ESR was right to distance us from the Chinese government, just in case someone in the press tries to skew the story. (Call me a liberal, but they're still pretty odious, someone had to say something.)
The real story here, though, is market niches.
Microsoft and the other commercial OS companies have had trouble selling their wares in up-and-coming countries like China because their stuff is too darned expensive. Consumers in the industrialized world can drop $100 on an operating system without blinking, but that's prohibitively high in the third world. That's one of the reasons software piracy is so widespread in certain foreign lands. This is a market opportunity for free software.
Linux has advanced by seizing market niches which Windows couldn't handle. Here are a bunch more: Russia, India, China, Indonesia, etc. In fact, a team of Indonesian academics recently volunteered for one open source project I keep tabs on. Seems they're thinking along these same lines. If we can get half the world's population using Linux, how long will the U.S. and Europe hold out?
Java may be handicapped by performance or design mistakes, but that's not the reason that it has not caught on. Big companies make very conservative decisions when selecting programming languages. They will only switch to a new language if it is already popular.
Everybody seems to be training their programmers in Java, but few are actually making the dive. This is similar to what happened with Pascal. Ultimately C beat it out because of its special ties to UNIX. That created a pool of experienced C programmers and reusable code which provided the critical mass necessary to attract attention. Visual Basic got the same sort of boost because Microsoft threw its weight behind it.
Java needs to secure a market niche so it can develop that critical mass. Web applets didn't seem to be enough to tip the scales, but with a bit more help it could displace VB.
This may be obvious, but some people on this board don't seem to get it.
There are two types of programmers.
Your typical/. reader is in a different category from most of the programmers working for big corporations. Don't sneer down at them too much. Not everybody can be a genius. They fulfill some necessary functions, and you'd be bored to tears if you had to do their work.
This is not new. Microsoft didn't lower the standards. Remember COBOL? VB fills the ecological niche left empty when COBOL didn't catch on among PC programmers. (Let's count our blessings BTW.) Your typical VB programmer has the same skill level as your typical COBOL programmer.
Sampling is a big issue here, and they probably didn't do it well.
Remember, though, most programmers are still forced to write for Windows or (gasp!) mainframes. I wish it weren't so, but that's why Microsoft is still a behemoth. Even with proper sampling VB would be in the top 4.
The thirteen comets must have been deflected at different times, so from each calculation he would have gotten a position for this planet at a particular time. Look at how that changes and you know its speed.
Or, look at it this way: you have a bunch of unknowns about this planet (x,y, and z position, x, y, and z velocity, and mass.) Each comet trajectory gives you an equation relating those numbers. You end up with 7 equations in 7 variables, which you can solve. Throw in a few extra equations for double-checking and getting a handle on the size of experimental errors, and you're up to 13.
Oh, and all astronomical observations are two-dimensional. What astronomers do is plot the exact sky position of a comet over time, watching how it changes. Throw in the positions of the planets, Newton's law of gravitation, and a calculator, and you can figure out the comet's 3-D position.
It's perfectly legal, and a common tactic, to threaten to sue other people, even if your legal basis is shaky. If they actually did sue, then in some jurisdictions they might be fined for a frivolous lawsuit. That's not likely in this case, though, since the web is still in the legal wilderness. If your own lawyer lied about the law you could sue them for malpractice, but the opposition is not bound by that rule.
Our legal system is adversarial; never accept legal advice from the other side's lawyers. They will twist and spin everything to their advantage.
This whole thing is the legal equivalent of guard dogs barking at you because you got too close to the fence.
My opponent here is quite correct that I called him a name. That was harsh, but necessary. I did it because I needed to end this thread, which would have led nowhere. I tempered it as best I could. I take responsibility for whatever damage was done; I would do it again; but my intent was not to flame. Yes, I got personal, but you got personal with me in the original post, though you did not know that.
I never intended to debate you. That probably left you frustrated, but it would be pointless because I do not disagree with you. You're not the problem. I did not debate the facts with you because I do not dispute most of your facts. I dispute their interpretation. Specifically, I felt compelled to challenge the message which was written between the lines of the first post:
person on antidepressants = homicidal maniac
You may protest that this was not the message you intended, and you are right. However many readers will find that message in your statement. I tried to address my remarks to those readers. I tried to offer an alternative interpretation of the facts you presented. That is all that I wished.
> Seriously: I've done the homework. I am convinced that there is no basis in fact for the number of prescriptions that we have for Lubox. See my postings regardint he proven interaction of sugar with depressive symptoms.
I understand and respect your commitment to nutritional treatment. I also agree to some extent with your analysis of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. I didn't appreciate the backhand swipe at St.John's Wort, but that's off topic. Heck, I'll even try the B-complex thing on myself. Unlike you, though, I'm not ready to toss antidepressants out the window.
> Oh yeah, you say "the kids don't go back to the doctor to get the medication altered". Read the product insert for Luvox and tell me that that is appropriate!!! It says, specifically, that the drugs are to be given in the smallest quantity possible and that children are to be treated regularly. > Luvox is not for treating compression. It's often used for that because the pharmaceutical companies have found depression to be a better market than it's approved use: treating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
You know more about Luvox than I do, but that sounds reasonable. The most likely response by the doctor, though, would be to try a different antidepressant. And yes, the doctor may not have known what he was doing.
> Oh yeah: most of the drugs don't come from Psychiatrists or even licensed counselors: they come from family doctors who know very little about psychiatry.
This is true. Here's the reason: depression is underdiagnosed, so the docs put their heads together and decided to start writing a lot more prescriptions. This has an upside (more people getting treatment promptly) and a downside (the docs don't necessarily know what they're doing.)
> Every single school shooting that I'm aware in the past several years (since Jonesboro, AR) has involved a child on a psychotropic drug.
Sigh. That goes back to my main point; nobody should be surprised when a deranged person turns out to be under psychiatric treatment.
> You give it away at the start of the article, when you say "Are we plagued by an epidemic of people killing themselves because Prozac messed up their mind?". In a word: the answer is yes!.
OK, folks, this guy may be a fanatic, and nothing I say may get past his rejection of antidepressants. The issues aren't as black and white as they may seem from this thread. Like I said, psychotropic drugs scare a lot of people. Don't judge everything he says by that, and please don't jump to conclusions about drugs causing the murders. They may have contributed, but that's not the only possible explanation.
1. Two kids commit suicide, after going on a killing spree. 2. Suicide is usually caused by depression. 3. The kids left behind documentation that they were filled with anger and rage, which is linked to depression. 4. Both kids had Luvox, an anti-depressant, in their bloodstream when they died.
Here is my theory as to what happened, just for contrast. These two kids develop serious psychological problems. They seek help, or someone imposes help on them. A psychiatrist looks them over, concludes that the problem resembled depression better than anything else in his/her playbook, and prescribes them anti-depressants. They don't help much (this happens a lot), the kids don't go back to the doctor to get the medication altered, and eventually they flip out and go on their killing spree.
It should not surprise anybody when people who are under psychiatric treatment flip out. Who else would be under treatment?
Remember a few years back, when the talk show circuit was filled with people who reacted badly to Prozac? Since then, Prozac has become one of the most widely prescribed drugs in America. Has anything bad happened? Are we plagued by an epidemic of people killing themselves because Prozac messed up their mind? Psychopharmacology is not an exact science. Drugs like this will help most patients, do nothing for others, and have weird or negative affects on the rest. Nobody understands exactly why. Treating depressed patients is a mix of educated guesses and trial-and-error. It has its downside, but the alternative is a lot worse.
The whole idea of psychotropic drugs scare a lot of people. It doesn't scare me, but then again Prozac may have saved my life. All I ask is that you use common sense when you consider things like this, and that you remember: correlation does not prove causation.
Remember a few years ago, when people were showing up on talk shows claiming that Prozac made them attempt suicide or go into a murderous rage? Everybody heard about it, and the 'Prozac makes you flip out' idea is now imprinted in the general public consciousness. Investigations later revealed that the whole brouhaha was a staged publicity campaign by a small group of people who objected to Prozac on religious grounds. (I won't mention the religion because they love to sue people.) Besides, all the people who reported bad reactions had something else in common. They were all seriously depressed, and/or had other psychiatric problems. That is, after all, why they were prescribed the drug in the first place. It really should not surprise us that some committed suicide or otherwise flipped out.
We live in a society where psychiatric help is available and widespread. Please forgive the insensitivity, but the people who go on these killing rampages are obviously wackos. There is a good chance that somebody noticed this before they went on their spree and tried to intervene, or that they sought help themselves. Thus, there is a good chance that they may have been on psychiatric drugs. Usually they help, sometimes they don't.
Remember, correlation does not prove causation.
I have to respect QuBert for being honest - he says that he is 'more inclined' to think that drugs are more dangerous than guns. Everybody, please be careful not to jump to conclusions one way or another on this, it is intellectual quicksand.
Just for the record, there were more murders last year in Texas than in New York City - and they have comparable population sizes.
This is one of the misperceptions which skews debates about guns and crime. When you live in a small town it is very easy to ignore crime; it doesn't happen every day. The newspaper reports two or three violent crimes a year. In a place like New York the evening news leads with six or seven crimes and periodically you'll hear a gunshot or witness a mugging or see the police gathered around a crime scene. That is simply a result of size. When 100,000 people live in your immediate neighborhood you will eventually see the dark side of humanity with your own eyes. You will then start thinking that it could happen to you. On the other hand, when a crime happens in the next county over, it is far enough away that you can still feel safe.
Until recently crime rates in cities really were higher than rural areas, and that idea is firmly implanted in everybody's head - we take it for granted. Beware those unexamined assumptions!
Slashdot Mirror
ESR was right to distance us from the Chinese government, just in case someone in the press tries to skew the story. (Call me a liberal, but they're still pretty odious, someone had to say something.)
The real story here, though, is market niches.
Microsoft and the other commercial OS companies have had trouble selling their wares in up-and-coming countries like China because their stuff is too darned expensive. Consumers in the industrialized world can drop $100 on an operating system without blinking, but that's prohibitively high in the third world. That's one of the reasons software piracy is so widespread in certain foreign lands. This is a market opportunity for free software.
Linux has advanced by seizing market niches which Windows couldn't handle. Here are a bunch more: Russia, India, China, Indonesia, etc. In fact, a team of Indonesian academics recently volunteered for one open source project I keep tabs on. Seems they're thinking along these same lines. If we can get half the world's population using Linux, how long will the U.S. and Europe hold out?
Java may be handicapped by performance or design mistakes, but that's not the reason that it has not caught on. Big companies make very conservative decisions when selecting programming languages. They will only switch to a new language if it is already popular.
Everybody seems to be training their programmers in Java, but few are actually making the dive. This is similar to what happened with Pascal. Ultimately C beat it out because of its special ties to UNIX. That created a pool of experienced C programmers and reusable code which provided the critical mass necessary to attract attention. Visual Basic got the same sort of boost because Microsoft threw its weight behind it.
Java needs to secure a market niche so it can develop that critical mass. Web applets didn't seem to be enough to tip the scales, but with a bit more help it could displace VB.
This may be obvious, but some people on this board don't seem to get it.
/. reader is in a different category from most of the programmers working for big corporations. Don't sneer down at them too much. Not everybody can be a genius. They fulfill some necessary functions, and you'd be bored to tears if you had to do their work.
There are two types of programmers.
Your typical
This is not new. Microsoft didn't lower the standards. Remember COBOL? VB fills the ecological niche left empty when COBOL didn't catch on among PC programmers. (Let's count our blessings BTW.) Your typical VB programmer has the same skill level as your typical COBOL programmer.
Sampling is a big issue here, and they probably didn't do it well.
Remember, though, most programmers are still forced to write for Windows or (gasp!) mainframes. I wish it weren't so, but that's why Microsoft is still a behemoth. Even with proper sampling VB would be in the top 4.
This guy's been doing the circuit for his new book.
There is an interview and a discussion of his stuff at
Edge.
The thirteen comets must have been deflected at different times, so from each calculation he would have gotten a position for this planet at a particular time. Look at how that changes and you know its speed.
Or, look at it this way: you have a bunch of unknowns about this planet (x,y, and z position, x, y, and z velocity, and mass.) Each comet trajectory gives you an equation relating those numbers. You end up with 7 equations in 7 variables, which you can solve. Throw in a few extra equations for double-checking and getting a handle on the size of experimental errors, and you're up to 13.
Oh, and all astronomical observations are two-dimensional. What astronomers do is plot the exact sky position of a comet over time, watching how it changes. Throw in the positions of the planets, Newton's law of gravitation, and a calculator, and you can figure out the comet's 3-D position.
It's perfectly legal, and a common tactic, to threaten to sue other people, even if your legal basis is shaky. If they actually did sue, then in some jurisdictions they might be fined for a frivolous lawsuit. That's not likely in this case, though, since the web is still in the legal wilderness. If your own lawyer lied about the law you could sue them for malpractice, but the opposition is not bound by that rule.
Our legal system is adversarial; never accept legal advice from the other side's lawyers. They will twist and spin everything to their advantage.
This whole thing is the legal equivalent of guard dogs barking at you because you got too close to the fence.
My opponent here is quite correct that I called him a name. That was harsh, but necessary. I did it because I needed to end this thread, which would have led nowhere. I tempered it as best I could. I take responsibility for whatever damage was done; I would do it again; but my intent was not to flame. Yes, I got personal, but you got personal with me in the original post, though you did not know that.
I never intended to debate you. That probably left you frustrated, but it would be pointless because I do not disagree with you. You're not the problem. I did not debate the facts with you because I do not dispute most of your facts. I dispute their interpretation. Specifically, I felt compelled to challenge the message which was written between the lines of the first post:
person on antidepressants = homicidal maniac
You may protest that this was not the message you intended, and you are right. However many readers will find that message in your statement. I tried to address my remarks to those readers. I tried to offer an alternative interpretation of the facts you presented. That is all that I wished.
Peace.
> Seriously: I've done the homework. I am convinced that there is no basis in fact for the number of prescriptions that we have for Lubox. See my postings regardint he proven interaction of sugar with depressive symptoms.
I understand and respect your commitment to nutritional treatment. I also agree to some extent with your analysis of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. I didn't appreciate the backhand swipe at St.John's Wort, but that's off topic. Heck, I'll even try the B-complex thing on myself. Unlike you, though, I'm not ready to toss antidepressants out the window.
> Oh yeah, you say "the kids don't go back to the doctor to get the medication altered". Read the product insert for Luvox and tell me that that is appropriate!!! It says, specifically, that the drugs are to be given in the smallest quantity possible and that children are to be treated regularly.
> Luvox is not for treating compression. It's often used for that because the pharmaceutical companies have found depression to be a better market than it's approved use: treating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
You know more about Luvox than I do, but that sounds reasonable. The most likely response by the doctor, though, would be to try a different antidepressant. And yes, the doctor may not have known what he was doing.
> Oh yeah: most of the drugs don't come from Psychiatrists or even licensed counselors: they come from family doctors who know very little about psychiatry.
This is true. Here's the reason: depression is underdiagnosed, so the docs put their heads together and decided to start writing a lot more prescriptions. This has an upside (more people getting treatment promptly) and a downside (the docs don't necessarily know what they're doing.)
> Every single school shooting that I'm aware in the past several years (since Jonesboro, AR) has involved a child on a psychotropic drug.
Sigh. That goes back to my main point; nobody should be surprised when a deranged person turns out to be under psychiatric treatment.
> You give it away at the start of the article, when you say "Are we plagued by an epidemic of people killing themselves because Prozac messed up their mind?". In a word: the answer is yes!.
OK, folks, this guy may be a fanatic, and nothing I say may get past his rejection of antidepressants. The issues aren't as black and white as they may seem from this thread. Like I said, psychotropic drugs scare a lot of people. Don't judge everything he says by that, and please don't jump to conclusions about drugs causing the murders. They may have contributed, but that's not the only possible explanation.
Take a second look at the facts here:
1. Two kids commit suicide, after going on a killing spree.
2. Suicide is usually caused by depression.
3. The kids left behind documentation that they were filled with anger and rage, which is linked to depression.
4. Both kids had Luvox, an anti-depressant, in their bloodstream when they died.
Here is my theory as to what happened, just for contrast. These two kids develop serious psychological problems. They seek help, or someone imposes help on them. A psychiatrist looks them over, concludes that the problem resembled depression better than anything else in his/her playbook, and prescribes them anti-depressants. They don't help much (this happens a lot), the kids don't go back to the doctor to get the medication altered, and eventually they flip out and go on their killing spree.
It should not surprise anybody when people who are under psychiatric treatment flip out. Who else would be under treatment?
Remember a few years back, when the talk show circuit was filled with people who reacted badly to Prozac? Since then, Prozac has become one of the most widely prescribed drugs in America. Has anything bad happened? Are we plagued by an epidemic of people killing themselves because Prozac messed up their mind? Psychopharmacology is not an exact science. Drugs like this will help most patients, do nothing for others, and have weird or negative affects on the rest. Nobody understands exactly why. Treating depressed patients is a mix of educated guesses and trial-and-error. It has its downside, but the alternative is a lot worse.
The whole idea of psychotropic drugs scare a lot of people. It doesn't scare me, but then again Prozac may have saved my life. All I ask is that you use common sense when you consider things like this, and that you remember: correlation does not prove causation.
Here we go again, another legend is created.
Remember a few years ago, when people were showing up on talk shows claiming that Prozac made them attempt suicide or go into a murderous rage? Everybody heard about it, and the 'Prozac makes you flip out' idea is now imprinted in the general public consciousness. Investigations later revealed that the whole brouhaha was a staged publicity campaign by a small group of people who objected to Prozac on religious grounds. (I won't mention the religion because they love to sue people.) Besides, all the people who reported bad reactions had something else in common. They were all seriously depressed, and/or had other psychiatric problems. That is, after all, why they were prescribed the drug in the first place. It really should not surprise us that some committed suicide or otherwise flipped out.
We live in a society where psychiatric help is available and widespread. Please forgive the insensitivity, but the people who go on these killing rampages are obviously wackos. There is a good chance that somebody noticed this before they went on their spree and tried to intervene, or that they sought help themselves. Thus, there is a good chance that they may have been on psychiatric drugs. Usually they help, sometimes they don't.
Remember, correlation does not prove causation.
I have to respect QuBert for being honest - he says that he is 'more inclined' to think that drugs are more dangerous than guns. Everybody, please be careful not to jump to conclusions one way or another on this, it is intellectual quicksand.
Just for the record, there were more murders last year in Texas than in New York City - and they have comparable population sizes.
This is one of the misperceptions which skews debates about guns and crime. When you live in a small town it is very easy to ignore crime; it doesn't happen every day. The newspaper reports two or three violent crimes a year. In a place like New York the evening news leads with six or seven crimes and periodically you'll hear a gunshot or witness a mugging or see the police gathered around a crime scene. That is simply a result of size. When 100,000 people live in your immediate neighborhood you will eventually see the dark side of humanity with your own eyes. You will then start thinking that it could happen to you. On the other hand, when a crime happens in the next county over, it is far enough away that you can still feel safe.
Until recently crime rates in cities really were higher than rural areas, and that idea is firmly implanted in everybody's head - we take it for granted. Beware those unexamined assumptions!