"God doesn't play dice with the Universe." Remember that one? Copernicus' ideas attacked the religious establishment, not God himself. His and Galileo's conflicts with the Church more than anything proved that that when *one* idea turns out to be wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean *all* of them are. That lead directly to the formalization of the scientific method, a way to work within the system.
I don't have the article I read, but this one is pretty good. It seems experiments in the 1960's showed Dirac to be incorrect, but gravity's value is still up in the air.
http://www.cakes.mcmail.com/StarTrek/gravity.htm
I only know about this from an article I read a while back, but the gist was that a guy named Dirac proved that the force of gravity decreases over time. I didn't understand the proof, but apparently it is compelling even though the exact numbers have not been found. My question is this: with fundamental questions like that floating around unanswered, just how confident are you in your predictions?
When a person who doesn't understand programming asks you about it, I am sure there are many men behind the curtains you don't talk about in the first pass. Are you going to jump right in to Godel numbering and OOP? Or should you start with the basics? Does that mean you are hiding something? Does that make it overly complicated? Perhaps. And perhaps that is sometimes necessary.
He is saying we don't know enough about his world. We are saying he doesn't know enough about ours. If you want to influence someone, you talk his language. This person has given us some clues about his language, especially the bit about donating to the EFF. You don't have to like it. You don't have to take advantage of it. But I hope you do.
I don't know, what would happen if evert tech worker in the world stopped working for a week?
Exactly what happens when stockyard, railway, security, transportation and any other class of workers do. Things slow down. Most papers condemn us. And the situation works itself out. But tech workers have distinct disadvantages in a strike. Firstly is that without our intervention, the stuff that works now will work fine for a very long time. Second there is competition enough for tech jobs. Hiring scabs is easy to do and hard to prevent. How do you picket an SSH connection?
Third: you can only force an issue through a strike if you have clear goals. What do we strike over? Repealing the DCMA? Breaking up M$, IBM or Oracle? Get rid of IP and software patents? With whom do you negotiate? Why should non-US (or non-Norweigian or whatever) tech workers participate?
At the risk of a classic Usenet mistake, I'll suggest you read a story called "The Roads Must Roll" by Robert Heinlein. Those strikers had a much better position that we do but they still lost.
This guy is very persuasive -- as well he should be. He's right in that you have to really learn about how things work before pronouncing judgement.
But I think the most important thing to understand is your own personal role and the extent of your influence in the larger picture. Tech is only important because it can help people do things they couldn't do before. Just like cars and railroads and butter churns. If it weren't a direct money-maker, very few people would care. Yes tech does affect the lives and fortunes of real people. It also upsets the 18th century principles much of the western world is founded on. But I think its recent celebrity has given us an inflated sense of our own importance.
We complain that legislation and companies are taking away our ability to do certain types of research, to use things in a way we want, sometimes even our livelihoods. Aren't those exactly the complaints of the people whose jobs computers replaced in the 20th century? We don't own the world, and as much as we think we run it, we don't do that either.
He said that Microsoft would pursue the computer security market aggressively. "Because it's a growth area, we're not being that coy with them about what we intend to do," he said.
In other words, they will embrace-and-pretend all crypto standards, buy out RSA, make IE work only with IIS HTTPS, and encrypt all Word documents so it's a violation of the DCMA to reverse-engineer the format. They will also introduce DRM in every Word doc, whether you like it or not, so it can't be read except on a late-model WinTel box with a DRM chip.
You will have to buy your Passport encryption key from Microsoft, and you will have to upgrade it every 3 months when a new Passport security hole is found. Oh -- and Microsoft's digital signature will always be trusted.
Slashdot Mirror
"My evil twin brother did it. Honest."
"God doesn't play dice with the Universe." Remember that one? Copernicus' ideas attacked the religious establishment, not God himself. His and Galileo's conflicts with the Church more than anything proved that that when *one* idea turns out to be wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean *all* of them are. That lead directly to the formalization of the scientific method, a way to work within the system.
I don't have the article I read, but this one is pretty good. It seems experiments in the 1960's showed Dirac to be incorrect, but gravity's value is still up in the air. http://www.cakes.mcmail.com/StarTrek/gravity.htm
I only know about this from an article I read a while back, but the gist was that a guy named Dirac proved that the force of gravity decreases over time. I didn't understand the proof, but apparently it is compelling even though the exact numbers have not been found. My question is this: with fundamental questions like that floating around unanswered, just how confident are you in your predictions?
When a person who doesn't understand programming asks you about it, I am sure there are many men behind the curtains you don't talk about in the first pass. Are you going to jump right in to Godel numbering and OOP? Or should you start with the basics? Does that mean you are hiding something? Does that make it overly complicated? Perhaps. And perhaps that is sometimes necessary.
He is saying we don't know enough about his world. We are saying he doesn't know enough about ours. If you want to influence someone, you talk his language. This person has given us some clues about his language, especially the bit about donating to the EFF. You don't have to like it. You don't have to take advantage of it. But I hope you do.
Exactly what happens when stockyard, railway, security, transportation and any other class of workers do. Things slow down. Most papers condemn us. And the situation works itself out. But tech workers have distinct disadvantages in a strike. Firstly is that without our intervention, the stuff that works now will work fine for a very long time. Second there is competition enough for tech jobs. Hiring scabs is easy to do and hard to prevent. How do you picket an SSH connection?
Third: you can only force an issue through a strike if you have clear goals. What do we strike over? Repealing the DCMA? Breaking up M$, IBM or Oracle? Get rid of IP and software patents? With whom do you negotiate? Why should non-US (or non-Norweigian or whatever) tech workers participate?
At the risk of a classic Usenet mistake, I'll suggest you read a story called "The Roads Must Roll" by Robert Heinlein. Those strikers had a much better position that we do but they still lost.
This guy is very persuasive -- as well he should be. He's right in that you have to really learn about how things work before pronouncing judgement.
But I think the most important thing to understand is your own personal role and the extent of your influence in the larger picture. Tech is only important because it can help people do things they couldn't do before. Just like cars and railroads and butter churns. If it weren't a direct money-maker, very few people would care. Yes tech does affect the lives and fortunes of real people. It also upsets the 18th century principles much of the western world is founded on. But I think its recent celebrity has given us an inflated sense of our own importance.
We complain that legislation and companies are taking away our ability to do certain types of research, to use things in a way we want, sometimes even our livelihoods. Aren't those exactly the complaints of the people whose jobs computers replaced in the 20th century? We don't own the world, and as much as we think we run it, we don't do that either.
In other words, they will embrace-and-pretend all crypto standards, buy out RSA, make IE work only with IIS HTTPS, and encrypt all Word documents so it's a violation of the DCMA to reverse-engineer the format. They will also introduce DRM in every Word doc, whether you like it or not, so it can't be read except on a late-model WinTel box with a DRM chip.
You will have to buy your Passport encryption key from Microsoft, and you will have to upgrade it every 3 months when a new Passport security hole is found. Oh -- and Microsoft's digital signature will always be trusted.
I feel safer already.