because google is not into childish games of retaliation and threats. if news corp puts out a robots.txt google will honor it, if they get a court order google will honor that too, public whining just gets sent to/dev/null
Hypothetically, what if Google stopped indexing all News Corp sites and told them this: "as you have made it abundantly clear that you do not appreciate our indexing service, we have voluntarily ceased to render that service onto you." What is childish or threatening about that? I wouldn't call that retaliatory; I would call it respecting their express wishes. If that doesn't work out so well for Murdoch, then perhaps in the future he will be careful what he wishes for.
I think the more relevant question is this: why should Google remain where they are obviously not wanted? In my view of things, remaining where you are not wanted is much more childish than vacating and going where you are actually appreciated.
I would be willing to bet that most people do not know about bookmarks, and just search Google (or whatever their favorite search engine is) whenever they want to go to a website. There is probably a significant percentage of people who enter domain names into Google when they want to visit the website at that domain.
Sounds like the people for whom "address bar search" where there should be a "site not found" error is something other than an unwanted nuisance.
Maybe the answer is robots.txt; but that is not what you tell a billionaire if he asks you.
Why not? What part of "hey, not only is this completely within your control, it's also easy to handle" would a billionaire not want to hear? Would they prefer to hear that there's nothing they can do or that the problem is incredibly difficult to solve? Please explain this because I don't get it.
This is all a ploy to negotiate with Google some more beneficial (to Murdoch) terms.
I can only see it working if he also manages to get a critical mass of other publications' owners to do the same thing.
They don't have to move in lockstep if he does have a coalition going. He can block WSJ.com, claim some victory, show it as a case model, and hope others buy his idea (WSJ does not need Google, but the example would probably not work for many other not-as-self-sustaining sites).
It's not politics, it's purely (an attempt to save a failed) business (model). If Rupert doesn't have a coalition going, there's only so much posturing he can do before actually cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Here's what I don't understand about people like Murdoch. He's 78 years old. I don't like him one bit, but I don't wish him ill either (for that would reflect badly on me while saying nothing about him). I hope he lives well into old age (and uses that time to reconsider his priorities -- more on that later). But realistically, he is a mortal being just like me and everyone else.
I'll speak only for myself here. If I were 78 years old, how much time would I have left on the planet? Two or three years? Five? Ten? Wouldn't I be lucky to have that much, since all of those figures exceed the average life expectancy of a male in the USA? If I am that old and already have enough money to guarantee not only my financial security but also that of any children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, what would be the point of continuing to try to build and maintain a media empire with increasingly aggressive tactics? Every minute I spent doing that would be time I wouldn't get to spend with my family, my friends, appreciating nature and the world around me, and maybe even trying to use my vast resources to make the world a slightly better place. It would be time that I would never get back once it has come and gone.
I really wonder what drives people like this. I want to know what they think they are accomplishing that's so important to them. It's not even a religious cause or a humanitarian effort or anything like that where this kind of devotion is not so unusual. It's just business and he has already acquired a vast personal fortune that is the dream of businessmen everywhere. He has already succeeded many times over yet he continues to play the game. Something here just doesn't add up. How do you explain this kind of dedication? Because as far as I can tell, it's quite pathological though even that doesn't really explain it.
I think they are trying to separate themselves to state that if you want the news, come to us and do it properly.
Have you ever searched for some information, and Google gave a hit where the surrounding text of the query already answers your question? And then not clicked the website?
Most news articles are at least several paragraphs, if not several pages. If having access to the little paragraph of sample text provided by a Google search removes all incentive to actually visit the site and read the full article, that should tell you something about the merit of their articles. The antithesis of this would be fascinating, well-written, nuanced coverage of the news that holds your interest and makes you feel that the entire article was worth reading. It's no wonder they are talking about leveraging the force of (copyright) law to get their way -- they seem to have little else to fall back on.
If they do decide to prevent Google from indexing their site, I predict they will see a significant reduction in traffic to their site. There are many places to go for news, most of which would be overjoyed to have a high ranking on Google. If they believe that they are so unique and indispensable that removing their content from Google searches will make people go directly to their sites instead of going to whichever news sites replace them in Google's listing, I think they are in for a surprise. If such an event causes them to have a change of heart, I hope Google says "nah, you demanded that we stop indexing your site and we complied; now that you have been replaced by other news services we have no interest in indexing your site again." In other words, this is the kind of asshattery that "the market" is able to correct.
Yes, of course! The government has already taken over the banking sector, the mortgage sector, the automotive sector, is about to take over the healthcare sector, so fuck it - the government may as well take over the energy sector as well. I can't wait until they take over food distribution - I've always wanted to know what it's like to stand in line for a loaf of bread all day.
I am not a fan of government intervention either, nor do I like what was done with banking and automobiles. Having said that, this isn't what is being proposed here. If the electric utilities must comply with laws mandating that they meet or exceed a minimum standard of security, this would be much more like the way local Board of Health requires that restaurants handle food in ways that prevent food poisoning. The Board of Health does not own the restaurants and it does not choose their management; it just periodically inspects them and can shut them down if there are egregious violations. Something similar could be worked out for the power companies when it comes to security.
Plugins are a -bad idea- for most people, for one even if your browser gets updated your plugins might not, leading gaping security flaws
This is the beauty of package managers. Basic plugins like this can be installed system-wide on Unix-like operating systems and that installation can be maintained by the package manager just like the browser itself and every other application. On Windows they can auto-update themselves though I know this method is less than ideal. The on-screen "traffic" of many individual applications all periodically popping up their own automatic updaters asking you to upgrade is likely to annoy users and may cause them to be clicked away (i.e. cancelled or disabled) just to get rid of them. Perhaps plugins that are important for security reasons can just automatically and non-interactively update themselves when they periodically poll for a new version and find that one is available to reduce this issue on Windows.
in addition to this, teaching people to install plugins is bad because a plugin could very well contain malware/viruses.
True, but then so could the browser. Yet there really haven't been problems with people going to mozilla.com or getfirefox.com and worrying about whether they are getting the real Firefox and not a trojaned browser, to use Firefox as an example. If the plugin is Open Source (GPL or BSD license or similar) then there's probably no reason that it can't just be included with the browser to eliminate this problem.
Ultimately, however, people need to stop being so mindless ("mindless" as in "autopilot") as to act out the results of "teaching people" by rote. Instead they could learn to judge for themselves what the situation calls for, be it the installation of a plugin or anything else. I think that's what we should be encouraging but we should do so knowing it won't happen overnight. There's no real substitute for understanding, and the attempt to provide substitutes for it is a big reason why there is so much malware in the first place.
A plugin can lead to reliance on the plugin and not spur development in the actual browser
That's potentially true, and quite likely for proprietary plugins. I see that as exactly what happened with Flash. If, however, this is an open standard with an Open Source implementation, then there are no barriers to incorporating the functionality directly into any Open Source browser. Perhaps for IE it can be in the form of a plugin. For that reason, I don't think this is a showstopper though it certainly is a consideration.
You mention that Flash should be replaced by open video standards for video applications. However, I frequently find video and even more so video live streams to be very fragile when the browser uses the systems video player. I then often just download the video and play it externally, because the internal video player doesn't respond and I don't know why.
Flash was introduced here because it just works.
Come up with something that works for everyone. If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.
It hasn't been my own experience that embedded video is fragile in the browser, though I don't doubt what you are saying of your experience. Personally, I prefer to have the browser load such video in an external player that treats it like streaming media, though stability isn't my reason. I like having the full controls of the external player available and I like being able to easily resize the window that plays the video.
Just curious, what OS, browser, and video player are you using? The way you described it as the "system video player" made me think of Windows, as Linux generally doesn't have a particular "system" video player (though I suppose a specific distribution might choose to do things this way). Instead, the user normally installs one or more players of his/her choice but they are just applications like any other and are not built-in OS features. That you had Windows in mind is just a guess, of course. The desktop environment on a Linux system might use file associations to designate a particular video player as the default handler for a certain type of file (I.e. AVI or MPEG) and this could also be called the "system video player." I also wonder if there is a particular file format that seems to give you more problems than others, perhaps because of DRM and requirements imposed by it that are not strictly necessary for playing a video.
It also occurred to me that maybe the problems you are experiencing with standard embedded video is because so many sites use Flash instead. If standard embedded video were more widely used, then problems like that might be more well-known and resolved. It seems to be the exception to the norm right now, and if that changed, I would expect it to improve more rapidly.
Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash
If Flash goes back to being a niche application for only certain specific types of content that actually require its programming language, such as online games, that would be a tremendous improvement. The issue being addressed here is that Flash is a full-featured system that's being used just to play videos, when there are other non-proprietary ways to deal with content that only needs to play a video. Using an open standard when one is available and could do the job is definitely a step in the right direction even if we know it's not a panacea that can totally replace Flash in every possible scenario. It could even lead to other open systems being designed and implemented that can replace Flash in areas where its featureset is actually needed.
That's an extremely common technique around here. Well, that and ad-hominem attacks. I don't think it's deliberate so much as it's a product of ignorance about argumentation and reasoning. Anyone who resorts to such tactics is substituting them for useful debate. Ergo, they are taking a very weak position even if they otherwise would have had a valid point. Still, since you know how to deal with that, it means you know how to deal with almost anyone here.
That can be contrasted against the relative few who really do have insight and know how to use it. Some of them have made me look at things differently or caused me to consider ideas that may not have occurred to me. In that sense they did me a service, and I had no problem telling them so and thanking them. That, to me, is the real value of participating in discussions like this. Some folks here really are both knowledgable and skilled and I appreciate being able to learn from them.
I'll add that there is no shame whatsoever in saying "that's a really good point; my position was mistaken" but there is cowardice behind being too proud to admit that. I mention this because that AC is suddenly very silent despite the passion he or she claimed to have about this issue. When I say that, I don't think I am telling you anything you don't already know, of course, but I did want to emphasize that for others who might be following this thread.
I believe I can see that you value this kind of understanding for your own edification. Still, I wanted to compliment you. It's always refreshing to hear from folks who can call things what they are.
I recently sent an e-mail to a local radio station after they read a news item stating that, so far this year, 12 people have died from the swine flu in my state. I sent them a letter because that's all that the news item said. It did not mention that about 1600 die of the regular old influenza every year. With all the hysteria about this issue I think some perspective is very badly needed. It's just piss-poor journalism to report a raw figure with no context like this.
It also has something to do with the piss-poor state of people's understanding of statistics in general. Your story is a classic example of how society needs to put a lot more emphasis on education when it comes to stats. I'd even put forward a "law" of information theory regarding this: the actionable value of data increases by the amount of its supporting data. So in this example, saying that 12 people have died of swine flu has a value of 0 (it has no context so it's meaningless). Saying that 1600 die of regular flu every year increases its value by 1, saying that last year 2500 people died of regular flu increases it by +1 again, saying that flue deaths this century have averaged 0.007% of that of the annual rate 100 years ago increases it +1 again, etc.
Sir, I'd mod you up to +5 if I had points. I think the real issue there is that if the public schools don't teach this, the average person won't know it. This is much to our collective shame. I have always believed it is a big mistake to wait for someone to come along and teach you important things out of the kindness of their hearts when basic literacy is the only requirement for educating yourself. It's a passive "spectator" approach to life and it means that many important things are left undone.
The folks in the media are another story. They have studied journalism. They should understand basic things like the need for context. They should know the value of comparing a new phenomenon to a similar phenomenon that is more well-known and better understood. As far as I am concerned, they have no excuse. But mediocrity thrives in an environment where it's rewarded by people who don't know better.
It'd be a tragedy, and I might loose a couple good friends, but the golden lining of the pandemic killing a couple million people in Western countries would be that it's more likely the dead would be the ones prone to believing in conspiracy theories and the like. The rest of us having gone and gotten immunized.
Finally -- Darwin Awards on a massive systematic scale.
Ah yes the good old "any alternative viewpoint must be a conspiracy theory" bit. I wish some of you would find a different playbook, because these easily-refutedtactics are rather tedious and boring. At any rate, I think that H1N1 has been overhyped and that, speaking only for myself (you want medical advice, talk to a doctor because I am not a doctor) the threat it poses has been greatly exaggerated. That's a conspiracy theory?
I'll give an analogy. What if I said that Windows Vista was overhyped? Does that also require a conspiracy? Can I not just review its features and known issues and decide that it's not as great as some people would have you believe? Or do you think there's no possible way for me to say that without believing in a bunch of shadowy figures in a smoky back room?
I realize that there exist people who think there is a conspiracy behind the H1N1 issue. If that bothers you, talk to those people. I have made no such claims and it's in poor taste at best to try to lump me together with them merely because I offer dissent. The weakness of that tactic is extreme. The message it's based on is, "I disagree with you, therefore something is wrong with you." It's abundantly possible for reasonable people to disagree on an issue. Unfortunately, they stop being reasonable once they resort to tactics like those.
I had an epiphany while trying to describe attitudes like yours to someone else yesterday. I was trying to put into words why it aggravates me so much when it suddenly hit me. I was watching 3 or 4 live streams last year when the outbreak was first detected, and we were being bombarded with press conferences as one state after another started announcing how many cases they were treating. As it happens, I was in the middle of making my first serious attempt at writing a novel about a pandemic and all the hysteria it may cause. Of course, now that we're in the middle of one, there's really no point to finishing the book. Having said that, I had researched dozens of reports, information sites from both government and non-government entities, and other things like various states' emergency response plans. It was actually pretty cool having the various states' plans open while "following along" through live streaming on the net. Then someone wrote a post somewhere that aggravated me to my core. He wrote, "call me when there are 36,000 dead because that's how many die every year."
What his, and apparently your, thoughts about this don't take into account is that we may pass the typical number of fatalities on a single day as the body count rises from say, 28,000 to 42,000. In that hypothetical situation, you and that guy are ready to start caring. What are you going to do the next day when the count climbs from 42,000 to 60,000? At what point do you shit yourself? I watched a symposium on pandemic flu given by the NIH as part of my research, and I learned an interesting fact. During the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, approximately 4,500 people died in the City of Philadelphia during the course of *one week*.
Yet you two don't want to do anything until the death toll passes the normal annual figure. Please don't take my word for it. Do your own research. Spend just a little bit of time reading up on the topic. Think about the logistics, and hopefully you will form an opinion that you feel is well-informed and is something you can defend. But just turning your back and calling it scaremongering is irresponsible and dangerous. A lot of people are going to die during the second wave. If we wait until you suggest before taking action, it will be way too late.
It was way before my time, but if I had lived during the 1950s-1960s I would have voluntarily accepted a polio vaccine. Why? Because polio is a horrible crippling illness that can maim someone for life. That's a real threat.
For what I am about to say now, it must be understood that I am speaking only for myself. I am not a doctor. Therefore, I would not dream of telling someone else what they should do about a medical issue. You as an individual must handle this as you see fit, which is exactly what I am doing for myself.
Having said that, I have done the research (your assumption that I haven't was cute) and I fit none of the characteristics of people who are at risk for serious complications for swine flu. If I came down with the swine flu, I'd feel like shit for a few days to a week and then I would get over it. This is a nuisance, but it's not a threat. It doesn't scare me.
What does bother me is when words like "global pandemic" get thrown around because of their emotional impact. Perhaps people have short memories these days, but I remember SARS, West Nile, Hoof and Mouth, avian flu, and there are probably others that I don't recall right now. Each one of them was treated by the media very much like H1N1. Body count has nothing to do with this; perspective does.
Think about the logistics, and hopefully you will form an opinion that you feel is well-informed and is something you can defend. But just turning your back and calling it scaremongering is irresponsible and dangerous.
In my case, it IS scaremongering. If many other healthy adults decided (for themselves, without my assistance) that they felt the same way, I would not be the le
Are they correlating this data with the fear of people of getting H1N1 in an airplane?
I recently sent an e-mail to a local radio station after they read a news item stating that, so far this year, 12 people have died from the swine flu in my state. I sent them a letter because that's all that the news item said. It did not mention that about 1600 die of the regular old influenza every year. With all the hysteria about this issue I think some perspective is very badly needed. It's just piss-poor journalism to report a raw figure with no context like this.
Your comment about the fear of H1N1 made me think about the various ways that it's being encouraged. To me that's just media sensationalism, which is not really unusual because it sells. Is H1N1 a threat to some people? Probably so; I am not a doctor so I should not say too much on that. Do I personally feel threatened by it? Not in the slightest. It'd be a nuisance to me, but not a threat. There's no way I am going to cower in fear and alter my life over it. It is their own damned laziness but the fact is most people aren't going to do their own research on this one. If there were more perspective and context in media reports about H1N1, it would be much easier for others to make up their own minds as I have done.
Even if this is or were a true threat to life and limb, acting like a bunch of panicked animals is the wrong way to reduce a threat.
...The way people react so strongly to the Electric Universe...
Because the electric force is so much stronger than gravity, it can and does make things happen much faster. Electricity, it can be demonstrated, has the ability to disrupt and rearrange matter very quickly. Our modern technology uses this ability in countless applications.
Electricity throws a rather large monkey wrench into the theory of evolution, because its cornerstone is time, billions and billions of years of time. Because the present science establishment is run by the high priests of the evolutionary religion, they would naturally vehemently oppose any idea that threatens the heart of their dogma. The movie "Expelled" is an excellent exposé of what happens to honest scientists who dare to question evolutionary dogma and its high priests.
I really have no problem with a steady-state view of the Universe, which to me is quite compatible with EU theory. EU theory shows the assumptions underlying the Hubble "redshift = distance" idea, which is the cornerstone of Big Bang theory. If redshift is intrinsic and is not dependent on distance, then you don't need an expanding universe.
To me the Universe is a mysterious thing. I am not remotely surprised if it defies all of our attempts to put it into this neat little box of rationality. It very well may have never had a linear-time origin, that is, it may be truly eternal in both a past, present, and future sense.
The scientific censorship that Expelled talks about, as well as what Halton Arp and Wallace Thornhill have personally experienced, is just inexcusable. Science would be publishing their papers and then, if they be found faulty, publishing follow-up papers explaining why they are faulty. That's not what happened. Instead, their papers were ignored and their telescope time was denied. They were blackballed and they were ostracised. This is not science; this is a religion dealing with a heretic.
The people in this very thread who have ridiculed you and I for merely mentioning alternative viewpoints don't realize that they are marching in lockstep to what is actually a religion that clothes itself in rational language. There is no free thought in that. It's a shame, because in their quest to portray us as some kind of freaks they reveal their own robotic nature.
No, falsifying it would mean profiling all running OS and application code, including the driver code, to determine precisely where any faults occur. Perhaps running Windows as a guest OS in an emulator would make this feasible. It could also mean having the full source code and either locating defects or attempting to demonstrate its correctness (to whatever degree of confidence this latter option is possible).
You can not falsify it, because it is obvious truth. You just wish it was false because you are heavily biased.
I've repeatedly heard the claim that drivers are to blame for Windows instabilities. I've yet to ever see anyone perform this kind of research to prove it. Maybe someone somewhere has done this, but the people who make claims about drivers feel no need to back up those claims. If it's really so obvious, backing it up should be no problem.
So I am saying "I don't know, yet I repeatedly hear this unsubstantiated claim". I go on to provide an example of an OS that runs on a very wide range of hardware, everything from embedded devices to PCs to supercomputing clusters that does not have these issues, meaning it's quite possible to support a wide range of hardware without the problem that (it is claimed) brings down Windows. The purpose of that is not to compare epeen sizes of two OS's, but to show that hardware diversity alone does not guarantee instability. That makes me the biased one? Really?
Seems to me the biased ones are MS apologists. Blaming third-party drivers absolves Microsoft of blame, because after all they didn't create those drivers. Until they provide a shred of proof I cannot consider their claims to be obvious. I can only say I don't know. "I don't know because I have seen no proof but have seen a potential counter-example" is not bias unless you have a belief to protect. If you do, then I understand how inquiry might make you insecure, but at that point you leave the realm of claims and evidence and enter the realm of religious faith.
You just want to believe Unix is so much better because it isn't evil like MS.
I primarily work with Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Thus, I don't make too many claims about Windows. I leave that to people who use Windows. All I am asking them to do is substantiate a claim I frequently hear from them. For that, I am called "biased" or people who don't know me from Adam feel free to tell me what I think is evil instead of asking me, but that's just noise. I am not seeing any proof to back up those claims which is the only thing that would constitute signal. The weakness of that technique is amazing. The only thing more amazing is your blindness to it.
This is not a great success. Instead, it appears to be the beginning of a failed policy.
If the intention is to assert further unreasonable power over a population that isn't likely to do anything about it, then all policies fitting that description (Internet-related or not) have been a resounding success. They're more successful still when each generation grows up conditioned to it because it's "just the way things are" with little appreciation for how they came to be that way. Then it's so much easier to add just a tiny extra restriction here and there, which doesn't seem so bad at the time, except that anyone who takes a long view would quickly realize that over time these things add up to a tremendous transfer of power away from the people.
It's only a failure if reasonable honest government that truly represents the people was ever the goal.
So then all the people who correctly show that the electric force must be involved in the large-scale operation of the universe and in our solar system are like lunatics? I suggest you learn a little bit about electric fields, magnetism and plasmas before you spout such nonsense.
The way people react so strongly to the Electric Universe, the way they are so eager to ridicule it and personally condemn you for even mentioning it says a lot all by itself. The same people who call themselves scientific will call you names instead of demonstrating the scientific basis of their rejection of Electric Universe theory. I think the irony of this is lost on them.
It's not unlike how the Church once reacted to heliocentrism. If I weren't sure about whether EU theory was onto something, this alone would confirm for me that it is indeed. I've read enough history to recognize certain patterns and those patterns are unmistakable. There's also the fact that I've never seen a person call EU theory "bullshit" who was also familiar with it.
The ridicule is quite amusing in one way. We're already accepting a non-mainstream theory that goes against much of establishment science. In that, we have already demonstrated that we value the truth of our own investigations and our own questioning, and not the number of people who agree with us. So what is the ridicule, which is just a childish form of disagreement, supposed to accomplish, exactly? I wonder if it's to reassure the "mainstream faithful" that there's no need to ask pesky questions, since only those "lunatics" would do that. If so, the parallels between scientific authority and religious authority are strong.
Truth backed by observation and correct reasoning never needed any kind of authority to make it the truth. It's a pleasure to hear from folks like you who understand that.
It means I believe it whether or not others need to disagree or even ridicule me for it. I believe that this is one of those polarizing things where you either see it for yourself or you don't and bickering about it is infinitesimally unlikely to change anyone's mind.
In other words you have no evidence for your beliefs and are unable to provide a rationale for them - you believe it despite the lack of evidence and the contravening evidence, and you take pride in your ignorance which you dub "faith". You think that your "opinion" is more reliable than the research conducted by hundreds of individuals who have a vastly better understanding of the subject, and you are more than happy to ignore the evidence presented by them simply because you think you know better.
Like I said, you're a typical creationist. Whether or not you share their views doesn't interest me; I'm just commenting on the fact that you share the same mindset. Or, if you want a more secular comparison, you're the astrophysics equivalent of Jenny McCarthy. Without the tits.
If you would accept a suggestion from me, never confuse consensus agreement with truth
If you would accept a suggestion from me: never confuse your emotional attachment to a viewpoint with data.
The "evidence" will be when there is a recognized crisis in astrophysics, the milder form of which is called a paradigm shift. When that happens, and when dark matter is a central part of it, do try to act suprised would you? As I can't arbitrarily and unilaterally decide to push that timetable, I instead see that it's headed in that direction. What you want is for me to make that bleeding obvious and totally undeniable for you. In that, you ask of me what you should be doing for yourself, if indeed you are participating in genuine inquiry. However, you show multiple signs that you want to be the guy who's right and not the guy who questions, and that's pure ego.
As you don't know what else to do with me, you have to label me a "creationist" and you must try to tell me that what I see very plainly is "faith" or "emotional attachment." I take it I'm supposed to resent that and retaliate, which would be most unbecoming of me. The point is, just telling me that you disagree and letting it go is too much for you. You must also make me the bad guy or the stupid guy. Now why might that be? Do you believe that comes from the strength of your position or the power of your message?
You see, there is a need to belittle in that, to make it into a personal matter. By doing this you reveal weakness of a personal nature, specifically a need to feel superior. That's a form of compensation for inferiority, in the same way that bullies are actually cowards though they try so hard to be intimidating. It's not your fault unless you know better. Still, the worst thing I could do for you would be to retaliate in kind and find some names to call you, which wouldn't be hard for me since you so openly display your hinge or your weakness.
It would take no effort for me to make you angry and otherwise to push a button and get a response, like any other machine. That's why it's a weakness. It's a string that even a stranger could come along and pull. But if I did that, it would only justify the tactics you are using, and I have no intention of giving you such an easy way out.
No, I'm going to continue to be both straightforward and kind to you no matter what you say. There is nothing you can say and nothing you can do to upset me in any way whatsoever, so I feel no need to lash out in such an undignified manner. That's precisely because I see something that you don't. It's a whole picture, of which the downsides of institutional authority such as what science has become is only a tiny part.
Say what you will, but it is nice having an OS that is *tightly* coupled with the hardware -- it cuts way down on poorly written drivers that are responsible for many of the BSOD in MS land. It is a premium to pay, but the frustration spared is well worth it.
Ah yes the "blame it on the drivers" apologetic for various Windows issues. It's the perfect excuse, really, because it's difficult to falsify. So I'll ask you this: how, pray tell, do you explain how properly-installed Linux has its rock-solid stability on such a wide variety of hardware? If indeed the support of a wide variety of commodity PC hardware is the cause of instability, and if the Mac is so stable because it has such a comparatively narrow range of hardware to support, what would be your answer to that question?
Note, my question was about Windows. I don't dispute that the Mac is quite stable. I just believe it's stable because it's based on Unix and Unix had this kind of stability long before Apple decided to use it. Apple was just smart enough to recognize that and smarter still to put a pretty and usable GUI on top of it. It's the "faulty drivers" excuse for Windows that I don't quite buy, and mostly because I've never received an answer to that question that made sense.
Even since cable/dsl was introduced it was made clear you didn't buy 24/7 full throughput, you bought burst speeds that were subject to the traffic of others on your aggregation point. So yes, you are getting to use exactly what you paid for.
The alternative if you wanted guaranteed 100% throughput 24/7 was and still is a dedicated line like a T1. There is a technological limitation to providing those burst speeds in a guaranteed way 24/7 to every subscriber on the network. They let power users get by when they aren't single-handedly affecting the performance of all of their neighbors, but you get throttled if it turns out you are.
If cable/dsl are forced to require 100% guaranteed speeds like a dedicated line, you will see the cost go way up, or the speeds go way down.
So far as I know the throttling and traffic manipulation seems to be mostly a facet of cable service. I have DSL through a major monopoly telephone company. I remember when I set it up, I _thoroughly_ grilled the representative about whether they screw with my connection in any way. I asked them, if I were to run a 24/7 server of any sort, or if I were to constantly saturate the full bandwidth available to me, both upstream and downstream, would they interfere? The answer was no. This is a residential-grade service, not business-class or anything like that. They have lived up to their word. I have never had any sort of interference or throttling of any sort, nor have I had any ports firewalled by them or anything of that nature (not even port 25).
I talk to folks who have cable access and they seem to have entered into a trade-off. They can potentially get more speed than my 3mbit (downstream) connection, but they have far more problems. They experience both more outages and more instances of actual performance being slower than advertised. I assume that's because of the shared nature of cable access. My point-to-point DSL, meanwhile, is rock-steady and consistent. I think I made the right choice there.
The point is not so much whether I want to run a server, or actually need to fully saturate my connection at all times. The point is I can do it if I feel like it with no concern that anyone is going to interfere with it. It would be nice to have more than 3mbit/down but putting up with the bullshit I constantly hear about cable companies is not worth it to me. I am surprised that so many people do. Then again, I was surprised that a major monopoly telephone company was so hassle-free to deal with. Is my experience unique?
Reminds me of a quote that I wish I could attribute: "the human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who don't."
And before someone else points it out, yes I meant "keeping society safe from criminals". First cup of coffee, yadda yadda.
If this really is genetic, wouldn't that be an argument for the death penalty as a method of selecting against that gene? Seems to me that giving such a light sentence is counterproductive here, if in fact it is genetic.
In recent years, SORBS has been the target of frequent accusations of mismanagement and poor conduct, leading many to wonder if this turn in events might signal a chance for improved behavior.
Honestly, that wouldn't make me wonder if SORBS will improve its behavior after an acquisition. No. That would have made me find another blocklist provider a long time ago. Shady/questionable behavior like that goes on only because it's so thoroughly tolerated and often actively supported.
Slashdot Mirror
because google is not into childish games of retaliation and threats. if news corp puts out a robots.txt google will honor it, if they get a court order google will honor that too, public whining just gets sent to /dev/null
Hypothetically, what if Google stopped indexing all News Corp sites and told them this: "as you have made it abundantly clear that you do not appreciate our indexing service, we have voluntarily ceased to render that service onto you." What is childish or threatening about that? I wouldn't call that retaliatory; I would call it respecting their express wishes. If that doesn't work out so well for Murdoch, then perhaps in the future he will be careful what he wishes for.
I think the more relevant question is this: why should Google remain where they are obviously not wanted? In my view of things, remaining where you are not wanted is much more childish than vacating and going where you are actually appreciated.
I would be willing to bet that most people do not know about bookmarks, and just search Google (or whatever their favorite search engine is) whenever they want to go to a website. There is probably a significant percentage of people who enter domain names into Google when they want to visit the website at that domain.
Sounds like the people for whom "address bar search" where there should be a "site not found" error is something other than an unwanted nuisance.
Why not? What part of "hey, not only is this completely within your control, it's also easy to handle" would a billionaire not want to hear? Would they prefer to hear that there's nothing they can do or that the problem is incredibly difficult to solve? Please explain this because I don't get it.
This is all a ploy to negotiate with Google some more beneficial (to Murdoch) terms. I can only see it working if he also manages to get a critical mass of other publications' owners to do the same thing. They don't have to move in lockstep if he does have a coalition going. He can block WSJ.com, claim some victory, show it as a case model, and hope others buy his idea (WSJ does not need Google, but the example would probably not work for many other not-as-self-sustaining sites).
It's not politics, it's purely (an attempt to save a failed) business (model). If Rupert doesn't have a coalition going, there's only so much posturing he can do before actually cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Here's what I don't understand about people like Murdoch. He's 78 years old. I don't like him one bit, but I don't wish him ill either (for that would reflect badly on me while saying nothing about him). I hope he lives well into old age (and uses that time to reconsider his priorities -- more on that later). But realistically, he is a mortal being just like me and everyone else.
I'll speak only for myself here. If I were 78 years old, how much time would I have left on the planet? Two or three years? Five? Ten? Wouldn't I be lucky to have that much, since all of those figures exceed the average life expectancy of a male in the USA? If I am that old and already have enough money to guarantee not only my financial security but also that of any children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, what would be the point of continuing to try to build and maintain a media empire with increasingly aggressive tactics? Every minute I spent doing that would be time I wouldn't get to spend with my family, my friends, appreciating nature and the world around me, and maybe even trying to use my vast resources to make the world a slightly better place. It would be time that I would never get back once it has come and gone.
I really wonder what drives people like this. I want to know what they think they are accomplishing that's so important to them. It's not even a religious cause or a humanitarian effort or anything like that where this kind of devotion is not so unusual. It's just business and he has already acquired a vast personal fortune that is the dream of businessmen everywhere. He has already succeeded many times over yet he continues to play the game. Something here just doesn't add up. How do you explain this kind of dedication? Because as far as I can tell, it's quite pathological though even that doesn't really explain it.
I think they are trying to separate themselves to state that if you want the news, come to us and do it properly.
Have you ever searched for some information, and Google gave a hit where the surrounding text of the query already answers your question? And then not clicked the website?
Most news articles are at least several paragraphs, if not several pages. If having access to the little paragraph of sample text provided by a Google search removes all incentive to actually visit the site and read the full article, that should tell you something about the merit of their articles. The antithesis of this would be fascinating, well-written, nuanced coverage of the news that holds your interest and makes you feel that the entire article was worth reading. It's no wonder they are talking about leveraging the force of (copyright) law to get their way -- they seem to have little else to fall back on.
If they do decide to prevent Google from indexing their site, I predict they will see a significant reduction in traffic to their site. There are many places to go for news, most of which would be overjoyed to have a high ranking on Google. If they believe that they are so unique and indispensable that removing their content from Google searches will make people go directly to their sites instead of going to whichever news sites replace them in Google's listing, I think they are in for a surprise. If such an event causes them to have a change of heart, I hope Google says "nah, you demanded that we stop indexing your site and we complied; now that you have been replaced by other news services we have no interest in indexing your site again." In other words, this is the kind of asshattery that "the market" is able to correct.
Yes, of course! The government has already taken over the banking sector, the mortgage sector, the automotive sector, is about to take over the healthcare sector, so fuck it - the government may as well take over the energy sector as well. I can't wait until they take over food distribution - I've always wanted to know what it's like to stand in line for a loaf of bread all day.
I am not a fan of government intervention either, nor do I like what was done with banking and automobiles. Having said that, this isn't what is being proposed here. If the electric utilities must comply with laws mandating that they meet or exceed a minimum standard of security, this would be much more like the way local Board of Health requires that restaurants handle food in ways that prevent food poisoning. The Board of Health does not own the restaurants and it does not choose their management; it just periodically inspects them and can shut them down if there are egregious violations. Something similar could be worked out for the power companies when it comes to security.
Ok, go for it: I use firefox on amd64, and don't have a working flash plugin. Looking forward to your solution.
Your best bet would be Gnash or something similar. That way you can compile it yourself to suit your 64-bit architecture.
This is the beauty of package managers. Basic plugins like this can be installed system-wide on Unix-like operating systems and that installation can be maintained by the package manager just like the browser itself and every other application. On Windows they can auto-update themselves though I know this method is less than ideal. The on-screen "traffic" of many individual applications all periodically popping up their own automatic updaters asking you to upgrade is likely to annoy users and may cause them to be clicked away (i.e. cancelled or disabled) just to get rid of them. Perhaps plugins that are important for security reasons can just automatically and non-interactively update themselves when they periodically poll for a new version and find that one is available to reduce this issue on Windows.
True, but then so could the browser. Yet there really haven't been problems with people going to mozilla.com or getfirefox.com and worrying about whether they are getting the real Firefox and not a trojaned browser, to use Firefox as an example. If the plugin is Open Source (GPL or BSD license or similar) then there's probably no reason that it can't just be included with the browser to eliminate this problem.
Ultimately, however, people need to stop being so mindless ("mindless" as in "autopilot") as to act out the results of "teaching people" by rote. Instead they could learn to judge for themselves what the situation calls for, be it the installation of a plugin or anything else. I think that's what we should be encouraging but we should do so knowing it won't happen overnight. There's no real substitute for understanding, and the attempt to provide substitutes for it is a big reason why there is so much malware in the first place.
That's potentially true, and quite likely for proprietary plugins. I see that as exactly what happened with Flash. If, however, this is an open standard with an Open Source implementation, then there are no barriers to incorporating the functionality directly into any Open Source browser. Perhaps for IE it can be in the form of a plugin. For that reason, I don't think this is a showstopper though it certainly is a consideration.
You mention that Flash should be replaced by open video standards for video applications. However, I frequently find video and even more so video live streams to be very fragile when the browser uses the systems video player. I then often just download the video and play it externally, because the internal video player doesn't respond and I don't know why.
Flash was introduced here because it just works. Come up with something that works for everyone. If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.
It hasn't been my own experience that embedded video is fragile in the browser, though I don't doubt what you are saying of your experience. Personally, I prefer to have the browser load such video in an external player that treats it like streaming media, though stability isn't my reason. I like having the full controls of the external player available and I like being able to easily resize the window that plays the video.
Just curious, what OS, browser, and video player are you using? The way you described it as the "system video player" made me think of Windows, as Linux generally doesn't have a particular "system" video player (though I suppose a specific distribution might choose to do things this way). Instead, the user normally installs one or more players of his/her choice but they are just applications like any other and are not built-in OS features. That you had Windows in mind is just a guess, of course. The desktop environment on a Linux system might use file associations to designate a particular video player as the default handler for a certain type of file (I.e. AVI or MPEG) and this could also be called the "system video player." I also wonder if there is a particular file format that seems to give you more problems than others, perhaps because of DRM and requirements imposed by it that are not strictly necessary for playing a video.
It also occurred to me that maybe the problems you are experiencing with standard embedded video is because so many sites use Flash instead. If standard embedded video were more widely used, then problems like that might be more well-known and resolved. It seems to be the exception to the norm right now, and if that changed, I would expect it to improve more rapidly.
Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash
If Flash goes back to being a niche application for only certain specific types of content that actually require its programming language, such as online games, that would be a tremendous improvement. The issue being addressed here is that Flash is a full-featured system that's being used just to play videos, when there are other non-proprietary ways to deal with content that only needs to play a video. Using an open standard when one is available and could do the job is definitely a step in the right direction even if we know it's not a panacea that can totally replace Flash in every possible scenario. It could even lead to other open systems being designed and implemented that can replace Flash in areas where its featureset is actually needed.
That's an extremely common technique around here. Well, that and ad-hominem attacks. I don't think it's deliberate so much as it's a product of ignorance about argumentation and reasoning. Anyone who resorts to such tactics is substituting them for useful debate. Ergo, they are taking a very weak position even if they otherwise would have had a valid point. Still, since you know how to deal with that, it means you know how to deal with almost anyone here.
That can be contrasted against the relative few who really do have insight and know how to use it. Some of them have made me look at things differently or caused me to consider ideas that may not have occurred to me. In that sense they did me a service, and I had no problem telling them so and thanking them. That, to me, is the real value of participating in discussions like this. Some folks here really are both knowledgable and skilled and I appreciate being able to learn from them.
I'll add that there is no shame whatsoever in saying "that's a really good point; my position was mistaken" but there is cowardice behind being too proud to admit that. I mention this because that AC is suddenly very silent despite the passion he or she claimed to have about this issue. When I say that, I don't think I am telling you anything you don't already know, of course, but I did want to emphasize that for others who might be following this thread.
I believe I can see that you value this kind of understanding for your own edification. Still, I wanted to compliment you. It's always refreshing to hear from folks who can call things what they are.
I recently sent an e-mail to a local radio station after they read a news item stating that, so far this year, 12 people have died from the swine flu in my state. I sent them a letter because that's all that the news item said. It did not mention that about 1600 die of the regular old influenza every year. With all the hysteria about this issue I think some perspective is very badly needed. It's just piss-poor journalism to report a raw figure with no context like this.
It also has something to do with the piss-poor state of people's understanding of statistics in general. Your story is a classic example of how society needs to put a lot more emphasis on education when it comes to stats. I'd even put forward a "law" of information theory regarding this: the actionable value of data increases by the amount of its supporting data. So in this example, saying that 12 people have died of swine flu has a value of 0 (it has no context so it's meaningless). Saying that 1600 die of regular flu every year increases its value by 1, saying that last year 2500 people died of regular flu increases it by +1 again, saying that flue deaths this century have averaged 0.007% of that of the annual rate 100 years ago increases it +1 again, etc.
Sir, I'd mod you up to +5 if I had points. I think the real issue there is that if the public schools don't teach this, the average person won't know it. This is much to our collective shame. I have always believed it is a big mistake to wait for someone to come along and teach you important things out of the kindness of their hearts when basic literacy is the only requirement for educating yourself. It's a passive "spectator" approach to life and it means that many important things are left undone.
The folks in the media are another story. They have studied journalism. They should understand basic things like the need for context. They should know the value of comparing a new phenomenon to a similar phenomenon that is more well-known and better understood. As far as I am concerned, they have no excuse. But mediocrity thrives in an environment where it's rewarded by people who don't know better.
It'd be a tragedy, and I might loose a couple good friends, but the golden lining of the pandemic killing a couple million people in Western countries would be that it's more likely the dead would be the ones prone to believing in conspiracy theories and the like. The rest of us having gone and gotten immunized.
Finally -- Darwin Awards on a massive systematic scale.
Ah yes the good old "any alternative viewpoint must be a conspiracy theory" bit. I wish some of you would find a different playbook, because these easily-refuted tactics are rather tedious and boring. At any rate, I think that H1N1 has been overhyped and that, speaking only for myself (you want medical advice, talk to a doctor because I am not a doctor) the threat it poses has been greatly exaggerated. That's a conspiracy theory?
I'll give an analogy. What if I said that Windows Vista was overhyped? Does that also require a conspiracy? Can I not just review its features and known issues and decide that it's not as great as some people would have you believe? Or do you think there's no possible way for me to say that without believing in a bunch of shadowy figures in a smoky back room?
I realize that there exist people who think there is a conspiracy behind the H1N1 issue. If that bothers you, talk to those people. I have made no such claims and it's in poor taste at best to try to lump me together with them merely because I offer dissent. The weakness of that tactic is extreme. The message it's based on is, "I disagree with you, therefore something is wrong with you." It's abundantly possible for reasonable people to disagree on an issue. Unfortunately, they stop being reasonable once they resort to tactics like those.
I had an epiphany while trying to describe attitudes like yours to someone else yesterday. I was trying to put into words why it aggravates me so much when it suddenly hit me. I was watching 3 or 4 live streams last year when the outbreak was first detected, and we were being bombarded with press conferences as one state after another started announcing how many cases they were treating. As it happens, I was in the middle of making my first serious attempt at writing a novel about a pandemic and all the hysteria it may cause. Of course, now that we're in the middle of one, there's really no point to finishing the book. Having said that, I had researched dozens of reports, information sites from both government and non-government entities, and other things like various states' emergency response plans. It was actually pretty cool having the various states' plans open while "following along" through live streaming on the net. Then someone wrote a post somewhere that aggravated me to my core. He wrote, "call me when there are 36,000 dead because that's how many die every year."
What his, and apparently your, thoughts about this don't take into account is that we may pass the typical number of fatalities on a single day as the body count rises from say, 28,000 to 42,000. In that hypothetical situation, you and that guy are ready to start caring. What are you going to do the next day when the count climbs from 42,000 to 60,000? At what point do you shit yourself? I watched a symposium on pandemic flu given by the NIH as part of my research, and I learned an interesting fact. During the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, approximately 4,500 people died in the City of Philadelphia during the course of *one week*.
Yet you two don't want to do anything until the death toll passes the normal annual figure. Please don't take my word for it. Do your own research. Spend just a little bit of time reading up on the topic. Think about the logistics, and hopefully you will form an opinion that you feel is well-informed and is something you can defend. But just turning your back and calling it scaremongering is irresponsible and dangerous. A lot of people are going to die during the second wave. If we wait until you suggest before taking action, it will be way too late.
It was way before my time, but if I had lived during the 1950s-1960s I would have voluntarily accepted a polio vaccine. Why? Because polio is a horrible crippling illness that can maim someone for life. That's a real threat.
For what I am about to say now, it must be understood that I am speaking only for myself. I am not a doctor. Therefore, I would not dream of telling someone else what they should do about a medical issue. You as an individual must handle this as you see fit, which is exactly what I am doing for myself.
Having said that, I have done the research (your assumption that I haven't was cute) and I fit none of the characteristics of people who are at risk for serious complications for swine flu. If I came down with the swine flu, I'd feel like shit for a few days to a week and then I would get over it. This is a nuisance, but it's not a threat. It doesn't scare me.
What does bother me is when words like "global pandemic" get thrown around because of their emotional impact. Perhaps people have short memories these days, but I remember SARS, West Nile, Hoof and Mouth, avian flu, and there are probably others that I don't recall right now. Each one of them was treated by the media very much like H1N1. Body count has nothing to do with this; perspective does.
In my case, it IS scaremongering. If many other healthy adults decided (for themselves, without my assistance) that they felt the same way, I would not be the le
Are they correlating this data with the fear of people of getting H1N1 in an airplane?
I recently sent an e-mail to a local radio station after they read a news item stating that, so far this year, 12 people have died from the swine flu in my state. I sent them a letter because that's all that the news item said. It did not mention that about 1600 die of the regular old influenza every year. With all the hysteria about this issue I think some perspective is very badly needed. It's just piss-poor journalism to report a raw figure with no context like this.
Your comment about the fear of H1N1 made me think about the various ways that it's being encouraged. To me that's just media sensationalism, which is not really unusual because it sells. Is H1N1 a threat to some people? Probably so; I am not a doctor so I should not say too much on that. Do I personally feel threatened by it? Not in the slightest. It'd be a nuisance to me, but not a threat. There's no way I am going to cower in fear and alter my life over it. It is their own damned laziness but the fact is most people aren't going to do their own research on this one. If there were more perspective and context in media reports about H1N1, it would be much easier for others to make up their own minds as I have done.
Even if this is or were a true threat to life and limb, acting like a bunch of panicked animals is the wrong way to reduce a threat.
...The way people react so strongly to the Electric Universe...
Because the electric force is so much stronger than gravity, it can and does make things happen much faster. Electricity, it can be demonstrated, has the ability to disrupt and rearrange matter very quickly. Our modern technology uses this ability in countless applications.
Electricity throws a rather large monkey wrench into the theory of evolution, because its cornerstone is time, billions and billions of years of time. Because the present science establishment is run by the high priests of the evolutionary religion, they would naturally vehemently oppose any idea that threatens the heart of their dogma. The movie "Expelled" is an excellent exposé of what happens to honest scientists who dare to question evolutionary dogma and its high priests.
I really have no problem with a steady-state view of the Universe, which to me is quite compatible with EU theory. EU theory shows the assumptions underlying the Hubble "redshift = distance" idea, which is the cornerstone of Big Bang theory. If redshift is intrinsic and is not dependent on distance, then you don't need an expanding universe.
To me the Universe is a mysterious thing. I am not remotely surprised if it defies all of our attempts to put it into this neat little box of rationality. It very well may have never had a linear-time origin, that is, it may be truly eternal in both a past, present, and future sense.
The scientific censorship that Expelled talks about, as well as what Halton Arp and Wallace Thornhill have personally experienced, is just inexcusable. Science would be publishing their papers and then, if they be found faulty, publishing follow-up papers explaining why they are faulty. That's not what happened. Instead, their papers were ignored and their telescope time was denied. They were blackballed and they were ostracised. This is not science; this is a religion dealing with a heretic.
The people in this very thread who have ridiculed you and I for merely mentioning alternative viewpoints don't realize that they are marching in lockstep to what is actually a religion that clothes itself in rational language. There is no free thought in that. It's a shame, because in their quest to portray us as some kind of freaks they reveal their own robotic nature.
No, falsifying it would mean profiling all running OS and application code, including the driver code, to determine precisely where any faults occur. Perhaps running Windows as a guest OS in an emulator would make this feasible. It could also mean having the full source code and either locating defects or attempting to demonstrate its correctness (to whatever degree of confidence this latter option is possible).
I've repeatedly heard the claim that drivers are to blame for Windows instabilities. I've yet to ever see anyone perform this kind of research to prove it. Maybe someone somewhere has done this, but the people who make claims about drivers feel no need to back up those claims. If it's really so obvious, backing it up should be no problem.
So I am saying "I don't know, yet I repeatedly hear this unsubstantiated claim". I go on to provide an example of an OS that runs on a very wide range of hardware, everything from embedded devices to PCs to supercomputing clusters that does not have these issues, meaning it's quite possible to support a wide range of hardware without the problem that (it is claimed) brings down Windows. The purpose of that is not to compare epeen sizes of two OS's, but to show that hardware diversity alone does not guarantee instability. That makes me the biased one? Really?
Seems to me the biased ones are MS apologists. Blaming third-party drivers absolves Microsoft of blame, because after all they didn't create those drivers. Until they provide a shred of proof I cannot consider their claims to be obvious. I can only say I don't know. "I don't know because I have seen no proof but have seen a potential counter-example" is not bias unless you have a belief to protect. If you do, then I understand how inquiry might make you insecure, but at that point you leave the realm of claims and evidence and enter the realm of religious faith.
I primarily work with Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Thus, I don't make too many claims about Windows. I leave that to people who use Windows. All I am asking them to do is substantiate a claim I frequently hear from them. For that, I am called "biased" or people who don't know me from Adam feel free to tell me what I think is evil instead of asking me, but that's just noise. I am not seeing any proof to back up those claims which is the only thing that would constitute signal. The weakness of that technique is amazing. The only thing more amazing is your blindness to it.
If the intention is to assert further unreasonable power over a population that isn't likely to do anything about it, then all policies fitting that description (Internet-related or not) have been a resounding success. They're more successful still when each generation grows up conditioned to it because it's "just the way things are" with little appreciation for how they came to be that way. Then it's so much easier to add just a tiny extra restriction here and there, which doesn't seem so bad at the time, except that anyone who takes a long view would quickly realize that over time these things add up to a tremendous transfer of power away from the people.
It's only a failure if reasonable honest government that truly represents the people was ever the goal.
...to every lunatic with a wacky idea...
So then all the people who correctly show that the electric force must be involved in the large-scale operation of the universe and in our solar system are like lunatics? I suggest you learn a little bit about electric fields, magnetism and plasmas before you spout such nonsense.
The way people react so strongly to the Electric Universe, the way they are so eager to ridicule it and personally condemn you for even mentioning it says a lot all by itself. The same people who call themselves scientific will call you names instead of demonstrating the scientific basis of their rejection of Electric Universe theory. I think the irony of this is lost on them.
It's not unlike how the Church once reacted to heliocentrism. If I weren't sure about whether EU theory was onto something, this alone would confirm for me that it is indeed. I've read enough history to recognize certain patterns and those patterns are unmistakable. There's also the fact that I've never seen a person call EU theory "bullshit" who was also familiar with it.
The ridicule is quite amusing in one way. We're already accepting a non-mainstream theory that goes against much of establishment science. In that, we have already demonstrated that we value the truth of our own investigations and our own questioning, and not the number of people who agree with us. So what is the ridicule, which is just a childish form of disagreement, supposed to accomplish, exactly? I wonder if it's to reassure the "mainstream faithful" that there's no need to ask pesky questions, since only those "lunatics" would do that. If so, the parallels between scientific authority and religious authority are strong.
Truth backed by observation and correct reasoning never needed any kind of authority to make it the truth. It's a pleasure to hear from folks like you who understand that.
It means I believe it whether or not others need to disagree or even ridicule me for it. I believe that this is one of those polarizing things where you either see it for yourself or you don't and bickering about it is infinitesimally unlikely to change anyone's mind.
In other words you have no evidence for your beliefs and are unable to provide a rationale for them - you believe it despite the lack of evidence and the contravening evidence, and you take pride in your ignorance which you dub "faith". You think that your "opinion" is more reliable than the research conducted by hundreds of individuals who have a vastly better understanding of the subject, and you are more than happy to ignore the evidence presented by them simply because you think you know better.
Like I said, you're a typical creationist. Whether or not you share their views doesn't interest me; I'm just commenting on the fact that you share the same mindset. Or, if you want a more secular comparison, you're the astrophysics equivalent of Jenny McCarthy. Without the tits.
If you would accept a suggestion from me, never confuse consensus agreement with truth
If you would accept a suggestion from me: never confuse your emotional attachment to a viewpoint with data.
The "evidence" will be when there is a recognized crisis in astrophysics, the milder form of which is called a paradigm shift. When that happens, and when dark matter is a central part of it, do try to act suprised would you? As I can't arbitrarily and unilaterally decide to push that timetable, I instead see that it's headed in that direction. What you want is for me to make that bleeding obvious and totally undeniable for you. In that, you ask of me what you should be doing for yourself, if indeed you are participating in genuine inquiry. However, you show multiple signs that you want to be the guy who's right and not the guy who questions, and that's pure ego.
As you don't know what else to do with me, you have to label me a "creationist" and you must try to tell me that what I see very plainly is "faith" or "emotional attachment." I take it I'm supposed to resent that and retaliate, which would be most unbecoming of me. The point is, just telling me that you disagree and letting it go is too much for you. You must also make me the bad guy or the stupid guy. Now why might that be? Do you believe that comes from the strength of your position or the power of your message?
You see, there is a need to belittle in that, to make it into a personal matter. By doing this you reveal weakness of a personal nature, specifically a need to feel superior. That's a form of compensation for inferiority, in the same way that bullies are actually cowards though they try so hard to be intimidating. It's not your fault unless you know better. Still, the worst thing I could do for you would be to retaliate in kind and find some names to call you, which wouldn't be hard for me since you so openly display your hinge or your weakness.
It would take no effort for me to make you angry and otherwise to push a button and get a response, like any other machine. That's why it's a weakness. It's a string that even a stranger could come along and pull. But if I did that, it would only justify the tactics you are using, and I have no intention of giving you such an easy way out.
No, I'm going to continue to be both straightforward and kind to you no matter what you say. There is nothing you can say and nothing you can do to upset me in any way whatsoever, so I feel no need to lash out in such an undignified manner. That's precisely because I see something that you don't. It's a whole picture, of which the downsides of institutional authority such as what science has become is only a tiny part.
Say what you will, but it is nice having an OS that is *tightly* coupled with the hardware -- it cuts way down on poorly written drivers that are responsible for many of the BSOD in MS land. It is a premium to pay, but the frustration spared is well worth it.
Ah yes the "blame it on the drivers" apologetic for various Windows issues. It's the perfect excuse, really, because it's difficult to falsify. So I'll ask you this: how, pray tell, do you explain how properly-installed Linux has its rock-solid stability on such a wide variety of hardware? If indeed the support of a wide variety of commodity PC hardware is the cause of instability, and if the Mac is so stable because it has such a comparatively narrow range of hardware to support, what would be your answer to that question?
Note, my question was about Windows. I don't dispute that the Mac is quite stable. I just believe it's stable because it's based on Unix and Unix had this kind of stability long before Apple decided to use it. Apple was just smart enough to recognize that and smarter still to put a pretty and usable GUI on top of it. It's the "faulty drivers" excuse for Windows that I don't quite buy, and mostly because I've never received an answer to that question that made sense.
Even since cable/dsl was introduced it was made clear you didn't buy 24/7 full throughput, you bought burst speeds that were subject to the traffic of others on your aggregation point. So yes, you are getting to use exactly what you paid for.
The alternative if you wanted guaranteed 100% throughput 24/7 was and still is a dedicated line like a T1. There is a technological limitation to providing those burst speeds in a guaranteed way 24/7 to every subscriber on the network. They let power users get by when they aren't single-handedly affecting the performance of all of their neighbors, but you get throttled if it turns out you are.
If cable/dsl are forced to require 100% guaranteed speeds like a dedicated line, you will see the cost go way up, or the speeds go way down.
So far as I know the throttling and traffic manipulation seems to be mostly a facet of cable service. I have DSL through a major monopoly telephone company. I remember when I set it up, I _thoroughly_ grilled the representative about whether they screw with my connection in any way. I asked them, if I were to run a 24/7 server of any sort, or if I were to constantly saturate the full bandwidth available to me, both upstream and downstream, would they interfere? The answer was no. This is a residential-grade service, not business-class or anything like that. They have lived up to their word. I have never had any sort of interference or throttling of any sort, nor have I had any ports firewalled by them or anything of that nature (not even port 25).
I talk to folks who have cable access and they seem to have entered into a trade-off. They can potentially get more speed than my 3mbit (downstream) connection, but they have far more problems. They experience both more outages and more instances of actual performance being slower than advertised. I assume that's because of the shared nature of cable access. My point-to-point DSL, meanwhile, is rock-steady and consistent. I think I made the right choice there.
The point is not so much whether I want to run a server, or actually need to fully saturate my connection at all times. The point is I can do it if I feel like it with no concern that anyone is going to interfere with it. It would be nice to have more than 3mbit/down but putting up with the bullshit I constantly hear about cable companies is not worth it to me. I am surprised that so many people do. Then again, I was surprised that a major monopoly telephone company was so hassle-free to deal with. Is my experience unique?
Man, why repeat yourself like that?
Reminds me of a quote that I wish I could attribute: "the human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who don't."
And before someone else points it out, yes I meant "keeping society safe from criminals". First cup of coffee, yadda yadda.
If this really is genetic, wouldn't that be an argument for the death penalty as a method of selecting against that gene? Seems to me that giving such a light sentence is counterproductive here, if in fact it is genetic.
Honestly, that wouldn't make me wonder if SORBS will improve its behavior after an acquisition. No. That would have made me find another blocklist provider a long time ago. Shady/questionable behavior like that goes on only because it's so thoroughly tolerated and often actively supported.