I read the comment I replied to as if Kyoto is part of the "once in a lifetime opportunity for the 'enlightened good progressives' to get almost total control over all aspects of life in the West".
Since it isn't in force, it can't be part of that particular problem.
The point was that it shows the intent and it also gives an idea of who has that intention. If you intend to bring something about and the first method that you try fails, you will probably respond by trying something else. That can also be expected here.
The good reputation should go towards those who are willing to go wherever the facts lead them. A scientist who can say "I have discovered that I was mistaken and here is why" is the real article. Any of them who won't let facts get in the way of their pet beliefs/theories are not scientists at all; they are priests who wear a different sort of robe.
The Electric Universe people were completely discredited when the NASA probe spawned from Deep Impact collided with the comet Tempel 1. If the Universe were -- as they claim -- made up of anti-matter, the resulting explosion of the probe and comet would have vaporized a fair chunk of the solar system.
Of course, this didn't stop them from saying that the collision actually proved their theory since there was a little explosion.
I believe you're proving my point for me when I say that the people who vehemently oppose the Electric Universe (EU) theory tend not to be familiar with it. I have read their works extensively and have never, ever seen the EU folks make the claim that the Universe is made up of antimatter. If you want to see what they had to say about the Deep Impact collison with Tempel 1, look here and you will find something entirely different from what you just described.
You can also find more on the Deep Impact event in this category of the Thunderbolts site.
To date, I have never once seen an opponent of the EU theory who was thoroughly familiar with it. There is no substitute for your own inquiry.
> he general public apparently has no idea how incredibly dogmatic, religious,
> and un-scientific much of modern science has become.
and
> I think the real issue here is that scientists have become another authority.
Or put more simply:
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die."
- Max Planck
And he said that before the politics and money factors entered into science.
I think Carl Sagan neatly addressed that:
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really
good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change
their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really
do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are
human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot
recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
Especially when he said it doesn't happen as often as it should because change is sometimes painful. I will add one observation to that: what really makes change so painful is when your ego is invested in a particular outcome. When that ego need is replaced by a sense of awe derived from the mystery (and sometimes the absurdity) of the universe, which unfortunately seems rare these days, change can be something you welcome.
Many research scientists live their comfy lives on government-stolen funds. They have to, because no one wants to buy their junk.
I have friends who admit to me, off the record, that their government grants are the only way they can pay off their ridiculous college debt that paid for a talent no one wants. Some have even said that they knowingly adopt accepted practices of shenanigans that fudge the data to support beliefs desired by the State.
This is nothing new:
Teacher's unions don't teach.
Public healthcare takes care of its own industry rather than patients.
Police officers serve and protect the State, not society.
TSA agents work hard to enforce their own barrel-chested powers rather than actual securty.
Why should government-granted shills be any different?
It is time for science to be market-driven rather than socialist in nature.
The general public apparently has no idea how incredibly dogmatic, religious, and un-scientific much of modern science has become. Nowhere do you see that more clearly than in cosmology, as highlighted by the Electric Universe folks. I don't care whether you believe in the Electric Universe theory or whether you think it's a load of crap (though, all people I've encountered who felt that way had one thing in common - they were not very familiar with it). It's not the theory that I really want to mention here. It's the associated writings which represent an excellent critique of what modern science has become. Those can be found at thunderbolts.info and at holoscience.com.
I think the real issue here is that scientists have become another authority. Authority of this sort is not compatible with genuine inquiry because it answers questions instead of asking them.
By far the biggest problem is entrenched government grants. You support the standard accepted theories or you are denied grant money. That's wonderful, right up until new theories are needed to advance the field. Then what was intended to be a way to weed out bad science and the like becomes an effective way to hold back progress. I don't think market-driven science is the ideal solution either, because many important pieces of pure research are long-term projects not likely to produce any sort of immediate return on investment.
I want you to know I truly appreciate a reasonable response like this. Even if this weren't relatively rare, I would still enjoy seeing it. I hope you excuse the length of this post, but I had a bit to say.
I guess it depends on what your definition of promotion is. Is simply talking about something MS did that actually is really good / useful promotion? Is correcting factually incorrect information promotion? Those seem to be the majority of pro-MS posts I've seen. Maybe you see something different, and that's fine, we just disagree.
I think part of the problem with the whole "Windows/Microsoft vs. Linux" debate is that it tends to have an exclusive focus on practicality and marketshare. Of course those are important, but freedom is important too. It's a shame that when software freedom is discussed it's often done by Linux/GPL advocates with a pontificating tone.
This is a complex issue, so I will simplify it while hoping that I don't oversimplify it. To me, Microsoft represents convenience while Linux (and GPL software in general) represents freedom. I will make my preference known: I greatly prefer freedom. I'll be blatantly honest, in my opinion only laziness would incline a person to prefer anything over freedom. Of course, there is more to it than that.
Many things "just work" in Windows that require some effort to do in Linux. Windows of course has a vast marketshare so compatibility is almost never an issue even with relatively obscure hardware; that is, hardware vendors who want to make sales generally include Windows drivers and support. The applications available for Windows tend to be more polished and intended for a wider, potentially non-technical or less-technical audience when compared to many Linux apps.
The downside of Windows is that it is a closed-source black box. That's a problem in terms of the freedom to modify or customize the OS or merely to better understand how it works. It's also a problem when troubleshooting because "looking under the hood" is more difficult under Windows and often requires third-party tools. By comparison, I can easily obtain detailed information about a system or a process in Linux using standard tools that are available on all but the most minimal of installations.
Then there are the myriad problems posed by vendorlock and storing your data in proprietary formats. Proprietary formats mean that your data is at the mercy of a third party. That third party usually knows on which side its bread is buttered, so this hasn't generally been a showstopper, but not everyone finds the possibility to be acceptable. I don't, especially not when there are alternatives.
There is the harm and unnecessary labor caused by the effects of embrace-extend-extinguish strategies and the artificial incompatibilities it creates. If you could put a total dollar amount on the time of users and the paid time of IT professionals that has been spent dealing with these artificial incompatibilities, I imagine it would be a staggering figure compared to what would have happened had Microsoft always used fully open standards whenever they are available. Just look at Web developers alone and the extra effort they spend accommodating IE to have a site that is consistent across browsers. Then consider that IE is not at all unusual in this regard, as this is a standard practice for Microsoft.
One of my biggest objections to Microsoft is moral in nature. I know that this is becoming an antiquated concept, in the sense that people don't care about it anymore, but this is one of those things that doesn't just go away merely because people disregard it. There is such a thing as "voting with your wallet". When you purchase software from Microsoft, you are supporting the company and all of its business practices. They are a convicted monopolist in several different countries. They also have done many things that have not caused legal action against them that were either wrong (in my op
Unfortunately a man who has his spine intact is a rare sight these days. Too many people don't understand that being petty and easily upset so that you respond with anger to whatever you dislike is the wrong kind of strength. That anger looks forceful and powerful but there is a great deal of cowardice behind it that comes from looking everywhere but within for your joy and your strength. Thus, anger is almost always about control of externals. It's also being strong in the wrong way because it is a compensation for weakness rather than a removal of weakness.
What you have provided a good counter-example against are the people-pleasers who derive their being and their self-worth (of a worthless sort) from the approval of others. Thus, they have no idea how to be their own person and they have conflict and frustration because their life is not really theirs. Such people usually believe that they are living their own lives because they have personally identified with those external influences that control them, which is why this system is so effective and why so few come to understand it. It needs this deception to work, which is why understanding it is the same thing as having freedom from it.
For you, it may be rather easy to understand that when you have a nation full of people with such weakness, it sets the stage for a powerful government to cater to it. If those people were whole and joyous and complete in the right way, the sort of comfort and security that government can offer would not be tempting to them. There are also economic and political reasons for it, of course, but this is the predecessor to fascism that no one in the media talks about. It is, in fact, the one enabler that makes all of the others possible. The mainstream media really can't talk about it and still have high ratings because most of the population has become this way. Of course, high ratings are more valuable to them than a chance to promote joyous, secure, sane people who cherish freedom. There's not much else to know about what sort of people they are.
You may have intended it that way, yes. That's the funny thing about posting in public forums -- people may respond in all sorts of ways, even those you did not intend! Okay, I'm being facetious. Seriously though, rhetorical questions are much more effective when the answer is obvious or assumed. They tend to fall apart when there are multiple answers and multiple viewpoints from which those answers can come.
I'm responding this way because you're frankly coming across as rather smug. It's as though you want me to feel like I wasted my time and effort in responding to you and should have known better than to do such a thing, merely because you had something different in mind. It doesn't have to be that way.
If you setup an email on your Blackberry with BIS (not BES) then RIM has your credentials.
Why is it an issue now with only Nokia?
That's a good question. I'll give you my best guess at an answer, though a guess is all that it is.
I should say up front that I don't know very much at all about Blackberries. I will assume that what you said is correct, that a Blackberry with BIS presents the very same privacy issue because it shares username/password credentials with a third party. Thus, the privacy issues posed by predecessors like the Blackberry can be viewed as a mistake or at least as less-than-optimal. If it's a mistake, then there is no good reason why Nokia could not have learned from this previous example and designed their system in such a way that no third parties need to be trusted with confidential information.
It should be possible to equip the phone with a standard POP3/IMAP e-mail client. Logically, if a phone can have a Web browser it can also have such an e-mail client. Then the login credentials can be stored in the phone itself and the phone can use APOP, TLS, or SSL to communicate securely with the e-mail server. Then Nokia is merely the carrier and has no reason to ever see anyone's login credentials and those credentials are safe(r) from other eavesdroppers because they are not sent as plaintext. If these new Nokia phones could do that, then that would represent an improvement on the earlier example of the Blackberry.
The thing I don't understand is why anyone would ever design the system in such a way that a third party needs to be trusted with confidential information. It seems unnecessary. What benefit does this provide that absolutely cannot be arranged by an independent e-mail client that stores such information locally on the phone? I suppose that same question can be rephrased as "does server-push provide any benefit that client-pull with a reasonable polling time could not also provide?"
Ummm, how about Exchange ActiveSync DirectPush directly from your company's Exchange server, no middlemen involved? Or IMAP IDLE? You could argue that it's less efficient, but maybe you don't want to hand over your password to Nokia.
I presume that the phone has a Web browser. So, it may make sense to use a Web mail service with this phone. That way, the username/password credentials are encrypted via SSL and are never given to Nokia's servers. I realize that the issue mentioned in the summary also involves SSL-encrypted HTTP requests, though that is the method of transport by which the credentials are given to Noka.
I don't personally use Gmail because I am not fond of how easily this allows Google to collect information about me (i.e. for advertisements). Having said that, its ability to collect e-mail from multiple POP/IMAP mailboxes may be a very handy feature for those who don't share my views on privacy. It seems like a good way to have all of the features that this Nokia service provides without having to entrust your e-mail passwords to an entity that can positively identify you because they have your billing information. That is, compared to Google's aggregate and (probably) non-personally identifiable data collection, the situation with Nokia is potentially much worse.
The GP - which is probably a troll - does betray the kind of thinking that has become dangerously infectious in the US today: utter partisanship.
This line made me want to ask you something, off-topic though it may be. I strongly agree that partisanship and the mindlessness that goes along with it are just as you describe, "dangerously infectious". What I'm not clear on is whether that is unique to the US. I am speaking in very general terms here, but I notice that in European countries with parliamentary forms of government, there are usually more than two political parties. Certainly the two-party "winner-take-all" system in the USA encourages the "us against them" mentality and I think it no coincidence that this mentality is so pronounced in the USA. Is this alleviated by having more than two parties with any chance of winning an election, or do you then have the same partisanship with X parties that the USA has with two parties?
A more fundamental question would be whether such partisanship arose because of the political system, or whether the political system is an effect of such partisanship and not a cause. I'm guessing this is like the "nature vs. nurture" debate where there is evidence for both.
The GP - which is probably a troll - does betray the kind of thinking that has become dangerously infectious in the US today: utter partisanship. They think that you must either be a loyal defender of a thing, or its relentless enemy. We see it too often in politics (and yes, it's an American thing, at least to the extent you see in political blogs.)
MS is probably doing something dodgy here, something that should set off anti-trust alarms. It's just too convenient that their biggest rival happens to get caught in the filter. But I've been critiqued as being a Microsoft apologist for, for example, saying good things about Office.
That's actually exactly what I was speaking against. If you ever wonder why that problem of partisanship doesn't just go away in spite of all its glaring and obvious flaws, this is why. It's difficult or impossible to point it out and speak against it without the assumption (and that's what it is, a baseless assumption) being made that there are only two possible "sides", so if you speak against one side you must be a member of the other side. Therefore, in the minds of several people who have responded to me, I spoke against the more religious MS advocates; therefore, I must be a religious Linux/other advocate and there is no other position I could be coming from. That's more of the linear, one-dimensional, two-points-and-a-line spectrum thinking that you see in politics (something I have repeatedly spoken against for some years now, by the way). Subscribing to that type of thinking amounts to self-limitation. Aren't false dichotomies great? Check my response (in this thread) to plague3106 for a more thorough response to this.
Now, I suppose you could say that I could have done a better job explaining how I felt. However, I have been on Slashdot and other public forums for some years now and I have found that if people want to make assumptions about you, in the absence of evidence, they are almost always going to do it no matter what you say. As a matter of fact, anyone who had perused my posting history or otherwise tried to learn the slightest thing about me would have found something quite the opposite of what you have described. I used to make the mistake of trying to word my posts in such a way as to make them more resistant to this sort of demagoguing. Then I realized that not only was it ineffective, it also amounted to me assuming the burden of someone else's self-imposed limitations.
That is, people tend to believe what they want to believe. That's why it's foolish to care too much about how you appear in the eyes of others. The only way to avoid catching flak once in a while is to never say anything remotely controversial; that price is too high.
Maybe that's because the people you blanket label as "MS apologists" aren't actually apologists, but reasonable & rational people that actually evaluate MS products on their merits. It seems at/. you're deemed an apologist if you ever defend MS on anything.
If you want to see group think in action, look at your own post, and the posts that show up when anyone dare criticize linux.
I appreciate what you're saying, but I have seen too many truly ridiculous "MS can do no wrong" posts. The objection you raise is how you could have known that I must not have been referring to the more objective folks who merely have different software preferences. If you can see how that works, then much bickering that comes from making assumptions about the person to whom you're replying can be neatly avoided. I don't consider someone an "MS apologist" because they say something good about MS or its products that happens to be true and factual.
I consider someone an "MS apologist" when they act like "Microsoft can do no wrong" and seek to spin every negative action Microsoft takes. That is something else entirely, and that is the exclusive subject of my previous post. To fail to recognize that while responding to what I said is equivalent to setting up a straw man (yes, this can happen unintentionally if not guarded against). Incidentally, you see the same mentality for other corporations such as Apple and Google. It appears to be a universal flaw in the way our culture perceives faceless artificial constructs such as corporations. The flaw comes from personally identifying with them instead of regarding them as any other object or force. So now I will further explain the reasoning behind my previous post.
I have never seen a good reason, that made sense, why anyone would want to promote a company that has a multimillion (or is it multibillion?) dollar marketing machine that's designed to do just that when they are not going to be compensated for their efforts. That act is no longer about technology or practicality or using the right tool for the job; it crosses that border and travels into "hearts and minds" territory, which seems grossly inappropriate to me. I hope that no one who is doing this has any illusions that Microsoft is going to show them any such loyalty.
If you believe that I must mindlessly and religiously advocate Linux (or anything else for that matter) merely because I speak against MS apologists, or if you believe that a person cannot point out misplaced loyalty and groupthink without also exhibiting the same flaws, then I would like to know the basis of your belief. I don't believe I have given you any justification for making this judgment against me. For that reason, this seems like a rejection of the concept of objectivity rather than an attempt to contend with me.
To put that another way, you've apparently run into the more "religious zealot" types as indicated by the last line of your post. The real problem with the zealots is that they make it more difficult to have reasonable discourse. Your reasoning can be perfectly valid and objective but people will assume you're like those zealots who tried to say similar things. That's the real damage that they do. I find humor in the saying "it's only 90% of them who give all the rest a bad name."
It probably wasn't intentional, most likely they pushed developers to focus first on microsoft based search engines, but really, I also find it hard to believe not a single person would have tried google first. I doubt it was a big conspiracy, but rather they knew about it but didn't want to spend anytime fixing it.
If they knew about it and chose not to treat it like any other bug (i.e. file it and attempt to fix it), then they were complicit. Logically, this would make it an intentional act. It's not like Microsoft doesn't have the resources to fix this sort of thing, or to test for it before this filter is available to the general public. I'm not saying they did this on purpose because I cannot prove that; in fact I have to say I have my beliefs but I don't actually know. What I am saying is that the scenario you describe would be no accident if it occurred the way you describe it. It would, in fact, describe a "conspiracy" of the "look the other way" type.
I'm amazed that the usual Microsoft apologists have not come out of the woodwork to defend this action. They seem quite timid when Microsoft does something that isn't easily spun or portrayed as a good thing. That's because they are largely cowards who don't really believe in defending a faceless corporation, that can easily defend itself, for free, as much as their vehement words would indicate. That they do this at all is one of the easier examples of misplaced loyalty and groupthink; for in my opinion, only a very small percentage of them (if any) are astroturfers or paid shills.
But it's not a tax on commerce. It's a tax on use. "Use" and "Commerce" look nothing alike. They aren't pronounced the same at all. "Use" taxation is on the basis that you use that thing you brought across state lines. And how do we valuate that property that you're using? Hmm... maybe, what it sells for. A percentage of the sales price in the state you brought it in from. And since you bought it there, you even have the receipt that tells you what the basis of taxation will be!
Yes, the reasoning is specious, fatuous, and bogus. But the shallowest of rationalizations seem to work out just fine in matters of taxation, as long as the government is the one doing the rationalizing.
I wonder what happens if you buy a thing in one state and never use it in your state of residence. Will they charge non-use tax?
I think the decision-making went something like this:
"We want a sales tax that we can impose on interstate commerce."
"But you can't do that, the Constitution forbids it!"
"Well then, we will call it a 'use tax' instead of calling it a 'sales tax' and that will make it okay! It's the exact same thing called by a different name, but it's somehow completely different and not illegal or illegitimate in the slightest! By the way, I don't understand why the people don't respect us?"
It's just a blatant attempt to circumvent the Constitution, only the average person is too stupid or too apathetic to recognize the threat that this represents if it remains unchecked. If you can ignore or get around one part of the Constitution with impunity, you can do the same with the rest of it.
Correct me if I'm wrong but, they just reinvented 'nice'?
If I understand this correctly, it differs from "nice" (and its variants like "renice") in one important way. On a *nix system, you can use nice to run a process at a very low priority. However, if no other processes are contending for CPU time, that low-priority process can still use 100% CPU. Thus, nice is a method of resource allocation but it is not a way to conserve that resource.
Now, if you could use nice to prevent a process from ever consuming more than X% CPU, then it would be an analogy.
The fact that they think any real person will use or understand a "sandbox mode" is just laughable.
Their intended audience may not have been the average Joe Sixpack. Even if Joe Sixpack was their intended audience, maybe they think any real person who can see their online article has Internet access. Further, maybe they think that any real person who has Internet access can use Google or Wikipedia to find out what is meant by "sandbox". I'd really like to know what is so unreasonable about this.
I actually wish that this were more common. There is nothing wrong with challenging a person by presenting easily-researched information with which they may not be familiar. In fact, one could argue that some of our problems as a society come from the distinct (and apparently deliberate) absence of individual intellectual challenges in most mainstream media. Lazy people really don't like this because it means more effort, but I suspect that their real problem with it is the independent, self-directed nature of such research. It conflicts with their passiveness (for lack of a better word, they are "sheeple"); if the same task were handed down by an authority like a boss or a college professor they would have no such objections to it. Either way, I strongly disagree with the idea that the demands of laziness should determine what is acceptable. Some of the best, most informative writings I have read were beneficial not because of the information directly elucidated in the writing itself, but because of the knowledge I acquired in order to understand and appreciate it.
include a button to boost the energy allocated to that application
I thought the chip gets the power, not the application. Am I reading this right?
The application is intangible, non-material information in the form of ones and zeroes. It's not possible to apply electrical power to it. Therefore, "more power to slow apps" or "boost the energy allocated to that application" should be understood as an expression meaning that there is more energy given to the chips/hardware that is running the application in question.
The article is very light on details, but I take it the idea is that more power would translate to higher clock frequencies or higher data throughput and the like. The article also fails to mention whether this mobile OS is capable of multitasking. If it is, then presumably the power settings for a given application would apply to the timeslices during which it is running.
The campus cops were reprimanded by management, because they were dressed like police officers, driving a police vehicle, and acting as police officers while they were just regular citizens (impersonating a police officer is a serious offence).
So arrest them, prosecute them, seek the maximum penalty, and make an example of them in the media, since that is how a regular average citizen can expect to be treated for doing the same thing. Or have we already rejected the idea of "rule of law"?
>Your snide "not quite as good" remark totally ignores the benefits beyond technical features.
As does 95% of the general public. Might want to rethink your line of argument there, sport.
Because for him to enjoy the freedom of Free Software, the majority must first agree with him? You know that's faulty, don't you?
This is a great site, with great content, but the only way to really experience that is to read at -1 and completely ignore the moderation, which simply does not work.
In my personal opinion, there's no other way to experience Slashdot. The folks who don't browse at -1 have no idea what they're missing, or maybe they're the easily offended and want to reduce their stress not by becoming less easily offended (that'd be too straightforward) but by refusing to read the posts that are most likely to be trolls and such.
At -1, I see all kinds of crap and laugh at the prospect that people actually get upset at such blatant attempts to stir shit up, and I also see the more insightful posts. A third thing I see is the very poor quality of some of the moderators. Most of them are pretty good but some of them have zero capacity to handle anything remotely controversial. It's as though they want to live in a world where all 6.5 billion people agree with them on every issue in order to avoid upsetting them, and cannot understand why this would be a horrible existence and would lead to complete stagnation of all ideas.
Anyway, if you don't currently browse at -1, try it on for size. See if you like it. Maybe you won't like it at all or maybe you'll wonder why you didn't do that a long time ago.
Or just do what I do with every annoying site. Disable javascript. On a properly designed site like this one, you don't lose a single thing by reverting to HTML. And yes, I call this properly designed because it works just fine without javascript, unlike the horde of flash only sites or the ones that seem to force JS to be used as nothing more than a wrapper for an anchor tag.
Thanks to just using HTML, I wouldn't even have known about this new change if not for people griping about it. The site works fine for me, the same as it has for the last 10 years.
NoScript is your friend for this one.
I don't currently disable Slashdot's Javascript but that "pause" feature on the main page is making me want to. Here's my problem with Javascript: it's so goddamned slow. A multi-core system with lots of RAM should not take that long to download and display 10 new story headings. I suppose it could be that Slashdot is slow to perform the network transfer, but when I think about how much bandwidth they must have, I tend to doubt this. I also doubt this because Firefox will try to max out one of my CPUs while this is happening so I doubt that this is I/O-bound.
Really now, I'd like an example of non-trivial Javascript that doesn't feel about four times slower than it should be. Firefox has come a long way towards addressing this issue but it's not exactly "there" yet. I'm not a JS programmer so I have no idea whether this is exclusively a property of JS itself (or its implementations) or whether many JS apps are simply far more complex than they need to be.
Well, there IS a reason why I have been using Linux for over 11 years and have no Microsoft software on my own computer. That's because I don't like doing things the Microsoft way and I especially don't like the lack of freedom as compared to a GPL solution. Like I said, I don't like Microsoft and I have plenty of good reasons for why I feel that way. Your comment about not allowing companies to get that large was also interesting. The only problem is that I can't think of a cure for that which isn't also worse than the disease.
Slashdot Mirror
I read the comment I replied to as if Kyoto is part of the "once in a lifetime opportunity for the 'enlightened good progressives' to get almost total control over all aspects of life in the West".
Since it isn't in force, it can't be part of that particular problem.
The point was that it shows the intent and it also gives an idea of who has that intention. If you intend to bring something about and the first method that you try fails, you will probably respond by trying something else. That can also be expected here.
s/ego/reputation/g
The good reputation should go towards those who are willing to go wherever the facts lead them. A scientist who can say "I have discovered that I was mistaken and here is why" is the real article. Any of them who won't let facts get in the way of their pet beliefs/theories are not scientists at all; they are priests who wear a different sort of robe.
The Electric Universe people were completely discredited when the NASA probe spawned from Deep Impact collided with the comet Tempel 1. If the Universe were -- as they claim -- made up of anti-matter, the resulting explosion of the probe and comet would have vaporized a fair chunk of the solar system.
Of course, this didn't stop them from saying that the collision actually proved their theory since there was a little explosion.
I believe you're proving my point for me when I say that the people who vehemently oppose the Electric Universe (EU) theory tend not to be familiar with it. I have read their works extensively and have never, ever seen the EU folks make the claim that the Universe is made up of antimatter. If you want to see what they had to say about the Deep Impact collison with Tempel 1, look here and you will find something entirely different from what you just described.
You can also find more on the Deep Impact event in this category of the Thunderbolts site.
To date, I have never once seen an opponent of the EU theory who was thoroughly familiar with it. There is no substitute for your own inquiry.
> he general public apparently has no idea how incredibly dogmatic, religious, > and un-scientific much of modern science has become.
and
> I think the real issue here is that scientists have become another authority.
Or put more simply:
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die." - Max Planck
And he said that before the politics and money factors entered into science.
I think Carl Sagan neatly addressed that:
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
Especially when he said it doesn't happen as often as it should because change is sometimes painful. I will add one observation to that: what really makes change so painful is when your ego is invested in a particular outcome. When that ego need is replaced by a sense of awe derived from the mystery (and sometimes the absurdity) of the universe, which unfortunately seems rare these days, change can be something you welcome.
Many research scientists live their comfy lives on government-stolen funds. They have to, because no one wants to buy their junk.
I have friends who admit to me, off the record, that their government grants are the only way they can pay off their ridiculous college debt that paid for a talent no one wants. Some have even said that they knowingly adopt accepted practices of shenanigans that fudge the data to support beliefs desired by the State.
This is nothing new:
Teacher's unions don't teach. Public healthcare takes care of its own industry rather than patients. Police officers serve and protect the State, not society. TSA agents work hard to enforce their own barrel-chested powers rather than actual securty.
Why should government-granted shills be any different?
It is time for science to be market-driven rather than socialist in nature.
The general public apparently has no idea how incredibly dogmatic, religious, and un-scientific much of modern science has become. Nowhere do you see that more clearly than in cosmology, as highlighted by the Electric Universe folks. I don't care whether you believe in the Electric Universe theory or whether you think it's a load of crap (though, all people I've encountered who felt that way had one thing in common - they were not very familiar with it). It's not the theory that I really want to mention here. It's the associated writings which represent an excellent critique of what modern science has become. Those can be found at thunderbolts.info and at holoscience.com.
I think the real issue here is that scientists have become another authority. Authority of this sort is not compatible with genuine inquiry because it answers questions instead of asking them.
By far the biggest problem is entrenched government grants. You support the standard accepted theories or you are denied grant money. That's wonderful, right up until new theories are needed to advance the field. Then what was intended to be a way to weed out bad science and the like becomes an effective way to hold back progress. I don't think market-driven science is the ideal solution either, because many important pieces of pure research are long-term projects not likely to produce any sort of immediate return on investment.
I think part of the problem with the whole "Windows/Microsoft vs. Linux" debate is that it tends to have an exclusive focus on practicality and marketshare. Of course those are important, but freedom is important too. It's a shame that when software freedom is discussed it's often done by Linux/GPL advocates with a pontificating tone.
This is a complex issue, so I will simplify it while hoping that I don't oversimplify it. To me, Microsoft represents convenience while Linux (and GPL software in general) represents freedom. I will make my preference known: I greatly prefer freedom. I'll be blatantly honest, in my opinion only laziness would incline a person to prefer anything over freedom. Of course, there is more to it than that.
Many things "just work" in Windows that require some effort to do in Linux. Windows of course has a vast marketshare so compatibility is almost never an issue even with relatively obscure hardware; that is, hardware vendors who want to make sales generally include Windows drivers and support. The applications available for Windows tend to be more polished and intended for a wider, potentially non-technical or less-technical audience when compared to many Linux apps.
The downside of Windows is that it is a closed-source black box. That's a problem in terms of the freedom to modify or customize the OS or merely to better understand how it works. It's also a problem when troubleshooting because "looking under the hood" is more difficult under Windows and often requires third-party tools. By comparison, I can easily obtain detailed information about a system or a process in Linux using standard tools that are available on all but the most minimal of installations.
Then there are the myriad problems posed by vendorlock and storing your data in proprietary formats. Proprietary formats mean that your data is at the mercy of a third party. That third party usually knows on which side its bread is buttered, so this hasn't generally been a showstopper, but not everyone finds the possibility to be acceptable. I don't, especially not when there are alternatives.
There is the harm and unnecessary labor caused by the effects of embrace-extend-extinguish strategies and the artificial incompatibilities it creates. If you could put a total dollar amount on the time of users and the paid time of IT professionals that has been spent dealing with these artificial incompatibilities, I imagine it would be a staggering figure compared to what would have happened had Microsoft always used fully open standards whenever they are available. Just look at Web developers alone and the extra effort they spend accommodating IE to have a site that is consistent across browsers. Then consider that IE is not at all unusual in this regard, as this is a standard practice for Microsoft.
One of my biggest objections to Microsoft is moral in nature. I know that this is becoming an antiquated concept, in the sense that people don't care about it anymore, but this is one of those things that doesn't just go away merely because people disregard it. There is such a thing as "voting with your wallet". When you purchase software from Microsoft, you are supporting the company and all of its business practices. They are a convicted monopolist in several different countries. They also have done many things that have not caused legal action against them that were either wrong (in my op
Yep, pretty much. What's your point?
Unfortunately a man who has his spine intact is a rare sight these days. Too many people don't understand that being petty and easily upset so that you respond with anger to whatever you dislike is the wrong kind of strength. That anger looks forceful and powerful but there is a great deal of cowardice behind it that comes from looking everywhere but within for your joy and your strength. Thus, anger is almost always about control of externals. It's also being strong in the wrong way because it is a compensation for weakness rather than a removal of weakness.
What you have provided a good counter-example against are the people-pleasers who derive their being and their self-worth (of a worthless sort) from the approval of others. Thus, they have no idea how to be their own person and they have conflict and frustration because their life is not really theirs. Such people usually believe that they are living their own lives because they have personally identified with those external influences that control them, which is why this system is so effective and why so few come to understand it. It needs this deception to work, which is why understanding it is the same thing as having freedom from it.
For you, it may be rather easy to understand that when you have a nation full of people with such weakness, it sets the stage for a powerful government to cater to it. If those people were whole and joyous and complete in the right way, the sort of comfort and security that government can offer would not be tempting to them. There are also economic and political reasons for it, of course, but this is the predecessor to fascism that no one in the media talks about. It is, in fact, the one enabler that makes all of the others possible. The mainstream media really can't talk about it and still have high ratings because most of the population has become this way. Of course, high ratings are more valuable to them than a chance to promote joyous, secure, sane people who cherish freedom. There's not much else to know about what sort of people they are.
It was more of a rhetorical question.
You may have intended it that way, yes. That's the funny thing about posting in public forums -- people may respond in all sorts of ways, even those you did not intend! Okay, I'm being facetious. Seriously though, rhetorical questions are much more effective when the answer is obvious or assumed. They tend to fall apart when there are multiple answers and multiple viewpoints from which those answers can come.
I'm responding this way because you're frankly coming across as rather smug. It's as though you want me to feel like I wasted my time and effort in responding to you and should have known better than to do such a thing, merely because you had something different in mind. It doesn't have to be that way.
If you setup an email on your Blackberry with BIS (not BES) then RIM has your credentials.
Why is it an issue now with only Nokia?
That's a good question. I'll give you my best guess at an answer, though a guess is all that it is.
I should say up front that I don't know very much at all about Blackberries. I will assume that what you said is correct, that a Blackberry with BIS presents the very same privacy issue because it shares username/password credentials with a third party. Thus, the privacy issues posed by predecessors like the Blackberry can be viewed as a mistake or at least as less-than-optimal. If it's a mistake, then there is no good reason why Nokia could not have learned from this previous example and designed their system in such a way that no third parties need to be trusted with confidential information.
It should be possible to equip the phone with a standard POP3/IMAP e-mail client. Logically, if a phone can have a Web browser it can also have such an e-mail client. Then the login credentials can be stored in the phone itself and the phone can use APOP, TLS, or SSL to communicate securely with the e-mail server. Then Nokia is merely the carrier and has no reason to ever see anyone's login credentials and those credentials are safe(r) from other eavesdroppers because they are not sent as plaintext. If these new Nokia phones could do that, then that would represent an improvement on the earlier example of the Blackberry.
The thing I don't understand is why anyone would ever design the system in such a way that a third party needs to be trusted with confidential information. It seems unnecessary. What benefit does this provide that absolutely cannot be arranged by an independent e-mail client that stores such information locally on the phone? I suppose that same question can be rephrased as "does server-push provide any benefit that client-pull with a reasonable polling time could not also provide?"
Ummm, how about Exchange ActiveSync DirectPush directly from your company's Exchange server, no middlemen involved? Or IMAP IDLE? You could argue that it's less efficient, but maybe you don't want to hand over your password to Nokia.
I presume that the phone has a Web browser. So, it may make sense to use a Web mail service with this phone. That way, the username/password credentials are encrypted via SSL and are never given to Nokia's servers. I realize that the issue mentioned in the summary also involves SSL-encrypted HTTP requests, though that is the method of transport by which the credentials are given to Noka.
I don't personally use Gmail because I am not fond of how easily this allows Google to collect information about me (i.e. for advertisements). Having said that, its ability to collect e-mail from multiple POP/IMAP mailboxes may be a very handy feature for those who don't share my views on privacy. It seems like a good way to have all of the features that this Nokia service provides without having to entrust your e-mail passwords to an entity that can positively identify you because they have your billing information. That is, compared to Google's aggregate and (probably) non-personally identifiable data collection, the situation with Nokia is potentially much worse.
This line made me want to ask you something, off-topic though it may be. I strongly agree that partisanship and the mindlessness that goes along with it are just as you describe, "dangerously infectious". What I'm not clear on is whether that is unique to the US. I am speaking in very general terms here, but I notice that in European countries with parliamentary forms of government, there are usually more than two political parties. Certainly the two-party "winner-take-all" system in the USA encourages the "us against them" mentality and I think it no coincidence that this mentality is so pronounced in the USA. Is this alleviated by having more than two parties with any chance of winning an election, or do you then have the same partisanship with X parties that the USA has with two parties?
A more fundamental question would be whether such partisanship arose because of the political system, or whether the political system is an effect of such partisanship and not a cause. I'm guessing this is like the "nature vs. nurture" debate where there is evidence for both.
The GP - which is probably a troll - does betray the kind of thinking that has become dangerously infectious in the US today: utter partisanship. They think that you must either be a loyal defender of a thing, or its relentless enemy. We see it too often in politics (and yes, it's an American thing, at least to the extent you see in political blogs.)
MS is probably doing something dodgy here, something that should set off anti-trust alarms. It's just too convenient that their biggest rival happens to get caught in the filter. But I've been critiqued as being a Microsoft apologist for, for example, saying good things about Office.
That's actually exactly what I was speaking against. If you ever wonder why that problem of partisanship doesn't just go away in spite of all its glaring and obvious flaws, this is why. It's difficult or impossible to point it out and speak against it without the assumption (and that's what it is, a baseless assumption) being made that there are only two possible "sides", so if you speak against one side you must be a member of the other side. Therefore, in the minds of several people who have responded to me, I spoke against the more religious MS advocates; therefore, I must be a religious Linux/other advocate and there is no other position I could be coming from. That's more of the linear, one-dimensional, two-points-and-a-line spectrum thinking that you see in politics (something I have repeatedly spoken against for some years now, by the way). Subscribing to that type of thinking amounts to self-limitation. Aren't false dichotomies great? Check my response (in this thread) to plague3106 for a more thorough response to this.
Now, I suppose you could say that I could have done a better job explaining how I felt. However, I have been on Slashdot and other public forums for some years now and I have found that if people want to make assumptions about you, in the absence of evidence, they are almost always going to do it no matter what you say. As a matter of fact, anyone who had perused my posting history or otherwise tried to learn the slightest thing about me would have found something quite the opposite of what you have described. I used to make the mistake of trying to word my posts in such a way as to make them more resistant to this sort of demagoguing. Then I realized that not only was it ineffective, it also amounted to me assuming the burden of someone else's self-imposed limitations.
That is, people tend to believe what they want to believe. That's why it's foolish to care too much about how you appear in the eyes of others. The only way to avoid catching flak once in a while is to never say anything remotely controversial; that price is too high.
Maybe that's because the people you blanket label as "MS apologists" aren't actually apologists, but reasonable & rational people that actually evaluate MS products on their merits. It seems at /. you're deemed an apologist if you ever defend MS on anything.
If you want to see group think in action, look at your own post, and the posts that show up when anyone dare criticize linux.
I appreciate what you're saying, but I have seen too many truly ridiculous "MS can do no wrong" posts. The objection you raise is how you could have known that I must not have been referring to the more objective folks who merely have different software preferences. If you can see how that works, then much bickering that comes from making assumptions about the person to whom you're replying can be neatly avoided. I don't consider someone an "MS apologist" because they say something good about MS or its products that happens to be true and factual.
I consider someone an "MS apologist" when they act like "Microsoft can do no wrong" and seek to spin every negative action Microsoft takes. That is something else entirely, and that is the exclusive subject of my previous post. To fail to recognize that while responding to what I said is equivalent to setting up a straw man (yes, this can happen unintentionally if not guarded against). Incidentally, you see the same mentality for other corporations such as Apple and Google. It appears to be a universal flaw in the way our culture perceives faceless artificial constructs such as corporations. The flaw comes from personally identifying with them instead of regarding them as any other object or force. So now I will further explain the reasoning behind my previous post.
I have never seen a good reason, that made sense, why anyone would want to promote a company that has a multimillion (or is it multibillion?) dollar marketing machine that's designed to do just that when they are not going to be compensated for their efforts. That act is no longer about technology or practicality or using the right tool for the job; it crosses that border and travels into "hearts and minds" territory, which seems grossly inappropriate to me. I hope that no one who is doing this has any illusions that Microsoft is going to show them any such loyalty.
If you believe that I must mindlessly and religiously advocate Linux (or anything else for that matter) merely because I speak against MS apologists, or if you believe that a person cannot point out misplaced loyalty and groupthink without also exhibiting the same flaws, then I would like to know the basis of your belief. I don't believe I have given you any justification for making this judgment against me. For that reason, this seems like a rejection of the concept of objectivity rather than an attempt to contend with me.
To put that another way, you've apparently run into the more "religious zealot" types as indicated by the last line of your post. The real problem with the zealots is that they make it more difficult to have reasonable discourse. Your reasoning can be perfectly valid and objective but people will assume you're like those zealots who tried to say similar things. That's the real damage that they do. I find humor in the saying "it's only 90% of them who give all the rest a bad name."
If they knew about it and chose not to treat it like any other bug (i.e. file it and attempt to fix it), then they were complicit. Logically, this would make it an intentional act. It's not like Microsoft doesn't have the resources to fix this sort of thing, or to test for it before this filter is available to the general public. I'm not saying they did this on purpose because I cannot prove that; in fact I have to say I have my beliefs but I don't actually know. What I am saying is that the scenario you describe would be no accident if it occurred the way you describe it. It would, in fact, describe a "conspiracy" of the "look the other way" type.
I'm amazed that the usual Microsoft apologists have not come out of the woodwork to defend this action. They seem quite timid when Microsoft does something that isn't easily spun or portrayed as a good thing. That's because they are largely cowards who don't really believe in defending a faceless corporation, that can easily defend itself, for free, as much as their vehement words would indicate. That they do this at all is one of the easier examples of misplaced loyalty and groupthink; for in my opinion, only a very small percentage of them (if any) are astroturfers or paid shills.
But it's not a tax on commerce. It's a tax on use. "Use" and "Commerce" look nothing alike. They aren't pronounced the same at all. "Use" taxation is on the basis that you use that thing you brought across state lines. And how do we valuate that property that you're using? Hmm... maybe, what it sells for. A percentage of the sales price in the state you brought it in from. And since you bought it there, you even have the receipt that tells you what the basis of taxation will be!
Yes, the reasoning is specious, fatuous, and bogus. But the shallowest of rationalizations seem to work out just fine in matters of taxation, as long as the government is the one doing the rationalizing.
I wonder what happens if you buy a thing in one state and never use it in your state of residence. Will they charge non-use tax?
I think the decision-making went something like this:
"We want a sales tax that we can impose on interstate commerce."
"But you can't do that, the Constitution forbids it!"
"Well then, we will call it a 'use tax' instead of calling it a 'sales tax' and that will make it okay! It's the exact same thing called by a different name, but it's somehow completely different and not illegal or illegitimate in the slightest! By the way, I don't understand why the people don't respect us?"
It's just a blatant attempt to circumvent the Constitution, only the average person is too stupid or too apathetic to recognize the threat that this represents if it remains unchecked. If you can ignore or get around one part of the Constitution with impunity, you can do the same with the rest of it.
Correct me if I'm wrong but, they just reinvented 'nice'?
If I understand this correctly, it differs from "nice" (and its variants like "renice") in one important way. On a *nix system, you can use nice to run a process at a very low priority. However, if no other processes are contending for CPU time, that low-priority process can still use 100% CPU. Thus, nice is a method of resource allocation but it is not a way to conserve that resource.
Now, if you could use nice to prevent a process from ever consuming more than X% CPU, then it would be an analogy.
Their intended audience may not have been the average Joe Sixpack. Even if Joe Sixpack was their intended audience, maybe they think any real person who can see their online article has Internet access. Further, maybe they think that any real person who has Internet access can use Google or Wikipedia to find out what is meant by "sandbox". I'd really like to know what is so unreasonable about this.
I actually wish that this were more common. There is nothing wrong with challenging a person by presenting easily-researched information with which they may not be familiar. In fact, one could argue that some of our problems as a society come from the distinct (and apparently deliberate) absence of individual intellectual challenges in most mainstream media. Lazy people really don't like this because it means more effort, but I suspect that their real problem with it is the independent, self-directed nature of such research. It conflicts with their passiveness (for lack of a better word, they are "sheeple"); if the same task were handed down by an authority like a boss or a college professor they would have no such objections to it. Either way, I strongly disagree with the idea that the demands of laziness should determine what is acceptable. Some of the best, most informative writings I have read were beneficial not because of the information directly elucidated in the writing itself, but because of the knowledge I acquired in order to understand and appreciate it.
include a button to boost the energy allocated to that application
I thought the chip gets the power, not the application. Am I reading this right?
The application is intangible, non-material information in the form of ones and zeroes. It's not possible to apply electrical power to it. Therefore, "more power to slow apps" or "boost the energy allocated to that application" should be understood as an expression meaning that there is more energy given to the chips/hardware that is running the application in question.
The article is very light on details, but I take it the idea is that more power would translate to higher clock frequencies or higher data throughput and the like. The article also fails to mention whether this mobile OS is capable of multitasking. If it is, then presumably the power settings for a given application would apply to the timeslices during which it is running.
So arrest them, prosecute them, seek the maximum penalty, and make an example of them in the media, since that is how a regular average citizen can expect to be treated for doing the same thing. Or have we already rejected the idea of "rule of law"?
Where I live, cops have to have at the very least a Bachelor's degree, preferably in criminal justice.
It's scary how dumb a lot of college grads are though.
If that continues to get bad enough, maybe we'll finally question whether rote memorization is the One True Way to learn anything.
>Your snide "not quite as good" remark totally ignores the benefits beyond technical features. As does 95% of the general public. Might want to rethink your line of argument there, sport.
Because for him to enjoy the freedom of Free Software, the majority must first agree with him? You know that's faulty, don't you?
Yeah, you'd have to emulate the BSOD and run everything as root to do a good job of XP compatibility.
That's a joke but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see the more knee-jerk types get all pissy about it.
In my personal opinion, there's no other way to experience Slashdot. The folks who don't browse at -1 have no idea what they're missing, or maybe they're the easily offended and want to reduce their stress not by becoming less easily offended (that'd be too straightforward) but by refusing to read the posts that are most likely to be trolls and such.
At -1, I see all kinds of crap and laugh at the prospect that people actually get upset at such blatant attempts to stir shit up, and I also see the more insightful posts. A third thing I see is the very poor quality of some of the moderators. Most of them are pretty good but some of them have zero capacity to handle anything remotely controversial. It's as though they want to live in a world where all 6.5 billion people agree with them on every issue in order to avoid upsetting them, and cannot understand why this would be a horrible existence and would lead to complete stagnation of all ideas.
Anyway, if you don't currently browse at -1, try it on for size. See if you like it. Maybe you won't like it at all or maybe you'll wonder why you didn't do that a long time ago.
Or just do what I do with every annoying site. Disable javascript. On a properly designed site like this one, you don't lose a single thing by reverting to HTML. And yes, I call this properly designed because it works just fine without javascript, unlike the horde of flash only sites or the ones that seem to force JS to be used as nothing more than a wrapper for an anchor tag.
Thanks to just using HTML, I wouldn't even have known about this new change if not for people griping about it. The site works fine for me, the same as it has for the last 10 years.
NoScript is your friend for this one.
I don't currently disable Slashdot's Javascript but that "pause" feature on the main page is making me want to. Here's my problem with Javascript: it's so goddamned slow. A multi-core system with lots of RAM should not take that long to download and display 10 new story headings. I suppose it could be that Slashdot is slow to perform the network transfer, but when I think about how much bandwidth they must have, I tend to doubt this. I also doubt this because Firefox will try to max out one of my CPUs while this is happening so I doubt that this is I/O-bound.
Really now, I'd like an example of non-trivial Javascript that doesn't feel about four times slower than it should be. Firefox has come a long way towards addressing this issue but it's not exactly "there" yet. I'm not a JS programmer so I have no idea whether this is exclusively a property of JS itself (or its implementations) or whether many JS apps are simply far more complex than they need to be.
Well, there IS a reason why I have been using Linux for over 11 years and have no Microsoft software on my own computer. That's because I don't like doing things the Microsoft way and I especially don't like the lack of freedom as compared to a GPL solution. Like I said, I don't like Microsoft and I have plenty of good reasons for why I feel that way. Your comment about not allowing companies to get that large was also interesting. The only problem is that I can't think of a cure for that which isn't also worse than the disease.