The intent was sow a general distrust of scientists, making it appear that that consensus is rare.
What they should be doing is educating the public in how science should work in Real Life. That its, when it comes to scientific fact, consensus is meaningless. It doesn't matter if all the scientists you ask agree that something is true if in fact it isn't. As an example, if you had asked scientists in 1890 if it were possible to travel faster than light, you'd find a clear consensus that it was. Did that make it true? Of course not. If you asked natural philosophers in the time of Newton if the spectrum extended past either red or violet, consensus would say it didn't, but it does. I'm not saying Global Warming (or Global Climate Change if you prefer) doesn't exist, or that industrialization isn't contributing to it, but that consensus among the people studying it isn't going to change the facts if that consensus is wrong.
So do I, but only a pipe. And, like almost all pipe smokers, I don't inhale the smoke. My chances of developing lung cancer are exactly the same as if I didn't smoke at all. If you must smoke, smoke a pipe. Or cigars, as you don't inhale them either.
Exactly. If it were possible to show some of what the poster added, it might be useful instead of a wasted effort as it is now. Alas, even if that were fixed, it wouldn't make it worth my time to bother with the "Discussion 2.0" so don't fix it on my account.
I'm not a subscriber, but I got offered it when it first came out. I went through the tutorial and started using it. Within less than five minutes, I went into my Preferences and turned the damned thing off, never to try it again. I hated it.
Among other things, its way of giving you a "teaster" of a comment was worse than useless. Giving you five or ten words of a reply doesn't tell you anything worth knowing when the comment starts out with a quote from the Parent. Most of its other "gosh-wow, shiny!" features are things I find not only pointless, but useless, such as changing the threshold of replies based on the score of the Parent. What difference does that make? The reply stands on its own value, not on that of its parent or grandparent.
All in all, I found it something that badly detracted from my Slashdot experience, and I never want to be subjected to it again. Please, editors, let those of us who like it as it is continue to read/. the way we do now.
To some extent, that's what my sister did. She bowls left-handed, but plays golf right-handed. She also uses her right hand for the mouse. Not everybody's that flexable, however.
As the son and the brother of lefties, I understand how hard it can be. However, I also know that there are left-handed scissors if you look around a little. HTH, HAND.
Speaking as a former Earthlink employee, going back to when they only had about 25,000 customers, no it isn't. Yes, Sky and a few other founders are Scientologists, but they had a rigid policy against proselityzing at work. Not once in the 7.5 years I worked there did I ever hear a pitch from them, or any other denomination. I have both good and bad memories of that time, but one thing they really believed in was freedom of religion, including freedom from preaching.
I, OTOH, was working for Earthlink when the merger came. Our stock price dropped by well over 40%, never to recover. When I saw the way we were expected to configure Mindspring customers, I was horrified, because Mindspring was, among other things, using three DNS servers on the same Class C; one router goes and no DNS! I have to say that at least half the things I found bad about Earthlink in all the time I was there, came from Mindspring. I'm sure your POV is valid, and I'm not disputing you. I just wanted to show things from the other side.
That being said, even before the Earthlink/Mindspring thing, Earthlink had changed from a fairly savvy ISP to a company that jumped on every bandwagon that came down the pike without asking itself if the idea was any good. Thinking back, I suspect that about a year or so before the merger, the marketing department got control of the company, and it really showed. This is just another example of what happens when technical decisions are made by people with neither the undestanding to do the right thing nor an interest in learning what the issues really are.
The data-center in question was in Pasadena, CA, way too near the San Andreas Fault. That's why we had 6 OC48s going out in different directions. I don't know why they picked that location, it may have simply been the only place where they could get the space they needed at a good price.
In some areas, two lines aren't enough. I worked for an ISP with a data-center near a major fault line. They had six different OC48s going out in different directions to make sure that if the data-center survived, it would have at least one connection to the outside world. Of course, most places don't need that much reduncancy, but putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea.
We can always use the names of gods and goddesses from various literatures. Who knows; eventually there might be planets named Om, Offler, Nuzzem and Anoia. I doubt, however, there will ever be a planet named after Dibbler.
Because TNOs collectively are a lot different from the planets. They're smaller, and their orbits are much more erratic. It's very likely that their origin is very different from the planets.
The orbit isn't a problem. If they're big enough to fit the definition for a planet, they're planets. If not, they aren't. No problem in either case.
No, we're not. We're just running out of major Roman gods. There are several different scads of gods we haven't used yet: Egyptian, Babylonian, Chinese, African, Aztec, Inca, the list goes on and on.
They demote pluto because it hasn't cleared the neighborhood of its orbit because its orbit intersects the orbit of Neptune.
Actually, it doesn't. If it did, there'd be the possibility of collision, and by now, they'd have collided. If you look at the orbits in three dimensions, you'll see that when the "cross," they're still several billion miles apart, even if both planets are at the "crossing point" at the same time.
There are millions of trans-Neptunian objects. If Pluto is a planet, than so are many of them.
So? If there's more trans-Neptunian objects out there big enough to be called planets, our system has more planets. What's the big deal? There's nothing magic about the number 9 (or 8) as the number of planets. When Uranus was discovered, the number of known planets increased; it increased again with Neptune. If we find more planets out there, it will increase yet again. No big deal.
I should have known better than to think I could have a reasonable discussion with a person that used the word 'fanboi'
And here I thought we'd been having a reasonable discussion, even though neither one of us expected to persuade the other. Oh well, I think we've gotten to the "beating a dead horse" stage. Thanx for the conversation.
I'm not saying people shouldn't use linux because it's not ready. People should use linux, because the software is there. I'm trying to explain why people aren't using linux.
If so, you've never mentioned it before. I agree that people aren't using Linux largely because most of the dealers don't provide it preinstalled, but that's not the only way to get it. However, I find it interesting that you now say the software is there, when earlier you were insisting it wasn't.
If anybody is advocating waiting in this discussion it is you.
Wrong. I've never suggested people should wait before trying Linux, I've been trying to show why you don't need to wait. As to what is my plan, I think that getting more and more people to use Linux at home is the best way to get it accepted, especially if you can start them off with it instead of converting them from Windows. That way, there will be a slow but growing grass-roots movement to get Linux into the office because that's what the employees know and understand. Remember, the whole point of Apple's giving Macs to schools is to build a generation of MacUsers. Why not try the same thing with Linux?
It is dangerous to say that it's "ready" before all the pieces are in place because it allows people to overlook important details.
And with this, we come full circle, right back to my original point. As long as there's any piece that people can claim isn't in place, there will be those who will say it's not ready yet. I say it is, and that the biggest obsticle it has is perfectionists like you. Let people start to try it; let a few Aunt Minnies learn it. So what if there are a few small things you can't do the way you want? As more and more people try it, some will switch, some won't. In either case, it will provide more incentive to fill in the missing pieces. Waiting until they're all there is pointless because the puzzle isn't static; it's continually growing. No, I say Linux is good enough now, and getting more non-geeks to try it will only increase the incentive for developers to do what they do best.
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What they should be doing is educating the public in how science should work in Real Life. That its, when it comes to scientific fact, consensus is meaningless. It doesn't matter if all the scientists you ask agree that something is true if in fact it isn't. As an example, if you had asked scientists in 1890 if it were possible to travel faster than light, you'd find a clear consensus that it was. Did that make it true? Of course not. If you asked natural philosophers in the time of Newton if the spectrum extended past either red or violet, consensus would say it didn't, but it does. I'm not saying Global Warming (or Global Climate Change if you prefer) doesn't exist, or that industrialization isn't contributing to it, but that consensus among the people studying it isn't going to change the facts if that consensus is wrong.
So do I, but only a pipe. And, like almost all pipe smokers, I don't inhale the smoke. My chances of developing lung cancer are exactly the same as if I didn't smoke at all. If you must smoke, smoke a pipe. Or cigars, as you don't inhale them either.
This sounds like just what the world needs: an easier way to become so indunated with news that you never have time for anything else.
Skip the ads and go right to the story.
To quote (approximately) President Andrew Jackson, "The court has rendered its judgement. Now, let's see them enforce it."
Exactly. If it were possible to show some of what the poster added, it might be useful instead of a wasted effort as it is now. Alas, even if that were fixed, it wouldn't make it worth my time to bother with the "Discussion 2.0" so don't fix it on my account.
Among other things, its way of giving you a "teaster" of a comment was worse than useless. Giving you five or ten words of a reply doesn't tell you anything worth knowing when the comment starts out with a quote from the Parent. Most of its other "gosh-wow, shiny!" features are things I find not only pointless, but useless, such as changing the threshold of replies based on the score of the Parent. What difference does that make? The reply stands on its own value, not on that of its parent or grandparent.
All in all, I found it something that badly detracted from my Slashdot experience, and I never want to be subjected to it again. Please, editors, let those of us who like it as it is continue to read /. the way we do now.
You'd have to ask her; I don't consider it any of my business.
To some extent, that's what my sister did. She bowls left-handed, but plays golf right-handed. She also uses her right hand for the mouse. Not everybody's that flexable, however.
As the son and the brother of lefties, I understand how hard it can be. However, I also know that there are left-handed scissors if you look around a little. HTH, HAND.
Yes. I know. I'm the one who pointed you in that direction; remember?
Slow readers? There are a lot of people out there surfing the Internet that only read a few words a minute.
Speaking as a former Earthlink employee, going back to when they only had about 25,000 customers, no it isn't. Yes, Sky and a few other founders are Scientologists, but they had a rigid policy against proselityzing at work. Not once in the 7.5 years I worked there did I ever hear a pitch from them, or any other denomination. I have both good and bad memories of that time, but one thing they really believed in was freedom of religion, including freedom from preaching.
That being said, even before the Earthlink/Mindspring thing, Earthlink had changed from a fairly savvy ISP to a company that jumped on every bandwagon that came down the pike without asking itself if the idea was any good. Thinking back, I suspect that about a year or so before the merger, the marketing department got control of the company, and it really showed. This is just another example of what happens when technical decisions are made by people with neither the undestanding to do the right thing nor an interest in learning what the issues really are.
The data-center in question was in Pasadena, CA, way too near the San Andreas Fault. That's why we had 6 OC48s going out in different directions. I don't know why they picked that location, it may have simply been the only place where they could get the space they needed at a good price.
These didn't. They went out, as I understand, to different sections of the backbone so that if one or two went out, the others would still be up.
In some areas, two lines aren't enough. I worked for an ISP with a data-center near a major fault line. They had six different OC48s going out in different directions to make sure that if the data-center survived, it would have at least one connection to the outside world. Of course, most places don't need that much reduncancy, but putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea.
We can always use the names of gods and goddesses from various literatures. Who knows; eventually there might be planets named Om, Offler, Nuzzem and Anoia. I doubt, however, there will ever be a planet named after Dibbler.
The orbit isn't a problem. If they're big enough to fit the definition for a planet, they're planets. If not, they aren't. No problem in either case.
No, we're not. We're just running out of major Roman gods. There are several different scads of gods we haven't used yet: Egyptian, Babylonian, Chinese, African, Aztec, Inca, the list goes on and on.
Actually, it doesn't. If it did, there'd be the possibility of collision, and by now, they'd have collided. If you look at the orbits in three dimensions, you'll see that when the "cross," they're still several billion miles apart, even if both planets are at the "crossing point" at the same time.
So? If there's more trans-Neptunian objects out there big enough to be called planets, our system has more planets. What's the big deal? There's nothing magic about the number 9 (or 8) as the number of planets. When Uranus was discovered, the number of known planets increased; it increased again with Neptune. If we find more planets out there, it will increase yet again. No big deal.
And here I thought we'd been having a reasonable discussion, even though neither one of us expected to persuade the other. Oh well, I think we've gotten to the "beating a dead horse" stage. Thanx for the conversation.
If so, you've never mentioned it before. I agree that people aren't using Linux largely because most of the dealers don't provide it preinstalled, but that's not the only way to get it. However, I find it interesting that you now say the software is there, when earlier you were insisting it wasn't.
If anybody is advocating waiting in this discussion it is you.
Wrong. I've never suggested people should wait before trying Linux, I've been trying to show why you don't need to wait. As to what is my plan, I think that getting more and more people to use Linux at home is the best way to get it accepted, especially if you can start them off with it instead of converting them from Windows. That way, there will be a slow but growing grass-roots movement to get Linux into the office because that's what the employees know and understand. Remember, the whole point of Apple's giving Macs to schools is to build a generation of MacUsers. Why not try the same thing with Linux?
And with this, we come full circle, right back to my original point. As long as there's any piece that people can claim isn't in place, there will be those who will say it's not ready yet. I say it is, and that the biggest obsticle it has is perfectionists like you. Let people start to try it; let a few Aunt Minnies learn it. So what if there are a few small things you can't do the way you want? As more and more people try it, some will switch, some won't. In either case, it will provide more incentive to fill in the missing pieces. Waiting until they're all there is pointless because the puzzle isn't static; it's continually growing. No, I say Linux is good enough now, and getting more non-geeks to try it will only increase the incentive for developers to do what they do best.