"Of course, just because someone is educated, doesn't mean they're necessarily smart... or don't have an agenda... I don't really see how Pac Man could EVER be considered in the same violence league as Grand Theft Auto, etc. "
Umm, thats not the argument she is making. In fact, its not even close. She is arguing that video ratings need to be rethought, for instance that games should be actually played before they are designated 'violence free'. Writing off violence just because it is cartoon violence doesn't really cut it, since young children can be affected by cartoons as well as real life. That doesn't mean Pac Man is in the same league as GTA, or that it should be banned for all children under 10, just that the ESRB needs to provide more information about the games it rates so that parents can have a better idea of the content in their kid's games.
See, this is why we should never rely on about.com stories for our news...
"Yes, it sounds like another failed plot, broken up in 1995 by ordinary police work without the aid of warrentless wiretapping, extreme rendition, torture, or invasion of sovereign nations."
Oplan Bojinka? Actually it was broken up when the terrorists accidentally started a chemical fire in their apartment, and the fire fighters and police who responded determined something phishy was going on. I don't think 'waiting for the terrorists to burn themselves' is either ordinary police work nor is it a very good strategy. Yeah, some argue that the police intentially set the fire to drive the men out of the apartment, but I still don't consider arson 'ordinary policework'.
And of course after discovering the plot, they did torture one of the suspects, Abdul Hakim Murad, to get more information. But lets ignore that little detail, since it sort of kills your argument before I've finished writing.
"The odd thing is that in 1995 ordinary good police work broke up a serious plot to bomb planes and no one ran hysterically in circles screaming the world was going to end if we didn't all go thirsty on our next international flight."
Yeah, its almost as if something happened maybe 5 years ago that caused people to think differently about terrorism...
Since December 2004, whenever there is even an earthquake reported in the Pacific, the question everyone is asking is whether or not a tsunami is eminent. When a story runs about some kid who got raped by someone they met online, how many parents try to curb their kids Internet access? When a car full of teenagers are killed in a traffic accident, watch the driving habits of their classmates and see if they change. After a friend of yours dies of skin cancer, can you honestly say you will not think twice about going out without sunscreen? Psychiatry 101, people treat dangers differently after they see them happen.
"Whereas in 2006, acting on "information" that was tortured out of a suspect in Pakistan a purported plot that violates empirically known facts of chemical synthesis was broken up, and much hysteria ensued."
All I see is a bunch of references to him being interrogated in Pakistan. Unless you believe Pakistan is so backwards a country that every interrogation is actually torture, I think I need some more evidence before I make that accusation. And I think I'll go with bomb and terrorism experts over a reporter over whether or not the plot makes sense.
"Which in turn requires versality, and to be able to cope with wathever one's thrown at. It requires one to be able to understand the fundamental principles (like, in the exemple of an office suite, the usage of Style to do proper formating), as opposed to memorise dumb command sequence as they appear in the most popular implementation (that will, in the end, not be that useful, because the current popular implementation has a tendency to change and break every few year), so that one can be quick in finding his way on new or different products."
Again, the vast majority of university students (CS majors, who believe it or not are not the center of the universe) do not need to be able to understand the 'fundemental principles' behind how a web browser works.
"The fundamental freedoms associated with Free Software as advocated by th FSF (the freedom to use, the freedom to study, the freedom to modify, the freedom to re-distribute)"
I'm sorry, but that is absolutely not true. You need to go back and read the GPL again, you are not allowed to freely use, study, modify, and distribute software published under it. In fact, the very opposite is true. Its that kind of thinking that gets people sued, and why companies have to have large legal departments to monitor how their employees use open source software.
"...also, OSS happen to be free-as-in-beer, which is nice for public institutions that must control all thier spending, "
So is IE, Safari, and any other product that is bundled with other products. And even for those that are not, universities (and university students) generally get a discounted rate.
"and that can have an easier access to more OSS-literate personnal (students and assistants), than corporate world."
Again, outside of the computer science department (which again is not the center of the academic universe), not all students are 'OSS-literate'. Think back to the history major and pre-med student I mentioned last time.
"Since when has expressing a desire for choice been zealotry"
You are not expressing a desire for choice, you are spreading misinformed propaganda about something you clearly do not understand.
"Less eyes look at the same closed source code than the same open source code, considerably less."
What are you, a broken record? I already refuted that point.
"Perhaps you missed the part about independent review and the affect of having your code reviewed in public is likely to have on the quality of code you endeavour to produce. "
Perhaps you missed the part about how the vast majority of OpenOffice users do not even download the source file, and those that do are not going to scan each and every line of code. Furthermore, claiming that since it is going to be open to the public developers are going to endeavour to produce better code in the first place shows you know absolutely squat about the history of the product in question. Ever hear of something called StarOffice? Want to guess how it is related to OpenOffice?
"Why would anybody bother with the silly argument, that not every users analyses the code of the program they are using, what is it meant to mean, what possible significance could it have betweem closed source and open source code (according to the DMCA it is a criminal offence for the majority of users to even attempt to look at closed source code)."
Are you asking why does it matter that your entire argument is based on a false premise?
Nothing like a condescending open source zealot to wake you up in the morning...
"The difference between open source and closed source that for some reason you fail to grasp, is you can fix that bug immediately or you can pay someone to do it for you."
No, you can't. First, believe it or not, most people out there who would use a product like OpenOffice are not software engineers. That argument may work for software that is primarily used by developers such as Apache, but not at all for something like OpenOffice. Second, projects like OpenOffice are notoriously tight, and you cannot just one day join the project right off the street. Even though they are open source, most of their developers work for Sun, and they do control who is able to contribute to the project.
"No one has ever claimed perfection, apart from marketdroids selling proprietary products, the big driving issue is about putting control back into the users hands."
No, but the previous poster did claim that with open source projects "If someone finds a bug or flaw, it doesn't take someone else very long to fix it", thats the claim I was rebutting.
"Code that has been subject to independent public vetting, will always be more stable and secure than code than has not been, if, for no other reason than more independent eyes have seen it (if you think internal company politics and bonuses etc. don't have an affect on the quality of code going out the door, then you are crazy)."
Again, while that argument may work in LaLa Land, thats simply not true in the real world (as this very article itself demonstrates). Just because something is open source does not mean everyone who uses it will take a look at every line of code. Most people (especially with a product like OpenOffice) will simply just use it and never even download that tarball of source code. And very few of those who do actually take a look at the code and who are skilled enough to recognize problems in it will look at every last little line of code in the project. In fact, many propritary products that have internal processes like code reviews will actually get more eyes on it than some open source projects.
As I mentioned to the other poster (I didn't notice that the idea originated here)...
"...and the academic community is supposed to be all about GPL, Open Source, etc..."
Really? How so? I thought the academica community was supposed to be about learning new things and preparing oneself for work in the real world. How does the GPL relate to a pre-med student? How does open source software relate to a history major studying ancient greece? Even among the very limited discipline of computer science (believe it or not, many universities do not even have CS departments at all), students should learn all sorts of software philosophies, not just have the GPL ingrained into their brains. I think you have a very misguided concept of what academia really is...
"Within our supposedly academic institutions, Firefox appears on only a small fraction of computers."
RTFA. That number is the percentage of universities that have installed it on some computers, not the percentage of computers that have it installed. You could have just as easily said that 32% of UK universities surveyed do not have firefox on any campus computer.
Furthermore, I don't see what being 'academic' has to do with what kind of software is installed on campus computers. Why would a small liberal arts university where the browser used is IE or Safari or even Netscape (I'm assuming that if they don't have Firefox, they are also not going to have Opera) any less academic than one that also has Firefox installed? Yeah, it may make sense for a CS lab to have more software installed, but that is a very small segment of academia as a whole.
Actually it may well be that sites like FriendsReunited and that airline one happen to be bigger in the UK. Here we would more likely list classmates.com (though I really only know about them because of all their banner ads) and expedia. Of course that really brings into question the idea that these are 'websites that changed the world'. This seems more like a list of 'websites we really like'.
Funny though, no porn or online dating sites (though I suppose craigslist can count)...
"I welcome any example where it took 4 weeks for a fix for a main package."
Well offhand, here is one opened 3 years ago which still hasn't been fixed, though it would be difficult to exploit. Basically what happens is that that a machine with trust level 4 (the default is 3, so again this would be difficult to exploit) to gain level 5 access (meaning they can run arbitrary commands on computer running the service. No, STAF/STAX is not as big as Linux (which is why I was talking about open source in general, not just Linux, which isn't even the software this article was about), but it is used in many corporate environments as an automated testing tool.
I've seen plenty of security bugs in open source code that don't get updated right away. Open source is not all that different from closed source software in this sense. While it certainly is fun to pretend open source is perfect and is in every way better than commercial software, that simply is not true.
"Because the carry-on the the only thing you're guaranteed to have when you arrive at your destination."
...unless it gets stolen. Or the plane crashes.
Yes, it is certainly possible for your check in luggage to be delayed for 24 hours, but it certainly is not the airline's policy or standard operations with most airlines. And considering how many people lose their own luggage, the only difference in terms of losing checked in bags and carry ons is that the airlines will refund lost checked bags.
"I want to bring my own freakin toothpaste when I travel."
Yeah, but do you need to use it on the plane? Why the hell do you need to bring it in your carry on? Is it really that hard to include toiletries in checked baggage?
"Freedom to move around the country is a pretty basic right which is being eroded by stealth."
You mean freedom to fly around the country, cheaply and without hassle? You do realize that half a century ago, there were no cheap airliners that could get you from New York to California in hours, right? Man, I wish my ancestors were here to tell you spoiled kids about the conditions of the ships that brought them to America. Brushing their teeth on the way over was probably the least of their concerns...
Re:FYI SLASH-TARDS -- What Flash can do:
on
The Future of Flash
·
· Score: 1
"I simply described some of the things *Flash* can do -- b/c so many people here just don't know."
No, most people here know all too well what Flash can do. The reason it is the subject of our ire isn't because it contains too few features.
"(...Among the things I didn't mention, you can create MAC/PC desktop apps, using the same codebase.)"
Again, why? Why use something that is designed as a web application as a desktop app?
"What you are describing is what can *maybe* be done in a couple dozen different browsers (+ versions), in dozens of different ways"
What, submit post and get requests (thats the only thing I said browsers can do too)? I think pretty much any browser can do that. Yes, there are multiple ways for them to do it, but how is that bad?
Re:FYI SLASH-TARDS -- What Flash can do:
on
The Future of Flash
·
· Score: 1
Sure, as long as you are running Windows. Wait, what does it mean to be cross platform again?
"and most features cannot be disabled by the user. (compare that to a user being able to turn off JS, or Java -- something often mandated in a corporate environment.)"
Ever imagine there might be a reason for that?
" * Flash can load and play external MP3 audio.
* Flash can play video. That is not possible w/ HTML/CSS/JS. "
Yes, Flash has many ways to annoy its users. That partially answers my previous question.
"# Flash can POST and GET a variety of data. "
Wow, basic use of the HTTP spec. I can't imagine anything else that even comes close to being able to do that...
"# Flash can access a user's webcam, allowing you to create your own video chat/IM app. "
What is the point of having a web application if it is dependent on your hardware?
Re:What sensible feed aggregator allows javascript
on
RSS and Web Feeds a Risk?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
From the article:
SPI Dynamics examined a number of online and offline applications used to read RSS and Atom feeds. In many cases any JavaScript code delivered on the feed would run on the user's PC, meaning it could be vulnerable to attack, Auger said.
They don't name names, but it does seem like a number of aggregators do support JavaScript. And when the day comes where someone develops a "Web 2.0 AJAX enabled blog", there will be pressure for more and more aggregators to support JavaScript (likely it will be an option that can be disabled, but who is going to do that if it means they cannot access certain features on certain blogs).
Umm, part of the scientific process is to put out your theories for peer review. The scientists who did this did nothing wrong, in fact they were absolutely correct. And for the record, they still have not been proven wrong, just much of their evidence has been given alternate explanations.
Let's see if you can try to do a decent job for once. This is the second article I've seen today with a title that is very badly worded. The title here appears to say that scientists have now, after 10 years of study, rejected the claim of the NASA scientists that there is life on this rock. When in reality, the story is more about the 10 year anniversary of the controversial announcement. No, I'm not asking for an involved fact checking assignment, just for you to do a quick glance at the article and make sure what the submitter wrote is accurate.
What statement? That its been 10 years since that announcement (the only 'news' here)? How is that curious? The inital announcement was in 1996, 1996 + 10 = 2006, Bush was inaugurated for his second term in 2005, and since most presidencies last 4 years, it makes absolute sense that he will be president on the 10 year anniversary.
"No one wants to admit life started out there somewhere. For all we know the meteorites seeded life on Earth... and elsewhere. Why is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth?"
Who is having trouble believing that life exists out there? What the topic of this debate is whether or not a particular rock (the ALH84001 meteorite) contains life. At first scientists believed they had found evidence of life in it, but in the 10 years since they havn't won over much support.
"I for one think it would be good for mankind to have a significant first contact with a superior race. At least then we can then look to exploration and not war to keep us occupied while we grow up."
Yeah, because there were no wars going on during the 1500s in the age of exploration...
And how exactly would discovering the existence of life outside of Earth make exploration more possible? Are you trying to say that we are not exploring space right now?
Thats some pretty strong language, and isn't at all appropriate for this discussion as it primarily involves opinions rather than facts. Linus disagrees with the direction GPLv3 is taking, which is his right to do. To 'refute' those comments, you would basically have to prove he has no problem with GPLv3.
Who the hell wrote this article, Richard Stallman?
Slashdot Mirror
"Of course, just because someone is educated, doesn't mean they're necessarily smart... or don't have an agenda... I don't really see how Pac Man could EVER be considered in the same violence league as Grand Theft Auto, etc. "
Umm, thats not the argument she is making. In fact, its not even close. She is arguing that video ratings need to be rethought, for instance that games should be actually played before they are designated 'violence free'. Writing off violence just because it is cartoon violence doesn't really cut it, since young children can be affected by cartoons as well as real life. That doesn't mean Pac Man is in the same league as GTA, or that it should be banned for all children under 10, just that the ESRB needs to provide more information about the games it rates so that parents can have a better idea of the content in their kid's games.
See, this is why we should never rely on about.com stories for our news...
"Yes, it sounds like another failed plot, broken up in 1995 by ordinary police work without the aid of warrentless wiretapping, extreme rendition, torture, or invasion of sovereign nations."
Oplan Bojinka? Actually it was broken up when the terrorists accidentally started a chemical fire in their apartment, and the fire fighters and police who responded determined something phishy was going on. I don't think 'waiting for the terrorists to burn themselves' is either ordinary police work nor is it a very good strategy. Yeah, some argue that the police intentially set the fire to drive the men out of the apartment, but I still don't consider arson 'ordinary policework'.
And of course after discovering the plot, they did torture one of the suspects, Abdul Hakim Murad, to get more information. But lets ignore that little detail, since it sort of kills your argument before I've finished writing.
"The odd thing is that in 1995 ordinary good police work broke up a serious plot to bomb planes and no one ran hysterically in circles screaming the world was going to end if we didn't all go thirsty on our next international flight."
Yeah, its almost as if something happened maybe 5 years ago that caused people to think differently about terrorism...
Since December 2004, whenever there is even an earthquake reported in the Pacific, the question everyone is asking is whether or not a tsunami is eminent. When a story runs about some kid who got raped by someone they met online, how many parents try to curb their kids Internet access? When a car full of teenagers are killed in a traffic accident, watch the driving habits of their classmates and see if they change. After a friend of yours dies of skin cancer, can you honestly say you will not think twice about going out without sunscreen? Psychiatry 101, people treat dangers differently after they see them happen.
"Whereas in 2006, acting on "information" that was tortured out of a suspect in Pakistan a purported plot that violates empirically known facts of chemical synthesis was broken up, and much hysteria ensued."
All I see is a bunch of references to him being interrogated in Pakistan. Unless you believe Pakistan is so backwards a country that every interrogation is actually torture, I think I need some more evidence before I make that accusation. And I think I'll go with bomb and terrorism experts over a reporter over whether or not the plot makes sense.
I can see the use of a metal detector, but whats the helicopter for?
I'm just going to assume that you are drunk or something and that wasn't supposed to make any sense...
"Which in turn requires versality, and to be able to cope with wathever one's thrown at. It requires one to be able to understand the fundamental principles (like, in the exemple of an office suite, the usage of Style to do proper formating), as opposed to memorise dumb command sequence as they appear in the most popular implementation (that will, in the end, not be that useful, because the current popular implementation has a tendency to change and break every few year), so that one can be quick in finding his way on new or different products."
Again, the vast majority of university students (CS majors, who believe it or not are not the center of the universe) do not need to be able to understand the 'fundemental principles' behind how a web browser works.
"The fundamental freedoms associated with Free Software as advocated by th FSF (the freedom to use, the freedom to study, the freedom to modify, the freedom to re-distribute)"
I'm sorry, but that is absolutely not true. You need to go back and read the GPL again, you are not allowed to freely use, study, modify, and distribute software published under it. In fact, the very opposite is true. Its that kind of thinking that gets people sued, and why companies have to have large legal departments to monitor how their employees use open source software.
"...also, OSS happen to be free-as-in-beer, which is nice for public institutions that must control all thier spending, "
So is IE, Safari, and any other product that is bundled with other products. And even for those that are not, universities (and university students) generally get a discounted rate.
"and that can have an easier access to more OSS-literate personnal (students and assistants), than corporate world."
Again, outside of the computer science department (which again is not the center of the academic universe), not all students are 'OSS-literate'. Think back to the history major and pre-med student I mentioned last time.
"Since when has expressing a desire for choice been zealotry"
You are not expressing a desire for choice, you are spreading misinformed propaganda about something you clearly do not understand.
"Less eyes look at the same closed source code than the same open source code, considerably less."
What are you, a broken record? I already refuted that point.
"Perhaps you missed the part about independent review and the affect of having your code reviewed in public is likely to have on the quality of code you endeavour to produce. "
Perhaps you missed the part about how the vast majority of OpenOffice users do not even download the source file, and those that do are not going to scan each and every line of code. Furthermore, claiming that since it is going to be open to the public developers are going to endeavour to produce better code in the first place shows you know absolutely squat about the history of the product in question. Ever hear of something called StarOffice? Want to guess how it is related to OpenOffice?
"Why would anybody bother with the silly argument, that not every users analyses the code of the program they are using, what is it meant to mean, what possible significance could it have betweem closed source and open source code (according to the DMCA it is a criminal offence for the majority of users to even attempt to look at closed source code)."
Are you asking why does it matter that your entire argument is based on a false premise?
Nothing like a condescending open source zealot to wake you up in the morning...
"The difference between open source and closed source that for some reason you fail to grasp, is you can fix that bug immediately or you can pay someone to do it for you."
No, you can't. First, believe it or not, most people out there who would use a product like OpenOffice are not software engineers. That argument may work for software that is primarily used by developers such as Apache, but not at all for something like OpenOffice. Second, projects like OpenOffice are notoriously tight, and you cannot just one day join the project right off the street. Even though they are open source, most of their developers work for Sun, and they do control who is able to contribute to the project.
"No one has ever claimed perfection, apart from marketdroids selling proprietary products, the big driving issue is about putting control back into the users hands."
No, but the previous poster did claim that with open source projects "If someone finds a bug or flaw, it doesn't take someone else very long to fix it", thats the claim I was rebutting.
"Code that has been subject to independent public vetting, will always be more stable and secure than code than has not been, if, for no other reason than more independent eyes have seen it (if you think internal company politics and bonuses etc. don't have an affect on the quality of code going out the door, then you are crazy)."
Again, while that argument may work in LaLa Land, thats simply not true in the real world (as this very article itself demonstrates). Just because something is open source does not mean everyone who uses it will take a look at every line of code. Most people (especially with a product like OpenOffice) will simply just use it and never even download that tarball of source code. And very few of those who do actually take a look at the code and who are skilled enough to recognize problems in it will look at every last little line of code in the project. In fact, many propritary products that have internal processes like code reviews will actually get more eyes on it than some open source projects.
As I mentioned to the other poster (I didn't notice that the idea originated here)...
"...and the academic community is supposed to be all about GPL, Open Source, etc..."
Really? How so? I thought the academica community was supposed to be about learning new things and preparing oneself for work in the real world. How does the GPL relate to a pre-med student? How does open source software relate to a history major studying ancient greece? Even among the very limited discipline of computer science (believe it or not, many universities do not even have CS departments at all), students should learn all sorts of software philosophies, not just have the GPL ingrained into their brains. I think you have a very misguided concept of what academia really is...
"Within our supposedly academic institutions, Firefox appears on only a small fraction of computers."
RTFA. That number is the percentage of universities that have installed it on some computers, not the percentage of computers that have it installed. You could have just as easily said that 32% of UK universities surveyed do not have firefox on any campus computer.
Furthermore, I don't see what being 'academic' has to do with what kind of software is installed on campus computers. Why would a small liberal arts university where the browser used is IE or Safari or even Netscape (I'm assuming that if they don't have Firefox, they are also not going to have Opera) any less academic than one that also has Firefox installed? Yeah, it may make sense for a CS lab to have more software installed, but that is a very small segment of academia as a whole.
Actually it may well be that sites like FriendsReunited and that airline one happen to be bigger in the UK. Here we would more likely list classmates.com (though I really only know about them because of all their banner ads) and expedia. Of course that really brings into question the idea that these are 'websites that changed the world'. This seems more like a list of 'websites we really like'.
Funny though, no porn or online dating sites (though I suppose craigslist can count)...
"I welcome any example where it took 4 weeks for a fix for a main package."
Well offhand, here is one opened 3 years ago which still hasn't been fixed, though it would be difficult to exploit. Basically what happens is that that a machine with trust level 4 (the default is 3, so again this would be difficult to exploit) to gain level 5 access (meaning they can run arbitrary commands on computer running the service. No, STAF/STAX is not as big as Linux (which is why I was talking about open source in general, not just Linux, which isn't even the software this article was about), but it is used in many corporate environments as an automated testing tool.
I've seen plenty of security bugs in open source code that don't get updated right away. Open source is not all that different from closed source software in this sense. While it certainly is fun to pretend open source is perfect and is in every way better than commercial software, that simply is not true.
RTFC. I was arguing against the idea that a relatively new technology is a basic right, not that you can't have it. Nice straw man though.
"Because the carry-on the the only thing you're guaranteed to have when you arrive at your destination."
Yes, it is certainly possible for your check in luggage to be delayed for 24 hours, but it certainly is not the airline's policy or standard operations with most airlines. And considering how many people lose their own luggage, the only difference in terms of losing checked in bags and carry ons is that the airlines will refund lost checked bags.
"I want to bring my own freakin toothpaste when I travel."
Yeah, but do you need to use it on the plane? Why the hell do you need to bring it in your carry on? Is it really that hard to include toiletries in checked baggage?
"Freedom to move around the country is a pretty basic right which is being eroded by stealth."
You mean freedom to fly around the country, cheaply and without hassle? You do realize that half a century ago, there were no cheap airliners that could get you from New York to California in hours, right? Man, I wish my ancestors were here to tell you spoiled kids about the conditions of the ships that brought them to America. Brushing their teeth on the way over was probably the least of their concerns...
No, most people here know all too well what Flash can do. The reason it is the subject of our ire isn't because it contains too few features.
"(...Among the things I didn't mention, you can create MAC/PC desktop apps, using the same codebase.)"
Again, why? Why use something that is designed as a web application as a desktop app?
"What you are describing is what can *maybe* be done in a couple dozen different browsers (+ versions), in dozens of different ways"
What, submit post and get requests (thats the only thing I said browsers can do too)? I think pretty much any browser can do that. Yes, there are multiple ways for them to do it, but how is that bad?
"Flash behaves consistently cross-browser, cross/platform "
Sure, as long as you are running Windows. Wait, what does it mean to be cross platform again?
"and most features cannot be disabled by the user. (compare that to a user being able to turn off JS, or Java -- something often mandated in a corporate environment.)"
Ever imagine there might be a reason for that?
" * Flash can load and play external MP3 audio. * Flash can play video. That is not possible w/ HTML/CSS/JS. "
Yes, Flash has many ways to annoy its users. That partially answers my previous question.
"# Flash can POST and GET a variety of data. "
Wow, basic use of the HTTP spec. I can't imagine anything else that even comes close to being able to do that...
"# Flash can access a user's webcam, allowing you to create your own video chat/IM app. "
What is the point of having a web application if it is dependent on your hardware?
They also sold their PC division over a year ago.
From the article:
They don't name names, but it does seem like a number of aggregators do support JavaScript. And when the day comes where someone develops a "Web 2.0 AJAX enabled blog", there will be pressure for more and more aggregators to support JavaScript (likely it will be an option that can be disabled, but who is going to do that if it means they cannot access certain features on certain blogs).
This is just one more reason I hate Javascript.
Umm, part of the scientific process is to put out your theories for peer review. The scientists who did this did nothing wrong, in fact they were absolutely correct. And for the record, they still have not been proven wrong, just much of their evidence has been given alternate explanations.
Let's see if you can try to do a decent job for once. This is the second article I've seen today with a title that is very badly worded. The title here appears to say that scientists have now, after 10 years of study, rejected the claim of the NASA scientists that there is life on this rock. When in reality, the story is more about the 10 year anniversary of the controversial announcement. No, I'm not asking for an involved fact checking assignment, just for you to do a quick glance at the article and make sure what the submitter wrote is accurate.
Except there may well be a good reason for why there appears to be no life on Mars, it is not a very habitable planet.
What statement? That its been 10 years since that announcement (the only 'news' here)? How is that curious? The inital announcement was in 1996, 1996 + 10 = 2006, Bush was inaugurated for his second term in 2005, and since most presidencies last 4 years, it makes absolute sense that he will be president on the 10 year anniversary.
"No one wants to admit life started out there somewhere. For all we know the meteorites seeded life on Earth... and elsewhere. Why is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth?"
Who is having trouble believing that life exists out there? What the topic of this debate is whether or not a particular rock (the ALH84001 meteorite) contains life. At first scientists believed they had found evidence of life in it, but in the 10 years since they havn't won over much support.
"I for one think it would be good for mankind to have a significant first contact with a superior race. At least then we can then look to exploration and not war to keep us occupied while we grow up."
Yeah, because there were no wars going on during the 1500s in the age of exploration...
And how exactly would discovering the existence of life outside of Earth make exploration more possible? Are you trying to say that we are not exploring space right now?
Thats some pretty strong language, and isn't at all appropriate for this discussion as it primarily involves opinions rather than facts. Linus disagrees with the direction GPLv3 is taking, which is his right to do. To 'refute' those comments, you would basically have to prove he has no problem with GPLv3.
Who the hell wrote this article, Richard Stallman?