugin it should be noted that to achieve Vista like behavior you have to use awkward hacks. This is until input redirection is pushed into the xorg tree.
There is no real difference between Beryl and Compiz except for user configurations. If you did a little detective work you would find out most of the new features in Beryl actually come from Compiz. Also in the case of plugins, the vast majority of Beryl specific plugins have been ported to Compiz.
Sure, I understand Rails offers you the ability to create websites at high speed, but none of the websites it can create is worthwhile.
Well penny-arcade.com and alistapart.com both run on Rails. Those are two sites I deem worthwhile. Then wtf do I know.
Yes, but they emerge necessarily; they have to be part of the theory.
Not true it would be possible to have a string theory without strings. Of course it might be some trivial theory but the fact that it is possible should be enough to understand that "strings" are by themselves not necessary.
As far as somehow observing strings it is true we could directly observe empirical data which is implied by "stringy physics" but the concept of a string is a philosophical concept. It has no real existence other than it exists in mathematical formulas. Not to say mathematics doesn't have a physical existence but rather what the word/concept "string" points towards is not a "physical" thing in the Cartesian sense. It is more likely it has some sort of informatic-theoretical existence.
We could imagine some experiment in the distance future where the energy required to reach Planck level physics is accessible. What would be observed is empirical data that matches a mathematical formula where the variable for "string" is isolated. It's not like the concept of a rock where you can pick one up and actually confirm its existence.
I guess in a way you could say this about all scientific entities. I think Bas van Fraassen says something along these lines. However an electron is surely more "real" than a string.
I am quite sure Witten never said that.
Well he said that "strings" are not fundamental to the theory but emergent phenomena. And as far as observing strings how do you independently observe the smallest thing in the universe?
Actually by definition superstrings could never be observed. Also it's interesting to note that Edward Witten even declared that it's not even necessary to the theory that these strings exist.
The point is not the lack of experimental data but rather string theory as a theory lends none to be discovered.
I think it's more about us as human beings reaching our "biological" limit on how much we can understand the nature of universe. It's somewhat naive to think that human beings could ever truly grasp the totality of the universe. So in the end we have a somewhat unsatisfying theory that does not explain/predict everything.
Your example of AI is very telling in that previous AI theorists believed that you could create something as complex as yourself with a few simple rules. Yet this is not the case, you have to "grow" an AI not create one. So again this goes back to our biological and physical limits of what we can actually understand. And therefore what theories we can create.
So to me String Theory (as it now currently stands with near infinite string vacua) is a denial of science being "Newtonian" in which there is no limit to what we can understand. Also along the lines of Descartes who believed human thought is universal and infinite. So you have scientists who still grasp to these concepts of the limitless potential of human understanding and see String theory as a threat to this idea. So they attack it and declare that it's not "Science". When in the end it is them who don't really understand the meaning of "Science".
You're an idiot.
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
Fuck you Slashdot
I guarantee you that Novell will be able to distribute GPLv3 software. Even assuming the Microsoft-Novell deal as it stands now will infringe on GPLv3 I'm more than confident that it can be tweaked so Novell can distribute GPLv3 software. Everyone and their mother is screaming about GPLv3 and all this time Microsoft/Novell have not changed the deal. Either they're stupid or they already planned for GPLv3.
It's easy enough to say that, but Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank AG, and AIG Technologies are not likely to be very happy when the next version of Samba rolls out and they can't use it because it is licensed under version 3 of the GPL and Novell can't distribute GPLv3 apps and still maintain its deal with Microsoft.
You sure about this in that GPLv3 will include retroactive clauses? My impression from Eben Moglen's comments is that GPLv3 will try to prevent these types of deals in the future but not ones in the past.
However let's assume Eben Moglen meant a retroactive clause, there is nothing stopping Novell/MS from tweaking their deal to fit into GPLv3 parameters. The Novell/MS lawyers were smart enough to sidestep GPLv2 and from their current posture it looks like they could do the same with GPLv3.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
Unless you are poor, black and live in New Orleans.
The rich and powerful need the State more than anyone else. That's the big secret. The rich introduce the State as protection from the poor. It's not normally the poor and weak who create the State but the rich and powerful. See hundreds of years of history.
I don't think guns have ever been a politically effective way to control a crowd. Mainly because the political fallout that follows; by using lethal force you legitimatize whatever political cause you were trying to stop. Also depending on the crowd they might start firing back or overrun the outnumbered police.
The Boston Massacre, Bloody Sunday (1905 and 1972), and Kent State shootings are all examples of such shootings that resulted is a major political loss. This new nonlethal energy weapon based method allows for effective crowd control without the political nastiness. Which if anything is why it's dangerous because it allows the powerful to stay powerful.
Crowd control in an of itself is not a bad idea if that's what you're getting at.
I think the problem is if "crowd control" is as simple as flipping a switch then it becomes much more susceptible to abuse. Imagine an oppressive government using such a device on a crowd of protesters. Then again to circumvent such a device might be easier than we think. If anything it might just make "crowd control" more violent. Instead of an angry mob throwing back cans of tear gas they might start using RPGs and mortars.
Apparently OpenOffice is going to include import filters for the OpenXML format.
If anything Novell is jumping the gun and getting ahead of the competition by including it into their version of OpenOffice before it hits upstream. I wouldn't call such a thing a fork.
Red Hat has undoubtedly the most number of open source developers. Novell is most likely second and then maybe IBM/Intel are tied for third. But Novell contributions shouldn't be discounted. XGL/compiz/GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap are all from the same man, David Reveman who was hired by Novell. His Novell backed push for a 3D desktop pretty much forced Red Hat to respond with AIGLX which again uses GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap. Also Robert Love of Novell was essential in implementing inotify into the 2.6.x kernel.
The idea that Novell is just working on Mono and OpenOffice is simply incorrect.
is whether or not there exists a bong so large that Jesus himself could not clear? Hrm....