Instead of questioning the standard model (giving us dark matter), we could question general relativity. This gives us a theory called MOND.
Actually, no. It gives you an "I don't know." That's unacceptable, so MOND emerges to fill the gap.
Seriously, you actually believe that? It's useless, not unacceptable. If all scientists did is say "I don't know" they wouldn't get much done would they? Think about it for a minute. Or, they do what scientists do best (i.e. science) and come up with new theories (e.g. MOND) which make testable predictions and attempt to test them.
MOND actually was something new that was proposed in response to the galaxy rotation problem. Whether it works out or not remains to be seen, though honestly I have little faith in it. The value of "I don't know" was that someone saw the need for a new theory. This required dissatisfaction with the existing ones. To me, "I don't know" is like a vacuum, and something will rush in to fill it. That something, if it is scientific, can be tested.
Inflation, on the other hand, was a revisionist, ad-hoc modification of Big Bang theory when it failed to correctly predict the results of measurements of the cosmic microwave background. I believe it's the sort of thing that Karl Popper warned us against. How can you ever falsify a theory when it can be modified to fit any observation that contradicts it? When you bring this up, you don't usually get a "here's why we don't feel that way." What you get is an angry response not unlike what you would expect if you told a Muslim that Allah doesn't exist or a Christian that Jesus was fictional. That is, you're a heretic. I don't view science as something that should have heretics.
By the way, you conveniently ignored my response to you when you viewed my worldview as an "infection." Cat got your tongue? I notice people often pretend like they didn't read anything for which they have no answer. Do you consider that courageous? I don't.
For that matter, why is there so much ignorance about the fact that the Schwarzschild solutions would and could never predict a singularity/black hole? That's if you read the actual paper authored by Schwarzschild himself -- he made that quite clear. David Hilbert modified Schwarzschild's work in December of 1916 to produce a soution that does permit black holes, yet for some reason we do not call it the Hilbert solution.
Also, why do I read so many articles about black holes with accretion disks and black holes as members of binary star systems etc. when there is no known two-body solution to General Relativity? That Hilbert solution is a one-body solution. All of those scenarios involve the black hole interacting with something, so how do you reconcile that? You can't make an analogy to Newtonian physics because Einstein's field equations are nonlinear so the principle of superposition does not apply, while this same principle does apply for Newtonian physics. Something here doesn't add up. Questions like this should have readily available answers.
When I ask those questions, I get dismissed, scoffed at, occasionally called names. There is one thing I never receive: a "you're wrong, and I'll show you why you are wrong and how you may be corrected." That isn't scientific, it's authoritarian. Hence my "priesthood" comment.
Instead of questioning the standard model (giving us dark matter), we could question general relativity. This gives us a theory called MOND.
Actually, no. It gives you an "I don't know." That's unacceptable, so MOND emerges to fill the gap.
FWIW, I don't really expect to convince you of this, as you seem to be quite firmly decided that it is bad science, even though it fits your apparent criteria for what science should be. But hopefully I can prevent others who read both of our comments from being infected by you.
I wouldn't expect a scientist who is confident about the factual basis and logical correctness of his worldview to view dissent as an "infection." I certainly would expect that from religious people who abhor the infidel and consider his doctrine dangerous.
Whether it's bad science or not is hard for me to say. I think it's science which is in need of a paradigm shift. Whether that makes it "bad" or merely "the best they could do at the time without being written off as fringe" is quite debatable.
So what you're saying is that you don't actually believe the nonsense you're spouting - you're simply trolling? Fun. Does that make you feel like a big man?
Far from it, good sir. 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. So I won't. The indifference means I am not bothered when things I believe don't find ready support, for that is a type of insecurity based on bandwagon appeal and I see the error in it. It also means I don't need to think ill of people, not even of those who can't disagree with my viewpoint without also judging me to be inferior in some way or inferring an ulterior motive such as trolling or egotism when my actions are mysterious to them. I am thankful to not carry that burden, for it's a heavy one.
If you would accept a suggestion from me, never confuse consensus agreement with truth. Not even when you find yourself on the side of the majority consensus.
Anytime your theory doesn't add up, or fails to predict the results of a new observation, why go through all the trouble of considering your theory falsified, questioning your premises, and coming up with new ideas?
Because every other scientist will laugh at you?
The more I see this kind of thing, the more I believe that mainstream science did not eliminate the priesthood. It merely replaced it with a more rational one to fit the changing needs of the people.
Yeah, creationists say the same thing. It seems to be amazingly common for dimwitted people to confuse their ignorance with "problems with science".
I see your provocation and raise you one indifference.
Really though, I don't expect agreement when I say a thing like that. You, if anything, are conforming to my expectations. There is no shame in that, though it's not terribly interesting either.
You have a profound understanding of Physics. That's exactly what physicists do.
Of course it's dark matter in the middle
Dark matter is sort of like violence. If it doesn't work, just use more of it.
Well it is certainly convenient. Anytime your theory doesn't add up, or fails to predict the results of a new observation, why go through all the trouble of considering your theory falsified, questioning your premises, and coming up with new ideas? Just add dark matter to make the math work out. Don't let it concern you that it's the one and only scientifically accepted form of matter that has never once been observed in any laboratory, after all, we have equations to balance!
The more I see this kind of thing, the more I believe that mainstream science did not eliminate the priesthood. It merely replaced it with a more rational one to fit the changing needs of the people.
You're rather well-informed and stalwart yourself to be able to see this despite the chorus of screaming voices which would have you believe that you're some kind of moron for questioning something that really does need to be questioned. In other words, truth in your own terms is not for the faint of heart. Anyone who needs to have answers handed to them because they wouldn't dare to question an expert is a member of the faint of heart.
People who view open standards as somehow a 'moral issue' usually don't have a full understanding of the total costs involved with information technology infrastructure.
Or maybe they understand that those infrastructure costs are a given whether or not you use open standards. When Maxtor sells you a hard drive, it's not like they charge more per gigabyte if you tell them you'll be using an open format to store your data. The government already needs computers and networks for their own purposes. Using tax dollars to pay for these things is a legitimate function of government and I have no problem with it. To then use restricted formats on the machines my tax dollars have purchased is the moral issue. To require me to spend additional money to buy proprietary software only to access what my tax dollars have already paid for is the moral issue. You can post AC all you like and you can repeat yourself all you like, it doesn't change this basic fact.
Are you sure they're really scrapping the previous definition? It sounds like they're just supplementing it with additional guidelines on how to recognize these non-evil-but-patented formats.
Scrapping and replacing it would be less sophisticated than what is being done here. You could say they are extending it, or you could say also that they are blurring it. If it were a great unknown, or new territory, or something like that for which there were not already clear and well-understood definitions, then that may make it excusable or at least understandable. However, that's not the case here.
The information is free, the medium is not. If you wanted paper copies of the records your argument wouldn't apply to paying a small fee for the paper, printing costs, and delivery.
It wouldn't apply there because paper is not inherently free. Someone has to cut down the trees, someone has to process the wood into paper, someone has to ship that paper from the paper mill, and someone has to print on it. The printed copies are a limited resource. If you have 100 printed copies, you cannot sell or give away 50 of them and still have 100 copies. Any that you sell must be replaced with more or else you will run out and be unable to sell or give away any more.
Electronic records are nothing like this. The government already has computers and Internet access because it has used tax dollars to pay for those. Now that it owns them, those can be reused to distribute infinite perfect copies of electronic records at no additional charge. There is no ongoing cost of acquiring more paper and using more ink.
If you want electronic records they have to be encapsulated somehow (like in a PDF or something), and those formats do cost money to develop.
Yet people around the world are willing to release both those formats and software that can work with them for free. Maybe those individuals are taking one for the team and bearing that cost themselves. The end result is that all of the rest of us do have formats available that don't cost us anything at all. The people who produced those formats and that software have specifically and deliberately taken steps to make sure of that, examples of which include their decision to use open licenses and their decision to seek no patents for their creations.
Of course, there are free formats out there and the government should use them or it's being wasteful, but this is definitely a "use the best/cheapest thing out there" thing, not a "I take a moral stand against paying for electronic records" thing.
There's something about taking a moral stand that makes many people uncomfortable. I suspect that's because it goes against their beliefs that convenience is everything by providing a counter-example. Can I prove that? No. Does it seem rather obvious to me? Yes, it does. Just as people who follow a religion can fail to adhere to its tenents without deliberately and consciously deciding "hey, I think I'd like to be a hypocrite," people can believe that immediate convenience is the only worthy criteria for decision-making without necessarily being aware that their choices reveal this pattern. This means you must use introspection and cannot correctly assume the reality of your stated intentions, however sincere and heartfelt they may be. It's the reason why all of the differing views about wisdom and what it actually is generally agree on one thing, and that's the importance of truly knowing yourself.
If you really want a mundane response, I will say this much. A government that is wasteful when it is capable of not being wasteful is, in fact, taking advantage of its people. This is much worse when it behaves this way because of financial and political interests that stand to profit from said waste, because then it is no accident. However, it's still pretty bad when it's an innocent mistake, and we the citizens should expect better. I believe this to be the morally correct, or if that is really an obstacle for you, I also believe it to be ethically correct.
Part of being open is being OK with alternative viewpoints.
Alternative viewpoints are great. Alternative definitions, however, are intentionally misleading. This is an alternative definition.
You see, the viewpoint that closed-source and proprietary standards are great already exists. The viewpoint that open-source and non-encumbered standards are great also already exists. There is no new viewpoint being proposed here. That's beacuse this is not a matter of viewpoint. It's a not-so-subtle attempt to blur the definitions that distinguish two existing viewpoints. There is only one reason for accidentally doing this: sheer incompetence. There is only one reason to deliberately do anything like that: the desire to equate things which are inherently distinct; that is, the desire to confuse. It's either incompetence or it's deception and neither of those are worth defending.
Whether you're offended that some people care about the GPL more than you would like them to has nothing to do with it. Whether commercial/proprietary software gets a bad rap more than you want it to also has nothing to do with it.
People don't have to give their work away for free if they don't want to.
That's absolutely correct. I can develop a program, or a protocol, or a format, and I can lock it away in a safe and bury it if that's what I feel like doing. I can copyright it and restrict it on that basis, or I can try to patent it. I can hoard the source code and release it only as a black-box binary. However, if I do that and then refer to it as "an open standard" then that would make me a liar. This is really simple.
I never understood why you and so many others want to equate the desire that things be called what they are with telling others what they should do with their work. They are not remotely the same. If I don't want to use a program because it's proprietary, I am not forcing that program's author to do anything. Nor am I telling him how he should use his programming talents. He is free to find someone else who does want to use his program. This is just another thinly-veiled "accept this thing and like it, or else there's something wrong with you" and I'm not buying it.
There is also a question about the morality of governments releasing public information in proprietary formats. My tax dollars have already paid to produce whatever documents the government releases. It belongs to we the people. Why should I have to pay a second time to obtain a proprietary program to access this public information that my tax dollars have already paid for? I celebrate the right of private citizens and private businesses to use whatever format pleases them, whether it's freely available or not. But when we are talking about governments there is a perfectly valid objection to the use of proprietary software, whether or not anyone finds that convenient.
What in GODS name are you blabbering about? No, seriously, what are you actually going on about?
This is for WEB fonts, not for "Oh hey, i think i will completely misdirect you by somehow magically being capable of modifying your STATUS BAR with web font-faces!"
These open fonts do absolutely NOTHING bad, people can already be redirected to websites without realising it, link obfuscation has been around since the web began.
Nobody gives a damn about the idiot users, especially the shops.
The idiots are their largest incomes, "oh my computers not workin, best bin it and buy a new one". (yes, it happens every day)
Whoever modded this up seriously needs to read it back over again, the parents posts have absolutely NOTHING to do with this and is almost FUD-like.
A conversation about one aspect of computing can also touch on other aspects of computing. It's a natural, normal flow and only some kind of self-censorship designed to please the sensibilities of those like you would halt it. The fact that you went on to add your own commentary about computer shops and their source of income makes you something of a hypocrite in this instance, for you complain about the direction this thread took and then gave it more momentum in that direction. Further, you'll never see me censor myself in order to please you or anyone else, for you may always exercise your right to disregard any statements you dislike. That you chose not to use that right is your problem and yours alone.
None of this constitutes a claim that a standardized Web font is an inherently bad thing, or would do damage of any sort to anyone, which coincidentally is why you never saw me make such a claim. I thought I'd highlight the significance of that, as it seemed lost upon you.
people are simply unable to determine where they are, whether or not a site is trustworthy, and will click anything to install something
That's because according to many users, basic competence is "only for geeks and nerds." Many of them consider it a terribly unreasonable burden to expect them to read even the most basic step-by-step documentation which was intended for non-technical audiences because "they're not computer experts." They don't seem to appreciate the difference between "don't trust every anonymous individual who asks for your bank account information" and "write this complex program in x86 assembly," which is not unlike the difference between "drive this car" and "rebuild its engine."
Knowing this, do I feel sorry for them when they get screwed? No, I don't. It's unfortunate and I wish it didn't have to be that way, but I see no injustice in it. That's because they not only refuse to inform themselves but often actively resent even the implication that they could and should. This still goes on even after the widely publicised cases of identity theft and fraud that, if anything, the media tends to get sensationalistic about. It still goes on despite the vast wealth of freely available information out there which is accessible to anyone who can get to Google. At some point, water seeks its own level. The scammers are just attaching a higher price tag to something that didn't have an excuse in the first place.
Bittorrent spawns a huge number of connections. If the OS (or ISP) gives equal bandwidth to each TCP stream, your connection to youtube gets about as much as each one of your 25 bitorrent connections, which destroys the streaming video, voip, or even normal web surfing. I would LOVE it if this provides a solution. (I would be even happier if ToS flags were widely honored, but that has never happened, so I don't know why it would happen now).
I have heard the claim that the reason why ToS/QoS flags are not widely honored is that Windows, by default, sets the highest priority for ALL traffic with no regard for what kind of traffic it is. As I don't run Windows, I have to say I honestly don't know whether this is so. Can anyone affirm or deny this claim?
Yeah, because Wikipedia so totally equals truth... oh, wait...
I wouldn't rely on it* to research abortion or some other hot-button political topic, but for relatively non-controversial, easily-verified subjects like the early history of Microsoft it's really quite good. The same goes for most articles related to science and engineering, as these are dry factual topics that tend not to attract the interest of malicious editors (assuming that's what you're worried about).
* I hope the functionally illiterate can appreciate the difference between "wouldn't rely on it" and "wouldn't use it at all." Sorry to add this but some of the more reactive types on here just love to read things into what you say.
I wonder if he appreciates that he'd have been unable to do this if everyone operated the way Microsoft does.
I think you misread. A company essentially contracted him to come in and fix bugs. Are you telling me that MS wouldn't let you see their code if they contracted with you to come in and fix bugs?
I read that quite clearly, thanks. I also read that prior to that arrangement, he and three other Lakeside students were banned for exploiting bugs in the OS. Presumably, his skill at doing so is what caused them to contract him. While he could have done this without source code, it certainly would have made that task easier. Furthermore, another Wikipedia article states that the users of the PDP-10 both shared and reused source code, so it's not unreasonable to think that Gates had access to it:
Over time, some PDP-10 operators began running operating systems assembled from major components developed outside DEC. For example, the main Scheduler might come from one university, the Disk Service from another, and so on. The commercial timesharing services such as CompuServe, On-Line Systems (OLS), and Rapidata maintained sophisticated inhouse systems programming groups so that they could modify the operating system as needed for their own businesses without being dependent on DEC or others. There were also strong user communities such as DECUS through which users could share software that they had developed. In some ways, this was one of the first open source environments, although the commercial operators tended to only take code from open sources, keeping their own proprietary enhancements to themselves.
One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.[15]
At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language.
Gates wrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly female students.
That gotta give some hacker and geekiness points;)
So Bill Gates studied the source code and benefitted from having done so? I wonder if he appreciates that he'd have been unable to do this if everyone operated the way Microsoft does.
The committee released a statement explaining how the document was leaked. They didn't "blame" P2P, they simply detailed how the document got where it is. If they had said that someone smuggled the document outside in their briefcase, would you interpret it as them attacking briefcases?
I agree with your clarification. This isn't intended to argue against what you said about that perception, but rather to highlight where that perception comes from.
The RIAA stated that "the disclosure was evidence of a need for controls on peer-to-peer software to block the improper or illegal exchange of music".
To answer your example, let's say that there is a wealthy, politically active group with a great deal of sympathy in Washington. This group is well-known for its hatred of briefcases because it finds them to be, shall we say, economically inconvenient. If the group said that such a smuggling is evidence that we need (i.e. government) control of briefcases, it might create that impression.
That's particularly true of the RIAA's statement since the document that was leaked has nothing to do with music. They are merely demonstrating that they're desperate for any excuse to demogogue anything related to P2P software, to the point that they will obviously clutch at straws like this. If they were really interested in security, they'd ask the same question another Slashdotter has already asked: why did they allow this person to work on secure documents with an unsecured computer? Only that wouldn't represent an opportunity to raise their pet issue, hence their problem with it.
and that's why journalists backed by newspapers gets freedom of the press, while individual bloggers gets court orders and/or sentences...
... by people who have no idea what "the press" was when the 1st Amendment was written. Much of it was not large and institutional. It was often as simple as a concerned citizen distributing pamphlets or starting his own local editorial. The individual bloggers are true to this spirit in a way that the media conglomerates could never hope to be.
More importantly, it was better understood that when you read such materials, you were reading the perspective of the author. It was not taken as the "final word" the way professional news is too-often regarded.
They're dangerous because they are unaware of what they don't know, so they feel qualified (authorized) to make decisions about what they do not really understand.
In my experience, politicans are a lot more likely to seek out expert advice in an area outside their realm than techie are.
There's one big problem with that. If they are thinking about, say, a law concerning file-sharing, the expert advice is going to come from someone who works in the IT industry, likely from an ISP. The interests of the ISP can differ from the interests of its users. So once again it's about authority and not knowledge, in this case the authority being credentials gained by having an institution or a company behind you. It's one reason why the law is so often biased in favor of corporations and other large organizations.
To their defense, we do have safety bottles today because at some point a baby died eating pills thinking they were candies. It's all about protecting the incompetent from themselves.
I wouldn't blame the pill bottle for that. Instead, I'd ask "where were the parents when this happened?"
So long as two computers can communicate with each other, so you will have P2P.
Luckily, we have politicians who's only education is in English, law, history, politics, art. So it's easy to push any techno-babble on them because they are dangerously uneducated fools.
They're dangerous because they are unaware of what they don't know, so they feel qualified (authorized) to make decisions about what they do not really understand.
When the Oracle at Delphi pronounced Socrates the wisest man in all of Greece, Socrates gave a response beyond reproach. He said, "If I am the wisest man, it is because I alone know that I know nothing."
You apparently have never filed a FOIA request anywhere. Government is at least as secretive as private industry.
In this case, clearly the police department didn't want to expose things such as 'when' and 'where', just the 'what' and 'who'. Add those other two items, and the 'why' becomes more evident.
Good job, though. Hope it works out for him.
It was a rhetorical question. I know how things actually are. It's in contrast to how things should be. Applying the expectation of how things should be is how that can be changed.
of an ordinary "Audit Trail". Now, you don't have to rely on manual log-entries and sign-out sheets.
It says a lot that this actually went to court in the first place, let alone that it went to the state Supreme Court. What part of "public record" needed clarification, exactly?
I am not an atheist. I responded to this post criticizing the logic. However, Flamebait != I do not agree. Unfortunately the metamod system is so screwed that there is no way to make sure the mods don't get points again.
Yeah, I don't understand the new metamod system either. The main page used to have a link that would show up from time to time and ask me to meta-moderate, which I was willing to do. I haven't seen that link in ages and would have to go looking for the metamod link. I don't understand why that, of all things, would be de-emphasized. It really seems like metamoderation is something that should be promoted.
I absolutely agree that there are some mods who should not be moderators. I have seen some extremely low-quality moderations around here, the ones that were clearly an attempt to censor, and they have been both more frequent and less subtle ever since the metamod system was changed. If I owned this site and saw that, I would say "hey, maybe changing that system was a bad idea, I better do something about this." I don't see what the holdup is on that one.
And those sects I could never believe in. Such beliefs are a total contradiction of themselves.
One is supposed to live a good life, but wait, that doesnt matter as long as one gains faith right before they die as god only picks the best of mankind?
The self-consistent version (the one not found in many churches) is that through faith, you attain salvation and become what I will call a spiritually aware or spiritually inspired person. That spiritual awareness makes you realize that there is a higher standard, represented by a better way to live. By "better" I mean marked by equanimity, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and loving-kindness where before you may have responded with such things as anger, resentment, hatred or bitterness.
This higher standard creates a striking contrast against all of your negative thoughts and behaviors, those that cause inner conflict for you and emotional or other harm to others. The contrast makes you painfully aware (what they call conviction) that the way you live needs to be changed, and that this change is for the better. This begins what very well may be a lifelong process of identifying and renouncing (repentence) those negative thoughts and behaviors, one at a time if necessary, through the mechanism of acknowledging the wrong things you have done and continue to do by a (sometimes rather painful) process of introspection and self-honesty.
This often involves confronting your own denial about the harm that your words and deeds can or have done. With that comes the realization that everyone always does what they think is right or justfiied or necessary, and it is their ideas about what those things are that might be in error. This is a key component of real compassion, for it lets you realize that most of the evil or harm in the world is caused by ignorance. It lets you realize that you may have been no better off than the person who just insulted you for no reason, if you grew up the way that he did and had to deal with the environment that he's had to face. It also lets you realize that the people who would show you malice for no reason are that way because they suffer, that people with happy and fulfilling lives are not known for their hostility. With that realization comes the strong desire that they suffer no longer. This desire takes the place of the angry or defensive reaction you might have had before.
In turn, this process of personal development unfolds into a real appreciation of the idea that no man is an island. What a Buddhist would call "oneness" is similar to what a Christian would call "the body of Christ." The suffering of others becomes less different to you than your own suffering as you learn to love others. It becomes apparent that things like anger and frustration and resentment and impatience are actually lesser forms of hatred, and that all of them hinge on the idea that the object of that hatred is some "other" in the sense of "us against them."
The hatred can be viewed like a virus. It is to thoughts and emotions what biological viruses are to DNA. People hate others because they have been the object of someone else's hatred, so they do unto others what was done to them. It's the reason why most abusers were themselves abused. Forgiveness, then, is not something that you do to be a nice guy. It's what you do to prevent the virus from spreading. It's the truly effective way to fight it. Forgiveness means it ends with you, that you refuse to become angry at your own mistreatment and act out of that anger towards others who will, in turn, do the same. It absolutely does not mean you have anger and then suppress it. It means you no longer have anger to suppress. This is my interpretation of that idea of struggling against "powers and principalities" and not "flesh and blood."
By the understanding and practice of these things, you gradually become more holy. That is, you stop being a part of the problem and instead become able to practice
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of questioning the standard model (giving us dark matter), we could question general relativity. This gives us a theory called MOND.
Actually, no. It gives you an "I don't know." That's unacceptable, so MOND emerges to fill the gap.
Seriously, you actually believe that? It's useless, not unacceptable. If all scientists did is say "I don't know" they wouldn't get much done would they? Think about it for a minute. Or, they do what scientists do best (i.e. science) and come up with new theories (e.g. MOND) which make testable predictions and attempt to test them.
MOND actually was something new that was proposed in response to the galaxy rotation problem. Whether it works out or not remains to be seen, though honestly I have little faith in it. The value of "I don't know" was that someone saw the need for a new theory. This required dissatisfaction with the existing ones. To me, "I don't know" is like a vacuum, and something will rush in to fill it. That something, if it is scientific, can be tested.
Inflation, on the other hand, was a revisionist, ad-hoc modification of Big Bang theory when it failed to correctly predict the results of measurements of the cosmic microwave background. I believe it's the sort of thing that Karl Popper warned us against. How can you ever falsify a theory when it can be modified to fit any observation that contradicts it? When you bring this up, you don't usually get a "here's why we don't feel that way." What you get is an angry response not unlike what you would expect if you told a Muslim that Allah doesn't exist or a Christian that Jesus was fictional. That is, you're a heretic. I don't view science as something that should have heretics.
By the way, you conveniently ignored my response to you when you viewed my worldview as an "infection." Cat got your tongue? I notice people often pretend like they didn't read anything for which they have no answer. Do you consider that courageous? I don't.
For that matter, why is there so much ignorance about the fact that the Schwarzschild solutions would and could never predict a singularity/black hole? That's if you read the actual paper authored by Schwarzschild himself -- he made that quite clear. David Hilbert modified Schwarzschild's work in December of 1916 to produce a soution that does permit black holes, yet for some reason we do not call it the Hilbert solution.
Also, why do I read so many articles about black holes with accretion disks and black holes as members of binary star systems etc. when there is no known two-body solution to General Relativity? That Hilbert solution is a one-body solution. All of those scenarios involve the black hole interacting with something, so how do you reconcile that? You can't make an analogy to Newtonian physics because Einstein's field equations are nonlinear so the principle of superposition does not apply, while this same principle does apply for Newtonian physics. Something here doesn't add up. Questions like this should have readily available answers.
When I ask those questions, I get dismissed, scoffed at, occasionally called names. There is one thing I never receive: a "you're wrong, and I'll show you why you are wrong and how you may be corrected." That isn't scientific, it's authoritarian. Hence my "priesthood" comment.
Actually, no. It gives you an "I don't know." That's unacceptable, so MOND emerges to fill the gap.
I wouldn't expect a scientist who is confident about the factual basis and logical correctness of his worldview to view dissent as an "infection." I certainly would expect that from religious people who abhor the infidel and consider his doctrine dangerous.
Whether it's bad science or not is hard for me to say. I think it's science which is in need of a paradigm shift. Whether that makes it "bad" or merely "the best they could do at the time without being written off as fringe" is quite debatable.
So what you're saying is that you don't actually believe the nonsense you're spouting - you're simply trolling? Fun. Does that make you feel like a big man?
Far from it, good sir. 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. So I won't. The indifference means I am not bothered when things I believe don't find ready support, for that is a type of insecurity based on bandwagon appeal and I see the error in it. It also means I don't need to think ill of people, not even of those who can't disagree with my viewpoint without also judging me to be inferior in some way or inferring an ulterior motive such as trolling or egotism when my actions are mysterious to them. I am thankful to not carry that burden, for it's a heavy one.
If you would accept a suggestion from me, never confuse consensus agreement with truth. Not even when you find yourself on the side of the majority consensus.
Anytime your theory doesn't add up, or fails to predict the results of a new observation, why go through all the trouble of considering your theory falsified, questioning your premises, and coming up with new ideas?
Because every other scientist will laugh at you?
The more I see this kind of thing, the more I believe that mainstream science did not eliminate the priesthood. It merely replaced it with a more rational one to fit the changing needs of the people.
Yeah, creationists say the same thing. It seems to be amazingly common for dimwitted people to confuse their ignorance with "problems with science".
I see your provocation and raise you one indifference.
Really though, I don't expect agreement when I say a thing like that. You, if anything, are conforming to my expectations. There is no shame in that, though it's not terribly interesting either.
You have a profound understanding of Physics. That's exactly what physicists do.
Of course it's dark matter in the middle
Dark matter is sort of like violence. If it doesn't work, just use more of it.
Well it is certainly convenient. Anytime your theory doesn't add up, or fails to predict the results of a new observation, why go through all the trouble of considering your theory falsified, questioning your premises, and coming up with new ideas? Just add dark matter to make the math work out. Don't let it concern you that it's the one and only scientifically accepted form of matter that has never once been observed in any laboratory, after all, we have equations to balance!
The more I see this kind of thing, the more I believe that mainstream science did not eliminate the priesthood. It merely replaced it with a more rational one to fit the changing needs of the people.
You're rather well-informed and stalwart yourself to be able to see this despite the chorus of screaming voices which would have you believe that you're some kind of moron for questioning something that really does need to be questioned. In other words, truth in your own terms is not for the faint of heart. Anyone who needs to have answers handed to them because they wouldn't dare to question an expert is a member of the faint of heart.
Of course it's dark matter in the middle
Dark matter is sort of like violence. If it doesn't work, just use more of it.
Or maybe they understand that those infrastructure costs are a given whether or not you use open standards. When Maxtor sells you a hard drive, it's not like they charge more per gigabyte if you tell them you'll be using an open format to store your data. The government already needs computers and networks for their own purposes. Using tax dollars to pay for these things is a legitimate function of government and I have no problem with it. To then use restricted formats on the machines my tax dollars have purchased is the moral issue. To require me to spend additional money to buy proprietary software only to access what my tax dollars have already paid for is the moral issue. You can post AC all you like and you can repeat yourself all you like, it doesn't change this basic fact.
Scrapping and replacing it would be less sophisticated than what is being done here. You could say they are extending it, or you could say also that they are blurring it. If it were a great unknown, or new territory, or something like that for which there were not already clear and well-understood definitions, then that may make it excusable or at least understandable. However, that's not the case here.
It wouldn't apply there because paper is not inherently free. Someone has to cut down the trees, someone has to process the wood into paper, someone has to ship that paper from the paper mill, and someone has to print on it. The printed copies are a limited resource. If you have 100 printed copies, you cannot sell or give away 50 of them and still have 100 copies. Any that you sell must be replaced with more or else you will run out and be unable to sell or give away any more.
Electronic records are nothing like this. The government already has computers and Internet access because it has used tax dollars to pay for those. Now that it owns them, those can be reused to distribute infinite perfect copies of electronic records at no additional charge. There is no ongoing cost of acquiring more paper and using more ink.
Yet people around the world are willing to release both those formats and software that can work with them for free. Maybe those individuals are taking one for the team and bearing that cost themselves. The end result is that all of the rest of us do have formats available that don't cost us anything at all. The people who produced those formats and that software have specifically and deliberately taken steps to make sure of that, examples of which include their decision to use open licenses and their decision to seek no patents for their creations.
There's something about taking a moral stand that makes many people uncomfortable. I suspect that's because it goes against their beliefs that convenience is everything by providing a counter-example. Can I prove that? No. Does it seem rather obvious to me? Yes, it does. Just as people who follow a religion can fail to adhere to its tenents without deliberately and consciously deciding "hey, I think I'd like to be a hypocrite," people can believe that immediate convenience is the only worthy criteria for decision-making without necessarily being aware that their choices reveal this pattern. This means you must use introspection and cannot correctly assume the reality of your stated intentions, however sincere and heartfelt they may be. It's the reason why all of the differing views about wisdom and what it actually is generally agree on one thing, and that's the importance of truly knowing yourself.
If you really want a mundane response, I will say this much. A government that is wasteful when it is capable of not being wasteful is, in fact, taking advantage of its people. This is much worse when it behaves this way because of financial and political interests that stand to profit from said waste, because then it is no accident. However, it's still pretty bad when it's an innocent mistake, and we the citizens should expect better. I believe this to be the morally correct, or if that is really an obstacle for you, I also believe it to be ethically correct.
Alternative viewpoints are great. Alternative definitions, however, are intentionally misleading. This is an alternative definition.
You see, the viewpoint that closed-source and proprietary standards are great already exists. The viewpoint that open-source and non-encumbered standards are great also already exists. There is no new viewpoint being proposed here. That's beacuse this is not a matter of viewpoint. It's a not-so-subtle attempt to blur the definitions that distinguish two existing viewpoints. There is only one reason for accidentally doing this: sheer incompetence. There is only one reason to deliberately do anything like that: the desire to equate things which are inherently distinct; that is, the desire to confuse. It's either incompetence or it's deception and neither of those are worth defending.
Whether you're offended that some people care about the GPL more than you would like them to has nothing to do with it. Whether commercial/proprietary software gets a bad rap more than you want it to also has nothing to do with it.
That's absolutely correct. I can develop a program, or a protocol, or a format, and I can lock it away in a safe and bury it if that's what I feel like doing. I can copyright it and restrict it on that basis, or I can try to patent it. I can hoard the source code and release it only as a black-box binary. However, if I do that and then refer to it as "an open standard" then that would make me a liar. This is really simple.
I never understood why you and so many others want to equate the desire that things be called what they are with telling others what they should do with their work. They are not remotely the same. If I don't want to use a program because it's proprietary, I am not forcing that program's author to do anything. Nor am I telling him how he should use his programming talents. He is free to find someone else who does want to use his program. This is just another thinly-veiled "accept this thing and like it, or else there's something wrong with you" and I'm not buying it.
There is also a question about the morality of governments releasing public information in proprietary formats. My tax dollars have already paid to produce whatever documents the government releases. It belongs to we the people. Why should I have to pay a second time to obtain a proprietary program to access this public information that my tax dollars have already paid for? I celebrate the right of private citizens and private businesses to use whatever format pleases them, whether it's freely available or not. But when we are talking about governments there is a perfectly valid objection to the use of proprietary software, whether or not anyone finds that convenient.
What in GODS name are you blabbering about? No, seriously, what are you actually going on about? This is for WEB fonts, not for "Oh hey, i think i will completely misdirect you by somehow magically being capable of modifying your STATUS BAR with web font-faces!" These open fonts do absolutely NOTHING bad, people can already be redirected to websites without realising it, link obfuscation has been around since the web began.
Nobody gives a damn about the idiot users, especially the shops. The idiots are their largest incomes, "oh my computers not workin, best bin it and buy a new one". (yes, it happens every day)
Whoever modded this up seriously needs to read it back over again, the parents posts have absolutely NOTHING to do with this and is almost FUD-like.
A conversation about one aspect of computing can also touch on other aspects of computing. It's a natural, normal flow and only some kind of self-censorship designed to please the sensibilities of those like you would halt it. The fact that you went on to add your own commentary about computer shops and their source of income makes you something of a hypocrite in this instance, for you complain about the direction this thread took and then gave it more momentum in that direction. Further, you'll never see me censor myself in order to please you or anyone else, for you may always exercise your right to disregard any statements you dislike. That you chose not to use that right is your problem and yours alone.
None of this constitutes a claim that a standardized Web font is an inherently bad thing, or would do damage of any sort to anyone, which coincidentally is why you never saw me make such a claim. I thought I'd highlight the significance of that, as it seemed lost upon you.
That's because according to many users, basic competence is "only for geeks and nerds." Many of them consider it a terribly unreasonable burden to expect them to read even the most basic step-by-step documentation which was intended for non-technical audiences because "they're not computer experts." They don't seem to appreciate the difference between "don't trust every anonymous individual who asks for your bank account information" and "write this complex program in x86 assembly," which is not unlike the difference between "drive this car" and "rebuild its engine."
Knowing this, do I feel sorry for them when they get screwed? No, I don't. It's unfortunate and I wish it didn't have to be that way, but I see no injustice in it. That's because they not only refuse to inform themselves but often actively resent even the implication that they could and should. This still goes on even after the widely publicised cases of identity theft and fraud that, if anything, the media tends to get sensationalistic about. It still goes on despite the vast wealth of freely available information out there which is accessible to anyone who can get to Google. At some point, water seeks its own level. The scammers are just attaching a higher price tag to something that didn't have an excuse in the first place.
Bittorrent spawns a huge number of connections. If the OS (or ISP) gives equal bandwidth to each TCP stream, your connection to youtube gets about as much as each one of your 25 bitorrent connections, which destroys the streaming video, voip, or even normal web surfing. I would LOVE it if this provides a solution. (I would be even happier if ToS flags were widely honored, but that has never happened, so I don't know why it would happen now).
I have heard the claim that the reason why ToS/QoS flags are not widely honored is that Windows, by default, sets the highest priority for ALL traffic with no regard for what kind of traffic it is. As I don't run Windows, I have to say I honestly don't know whether this is so. Can anyone affirm or deny this claim?
Yeah, because Wikipedia so totally equals truth... oh, wait...
I wouldn't rely on it* to research abortion or some other hot-button political topic, but for relatively non-controversial, easily-verified subjects like the early history of Microsoft it's really quite good. The same goes for most articles related to science and engineering, as these are dry factual topics that tend not to attract the interest of malicious editors (assuming that's what you're worried about).
* I hope the functionally illiterate can appreciate the difference between "wouldn't rely on it" and "wouldn't use it at all." Sorry to add this but some of the more reactive types on here just love to read things into what you say.
I wonder if he appreciates that he'd have been unable to do this if everyone operated the way Microsoft does.
I think you misread. A company essentially contracted him to come in and fix bugs. Are you telling me that MS wouldn't let you see their code if they contracted with you to come in and fix bugs?
I read that quite clearly, thanks. I also read that prior to that arrangement, he and three other Lakeside students were banned for exploiting bugs in the OS. Presumably, his skill at doing so is what caused them to contract him. While he could have done this without source code, it certainly would have made that task easier. Furthermore, another Wikipedia article states that the users of the PDP-10 both shared and reused source code, so it's not unreasonable to think that Gates had access to it:
Over time, some PDP-10 operators began running operating systems assembled from major components developed outside DEC. For example, the main Scheduler might come from one university, the Disk Service from another, and so on. The commercial timesharing services such as CompuServe, On-Line Systems (OLS), and Rapidata maintained sophisticated inhouse systems programming groups so that they could modify the operating system as needed for their own businesses without being dependent on DEC or others. There were also strong user communities such as DECUS through which users could share software that they had developed. In some ways, this was one of the first open source environments, although the commercial operators tended to only take code from open sources, keeping their own proprietary enhancements to themselves.
Yes, but he's a wealthy flaming sociopath, and in our culture that makes it okay!
Not many people are likely to say it quite so plainly and openly, of course. But that certainly is the message here.
Also like how Wikipedia article tells on his early life,
One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.[15]
At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language.
Gates wrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly female students.
That gotta give some hacker and geekiness points ;)
So Bill Gates studied the source code and benefitted from having done so? I wonder if he appreciates that he'd have been unable to do this if everyone operated the way Microsoft does.
I agree with your clarification. This isn't intended to argue against what you said about that perception, but rather to highlight where that perception comes from.
The RIAA stated that "the disclosure was evidence of a need for controls on peer-to-peer software to block the improper or illegal exchange of music".
To answer your example, let's say that there is a wealthy, politically active group with a great deal of sympathy in Washington. This group is well-known for its hatred of briefcases because it finds them to be, shall we say, economically inconvenient. If the group said that such a smuggling is evidence that we need (i.e. government) control of briefcases, it might create that impression.
That's particularly true of the RIAA's statement since the document that was leaked has nothing to do with music. They are merely demonstrating that they're desperate for any excuse to demogogue anything related to P2P software, to the point that they will obviously clutch at straws like this. If they were really interested in security, they'd ask the same question another Slashdotter has already asked: why did they allow this person to work on secure documents with an unsecured computer? Only that wouldn't represent an opportunity to raise their pet issue, hence their problem with it.
and that's why journalists backed by newspapers gets freedom of the press, while individual bloggers gets court orders and/or sentences...
... by people who have no idea what "the press" was when the 1st Amendment was written. Much of it was not large and institutional. It was often as simple as a concerned citizen distributing pamphlets or starting his own local editorial. The individual bloggers are true to this spirit in a way that the media conglomerates could never hope to be.
More importantly, it was better understood that when you read such materials, you were reading the perspective of the author. It was not taken as the "final word" the way professional news is too-often regarded.
They're dangerous because they are unaware of what they don't know, so they feel qualified (authorized) to make decisions about what they do not really understand. In my experience, politicans are a lot more likely to seek out expert advice in an area outside their realm than techie are.
There's one big problem with that. If they are thinking about, say, a law concerning file-sharing, the expert advice is going to come from someone who works in the IT industry, likely from an ISP. The interests of the ISP can differ from the interests of its users. So once again it's about authority and not knowledge, in this case the authority being credentials gained by having an institution or a company behind you. It's one reason why the law is so often biased in favor of corporations and other large organizations.
To their defense, we do have safety bottles today because at some point a baby died eating pills thinking they were candies. It's all about protecting the incompetent from themselves.
I wouldn't blame the pill bottle for that. Instead, I'd ask "where were the parents when this happened?"
So long as two computers can communicate with each other, so you will have P2P.
Luckily, we have politicians who's only education is in English, law, history, politics, art. So it's easy to push any techno-babble on them because they are dangerously uneducated fools.
They're dangerous because they are unaware of what they don't know, so they feel qualified (authorized) to make decisions about what they do not really understand.
When the Oracle at Delphi pronounced Socrates the wisest man in all of Greece, Socrates gave a response beyond reproach. He said, "If I am the wisest man, it is because I alone know that I know nothing."
You apparently have never filed a FOIA request anywhere. Government is at least as secretive as private industry.
In this case, clearly the police department didn't want to expose things such as 'when' and 'where', just the 'what' and 'who'. Add those other two items, and the 'why' becomes more evident.
Good job, though. Hope it works out for him.
It was a rhetorical question. I know how things actually are. It's in contrast to how things should be. Applying the expectation of how things should be is how that can be changed.
of an ordinary "Audit Trail". Now, you don't have to rely on manual log-entries and sign-out sheets.
It says a lot that this actually went to court in the first place, let alone that it went to the state Supreme Court. What part of "public record" needed clarification, exactly?
Howdy,
I am not an atheist. I responded to this post criticizing the logic. However, Flamebait != I do not agree. Unfortunately the metamod system is so screwed that there is no way to make sure the mods don't get points again.
Yeah, I don't understand the new metamod system either. The main page used to have a link that would show up from time to time and ask me to meta-moderate, which I was willing to do. I haven't seen that link in ages and would have to go looking for the metamod link. I don't understand why that, of all things, would be de-emphasized. It really seems like metamoderation is something that should be promoted.
I absolutely agree that there are some mods who should not be moderators. I have seen some extremely low-quality moderations around here, the ones that were clearly an attempt to censor, and they have been both more frequent and less subtle ever since the metamod system was changed. If I owned this site and saw that, I would say "hey, maybe changing that system was a bad idea, I better do something about this." I don't see what the holdup is on that one.
And those sects I could never believe in. Such beliefs are a total contradiction of themselves.
One is supposed to live a good life, but wait, that doesnt matter as long as one gains faith right before they die as god only picks the best of mankind?
The self-consistent version (the one not found in many churches) is that through faith, you attain salvation and become what I will call a spiritually aware or spiritually inspired person. That spiritual awareness makes you realize that there is a higher standard, represented by a better way to live. By "better" I mean marked by equanimity, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and loving-kindness where before you may have responded with such things as anger, resentment, hatred or bitterness.
This higher standard creates a striking contrast against all of your negative thoughts and behaviors, those that cause inner conflict for you and emotional or other harm to others. The contrast makes you painfully aware (what they call conviction) that the way you live needs to be changed, and that this change is for the better. This begins what very well may be a lifelong process of identifying and renouncing (repentence) those negative thoughts and behaviors, one at a time if necessary, through the mechanism of acknowledging the wrong things you have done and continue to do by a (sometimes rather painful) process of introspection and self-honesty.
This often involves confronting your own denial about the harm that your words and deeds can or have done. With that comes the realization that everyone always does what they think is right or justfiied or necessary, and it is their ideas about what those things are that might be in error. This is a key component of real compassion, for it lets you realize that most of the evil or harm in the world is caused by ignorance. It lets you realize that you may have been no better off than the person who just insulted you for no reason, if you grew up the way that he did and had to deal with the environment that he's had to face. It also lets you realize that the people who would show you malice for no reason are that way because they suffer, that people with happy and fulfilling lives are not known for their hostility. With that realization comes the strong desire that they suffer no longer. This desire takes the place of the angry or defensive reaction you might have had before.
In turn, this process of personal development unfolds into a real appreciation of the idea that no man is an island. What a Buddhist would call "oneness" is similar to what a Christian would call "the body of Christ." The suffering of others becomes less different to you than your own suffering as you learn to love others. It becomes apparent that things like anger and frustration and resentment and impatience are actually lesser forms of hatred, and that all of them hinge on the idea that the object of that hatred is some "other" in the sense of "us against them."
The hatred can be viewed like a virus. It is to thoughts and emotions what biological viruses are to DNA. People hate others because they have been the object of someone else's hatred, so they do unto others what was done to them. It's the reason why most abusers were themselves abused. Forgiveness, then, is not something that you do to be a nice guy. It's what you do to prevent the virus from spreading. It's the truly effective way to fight it. Forgiveness means it ends with you, that you refuse to become angry at your own mistreatment and act out of that anger towards others who will, in turn, do the same. It absolutely does not mean you have anger and then suppress it. It means you no longer have anger to suppress. This is my interpretation of that idea of struggling against "powers and principalities" and not "flesh and blood."
By the understanding and practice of these things, you gradually become more holy. That is, you stop being a part of the problem and instead become able to practice