And yet, at the same time, it's inaccurate to compare features that are enabled on a default installation of IE with an add-on enhanced Firefox, since very few add-ons make it to the majority of Firefox installations. I have a variety of add-ons installed, for instance, but don't have ClearClick.
The models may be different enough that completely fair comparisons can't be made.
It can be useful to contrast the "it's easy to use, so use its defaults out of the box" design with the "it's intended to be customized, so go choose your addons" design. My entire problem with the design of all or nearly all Microsoft products is the way they have twisted the idea of "easy to use."
There is a process of learning and gradually gaining mastery over the interacting systems that are software, computers, and networks. It is a dynamic process of gaining knowledge and transforming it into discovery and understanding by using it. The way "easy to use" marketing is done today is designed to cater to a large group of instant-gratification types who think that this beautiful process is an unwanted burden to be avoided or glossed over as quickly as possible. That is because they are not perceiving correctly (yes, there is such a thing).
If these folks were better able to use the machines as tools, or if they enjoyed them more, you could say that they were making a sort of trade-off. But this is not the case at all. These are the users who can operate a machine on a daily basis for five years and still know next to nothing about it. That just isn't natural, it is a self-imposed limitation. These are the users who abandon common sense and produce some of the most absurd tech support stories. These are the users who require retraining when only the interface, not the functionality, of a program is changed. If they were merely ignorant users, they would fix that on their own; they are helpless users. Helpless users require more support and support usually costs money, so business (including various software companies) will cater to and encourage this mentality and have no incentive to do otherwise.
It really is a mentality. This post may superficially appear to be about computing but it is not. Computing (or the differences between users) merely provides one instance of a general principle. Look around and you'll see that people who don't value knowledge and discovery and understanding don't limit the effects of their value system to computing. This is really about freedom and the idea that discovering the limits of your worldview can either frighten you or delight you. From the consumerist pill-for-every-ill perspective and its message that no effort is worthwhile, that idea can be horror itself.
Ever drive in a massively populated area? Driving at a safe distance is nearly impossible. Try it and watch how many nuts nearly kill you as they swerve around and cut you off. Driving in NYC or probably any other major city is a good example of this. Its not smart to ride the bumper of the car directly in front of you but, it isn't always possible to drive one car length per 10 miles or whatever consensus is the appropriate distance.
To clarify, that's why I identified the problem as the mentality. People don't value foresight and the kinds of suffering (most of which we call "accidents") it can avoid and that is the problem. The identifiable flaws in the way people often drive are merely symptoms. That's why the application of rules or a list of "do's and don'ts" designed to modify behavior will not really solve this problem once and for all, for they are superficial solutions aimed only at symptoms. That is not how you bring about a future where people have to read history books to remember that there ever were these kinds of problems. At best, that approach can only manage the situation which is what we do with problems we don't really know how to solve or are unwilling to solve.
If people truly loved and respected one another, if doing things right for the pure joy of doing the right thing were their delight, they would take care of these things quite naturally whether it's NYC or a 100-person little town. They would have the correct understanding and it would find a way. The difficulty of doing that in a densely populated place like NYC would be their thrill to overcome. It would not be a struggle or a battle. This is harmony and this is possible. That's my real point; I just have to start with what you may call the "problem domain" to get there. This is not a mental effort or a deductive process though I often have to phrase the output in those terms. The inspiration that does the real work of "getting there" is a joy.
That's a wonderful way to piss someone off and cause them to really get a case of road rage. Not to mention the fact that it makes your very personal problem with tailgaters everyone else on the road's problem, too. I can understand 50 and maybe even 45 in a 55, especially if it's not too busy. But 25 on a 55 is (usually) dangerous for everyone.
You make a great case for why I'm the wrong guy to tailgate (joke). Getting pissed off at someone because he won't allow you to needlessly endanger his life and limb for your own convenience is a bit like getting pissed off at a brick wall because you punched it and hurt your hand. But really, if this sort of "I'm not going to put up with this no matter what" determination were more common, many of these maladaptive behaviors would be unknown to us. Now, remember that all bullies are cowards. The reality is that once they find out I am not going to cave in to their pressure, that they cannot have their way with me, and worse (for them), that I can arrange all of this without compromising my joy and while simultaneously wanting something much better for them as well, they rather quickly find somewhere else to be. This almost always happens on a multi-lane road where they had the option of passing me the whole time. The silliness of that does come down on them, hard. It has only actually come to "25 in a 55" once or twice and I never saw such behavior from that individual again, and that isn't because I didn't see them again.
There are some statistics [drivesafely.org] I've seen quoted in drivers safety courses that indicate the opposite. I don't know where the stats come from, but assuming they're correct, speeding does have an impact on pedestrian safety. You don't always see the pedestrians until after they've stepped out in front of your vehicle. It would be nice to have higher speed limits on the highways, though.
I'll give an example, and yes this does apply to a highway. A few years ago a particular highway around here had a 55 mph speed limit. Had I done 65 on the highway during that time, I may have been pulled over and ticketed. The officer doing so would say that this was necessary for safety, that the 55 mph speed limit was the maximum safe speed (nevermind that fuel conservation during the 70s oil crisis is where the 55 mph limit came from). Now, that same exact highway has a 65 mph speed limit. There has been no new construction and no modifications to this highway. Yet, suddenly 65 mph is a safe speed. Am I to believe that the laws of physics have changed in the last few years?
The more I study this, the more the data seems to show that slow drivers are actually more dangerous. For one, someone who consistently drives well under the speed limit during good conditions and in the absence of hazards is telling me something. They are telling me in the strongest possible terms that they do not believe they can handle their vehicle at the same speed that everyone else can manage. Perhaps they are drunk; perhaps they are elderly and have diminished reflexes, or perhaps they are a newly-licensed driver. Either way, this represents a lack of skill.
Second, in an ideal world drivers do not weave in and out of lanes or cut in front of people. In the real world, people will do this to get around a slow driver because their other realistic alternative is getting stuck behind them, particularly if that slow driver is in the passing lane. This will happen each time, you can count on it, you can tell people not to do that until you're blue in the face and it will make no difference. Like all other predictable reactions, we should acknowledge it for the reality that it is and handle it accordingly.
I really like where you take this idea. I frequently wonder why certain people have so much "bad luck," and your explanation seems to make a lot of sense. Attributing bad turns to bad luck pushes problems off on the universe. I thi
The truthiness of your post overwhelms me oh prohet of martyrdom. Please. Do you have a news letter? I wish to subscribe.
Alternatively, this comment to be read as to say:
"WTF did what you just posted have anything to do with my comment? And why did you feel the need to get snarky?"
I am speaking what I know to be true and thus I may appear to be what you can call uncompromising, for these are simple matters that even mundane reason can clear up. But I am only speaking what I know to be true. I do not "own the truth" which really would be "snarky". As a wise man once told me, "I did not make the world the way that it is, I merely live in it".
You can look at many thousands of individual behaviors and their little nuances. Or you can look at the mind behind those behaviors and the one or two things it does not understand that causes all of those individual behaviors and their little nuances. If you were trying to do the former, you may see my post about the latter and conclude that it is unrelated.
Though a short search didn't turn up the article I was looking for, I remember reading here that there was a report that definitively linked a person's perception of the road with their tendancy to road rage.
The more you thought of it as "your road" and people getting in "your way", the more likely you were to become angry when someone didn't drive as you wanted them to. I think this is a far more likely indicator than 'debt ratios'.
I wasn't referring to "debt ratios" as that sounds like an actual term that is much more specific than the principle I was highlighting. I was referring to debt as a lifestyle choice; "choice" implying that I am limiting my description to those for whom other options are available. My point in mentioning debt is that there is such a thing as Truth. If you tell me that there isn't, I will say "oh really? is that...... true?" and it will immediately contradict itself. So, there is a "right" way to do things and it's usually much simpler than our ideas of the "optimal" way to do things, if you can grasp the difference.
Apparently using such a mundane thing as financial debt to illustrate the point was a stumbling block for you. I know that because I was referring to a mentality and you responed as though I had made a positive claim about the reliability of it as an indicator of anything, which I did not. The idea is that a thing like debt does not happen by itself; it requires the indebted person's active participation and most of the time, that person had other choices. In this way debt is like obesity: a very tiny percentage truly honestly cannot help it, while the vast majority could have chosen differently. The victim mentality is quite popular and rather precious to a lot of people because they consider recognizing their mistakes, learning from them, and moving on to live a better life to be a painful process, so I'm sure I just "offended" lots of people by implying that they should do this. They'll blame me for that if they even have the courage to speak up, nevermind that I bear no malice (this isn't some immature "gotcha" game) and what I said is self-evident truth. What'll really "fry their noodle" is when they realize how much happier and more complete they'll be when they lose the victim mentality. That choice is theirs; all I can personally do is refuse to be another enabler for what I know to be wrong.
In a similar spirit, it is not difficult to recognize that rear-ending the vehicle in front of you is the most easily preventable accident you could ever cause. It's so preventable that in most (all?) states of the USA, not taking steps to prevent it is a traffic violation, typically known as "following too closely", though unfortunately it is rarely enforced unless an accident has already happened.
If it were up to me, we'd quit worrying so much about speeding (it should be obvious it has little to do with safety and much to do with revenue) and we would instruct police officers to look for people who follow too closely and people who fail to yield right-of-way, the two primary causes of accidents. A very close third would be people who get in the passing lane and then refuse to either pass the vehicle beside them or get out of the passing lane. I'm actually having people pre-emptively cut in front of me on the highway because they think I'm going to do that too, which is (no good, yet) understandable, considering that they probably got stuck an inconsiderate person for the duration of their trip the last time they extended benefit of doubt.
Those who tailgate typically do it for one reason, and one reason only, they think you are in their way and they think riding your bumper is a way of bullying you out of their way.
And here we get to the real heart of the matter. The best way to make sure that you never run out of bullies is to reward that behavior by giving them what they want. For that re
OT, but yeah, I see the same kind of random nonsense. On the homepage, I'm logged in. When I clicky to a story's comments sometimes I'm not. But I go back to the homepage and I am again. Clicky to another story, and I'm still logged in. No idea why.
If you use FireFox (not sure how IE handles this), check your cookie Exception list. It's possible that you are allowing cookies from, say, yro.slashdot.org and not news.slashdot.org. I deal with this by simply having "slashdot.org" (no prefix) set to "Allow" in my cookie Exception list, as shown under the Privacy tab of the Preferences dialog and this neatly takes care of all of the various subdomains.
I had a "friend" once who had a similar button in his car that would disable his brake lights. He made a living for a few years by getting "accidentally" rear-ended. Always managed to flip 'em back on by the time the cops showed up.
I wish this were much more common and lots of people did it. Maybe that's what it would take for people in general to understand why a good following distance is important. No, really, you're supposed to drive in such a way that something like this would never make you have an accident. People who refuse to do that are unfit to use a shared resource like the public roadways and I do not recognize their right to pose an unnecessary hazard to others (and why should you?).
Ever notice those people who tailgate you until you approach a traffic light? Then they back off because they know you may have to slow down or stop and they know that their following distance is unsafe for that. Their arrogance is that they think they will always know when you have to slow or stop, that there is no such thing as deer or dogs or pedestrians or impatient drivers who suddenly create hazards and that everything always goes smoothly the way you intended with no unforeseen complications.
I think this mentality also has something to do with the amount of debt that the average person (in the USA) carries and why so many people live from paycheck to paycheck when most of them have other options. That is, it's the unthinking "leaf in the wind" mentality, again, where people don't realize that they are living in such a way that leaves them open to what appear to be sudden and surprising events. The only amazing thing about the situation is that people can be so wide-open to these problems for so long before something finally does happen. That is no excuse for denial of what should be plainly true, but if someone wants to be in denial, this alone can help prevent them from seeing the cause and effect.
What pronoun do you use for a corporation? It? They? She? He? In this case, probably "we."
I think "it" would help reinforce the idea that it's an artificial, amoral, non-human entity. The only flaw is that it's also grammatically acceptable to use "it" to describe animals, and animals most definitely have loyalties. So, I intend no insult to swine or other animals when I refer to a corporation as "it".
yeah right because computers happen in nature. we did have a diversity of computers in the wild, they happily swung from the trees and shat in the woods, but then the windows computer was introduced and ate all their food and raped their babies.
or maybe not everything has an analogy based on nature, since it's 100% artifical to begin with, and fills an artifical reqirement (like all computers being compatible dictates a monoculture...)
The concept is really simple. You have hundreds of millions of PCs which all have a common vulnerability. This need not be the case; that is only one way out of many possible ways. It is only the case so that one entity (known as Microsoft) can benefit. There is no other reason for it. There is nothing unique about the Downadup worm. This sort of "write once, damage nearly everywhere" exploit has happened before and will continue to happen again until we realize there is a better way. Once that realization is made, you'd be surprised at how easily things can change.
You either grasp the basic concept and realize it to be a universal one with a sound basis... or you respond with the above. It's alright. There is no constructive criticism, however well-founded or rooted in logic, that can be levied against Windows without some apologist coming out of the woodwork to "combat" it in a way that makes no sense as you have just done. When you get tired of seeing Windows with this semi-religious viewpoint, you'll feel better, for it's something of a psychic burden to come up with your conclusion before you examine your premises.
The only real argument you could make here is "this monoculture is justified because it provides a common platform for development". Even that won't work because Microsoft has gone to great lengths to introduce subtle (and occasionally not-so-subtle) incompatibilities between implementations found on Windows and published standards. If not for that, the status of Windows as a development platform would be irrelevant or nearly irrelevant. Microsoft knows this which is why they aren't so fond of standards (ok, except for the ones they pay for). Even we who don't run Windows have to guard against secondary effects (bandwidth-wasting attacks from infected Windows hosts, etc) from those who do. No, the reality is that all of us are having a diminished experience for the sole purpose of enriching one company. This is just plain wrong, which is why people have to miss easy analogies and otherwise perform feats of mental acrobatics in order to avoid saying so. You're welcome.
The more petty among you will read what I said and decide (entirely without consulting me) what alternative theory I believe in
Then, perhaps you should elaborate in what alternative you believe in instead of making pronouncements about how wrong a theory is without offering a more valid alternative.
That's just it. I don't have all the answers either, nor did I claim to. See, you sound like you just can't stand admitting that this is the case, which is why if I poke holes in your favored theory, you immediately demand that I give you something with which to replace it. That's what religions people do; I expect more strength than that from science. That line of mine that you quoted, it was put there for the sole purpose of avoiding the request that you have made anyway. There are many theories. Perhaps you can do some research and find one that better suits you without needing me or anyone else to show you the way.
The rest doesn't merit a response because you are either interested in finding your own answers or you are not, but they are the type of issues that are fairly easy research topics. This one line was something I wanted to comment on, however, and that was just to ask a rhetorical question.
Do you not see how manipulative that is? You don't like what I say, that's fine, I never asked you to nor did I ever expect you to. But to call my character into question (and it was subtle as far as that goes, but that's just what you did there) when it's utterly unnecessary and won't shed any light on the discussion is a position of weakness. It's foolish because you don't know the first thing about me. It shows a desperation to control and perhaps also a self-congratulatory nature on your part since it was a clever twisting of my words.
So why do you imply that I'm not humble? Because I know how to think critically? Because I question instead of taking knowledge on authority (establishment science, if nothing else, is an authority)? Because I am unashamed of both of these things? I'm guessing you don't have a reason at all, you just don't like that something I said had an unsettling effect on you and you thought you'd take a poke at me because of it. You will never find joy that way.
The problem with just "not knowing" is what do you do then?
It means you try as many different alternatives as possible and as each one fails (that is, as you find the limitations of each), you get rid of it instead of making ad-hoc modifications to save the theory. This is childishly simple. There is no need to create this big mystique around it which amounts to pretending like the broken system we have now is the only possible way to deal with these questions. In fact you could say that the real "triumph" (a dubious one) of the current system is that most people cannot imagine another way to do things.
Make some guesses, even if they're bad guesses.
And if you are a scientist and those "guesses" call for a different framework/worldview/paradigm, it could destroy your career because people will balk at this without ever considering the merits of your ideas, including the people who decide whether you continue to receive funding. Isn't this sort of entrenchment and status quo worship exactly the opposite of what science is supposed to represent? Do some research and you'll be amazed at just how much of that really does happen in this day and age and ask yourself whether you think we are moving forwards or backwards.
What ad? Capable of running Windows Vista means "it will install Windows Vista and you can run whatever programs your computer has the resources for". That's it.
What ever happened to doing research, as a consumer, before making a purchase?
It's like when Bill Hicks was alive and was talking about how we, collectively, are at about an 8th grade emotional level, particularly in the USA. Only mature people are willing and able to take responsibility for their actions, which would include recognizing why purchasing what you do not understand opens you up to this sort of failure and that this consideration is completely separate and independent from the question of whether the other guy misrepresented anything.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [barnesandnoble.com], Thomas Kuhn's magnum opus, should be required reading before engaging in a debate on science. There's an aphorism that goes "all theories are wrong, but some are useful." We can and do use theories we know have flaws because in the vast majority of cases, they predict and explain what happens in nature.
This is an ideal that quickly falls apart when the effective message from government and private funding is "you support the mainstream theory or we kill your budget". That's not "this is just a theory that happens to do the job right now but may be wrong"; that is something else entirely. Just tell me how many successful predictions have been made by astronomers in the last 25 years and then compare that figure to any other scientific field.
When a better theory comes along to explain the observations, we begin to use that one instead.
That'd be nice, but I'm hearing too many scientists who have tried that only to have their telescope time revoked, their papers unpublished, their funding cut, etc. Halton Arp is a good example. I mean he has a theory that with a single idea has not only better explained astronomical phenomenon but has also successfully made predictions, and his experience is just as I have described. While I think comparing that to Galileo, who was in danger of losing life and limb, is a bit dramatic, a small write-up of his experience can be found here If you start looking, you will find lots of other examples in several other fields; astronomy just seems to be one of the worst and I suspect that's because of the house of cards that Big Bang cosmology has become (they can afford an amount of hubris that an engineer could not, for example, because if a bridge collapses no one is going to pretend that it didn't).
So, it is not difficult to find real problems with science as it is practiced today, namely that many unscientific things are going on and that money has become at least as important as facts, there remain the kind of popularity contests and persecutions that we like to think we left behind in the Middle Ages, and that's unfortunate. It may be worse still that lots of people like you will disregard these things (things you should not need me or anyone else to point out in the first place if you truly are interested in seeing the right thing happen) and talk about ideals that we'd all like to see that are simply not happening.
In other words, your response was eloquent and pleasing and "+5 Insightful"... and full of denial. It's alright though, really. When there is a crisis in astronomy in 5-10 years and you ask yourself how this could have happened, why anyone didn't see it coming, just remember me. The way I like to explain it is "just because it has not yet grown into a 75-foot oak tree does not mean that the acorn has not been planted". Some people see the acorn and remove it early. Others are shocked when one day they see a 75-foot oak tree and are amazed at how much effort it takes to chop one down.
I wish I had mod points today, thanks for posting that. It was an excellent and constructive criticism.
Haha, that didn't stop the mods from deciding that a post about problems with astronomy during a discussion about astronomy is somehow -1 Offtopic. Ah well, it wouldn't be the first time someone was just a little too eager to find an excuse to dismiss or silence me or any other critical thinker. I hope others react to that the same way that I do, which is to realize that these are small-minded men who are easily threatened when you challenge their pet beliefs and that therefore, the worst thing you could do is allow their little temper tantrums (in the form of abusing the moderation system) to discourage you.
The theory has testable predictions â" for example that the compositions of the rocky inner planets should be more similar than the current theory of planet formation would have them.
And if it's like any other mainstream astronomical theory, the testable predictions really won't matter. At all. If those predictions are found to be false, they'll just make a long series of ad-hoc modifications to the theory in order to "save" it instead of seriously questioning their worldview/paradigm/framework (whatever you care to call it) because of the pseudoscientific disaster that astronomy has become.
When astronomy has a crisis in the next 5-10 years or so, perhaps most of you will be surprised. For a good starting point to see what I am talking about, do some research on black holes and what Schwartzchild really said vs. what is commonly attributed to him in colleges and textbooks everywhere (ask yourself if the most amateur of journalists would report so inaccurately). Or research Edwin Hubble and the fact that there are two equally valid interpretations of the redshift equation and we have settled the question of which to use by making an assumption. Or explain to me how a star that is powered by an internal thermonuclear reaction could have an atmosphere that is many times hotter than its surface (if you think that's a simple matter, you do not appreciate the question). Or why it is that a steady, flowing stream of charged particles is called an electric current everywhere it is found, unless those charged particles come from the sun and compose what is called the solar wind? Or why Hannes Alfven, the originator of what is now called magnetohydrodynamics, has thoroughly discredited his own theory, including during his Nobel Prize speech (especially the part about magnetic field lines being "frozen" in plasma), yet scientists continue to use this discredited theory to come up with fanciful ideas like "magnetic reconnection"? It's time to come up with new ideas instead of unscientifically shoring up old, failed ones in the name of preserving your funding.
And no, just because you see what a house of cards Big Bang cosmology is does not mean that you necessarily believe in theistic creation or anything like that. It means you appreciate the magnitude of a question like "how did the universe get here?" and are humble enough to admit that maybe you don't know. The more petty among you will read what I said and decide (entirely without consulting me) what alternative theory I believe in and will probably proceed to make a contest of it because you cannot grasp the simple essence of "this is an open question" and therefore cannot conceive of anything except one ideology versus another. It's alright not to know; sometimes there is great freedom in it.
'Age' does not guarantee wisdom, would be my only complaint.
Indeed, and in some cases "age" also means "entrenched worldview", "resistant to change", and the type of self-limiting hubris that prevents one from entertaining alternative viewpoints.
Why do you feel that way? The nerds that have stuck around tend to have very valid opinions, even if I don't always agree with them. We have been on the net longer than most, and have a better perspective on this issues that keep popping up. Granted, some of the arguments get really circular, but there is wisdom in the old-timers.
Because when the only thing you know about a poster is that they have a low Slashdot user ID, it is the fallacy of appeal to authority. The only way to know more about a poster than the number of digits in their user ID is to examine the merit of what they are actually saying, in which case the user ID number is quite irrelevant. I really do not care what someone's user ID is. It provides no exemption from the need to critically examine the facts they present or the claims they make, nor the need to apply common sense to the opinions they present.
There is simply no substitute for thinking for yourself, it makes you a better and more effective person who is not easily deceived (intentionally or otherwise). I wish we'd accept that this is a good thing instead of looking for clever and not-so-clever ways to shortcut this process.
But Olberman's bias is liberal much in the same way that reality has liberal bias.
Only liberals think reality has a liberal bias. Independents can see just as many examples as liberals twisting reality to advance their pet causes as conservatives doing the same. At the end of the day the only difference between the two is which of your freedoms you don't mind losing.
It's great to see increasing numbers of people who are willing to call things what they are as you just did. I do feel like the one good side-effect of how absurd and downright insane everything is becoming is that more people are starting to wake up and realize that no one in the major media has their best interests at heart. If you have never seen the 1976 movie Network I think you would really, really enjoy it.
Calling someone partisan to dismiss everything they say is a lazy, intellectual cop-out.
I've yet to ever see a form of dismissal of any non-trivial issue that didn't make me feel this way. I've always felt that it was the favored tactic of small-minded individuals who feel threatened instead of delighted when they discover the limitations of their worldview.
Can't take CNN seriously either but that's not because they are hyper-partisan -- it's because they managed to find the airtime to cover Britney Spears while our country is involved in two wars......
You don't really believe that's a coincidence, do you?
From what I gather, though, at least the Democrats want everyone to go to school, so they can learn to think for themselves.
If that's what you believe the public school system is for, I'd like to introduce you to a man named John Taylor Gatto. I know of two works of his which will disabuse you of this notion if you will only read them. The first is an essay called The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher and the second is a full book called The Underground History of American Education. Both are quite eye-opening. The only caution I will give is that you may feel a temptation to become angry when you read these works; that will help nothing and no one, particularly you. The better approach is to understand that "if they really understood what they were doing, they wouldn't."
You appear to be conflating conservative with Republican, but the two are not interchangeable, particularly with respect to the administration that just left office. There are plenty of conservatives that took issue with the warrantless wiretapping because it represented exactly the sort of governmental encroachment into private life that their ideology opposes.
That mainstream Republicans who support things like domestic surveillance, offensive war, and micromanagement of the economy call themselves "conservative" (why? because many of them are also prudes like what we saw in the Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction"?) is one of the best examples of Newspeak in our times. It's destroyed the meaning that this word "conservative" once had; now it means whatever is convenient for the speaker depending on who is speaking and whom they are addressing.
I personally do not like and do not support either major party, for they are both worshippers of the status quo and their own entrenched power, but I will say that at least the Democrats are more open about their dream of an ever-expanding government. That doesn't make the Democrats any better, of course, it just means that they use a different tactic. They use the idea of a government that does many things for you that you should be doing for yourself as a seductive lure to weaken our resolve and compromise our principles. The effect is the same, however, for both parties and both tactics and it is our collective weakness, lack of resolve, and screwed-up priorities that makes this whole thing work. A healthy, joyous, complete person with a firm grasp of what is and is not important (freedom vs. security, for example) would never be tempted by the offerings of either party.
See, that's where you're wrong. It was a huge success in this case. They got hordes of intelligence on the domestic activities of U.S. citizens, without any need for public documentation or warrants, and nobody has gone to jail for it. In fact, the telecoms were granted blanket immunity from prosecution after the fact. Sure, they couldn't keep it up forever, but that was never the goal to begin with.
No, I wasn't commenting on the intelligence-gathering or domestic spying itself. I was commenting on what that ultimately leads to. This kind of surveillance (only the technology with which it is done has changed) and lack of respect for the citizens has always been a core component of totalitarian dictatorships throughout history. I consider the widespread misery and suffering that all such dictatorships embody to be the "utter failure" and it's not like we don't have enough historical examples to know what the early stages look like.
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And yet, at the same time, it's inaccurate to compare features that are enabled on a default installation of IE with an add-on enhanced Firefox, since very few add-ons make it to the majority of Firefox installations. I have a variety of add-ons installed, for instance, but don't have ClearClick. The models may be different enough that completely fair comparisons can't be made.
It can be useful to contrast the "it's easy to use, so use its defaults out of the box" design with the "it's intended to be customized, so go choose your addons" design. My entire problem with the design of all or nearly all Microsoft products is the way they have twisted the idea of "easy to use."
There is a process of learning and gradually gaining mastery over the interacting systems that are software, computers, and networks. It is a dynamic process of gaining knowledge and transforming it into discovery and understanding by using it. The way "easy to use" marketing is done today is designed to cater to a large group of instant-gratification types who think that this beautiful process is an unwanted burden to be avoided or glossed over as quickly as possible. That is because they are not perceiving correctly (yes, there is such a thing).
If these folks were better able to use the machines as tools, or if they enjoyed them more, you could say that they were making a sort of trade-off. But this is not the case at all. These are the users who can operate a machine on a daily basis for five years and still know next to nothing about it. That just isn't natural, it is a self-imposed limitation. These are the users who abandon common sense and produce some of the most absurd tech support stories. These are the users who require retraining when only the interface, not the functionality, of a program is changed. If they were merely ignorant users, they would fix that on their own; they are helpless users. Helpless users require more support and support usually costs money, so business (including various software companies) will cater to and encourage this mentality and have no incentive to do otherwise.
It really is a mentality. This post may superficially appear to be about computing but it is not. Computing (or the differences between users) merely provides one instance of a general principle. Look around and you'll see that people who don't value knowledge and discovery and understanding don't limit the effects of their value system to computing. This is really about freedom and the idea that discovering the limits of your worldview can either frighten you or delight you. From the consumerist pill-for-every-ill perspective and its message that no effort is worthwhile, that idea can be horror itself.
To clarify, that's why I identified the problem as the mentality. People don't value foresight and the kinds of suffering (most of which we call "accidents") it can avoid and that is the problem. The identifiable flaws in the way people often drive are merely symptoms. That's why the application of rules or a list of "do's and don'ts" designed to modify behavior will not really solve this problem once and for all, for they are superficial solutions aimed only at symptoms. That is not how you bring about a future where people have to read history books to remember that there ever were these kinds of problems. At best, that approach can only manage the situation which is what we do with problems we don't really know how to solve or are unwilling to solve.
If people truly loved and respected one another, if doing things right for the pure joy of doing the right thing were their delight, they would take care of these things quite naturally whether it's NYC or a 100-person little town. They would have the correct understanding and it would find a way. The difficulty of doing that in a densely populated place like NYC would be their thrill to overcome. It would not be a struggle or a battle. This is harmony and this is possible. That's my real point; I just have to start with what you may call the "problem domain" to get there. This is not a mental effort or a deductive process though I often have to phrase the output in those terms. The inspiration that does the real work of "getting there" is a joy.
You make a great case for why I'm the wrong guy to tailgate (joke). Getting pissed off at someone because he won't allow you to needlessly endanger his life and limb for your own convenience is a bit like getting pissed off at a brick wall because you punched it and hurt your hand. But really, if this sort of "I'm not going to put up with this no matter what" determination were more common, many of these maladaptive behaviors would be unknown to us. Now, remember that all bullies are cowards. The reality is that once they find out I am not going to cave in to their pressure, that they cannot have their way with me, and worse (for them), that I can arrange all of this without compromising my joy and while simultaneously wanting something much better for them as well, they rather quickly find somewhere else to be. This almost always happens on a multi-lane road where they had the option of passing me the whole time. The silliness of that does come down on them, hard. It has only actually come to "25 in a 55" once or twice and I never saw such behavior from that individual again, and that isn't because I didn't see them again.
I'll give an example, and yes this does apply to a highway. A few years ago a particular highway around here had a 55 mph speed limit. Had I done 65 on the highway during that time, I may have been pulled over and ticketed. The officer doing so would say that this was necessary for safety, that the 55 mph speed limit was the maximum safe speed (nevermind that fuel conservation during the 70s oil crisis is where the 55 mph limit came from). Now, that same exact highway has a 65 mph speed limit. There has been no new construction and no modifications to this highway. Yet, suddenly 65 mph is a safe speed. Am I to believe that the laws of physics have changed in the last few years?
The more I study this, the more the data seems to show that slow drivers are actually more dangerous. For one, someone who consistently drives well under the speed limit during good conditions and in the absence of hazards is telling me something. They are telling me in the strongest possible terms that they do not believe they can handle their vehicle at the same speed that everyone else can manage. Perhaps they are drunk; perhaps they are elderly and have diminished reflexes, or perhaps they are a newly-licensed driver. Either way, this represents a lack of skill.
Second, in an ideal world drivers do not weave in and out of lanes or cut in front of people. In the real world, people will do this to get around a slow driver because their other realistic alternative is getting stuck behind them, particularly if that slow driver is in the passing lane. This will happen each time, you can count on it, you can tell people not to do that until you're blue in the face and it will make no difference. Like all other predictable reactions, we should acknowledge it for the reality that it is and handle it accordingly.
The truthiness of your post overwhelms me oh prohet of martyrdom. Please. Do you have a news letter? I wish to subscribe.
Alternatively, this comment to be read as to say:
"WTF did what you just posted have anything to do with my comment? And why did you feel the need to get snarky?"
I am speaking what I know to be true and thus I may appear to be what you can call uncompromising, for these are simple matters that even mundane reason can clear up. But I am only speaking what I know to be true. I do not "own the truth" which really would be "snarky". As a wise man once told me, "I did not make the world the way that it is, I merely live in it".
You can look at many thousands of individual behaviors and their little nuances. Or you can look at the mind behind those behaviors and the one or two things it does not understand that causes all of those individual behaviors and their little nuances. If you were trying to do the former, you may see my post about the latter and conclude that it is unrelated.
I wasn't referring to "debt ratios" as that sounds like an actual term that is much more specific than the principle I was highlighting. I was referring to debt as a lifestyle choice; "choice" implying that I am limiting my description to those for whom other options are available. My point in mentioning debt is that there is such a thing as Truth. If you tell me that there isn't, I will say "oh really? is that ... ... true?" and it will immediately contradict itself. So, there is a "right" way to do things and it's usually much simpler than our ideas of the "optimal" way to do things, if you can grasp the difference.
Apparently using such a mundane thing as financial debt to illustrate the point was a stumbling block for you. I know that because I was referring to a mentality and you responed as though I had made a positive claim about the reliability of it as an indicator of anything, which I did not. The idea is that a thing like debt does not happen by itself; it requires the indebted person's active participation and most of the time, that person had other choices. In this way debt is like obesity: a very tiny percentage truly honestly cannot help it, while the vast majority could have chosen differently. The victim mentality is quite popular and rather precious to a lot of people because they consider recognizing their mistakes, learning from them, and moving on to live a better life to be a painful process, so I'm sure I just "offended" lots of people by implying that they should do this. They'll blame me for that if they even have the courage to speak up, nevermind that I bear no malice (this isn't some immature "gotcha" game) and what I said is self-evident truth. What'll really "fry their noodle" is when they realize how much happier and more complete they'll be when they lose the victim mentality. That choice is theirs; all I can personally do is refuse to be another enabler for what I know to be wrong.
In a similar spirit, it is not difficult to recognize that rear-ending the vehicle in front of you is the most easily preventable accident you could ever cause. It's so preventable that in most (all?) states of the USA, not taking steps to prevent it is a traffic violation, typically known as "following too closely", though unfortunately it is rarely enforced unless an accident has already happened.
If it were up to me, we'd quit worrying so much about speeding (it should be obvious it has little to do with safety and much to do with revenue) and we would instruct police officers to look for people who follow too closely and people who fail to yield right-of-way, the two primary causes of accidents. A very close third would be people who get in the passing lane and then refuse to either pass the vehicle beside them or get out of the passing lane. I'm actually having people pre-emptively cut in front of me on the highway because they think I'm going to do that too, which is (no good, yet) understandable, considering that they probably got stuck an inconsiderate person for the duration of their trip the last time they extended benefit of doubt.
And here we get to the real heart of the matter. The best way to make sure that you never run out of bullies is to reward that behavior by giving them what they want. For that re
OT, but yeah, I see the same kind of random nonsense. On the homepage, I'm logged in. When I clicky to a story's comments sometimes I'm not. But I go back to the homepage and I am again. Clicky to another story, and I'm still logged in. No idea why.
If you use FireFox (not sure how IE handles this), check your cookie Exception list. It's possible that you are allowing cookies from, say, yro.slashdot.org and not news.slashdot.org. I deal with this by simply having "slashdot.org" (no prefix) set to "Allow" in my cookie Exception list, as shown under the Privacy tab of the Preferences dialog and this neatly takes care of all of the various subdomains.
I wish this were much more common and lots of people did it. Maybe that's what it would take for people in general to understand why a good following distance is important. No, really, you're supposed to drive in such a way that something like this would never make you have an accident. People who refuse to do that are unfit to use a shared resource like the public roadways and I do not recognize their right to pose an unnecessary hazard to others (and why should you?).
Ever notice those people who tailgate you until you approach a traffic light? Then they back off because they know you may have to slow down or stop and they know that their following distance is unsafe for that. Their arrogance is that they think they will always know when you have to slow or stop, that there is no such thing as deer or dogs or pedestrians or impatient drivers who suddenly create hazards and that everything always goes smoothly the way you intended with no unforeseen complications.
I think this mentality also has something to do with the amount of debt that the average person (in the USA) carries and why so many people live from paycheck to paycheck when most of them have other options. That is, it's the unthinking "leaf in the wind" mentality, again, where people don't realize that they are living in such a way that leaves them open to what appear to be sudden and surprising events. The only amazing thing about the situation is that people can be so wide-open to these problems for so long before something finally does happen. That is no excuse for denial of what should be plainly true, but if someone wants to be in denial, this alone can help prevent them from seeing the cause and effect.
Have you ever heard of pronouns?
What pronoun do you use for a corporation? It? They? She? He? In this case, probably "we."
I think "it" would help reinforce the idea that it's an artificial, amoral, non-human entity. The only flaw is that it's also grammatically acceptable to use "it" to describe animals, and animals most definitely have loyalties. So, I intend no insult to swine or other animals when I refer to a corporation as "it".
yeah right because computers happen in nature. we did have a diversity of computers in the wild, they happily swung from the trees and shat in the woods, but then the windows computer was introduced and ate all their food and raped their babies.
or maybe not everything has an analogy based on nature, since it's 100% artifical to begin with, and fills an artifical reqirement (like all computers being compatible dictates a monoculture...)
The concept is really simple. You have hundreds of millions of PCs which all have a common vulnerability. This need not be the case; that is only one way out of many possible ways. It is only the case so that one entity (known as Microsoft) can benefit. There is no other reason for it. There is nothing unique about the Downadup worm. This sort of "write once, damage nearly everywhere" exploit has happened before and will continue to happen again until we realize there is a better way. Once that realization is made, you'd be surprised at how easily things can change.
... or you respond with the above. It's alright. There is no constructive criticism, however well-founded or rooted in logic, that can be levied against Windows without some apologist coming out of the woodwork to "combat" it in a way that makes no sense as you have just done. When you get tired of seeing Windows with this semi-religious viewpoint, you'll feel better, for it's something of a psychic burden to come up with your conclusion before you examine your premises.
You either grasp the basic concept and realize it to be a universal one with a sound basis
The only real argument you could make here is "this monoculture is justified because it provides a common platform for development". Even that won't work because Microsoft has gone to great lengths to introduce subtle (and occasionally not-so-subtle) incompatibilities between implementations found on Windows and published standards. If not for that, the status of Windows as a development platform would be irrelevant or nearly irrelevant. Microsoft knows this which is why they aren't so fond of standards (ok, except for the ones they pay for). Even we who don't run Windows have to guard against secondary effects (bandwidth-wasting attacks from infected Windows hosts, etc) from those who do. No, the reality is that all of us are having a diminished experience for the sole purpose of enriching one company. This is just plain wrong, which is why people have to miss easy analogies and otherwise perform feats of mental acrobatics in order to avoid saying so. You're welcome.
Then, perhaps you should elaborate in what alternative you believe in instead of making pronouncements about how wrong a theory is without offering a more valid alternative.
That's just it. I don't have all the answers either, nor did I claim to. See, you sound like you just can't stand admitting that this is the case, which is why if I poke holes in your favored theory, you immediately demand that I give you something with which to replace it. That's what religions people do; I expect more strength than that from science. That line of mine that you quoted, it was put there for the sole purpose of avoiding the request that you have made anyway. There are many theories. Perhaps you can do some research and find one that better suits you without needing me or anyone else to show you the way.
The rest doesn't merit a response because you are either interested in finding your own answers or you are not, but they are the type of issues that are fairly easy research topics. This one line was something I wanted to comment on, however, and that was just to ask a rhetorical question.
Do you not see how manipulative that is? You don't like what I say, that's fine, I never asked you to nor did I ever expect you to. But to call my character into question (and it was subtle as far as that goes, but that's just what you did there) when it's utterly unnecessary and won't shed any light on the discussion is a position of weakness. It's foolish because you don't know the first thing about me. It shows a desperation to control and perhaps also a self-congratulatory nature on your part since it was a clever twisting of my words.
So why do you imply that I'm not humble? Because I know how to think critically? Because I question instead of taking knowledge on authority (establishment science, if nothing else, is an authority)? Because I am unashamed of both of these things? I'm guessing you don't have a reason at all, you just don't like that something I said had an unsettling effect on you and you thought you'd take a poke at me because of it. You will never find joy that way.
It means you try as many different alternatives as possible and as each one fails (that is, as you find the limitations of each), you get rid of it instead of making ad-hoc modifications to save the theory. This is childishly simple. There is no need to create this big mystique around it which amounts to pretending like the broken system we have now is the only possible way to deal with these questions. In fact you could say that the real "triumph" (a dubious one) of the current system is that most people cannot imagine another way to do things.
And if you are a scientist and those "guesses" call for a different framework/worldview/paradigm, it could destroy your career because people will balk at this without ever considering the merits of your ideas, including the people who decide whether you continue to receive funding. Isn't this sort of entrenchment and status quo worship exactly the opposite of what science is supposed to represent? Do some research and you'll be amazed at just how much of that really does happen in this day and age and ask yourself whether you think we are moving forwards or backwards.
And now we rediscover why monocultures don't work (and are generally not found) in nature.
It's like when Bill Hicks was alive and was talking about how we, collectively, are at about an 8th grade emotional level, particularly in the USA. Only mature people are willing and able to take responsibility for their actions, which would include recognizing why purchasing what you do not understand opens you up to this sort of failure and that this consideration is completely separate and independent from the question of whether the other guy misrepresented anything.
This is an ideal that quickly falls apart when the effective message from government and private funding is "you support the mainstream theory or we kill your budget". That's not "this is just a theory that happens to do the job right now but may be wrong"; that is something else entirely. Just tell me how many successful predictions have been made by astronomers in the last 25 years and then compare that figure to any other scientific field.
That'd be nice, but I'm hearing too many scientists who have tried that only to have their telescope time revoked, their papers unpublished, their funding cut, etc. Halton Arp is a good example. I mean he has a theory that with a single idea has not only better explained astronomical phenomenon but has also successfully made predictions, and his experience is just as I have described. While I think comparing that to Galileo, who was in danger of losing life and limb, is a bit dramatic, a small write-up of his experience can be found here If you start looking, you will find lots of other examples in several other fields; astronomy just seems to be one of the worst and I suspect that's because of the house of cards that Big Bang cosmology has become (they can afford an amount of hubris that an engineer could not, for example, because if a bridge collapses no one is going to pretend that it didn't).
... and full of denial. It's alright though, really. When there is a crisis in astronomy in 5-10 years and you ask yourself how this could have happened, why anyone didn't see it coming, just remember me. The way I like to explain it is "just because it has not yet grown into a 75-foot oak tree does not mean that the acorn has not been planted". Some people see the acorn and remove it early. Others are shocked when one day they see a 75-foot oak tree and are amazed at how much effort it takes to chop one down.
So, it is not difficult to find real problems with science as it is practiced today, namely that many unscientific things are going on and that money has become at least as important as facts, there remain the kind of popularity contests and persecutions that we like to think we left behind in the Middle Ages, and that's unfortunate. It may be worse still that lots of people like you will disregard these things (things you should not need me or anyone else to point out in the first place if you truly are interested in seeing the right thing happen) and talk about ideals that we'd all like to see that are simply not happening.
In other words, your response was eloquent and pleasing and "+5 Insightful"
I wish I had mod points today, thanks for posting that. It was an excellent and constructive criticism.
Haha, that didn't stop the mods from deciding that a post about problems with astronomy during a discussion about astronomy is somehow -1 Offtopic. Ah well, it wouldn't be the first time someone was just a little too eager to find an excuse to dismiss or silence me or any other critical thinker. I hope others react to that the same way that I do, which is to realize that these are small-minded men who are easily threatened when you challenge their pet beliefs and that therefore, the worst thing you could do is allow their little temper tantrums (in the form of abusing the moderation system) to discourage you.
And if it's like any other mainstream astronomical theory, the testable predictions really won't matter. At all. If those predictions are found to be false, they'll just make a long series of ad-hoc modifications to the theory in order to "save" it instead of seriously questioning their worldview/paradigm/framework (whatever you care to call it) because of the pseudoscientific disaster that astronomy has become.
When astronomy has a crisis in the next 5-10 years or so, perhaps most of you will be surprised. For a good starting point to see what I am talking about, do some research on black holes and what Schwartzchild really said vs. what is commonly attributed to him in colleges and textbooks everywhere (ask yourself if the most amateur of journalists would report so inaccurately). Or research Edwin Hubble and the fact that there are two equally valid interpretations of the redshift equation and we have settled the question of which to use by making an assumption. Or explain to me how a star that is powered by an internal thermonuclear reaction could have an atmosphere that is many times hotter than its surface (if you think that's a simple matter, you do not appreciate the question). Or why it is that a steady, flowing stream of charged particles is called an electric current everywhere it is found, unless those charged particles come from the sun and compose what is called the solar wind? Or why Hannes Alfven, the originator of what is now called magnetohydrodynamics, has thoroughly discredited his own theory, including during his Nobel Prize speech (especially the part about magnetic field lines being "frozen" in plasma), yet scientists continue to use this discredited theory to come up with fanciful ideas like "magnetic reconnection"? It's time to come up with new ideas instead of unscientifically shoring up old, failed ones in the name of preserving your funding.
And no, just because you see what a house of cards Big Bang cosmology is does not mean that you necessarily believe in theistic creation or anything like that. It means you appreciate the magnitude of a question like "how did the universe get here?" and are humble enough to admit that maybe you don't know. The more petty among you will read what I said and decide (entirely without consulting me) what alternative theory I believe in and will probably proceed to make a contest of it because you cannot grasp the simple essence of "this is an open question" and therefore cannot conceive of anything except one ideology versus another. It's alright not to know; sometimes there is great freedom in it.
'Age' does not guarantee wisdom, would be my only complaint.
Indeed, and in some cases "age" also means "entrenched worldview", "resistant to change", and the type of self-limiting hubris that prevents one from entertaining alternative viewpoints.
Why do you feel that way? The nerds that have stuck around tend to have very valid opinions, even if I don't always agree with them. We have been on the net longer than most, and have a better perspective on this issues that keep popping up. Granted, some of the arguments get really circular, but there is wisdom in the old-timers.
Because when the only thing you know about a poster is that they have a low Slashdot user ID, it is the fallacy of appeal to authority. The only way to know more about a poster than the number of digits in their user ID is to examine the merit of what they are actually saying, in which case the user ID number is quite irrelevant. I really do not care what someone's user ID is. It provides no exemption from the need to critically examine the facts they present or the claims they make, nor the need to apply common sense to the opinions they present.
There is simply no substitute for thinking for yourself, it makes you a better and more effective person who is not easily deceived (intentionally or otherwise). I wish we'd accept that this is a good thing instead of looking for clever and not-so-clever ways to shortcut this process.
But Olberman's bias is liberal much in the same way that reality has liberal bias.
Only liberals think reality has a liberal bias. Independents can see just as many examples as liberals twisting reality to advance their pet causes as conservatives doing the same. At the end of the day the only difference between the two is which of your freedoms you don't mind losing.
It's great to see increasing numbers of people who are willing to call things what they are as you just did. I do feel like the one good side-effect of how absurd and downright insane everything is becoming is that more people are starting to wake up and realize that no one in the major media has their best interests at heart. If you have never seen the 1976 movie Network I think you would really, really enjoy it.
I've yet to ever see a form of dismissal of any non-trivial issue that didn't make me feel this way. I've always felt that it was the favored tactic of small-minded individuals who feel threatened instead of delighted when they discover the limitations of their worldview.
You don't really believe that's a coincidence, do you?
From what I gather, though, at least the Democrats want everyone to go to school, so they can learn to think for themselves.
If that's what you believe the public school system is for, I'd like to introduce you to a man named John Taylor Gatto. I know of two works of his which will disabuse you of this notion if you will only read them. The first is an essay called The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher and the second is a full book called The Underground History of American Education. Both are quite eye-opening. The only caution I will give is that you may feel a temptation to become angry when you read these works; that will help nothing and no one, particularly you. The better approach is to understand that "if they really understood what they were doing, they wouldn't."
You appear to be conflating conservative with Republican, but the two are not interchangeable, particularly with respect to the administration that just left office. There are plenty of conservatives that took issue with the warrantless wiretapping because it represented exactly the sort of governmental encroachment into private life that their ideology opposes.
That mainstream Republicans who support things like domestic surveillance, offensive war, and micromanagement of the economy call themselves "conservative" (why? because many of them are also prudes like what we saw in the Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction"?) is one of the best examples of Newspeak in our times. It's destroyed the meaning that this word "conservative" once had; now it means whatever is convenient for the speaker depending on who is speaking and whom they are addressing.
I personally do not like and do not support either major party, for they are both worshippers of the status quo and their own entrenched power, but I will say that at least the Democrats are more open about their dream of an ever-expanding government. That doesn't make the Democrats any better, of course, it just means that they use a different tactic. They use the idea of a government that does many things for you that you should be doing for yourself as a seductive lure to weaken our resolve and compromise our principles. The effect is the same, however, for both parties and both tactics and it is our collective weakness, lack of resolve, and screwed-up priorities that makes this whole thing work. A healthy, joyous, complete person with a firm grasp of what is and is not important (freedom vs. security, for example) would never be tempted by the offerings of either party.
It has always been an utter failure ...
See, that's where you're wrong. It was a huge success in this case. They got hordes of intelligence on the domestic activities of U.S. citizens, without any need for public documentation or warrants, and nobody has gone to jail for it. In fact, the telecoms were granted blanket immunity from prosecution after the fact. Sure, they couldn't keep it up forever, but that was never the goal to begin with.
No, I wasn't commenting on the intelligence-gathering or domestic spying itself. I was commenting on what that ultimately leads to. This kind of surveillance (only the technology with which it is done has changed) and lack of respect for the citizens has always been a core component of totalitarian dictatorships throughout history. I consider the widespread misery and suffering that all such dictatorships embody to be the "utter failure" and it's not like we don't have enough historical examples to know what the early stages look like.