your original posting sounded like you were saying that he didn't quote one on this occassion.
My original post was meant to say that, had it been common knowledge, there's a good chance he would have attributed it to common knowledge. As the story was supposed to be something some guy heard from a mystic from a long way away, I think there's a decent chance Plato made it up.
There was nothing in Aristotles writings which suggest that Plato didn't intend for his stories to be taken literally.
Some day when I have more time, I'll try to find the quote, but I believe it's in metaphysics. Aristotle says something along the lines of "Plato didn't believe anything he wrote." He goes on to say that what Plato really believed was something complicated involving monads and dyads, and Aristotle didn't quite agree with it. But the point is, Aristotle confirms that each of Plato's dialogs is a dialectic planned to inspire a philosophic thought in the reader, and aren't meant to be historical, and aren't even meant to be espousing any particular beliefs (which is pretty clear from a good reading of the dialogs anyhow, but if you're looking for confirmation on what Plato was doing, it's hard to get more authoritative than Aristotle)
Plato never, in any writings we have, explicitly says, "these are made up", but they're written as plays. He has characters which are writers by profession, who speak of how to write, and how each and every word has to be placed just so for maximum effect and perfection. Lastly, if you understand Plato's writings at all decently, it's plain that these are rife with metaphor and sarcasm. Really, Socrates doesn't even mean half the things he says.
In the case of Aristotle (one of Plato's students), he believed Plato had invented it.
So much more of a reason to believe that Plato invented it. If there was controversy today over what some scholar "meant" when he said something, who would you believe, the general consensus of a bunch of random people, or the educated opinion of the scholar's star pupil?
it's only natural that there should be a sort of encyclopedia that allows each to contribute his own expertise without going through the priesthood of a encyclopedia editorial board. Will it make traditional encyclopedias obselete? Certiainly not, at least in the short term! But nor do the differences mean that something like Wikipedia shouldn't exist and that people searching for information should eschew it in favor of traditionally published encyclopedias.
I don't think anybody is claiming that the Wikipedia *shouldn't exist*. At least I hope not, and I haven't heard such a thing stated. It's a terrific source of vast quantities of information. I think the question that has been raised is, how confident can you be in the facts/opinions expressed in the wikipedia, knowing that any nutjob could have inserted the information 30 seconds before you got there.
In the example of Linux, as you brought up the function of gatekeepers, at least there you have people who know about the kernel, reviewing and testing code changes before they're added into the stable download. When I download the newest kernel, I don't expect it to be completely bug-free, but I usually feel pretty confident it'll be in pretty good shape. The situation would be different if the kernel was still open for anonymous unreviewed changes up the the second I started my download. You shouldn't underestimate that difference. I could insert anything I pleased in the wikipedia today, and even if it gets corrected within 5 minutes, how many readers have I mislead in those 5 minutes? And surely some things survive much longer.
Besides that, with such a casual submission process, in any dispute, the point of view that comes out on top is bound to the that with the most popularity and the most energetic/persistant/relentless contributers. Right and wrong shouldn't lend themselves to popularity contests. Facts are facts, even if 90% of the people don't like them and don't believe them.
So these are, I think, valid criticisms of the wikipedia. That they're valid doesn't mean the wikipedia should be shut down, though. It seems to me there are a couple of options: a) find a way to address these criticisms, or b) accept the classification of wikipedia as a useful, interesting, but ultimately unreliable source of information.
Of course, there's always c) spread so much propaganda that people believe everything out of the wikipedia is the word of the open-sourced God, but I think that sort of thinking is what lead the guy to title his article "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia".
What encyclopedias are good for, on the other hand, is to give a quick tour of and route into an area the reader isn't already familiar with.
It also helps if you can say, with relative confidence, that the information you're receiving during this "quick tour" is reliable. I don't think it needs to be "matter of life-and-death" reliable, but even just, "when I tell my friends something I read on wikipedia, I feel comfortable that I'm not full of s#$%" reliable.
FWIW, I love Wikipedia. It is an amazing resource and deserves to thrive, but if it can e made more robust, while retaining its essential open, collaborative nature, so much the better.
What I like about your post is that you acknowledge that there are problems with the way the wikipedia works, and that this does not make it useless. This is important.
People get so attached to their pet projects sometimes that everything becomes all-or-nothing. If someone critically evaluates one aspect of the project, it's treated as an attack on the whole project-- as a statement that "this project should be trashed"-- and the evaluation is dismissed. This reaction is not productive.
I think the Wikipedia is a great thing, but I also think that this reveiwer's concerns are valid. For all of what it does well, the Wikipedia still has some weaknesses, which should either be addressed (i.e. fixed), or else we should all recognize and live with a certain amount of uncertainty of the reliability of the information you get.
Plato does actually state where he heard it from. One of the other characters in the book, Solon, heard the story from Egyptian Priests.
Yes, he does say he heard it from Egyptian Priests. However, Plato comes up with things now and then that were told to some character by a priest or an oracle or something. In many of those cases, it could easily be made up. Remember, this is fiction. I could write a story where Luke tells Han that there's a planet called "Atlantia", and he knows all about it because Yoda told him.
*sigh* and it's too bad that Yoda's dead, or we could come up with an interstellar ship, find that Galaxy "far far away", find Degoba, and obviously, there would be a muppet there, waiting to reveal to us the location of Atlantia.
Except, oh, wait, Atlantia was something I made up. The story about Luke was made-up, and the story he told, of Yoda telling him about Atlantia, being part of a made-up story, was made-up too. And all of this is based on existing mythology, but that doesn't make it any more true.
We don't have tons of information on the what word-of-mouth was around Plato's time, and what was common knowledge, but it could easily have been made up.
Aristotle didn't believe Plato though
Correction: Aristotle understood that Plato didn't intend for his stories to be taken literally.
but he does site one source in "Constitution of the Tegaeians" where the people of Arcadia claim to have been descendants from Atlantis
Can you be more specific where this comes from? I don't recall it, but you may be right, and this would be an indication at least that the myth was more wide-spread than Plato's dialog, which would be interesting. However, it still wouldn't demonstrate anything factual about Atlantis.
the Jewish history was told and re-told during babylonian captivity to preserve the identity of the people - yet in THAT particular case it's supposedly not distorted in any way.
If you say so. However, the people who believe that this is history do so out of a dogmatic belief that the history was composed from the "word of God", and so it could not have been distorted. In that context, I won't argue.
However, barring divine intervention, oral histories tend to do the same sort of thing that happens when you play a game of "telephone". The exact message is not preserved. Sometimes it's changed purposefully, and sometimes the meaning remains intact, but after a few generations, the original message is pretty much always lost.
er... Homer wasn't a writer at all. Homer himself may have been a fiction. There was a strong oral tradition behind a couple of tales attributed to an old blind storyteller named "Homer", but by the time they were written, the stories had been passed down orally, a number of generations, and homer was long-since dead (if he ever existed at all).
With Homer, the writing of the epics are as much mythological as the epics themselves, so it becomes very difficult to ascribe intention. However, many people believe that the Illiad was intended to be as much history as mythology, and it's not clear they distinguished between the two at the time.
If you've read the Illiad, you've probably noticed that there are all sorts of accounts of people fighting and dying, their names, and who their relatives are, who aren't really proper characters. There are plenty of people in the story who exist long enough to be killed, and aren't mentioned before or after. Some have interpreted this to be a result of the story being used to keep track of individual's ancestors and such.
Additionally, all the talk of the Gods, taking sides, fighting, causing problems, it's not clear that wasn't meant to be equally historical as the sacking of Troy itself. As I said, it's hard to know if they even distinguished between the two. It might be fair to compare the Illiad to the Tanakh. Was it written with the intention of being history, myth, religious work, or fiction? Historically, it's hard to say because we aren't even sure who wrote it down, but it seems to be a mix.
Disclaimer: I'm not going to argue with those who say they know who wrote the Tanakh and why, but I only want to say that we don't have an independant historical account, and so a scientific sort of knowledge about it is pretty much impossible to establish.
Plato, on the other hand, came considerably later, and things had changed. Quite a bit of Plato's writings have survived, as well as writings about him and Socrates from their contemporaries.
Many first year philosophy students mistakenly believe that Plato's writings were historical transcripts of discussions he had witnessed, but it's well established that Plato could not have been present for half of these discussions, even were we to presume that these discussions all took place. Further, within the dialogs, there are allusions to the fact that they're carefully crafted to make a point, and we have writings of people like Aristotle (who knew Plato) who write about why Plato's dialogs should not be taken literally, and that Plato was a satirist at heart.
So these situations are quite a bit different. In one case, we can't know the intention, but it seems to be an attempt at oral history. In another case, we have evidence of the intention, and it's clearly not meant to be historical.
Oh, and other thing to throw into the mix: anonymity. The relation between freedom/usability/accessibility/security and anonymity is interesting. Like, we might be able to increase security if we all had RFID tags implanted under the skin, and that might be very usable and accessible without impinging directly on freedom, but it keeps you from being anonymous, which might indirectly impinge on certain sorts of freedom.
I realize this wasn't meant to be about politics, but the topics are connected. When you abstract ideas about computer security to general axioms, I think you'll find that they have meaning in personal/political security.
I think what we really perceive is that "security" and "ignorant/inattentive accessibility" are inversely proportional. Meaning, how secure your computer is is inversely proportional to how easily you can access it without having any idea of what you're doing. If things are secure, you need to know how to operate things, and have passwords memorized, and you generall need to pay attention to what you're doing. Plus, in general, inaccessable means more secure (all else being equal). But once you have access, I don't see any reason why a secure system can't be useable.
Perhaps you could word it more meaningfully as "security vs. freedom". Those two generally have to battle it out, and not just when it comes to computers. For a computer example, if you secure a machine from user tampering, the users won't be able to change everything they want. If you don't allow users to delete files, then they might not always be able to delete the files they want. However, this need not affect usability when it comes to useful tasks.
Speaking of freedom and security, someone wanna lay out the Franklin quote? (I bet it shows up in this post before the day is done).
GP:Anyway, OSX uses the Mach kernel, which is based on BSD
P:No, it's based on Mach.
Ok, maybe I'm speaking too loosely, but wasn't
Mach developed to be a microkernel replacement for BSD...? I'm not claiming to be a big expert here, and I don't know, maybe they didn't use any code taken from the BSD kernel, but wasn't it developed to fit into an otherwise BSD system, meaning the kernel and modules were developed to fit the specifications of a BSD system? I was under the general impression that the Mach kernel was not engineered to run a "new" operating system, but was written to serve the same purpose as the BSD kernel, sort of a drop-in replacement, just not monolithic in design. Or is that not right?
Yeah, maybe, but who knows... It's hard to read a story from a couple thousand years ago and be sure how a contemporary audience would have understood the implications of what's being said. Really hard.
Having said that, and having some idea of Plato's style, forced to guess, I'd say that when any Platonic character relates a myth which none of the other characters are aware of, the myth is likely to be completely contrived by Plato. I say this as a hunch, mostly because Plato likes to make a point of talking about where information came from, and will have characters say something like, "Well, it's common knowledge..." or "Everone knows about..." If it was a common myth, there'd likely be an indication from the other characters that they've heard it before.
But like I said, it's really hard to say for sure. The only way of knowing would be if we found a written account of Atlantis that pre-dated Plato, and... well... good luck at that.
When you reduce human tradegdy such as the distruction of a civilization to an 'obvious parable' then you do the rest of us a disservice.
That it was an 'obvious parable' is true. When Plato wrote of it, it was in the context of being an obvious parable. Whether this 'obvious parable' had any basis in anything other that Plato's whimsy is a different matter.
Plato may have been inspired to write this metaphor of Atlantis by a real myth that would have been well known at the time, or perhaps not. If it was a widely known myth, that myth may have had some basis in historical fact, or perhaps not. If it has a basis in fact, the fact behind the legend of Atlantis may be something like what Plato describes, or perhaps the reality was nothing like the parable Plato creates.
However, what is pretty well known is, Plato wrote fictional discussions and included in one of them an obvious parable about a city called Atlantis.
I keep an open mind about Atlantis because Troy was ficticious right up until someone found it.
That's an interesting comparison, but at least there are indications that the Illiad, along with being a good story, may have been intended to be a sort-of "historical account". Certainly, as with many oral traditions, historical accounts become mythologised, re-interpreted with each generation, and generally skewed. However, since we don't anything like written documentation of the creation of "The Illiad", and it was supposed to be the story of how the Greek peoples united into being, together, "Greek", I find the idea that there was some historical intention hard to argue with.
We are much more certain, however, about Plato. Plato was essentially a writer of fiction, and it's commonly agreed that he had little intention of being historically accurate. That being said, it's hard to know for sure if the Atlantis myth from the dialog was even a common Greek myth at the time, or if Plato invented it out of thin air.
Additionally, with the discovery of Troy, an ancient city which archeological evidence seems to indicate was distroyed by Greeks at about the right time frame was discovered in about the right area, and many people agree that it is likely to be the city being referenced in the stories of Troy. However, this evidence verifies very little of the Greek's historical accounts of the war with Troy.
Right. I always try to explain this to people when the subject of Atlantis comes up. The story seems to have originated from a Platonic dialog, and Platonic dialogs were essentially *plays*. Though the characters were often based on real people, it's evident that the dialogs were not meant to be transcripts of actual discussions, but carefully crafted works of fiction, meant to inspire various levels of philosophic thought. Looking for Atlantis because there was mention of it in a dialog may be a bit like searching the woods for Oberon.
iTunes currently requires version 4.2 as a minimum to play any DRM'd songs you have purchased from the store....2 years from now, those restrictions could change to requiring a theoretical iTunes 5.0 which would theoretically require Windows XP & Longhorn and Mac OS 10.4.x & 10.5.x.
The only reason you can't play iTunes DRM music on older versions of iTunes is that the DRM scheme wasn't in use yet, and of course software created before the creation of a standard won't support that standard. However, the songs purchased from iTMS have never been "upgraded" (so to speak) to require a higher version of iTunes than what was used to purchase it in the first place. So, if you bought songs with iTMS, and you've never upgraded your copy of iTunes since then, they still work. So I don't see Apple releasing upgrades as such a big problem.
A bigger problem, in my mind anyway, with the DRM is this: Imagine, 3 years from now, Apple, or iTMS, or both, fail, and I buy a new machine that runs some other hypothetical operating system, and no existing version of iTunes will run on it, what do I do then? I have to keep an old OSX/Windows machine around just to listen to a few CDs I bought on iTMS? Or will it then be legal to break the DRM?
It gets to be a little like the problem of: I have a bunch of data on old 5.25" floppies, but new computers don't have floppy drives, only with the difference that it would be illegal to copy it to a more reasonable medium. So, you see, my worry isn't so much that Apple will continue to upgrade their software, but that there will come a time when they won't continue to update their software.
oh, you mean when I'm "in the hole" of making a decent point and being modded "+5 insightful", I'm "continuing to dig" by admitting a minor mistake in my post, and asking a question or two? Maybe you should try contributing to the discussion if you have something to say. And I don't consider cryptic (and uncalled for) flames a 'contribution'.
Yeah, if you notice, there's a typo where I wrote, "They workS similar to Unix", where I had written the post for Linux only, because I wasn't sure about BSD.
Now, ok, since we've had that correction, is it just 'BSD' that's considered Unix, or is is all the BSDs, (meaning FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD). Anyway, OSX uses the Mach kernel, which is based on BSD, and it runs some sort of BSD compatibility layer (though I'm not sure what that entails), as well as running many apps/tools that originated on Unix, and even containing some. So it's at least Unix-based, and Unix compatible, and Unix-like I guess?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong. But still, my larger point, how much does the distinction between "Unix" and "Unix-like" matter, really? (as in, is it important to this discussion?) If someone says "MacOS is Unix" in this context, is it really necessary jump all over them saying "no it's not", except maybe as a matter of trivia?
Actually, in the context of the discussion it couldn't be anything, it was being discussed as "wc", and that is mainly the point. It was "wc" (we're basically talking unix/posix 1003.2 here) in the early seventies, and it's "wc" today. And it does essentially the same thing today as then.
Sure, if the whole point of your argument is that 'wc' is a command that happens to have remain unchanged for a long time, however...
I don't think that's any kind of an argument for inherent superiority of CLI, but more an argument for "Thank GOD they don't change these things!" But, you see, that they don't change these things is to make up for a weakness in the CLI that isn't such a problem for the GUI: It's pretty hard/time-consuming to find out how to do something, unless you already know. If I sit down at a hypothetical CLI system, not knowing knowing a single command, or even what system it is, I'm done for. Even if it uses a similar prompt/syntax system, there's nothing I can do unless I can find a manual, and even then, it will take quite a bit of reading to get started. Even if you know a command, but can't remember exactly how it's spelled, you're in for some pain. Ever see a dos guy getting frustrated at a unix system because "dir" doesn't work? On the other hand, the GUI (a good GUI) pretty much explains itself. It plays on our visual/spacial intuition to represent things that we can act on.
I find it much easier to type "wc fname"..... Done! Don't have to look for it.... don't have to RTFM....
Sure, but that was part of my point. If you already know the system you're working on, and you've memorized the commands, it's just that easy. Likewise, if I'm familiar with the GUI I'm working on, and I know where everything is, there's no 'treasure hunt'. A UI that you're familiar with, know the ins-and-outs of, and are comfortable on is going to be easier to deal with one that you aren't, and don't. But that doesn't tell you which one is "better".
OTOH, I could be relatively competant on Unix systems, know that there's a command for executing a word-count, but just not know the command is 'wc', and it could be a pain in the butt to figure it out. Finding an unfamiliar/infrequently-used option or command in a GUI tends to be a bit easier.
So what? Linux and BSD aren't Unix either, but people sometimes refer to them as "Unix" or "Unix flavors" or something along those lines, because, in many ways, they works similarly to Unix. If you know your way around a Unix box, with a few adjustments, you'll be able to figure out these other systems. And OSX isn't BSD, but a fair amount of it is based on BSD.
Taking all that into account, I'm not sure what your point is. Maybe you were just trolling, but someone must not have thought so, since you were modded insightful.
OTOH, were you to ask CLI users the same question.... they would all know exactly how to use wc, and interestingly enough, had you asked the same question to the CLI users over the past fifteen years you would have gotten the same answers. So, in addition to a simple answer, CLI is a consistent one.
OTOH, the CLI answer *could* just as easily be anything, and it can be pretty hard to find if you don't know. I could make an wordcount tool be called "wrdcnt" or "wordcount". Given only the executable name 'wc', I have to go reading through manuals to find out what '/s' might do, if anything. So, it's fast as long as you're operating on a system that uses all the same commands, and you're using commands/switches you're familiar with.
Compare that with using a GUI, and I might say, I don't remember exactly where 'word count' is, but quickly scrolling through the menus will find it in any decent word processor. Usually, if there are any options to be found, it'll be apparent-- I won't need to RTFM.
P.S.And don't even get me started about the menus with chevrons!
You're absolutely right about the stupidity of self-modifying menus. A power user will know how to modify the menus himself, and self-modifying menus placed in front of a newbie will only serve toward confusion. However, let's not confuse a criticism of Microsoft's implimentation of their GUI with a criticism of GUIs themselves.
I think the simple truth is, there are some activities that can be accomplished quicker and more easily on a GUI, and some tasks that are quicker and more easily accomplished with a CLI. If you have both (which, I can't think of an actively developed OS that can't), then you get to pick and choose which works for you for each task, so why complain?
Umm, I think the Panic guys would have a rather hard time in doing that for Audion, as the thingy has a built-in Fraunhofer-licensed MP3 encoder...
That's not much of an obstacle, given that they could easily GPL it without that one encoder (they could even keep the LAME encoder, I believe. Isn't LAME GPL?)
Anyway, I'm not trying to say they absolutely should have, I'm just saying that it's what I *wish* companies would do.
agreed. Panic is a pretty good company. My *personal* preference is, if you are quitting development on a piece of software, and have no plans of going back to it, that companies would GPL is. I mean, that's just my wish, and I'm sure many here would agree.
However, it's their software, and I do think it's very considerate, and even generous, to go ahead and make it freeware. By doing this, Panic hasn't really lost anything, if they were going to quit selling it anyway, but it builds good will.
Sure, there are more reasons, but if I had to pick one reason that the iPod was successful while others weren't, I'd say it was because it wasn't frustrating to use (while others were).
I think another significant reason was iTunes. That bit of software made it easy to "Rip, Mix, Upload to my damn iPod".
I'd include that in the "ease of use" idea. They looked at the whole use of the device, and removed the annoying aspects (which included, "How do I get my music on to this thing?")
Plus you could buy songs online without any hassle.
The iPod was a winner even before iTMS. Sure, now, it's a selling point for the iPod, but even before the store opened, the iPod was doing way better than the competition.
Yeah, well, Apple didn't design the iPod.
Doesn't matter. Apple released it as an 'Apple product', and I'm only saying that you won't see a commercially available 'Apple product' that doesn't have certain sorts of simplicity in it's design. (Plus, if I recall, Apple took the idea from PortalPlayer and redesigned it. But again, that's not the point.)
This is a _terrible_ idea. If voters walk out of the voting booth with a receipt that says how they voted, you've just enabled everyone who might want to pressure, bribe, or influence voters.
This, for me, is a good example of something: Many of the ideas people are coming up with are flawed. It sounds like a good idea, until you really think about it, and then you realize it's a _terrible_ idea.
Most of the screwed up things people make fun of in the American electoral systems are screwed up in order to prevent something more screwed up from happening. The electoral college is there to prevent a delicate power balance between states. Why aren't there uniform election laws around the country? The federal government is *constitutionally* forbidden from setting election laws specifically to keep the delicate balance between state govt and federal govt.
The American system is complicated because the men who set the rules understood the complexity of fair government. For the most part, the best idea is to leave it be.
The problem here is that wikipedia, and wikis in general, assume that the users all want the information to be as accurate as possible, and that any biases expressed or implied are unintentional, and therefore will be corrected over time.
I agree that that is one problem, but that's not the only problem. People also have honest disagreements as to what is "accurate" or "unbiased".
It can be a bit complicated:
Sometimes there are two very different points of view on a subject, and both of them are intelligent and valid.
Sometimes there are two very different intelligent points of view on a subject, and though both groups honestly believe they're right, *one* of them is wrong.
Sometimes there are two very different intelligent points of view on a subject, and though both groups honestly believe they're right, *both* of them are wrong.
Sometimes people are just plain ignorant.
And finally, you're right, sometimes people are purposefully writing misleading/incorrect content, either out of malice or attempts at humor.
When you add all this up and pair it with the wikipedia's editorial system [or lack thereof], it always leads me to the same conclusion: the wikipedia is a great source of information, but should not be taken as authoritative. There's simply too great a possibility that the information you're looking at is not correct.
One idea I'd like to float is to have another version. The same way you might have a "stable" and "test" version of code, and the review process might be more rigorous for code going into the "stable" version, maybe there should be a "stable" version of the wiki. Same information, but nothing goes in without being edited by someone authoritative in the field the information pertains to. I'm not saying it's *the* solution, but it's an idea.
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My original post was meant to say that, had it been common knowledge, there's a good chance he would have attributed it to common knowledge. As the story was supposed to be something some guy heard from a mystic from a long way away, I think there's a decent chance Plato made it up.
There was nothing in Aristotles writings which suggest that Plato didn't intend for his stories to be taken literally.
Some day when I have more time, I'll try to find the quote, but I believe it's in metaphysics. Aristotle says something along the lines of "Plato didn't believe anything he wrote." He goes on to say that what Plato really believed was something complicated involving monads and dyads, and Aristotle didn't quite agree with it. But the point is, Aristotle confirms that each of Plato's dialogs is a dialectic planned to inspire a philosophic thought in the reader, and aren't meant to be historical, and aren't even meant to be espousing any particular beliefs (which is pretty clear from a good reading of the dialogs anyhow, but if you're looking for confirmation on what Plato was doing, it's hard to get more authoritative than Aristotle)
Plato never, in any writings we have, explicitly says, "these are made up", but they're written as plays. He has characters which are writers by profession, who speak of how to write, and how each and every word has to be placed just so for maximum effect and perfection. Lastly, if you understand Plato's writings at all decently, it's plain that these are rife with metaphor and sarcasm. Really, Socrates doesn't even mean half the things he says.
In the case of Aristotle (one of Plato's students), he believed Plato had invented it.
So much more of a reason to believe that Plato invented it. If there was controversy today over what some scholar "meant" when he said something, who would you believe, the general consensus of a bunch of random people, or the educated opinion of the scholar's star pupil?
I don't think anybody is claiming that the Wikipedia *shouldn't exist*. At least I hope not, and I haven't heard such a thing stated. It's a terrific source of vast quantities of information. I think the question that has been raised is, how confident can you be in the facts/opinions expressed in the wikipedia, knowing that any nutjob could have inserted the information 30 seconds before you got there.
In the example of Linux, as you brought up the function of gatekeepers, at least there you have people who know about the kernel, reviewing and testing code changes before they're added into the stable download. When I download the newest kernel, I don't expect it to be completely bug-free, but I usually feel pretty confident it'll be in pretty good shape. The situation would be different if the kernel was still open for anonymous unreviewed changes up the the second I started my download. You shouldn't underestimate that difference. I could insert anything I pleased in the wikipedia today, and even if it gets corrected within 5 minutes, how many readers have I mislead in those 5 minutes? And surely some things survive much longer.
Besides that, with such a casual submission process, in any dispute, the point of view that comes out on top is bound to the that with the most popularity and the most energetic/persistant/relentless contributers. Right and wrong shouldn't lend themselves to popularity contests. Facts are facts, even if 90% of the people don't like them and don't believe them.
So these are, I think, valid criticisms of the wikipedia. That they're valid doesn't mean the wikipedia should be shut down, though. It seems to me there are a couple of options: a) find a way to address these criticisms, or b) accept the classification of wikipedia as a useful, interesting, but ultimately unreliable source of information.
Of course, there's always c) spread so much propaganda that people believe everything out of the wikipedia is the word of the open-sourced God, but I think that sort of thinking is what lead the guy to title his article "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia".
It also helps if you can say, with relative confidence, that the information you're receiving during this "quick tour" is reliable. I don't think it needs to be "matter of life-and-death" reliable, but even just, "when I tell my friends something I read on wikipedia, I feel comfortable that I'm not full of s#$%" reliable.
What I like about your post is that you acknowledge that there are problems with the way the wikipedia works, and that this does not make it useless. This is important.
People get so attached to their pet projects sometimes that everything becomes all-or-nothing. If someone critically evaluates one aspect of the project, it's treated as an attack on the whole project-- as a statement that "this project should be trashed"-- and the evaluation is dismissed. This reaction is not productive.
I think the Wikipedia is a great thing, but I also think that this reveiwer's concerns are valid. For all of what it does well, the Wikipedia still has some weaknesses, which should either be addressed (i.e. fixed), or else we should all recognize and live with a certain amount of uncertainty of the reliability of the information you get.
Yes, he does say he heard it from Egyptian Priests. However, Plato comes up with things now and then that were told to some character by a priest or an oracle or something. In many of those cases, it could easily be made up. Remember, this is fiction. I could write a story where Luke tells Han that there's a planet called "Atlantia", and he knows all about it because Yoda told him.
*sigh* and it's too bad that Yoda's dead, or we could come up with an interstellar ship, find that Galaxy "far far away", find Degoba, and obviously, there would be a muppet there, waiting to reveal to us the location of Atlantia.
Except, oh, wait, Atlantia was something I made up. The story about Luke was made-up, and the story he told, of Yoda telling him about Atlantia, being part of a made-up story, was made-up too. And all of this is based on existing mythology, but that doesn't make it any more true.
We don't have tons of information on the what word-of-mouth was around Plato's time, and what was common knowledge, but it could easily have been made up.
Aristotle didn't believe Plato though
Correction: Aristotle understood that Plato didn't intend for his stories to be taken literally.
but he does site one source in "Constitution of the Tegaeians" where the people of Arcadia claim to have been descendants from Atlantis
Can you be more specific where this comes from? I don't recall it, but you may be right, and this would be an indication at least that the myth was more wide-spread than Plato's dialog, which would be interesting. However, it still wouldn't demonstrate anything factual about Atlantis.
If you say so. However, the people who believe that this is history do so out of a dogmatic belief that the history was composed from the "word of God", and so it could not have been distorted. In that context, I won't argue.
However, barring divine intervention, oral histories tend to do the same sort of thing that happens when you play a game of "telephone". The exact message is not preserved. Sometimes it's changed purposefully, and sometimes the meaning remains intact, but after a few generations, the original message is pretty much always lost.
Or were you just trying to start a flame war?
With Homer, the writing of the epics are as much mythological as the epics themselves, so it becomes very difficult to ascribe intention. However, many people believe that the Illiad was intended to be as much history as mythology, and it's not clear they distinguished between the two at the time.
If you've read the Illiad, you've probably noticed that there are all sorts of accounts of people fighting and dying, their names, and who their relatives are, who aren't really proper characters. There are plenty of people in the story who exist long enough to be killed, and aren't mentioned before or after. Some have interpreted this to be a result of the story being used to keep track of individual's ancestors and such.
Additionally, all the talk of the Gods, taking sides, fighting, causing problems, it's not clear that wasn't meant to be equally historical as the sacking of Troy itself. As I said, it's hard to know if they even distinguished between the two. It might be fair to compare the Illiad to the Tanakh. Was it written with the intention of being history, myth, religious work, or fiction? Historically, it's hard to say because we aren't even sure who wrote it down, but it seems to be a mix.
Disclaimer: I'm not going to argue with those who say they know who wrote the Tanakh and why, but I only want to say that we don't have an independant historical account, and so a scientific sort of knowledge about it is pretty much impossible to establish.
Plato, on the other hand, came considerably later, and things had changed. Quite a bit of Plato's writings have survived, as well as writings about him and Socrates from their contemporaries.
Many first year philosophy students mistakenly believe that Plato's writings were historical transcripts of discussions he had witnessed, but it's well established that Plato could not have been present for half of these discussions, even were we to presume that these discussions all took place. Further, within the dialogs, there are allusions to the fact that they're carefully crafted to make a point, and we have writings of people like Aristotle (who knew Plato) who write about why Plato's dialogs should not be taken literally, and that Plato was a satirist at heart.
So these situations are quite a bit different. In one case, we can't know the intention, but it seems to be an attempt at oral history. In another case, we have evidence of the intention, and it's clearly not meant to be historical.
I realize this wasn't meant to be about politics, but the topics are connected. When you abstract ideas about computer security to general axioms, I think you'll find that they have meaning in personal/political security.
Perhaps you could word it more meaningfully as "security vs. freedom". Those two generally have to battle it out, and not just when it comes to computers. For a computer example, if you secure a machine from user tampering, the users won't be able to change everything they want. If you don't allow users to delete files, then they might not always be able to delete the files they want. However, this need not affect usability when it comes to useful tasks.
Speaking of freedom and security, someone wanna lay out the Franklin quote? (I bet it shows up in this post before the day is done).
P:No, it's based on Mach.
Ok, maybe I'm speaking too loosely, but wasn't Mach developed to be a microkernel replacement for BSD...? I'm not claiming to be a big expert here, and I don't know, maybe they didn't use any code taken from the BSD kernel, but wasn't it developed to fit into an otherwise BSD system, meaning the kernel and modules were developed to fit the specifications of a BSD system? I was under the general impression that the Mach kernel was not engineered to run a "new" operating system, but was written to serve the same purpose as the BSD kernel, sort of a drop-in replacement, just not monolithic in design. Or is that not right?
Having said that, and having some idea of Plato's style, forced to guess, I'd say that when any Platonic character relates a myth which none of the other characters are aware of, the myth is likely to be completely contrived by Plato. I say this as a hunch, mostly because Plato likes to make a point of talking about where information came from, and will have characters say something like, "Well, it's common knowledge..." or "Everone knows about..." If it was a common myth, there'd likely be an indication from the other characters that they've heard it before.
But like I said, it's really hard to say for sure. The only way of knowing would be if we found a written account of Atlantis that pre-dated Plato, and... well... good luck at that.
That it was an 'obvious parable' is true. When Plato wrote of it, it was in the context of being an obvious parable. Whether this 'obvious parable' had any basis in anything other that Plato's whimsy is a different matter.
Plato may have been inspired to write this metaphor of Atlantis by a real myth that would have been well known at the time, or perhaps not. If it was a widely known myth, that myth may have had some basis in historical fact, or perhaps not. If it has a basis in fact, the fact behind the legend of Atlantis may be something like what Plato describes, or perhaps the reality was nothing like the parable Plato creates.
However, what is pretty well known is, Plato wrote fictional discussions and included in one of them an obvious parable about a city called Atlantis.
That's an interesting comparison, but at least there are indications that the Illiad, along with being a good story, may have been intended to be a sort-of "historical account". Certainly, as with many oral traditions, historical accounts become mythologised, re-interpreted with each generation, and generally skewed. However, since we don't anything like written documentation of the creation of "The Illiad", and it was supposed to be the story of how the Greek peoples united into being, together, "Greek", I find the idea that there was some historical intention hard to argue with.
We are much more certain, however, about Plato. Plato was essentially a writer of fiction, and it's commonly agreed that he had little intention of being historically accurate. That being said, it's hard to know for sure if the Atlantis myth from the dialog was even a common Greek myth at the time, or if Plato invented it out of thin air.
Additionally, with the discovery of Troy, an ancient city which archeological evidence seems to indicate was distroyed by Greeks at about the right time frame was discovered in about the right area, and many people agree that it is likely to be the city being referenced in the stories of Troy. However, this evidence verifies very little of the Greek's historical accounts of the war with Troy.
Right. I always try to explain this to people when the subject of Atlantis comes up. The story seems to have originated from a Platonic dialog, and Platonic dialogs were essentially *plays*. Though the characters were often based on real people, it's evident that the dialogs were not meant to be transcripts of actual discussions, but carefully crafted works of fiction, meant to inspire various levels of philosophic thought. Looking for Atlantis because there was mention of it in a dialog may be a bit like searching the woods for Oberon.
The only reason you can't play iTunes DRM music on older versions of iTunes is that the DRM scheme wasn't in use yet, and of course software created before the creation of a standard won't support that standard. However, the songs purchased from iTMS have never been "upgraded" (so to speak) to require a higher version of iTunes than what was used to purchase it in the first place. So, if you bought songs with iTMS, and you've never upgraded your copy of iTunes since then, they still work. So I don't see Apple releasing upgrades as such a big problem.
A bigger problem, in my mind anyway, with the DRM is this: Imagine, 3 years from now, Apple, or iTMS, or both, fail, and I buy a new machine that runs some other hypothetical operating system, and no existing version of iTunes will run on it, what do I do then? I have to keep an old OSX/Windows machine around just to listen to a few CDs I bought on iTMS? Or will it then be legal to break the DRM?
It gets to be a little like the problem of: I have a bunch of data on old 5.25" floppies, but new computers don't have floppy drives, only with the difference that it would be illegal to copy it to a more reasonable medium. So, you see, my worry isn't so much that Apple will continue to upgrade their software, but that there will come a time when they won't continue to update their software.
oh, you mean when I'm "in the hole" of making a decent point and being modded "+5 insightful", I'm "continuing to dig" by admitting a minor mistake in my post, and asking a question or two? Maybe you should try contributing to the discussion if you have something to say. And I don't consider cryptic (and uncalled for) flames a 'contribution'.
Now, ok, since we've had that correction, is it just 'BSD' that's considered Unix, or is is all the BSDs, (meaning FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD). Anyway, OSX uses the Mach kernel, which is based on BSD, and it runs some sort of BSD compatibility layer (though I'm not sure what that entails), as well as running many apps/tools that originated on Unix, and even containing some. So it's at least Unix-based, and Unix compatible, and Unix-like I guess?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong. But still, my larger point, how much does the distinction between "Unix" and "Unix-like" matter, really? (as in, is it important to this discussion?) If someone says "MacOS is Unix" in this context, is it really necessary jump all over them saying "no it's not", except maybe as a matter of trivia?
Sure, if the whole point of your argument is that 'wc' is a command that happens to have remain unchanged for a long time, however...
I don't think that's any kind of an argument for inherent superiority of CLI, but more an argument for "Thank GOD they don't change these things!" But, you see, that they don't change these things is to make up for a weakness in the CLI that isn't such a problem for the GUI: It's pretty hard/time-consuming to find out how to do something, unless you already know. If I sit down at a hypothetical CLI system, not knowing knowing a single command, or even what system it is, I'm done for. Even if it uses a similar prompt/syntax system, there's nothing I can do unless I can find a manual, and even then, it will take quite a bit of reading to get started. Even if you know a command, but can't remember exactly how it's spelled, you're in for some pain. Ever see a dos guy getting frustrated at a unix system because "dir" doesn't work? On the other hand, the GUI (a good GUI) pretty much explains itself. It plays on our visual/spacial intuition to represent things that we can act on.
I find it much easier to type "wc fname"..... Done! Don't have to look for it.... don't have to RTFM....
Sure, but that was part of my point. If you already know the system you're working on, and you've memorized the commands, it's just that easy. Likewise, if I'm familiar with the GUI I'm working on, and I know where everything is, there's no 'treasure hunt'. A UI that you're familiar with, know the ins-and-outs of, and are comfortable on is going to be easier to deal with one that you aren't, and don't. But that doesn't tell you which one is "better".
OTOH, I could be relatively competant on Unix systems, know that there's a command for executing a word-count, but just not know the command is 'wc', and it could be a pain in the butt to figure it out. Finding an unfamiliar/infrequently-used option or command in a GUI tends to be a bit easier.
Taking all that into account, I'm not sure what your point is. Maybe you were just trolling, but someone must not have thought so, since you were modded insightful.
OTOH, the CLI answer *could* just as easily be anything, and it can be pretty hard to find if you don't know. I could make an wordcount tool be called "wrdcnt" or "wordcount". Given only the executable name 'wc', I have to go reading through manuals to find out what '/s' might do, if anything. So, it's fast as long as you're operating on a system that uses all the same commands, and you're using commands/switches you're familiar with.
Compare that with using a GUI, and I might say, I don't remember exactly where 'word count' is, but quickly scrolling through the menus will find it in any decent word processor. Usually, if there are any options to be found, it'll be apparent-- I won't need to RTFM.
P.S.And don't even get me started about the menus with chevrons!
You're absolutely right about the stupidity of self-modifying menus. A power user will know how to modify the menus himself, and self-modifying menus placed in front of a newbie will only serve toward confusion. However, let's not confuse a criticism of Microsoft's implimentation of their GUI with a criticism of GUIs themselves.
I think the simple truth is, there are some activities that can be accomplished quicker and more easily on a GUI, and some tasks that are quicker and more easily accomplished with a CLI. If you have both (which, I can't think of an actively developed OS that can't), then you get to pick and choose which works for you for each task, so why complain?
That's not much of an obstacle, given that they could easily GPL it without that one encoder (they could even keep the LAME encoder, I believe. Isn't LAME GPL?)
Anyway, I'm not trying to say they absolutely should have, I'm just saying that it's what I *wish* companies would do.
However, it's their software, and I do think it's very considerate, and even generous, to go ahead and make it freeware. By doing this, Panic hasn't really lost anything, if they were going to quit selling it anyway, but it builds good will.
Sure, there are more reasons, but if I had to pick one reason that the iPod was successful while others weren't, I'd say it was because it wasn't frustrating to use (while others were).
I think another significant reason was iTunes. That bit of software made it easy to "Rip, Mix, Upload to my damn iPod".
I'd include that in the "ease of use" idea. They looked at the whole use of the device, and removed the annoying aspects (which included, "How do I get my music on to this thing?")
Plus you could buy songs online without any hassle.
The iPod was a winner even before iTMS. Sure, now, it's a selling point for the iPod, but even before the store opened, the iPod was doing way better than the competition.
Yeah, well, Apple didn't design the iPod.
Doesn't matter. Apple released it as an 'Apple product', and I'm only saying that you won't see a commercially available 'Apple product' that doesn't have certain sorts of simplicity in it's design. (Plus, if I recall, Apple took the idea from PortalPlayer and redesigned it. But again, that's not the point.)
This, for me, is a good example of something: Many of the ideas people are coming up with are flawed. It sounds like a good idea, until you really think about it, and then you realize it's a _terrible_ idea.
Most of the screwed up things people make fun of in the American electoral systems are screwed up in order to prevent something more screwed up from happening. The electoral college is there to prevent a delicate power balance between states. Why aren't there uniform election laws around the country? The federal government is *constitutionally* forbidden from setting election laws specifically to keep the delicate balance between state govt and federal govt.
The American system is complicated because the men who set the rules understood the complexity of fair government. For the most part, the best idea is to leave it be.
I agree that that is one problem, but that's not the only problem. People also have honest disagreements as to what is "accurate" or "unbiased".
It can be a bit complicated:
When you add all this up and pair it with the wikipedia's editorial system [or lack thereof], it always leads me to the same conclusion: the wikipedia is a great source of information, but should not be taken as authoritative. There's simply too great a possibility that the information you're looking at is not correct.
One idea I'd like to float is to have another version. The same way you might have a "stable" and "test" version of code, and the review process might be more rigorous for code going into the "stable" version, maybe there should be a "stable" version of the wiki. Same information, but nothing goes in without being edited by someone authoritative in the field the information pertains to. I'm not saying it's *the* solution, but it's an idea.