Because when you start to look for the secret procedure behind friendship, you start looking at people as if they were abstract personalities, with some quanitifiable set of properties, and you stop looking at them as human beings.
Long ago I read a book where two characters were discussing personality types. One character claimed he categorized people into two groups. He'd show people the idyllic garden behind his home and eventually tell them he had built that small hill, and moved those rocks so they looked like they had fallen there, and reshaped the stream to run a different way. One type of people were appalled that the beauty was not natural and felt disillusioned and the other group were amazed by his ability to create beauty and enlightened by the knowledge. The claim was that some people prefer to believe in the beauty in the natural world, while others prefer to see the beauty inside a person expressed.
I don't believe in such dichotomies, but I think there is a valuable lesson there. Understanding the processes that lay behind some phenomenon need not devalue that phenomenon and may in fact enhance one's appreciation of it. Every day I am appalled by the ignorance and meanness and stupidity and selfishness of people. They lie right to your face, care nothing for people they profess to love, and are unthinking animals in making decisions, while they are cold and calculating robot lawyers when it comes to justifying those same actions.
Every day I am amazed by how amazingly generous and giving people are. People will ruin their entire day to avoid disappointing a friend, children put us all to shame with their friendliness and wonder and lack of prejudice, and people with completely different world views and beliefs can set that aside to do some good in the world.
I've read more psychology books than some psychologists I know. I am very good at understanding people's motivations and feelings. I understand and implement a half dozen different models of the human animal. I don't think that stops me at all from being a very social person and I don't think it objectifies people. I don't have any trouble making friends and always seem to be meeting new people.
I think it is important to recognize that understanding the human mind in a scientific sense does not mean you cannot understand it from a human perspective as well, and empathize and connect. These are not mutually exclusive points of view.
Music just has the right characteristics to be a good conversation topic.
I strongly disagree. Music is often thought to be good conversation topic and a good meter for determining what type of personality someone has. 90% of the time actually starting such a conversation, however, results in canned responses based upon what social circle the person is in and what they think is "cool." Most younger people especially tend to listen to music to make a statement, rather than to reflect their real tastes. The average conversation about music goes something like this:
So, what kind of music do you like?
Umm, you know, indy music, like [pop_band_x] or [pop_band_y]
Really, huh those are okay, have you heard [band_z]
Umm, no, are they good?
...
Such conversation is dreadful and useless. If you want to get to know someone and make an impression, you need to be a bit more interesting yourself. I like to start conversations with something spontaneous, like, "hi you don't know me but I think you're really sexy. Can you think of any circumstance under which you'd murder someone?" Or start off by breaking them out of the conversational mold. I met some really interesting people by introducing them to my friends like, "hey everybody, this is my old friend Veronica, she once punched a homeless guy who said her shoes were ugly." If the random girl I'm referring to as "Veronica" is an interesting person, she'll almost always run with it and I met someone fun. If not, she runs for the door or her boyfriend and I haven't wasted 5 minutes repeating the same boring conversation about music.
My advice to everyone is to ignore the topic of music and develop some character. Be confident and interesting and you don't have to worry about picking "safe" topics to meet people.
I don't have time to reply in depth at the moment, but a state representative is not a federal anything.
Umm, perhaps I misunderstood, I thought you were referring to the state's representative in the house. It does not matter though, since it is not particularly material to the points I made. People are a lot more likely to know who their governor or mayor or secretary of transportation is than to know who their congress critter is.
Then perhaps each city should have its own drivers licences. That would be far less centralised than a state licence, and a city knows its own roads better than a state.
Why? Has the level of centralization now being used proven to be subject to unreasonable abuse? The point is to keep the federal government from turning into an authoritarian regime. If a state government does the same it still hurts people, but we can deal with it from a federal level and have in the past.
Or even better, why not have each citizen declare his or own drivers licence?
Please look up the "slippery slope" logical fallacy. It will explain why your argument is irrational. For that matter, please look up all the classic logical fallacies that are part of the rhetorical method, not because of this discussion, but because everyone should have been taught them in school in order to help them think logically and make rational decisions.
You have a puzzling perspective. You believe that "the feds" can crack down on abuses of the Constitution, and yet in the next sentence you worry about federal abuse.
If popular opinion warrants it, the feds can step in a stop abuse on a state level, and they have done so in the past. Murder, for example, is properly a federal offense. If a governor is murdering people, the feds can step in stopping the most rampant abuse and removing those people from power. With underage drinking, however, there is no justification for the feds to step in and remove some governor who was drinking when they were 18 (theoretically speaking of course). The point is to balance the power of the states and the feds and if there is any doubt, the states are a less risky bet, since any abuse they enact will be limited to one state and less likely to destroy the entire government. The power to limit rights is like a gun. Do we aim that gun at our head or our arm, when the need arises?
The solution in either case is not to flee, but to correct the problems that arise.
The best solution to a problem, especially a personal one, is not always standing up to the powerful. Fleeing to another state is a time honored and useful way to enact changes, ever since the days of slavery.
I'm not sure what measure you use to gauge attention, but media coverage of state/local issues is lesser..
The media has been nationalized, but there is still plenty of local coverage. Local newspapers, for example, are often overlooked when people talk about these things because individually, they reach few people. Collectively, they make up a lot of what people actually see.
...voter turnout is substantially depressed...
Aside from the presidential election, if you ask most people what the most important thing to them on a ballot is, it is usually either a gubernatorial race or a local issue. In polls, more people are interested in a millage issue on a midterm election ballot, than in their congress critters.
...and a pathetic percentage (~9%, IIRC) can even name their state representative.
A state representative is a federal government official. How many know who their governor is? How many know who their mayor is?
Regardless, the hypothetical described could not be pushed on the public unwillingly overnight.
No, the concentration of power more and more to the federal government and away from both states and individuals has been an ongoing process since the country was established. Every law passed instead of repealed is another nail in that coffin.
...insidious sneak-ins are quite difficult to pull off at the federal level than at the state level because of the far greater oversight and accountability mandated in DC...
And an order of magnitude more dangerous because it affects more people and is less likely to be stopped.
Even beyond that, changing culture and social expectations may well make that scenario completely acceptable within a generation, making the whole debate irrelevant.
Do you think the power wielded by the government is not part of changing our culture? There have been widespread propaganda campaigns in active operation since the 50s. Does that make it any better?
If I setup a "lemonade-stand" labeled "B of A Deposits" in my neighborhood and tell people they can make deposits with me instead of going to the bank, should the bank be held responsible if some people actually do it? At some point, people have to take responsibility.
It's not just that people aren't taking it seriously, it is that the system was designed without taking the human element into account. You say "what if I set up a lemonade stand" but that is exactly the same issue. That scam wouldn't work because it does not take the human element into account and no one would believe it. Part of the problem is the current crop of "security experts" often completely neglect the computer-human interaction component of security then try to excuse that by placing blame elsewhere. Guess what, if you goal is to not be blamed, that might work, but the supposed goal is to increase security and they are failing. Malware writers and phishers are not ignoring the human element and that is partly why they are succeeding so much.
No online banking security measure that is put in place is ever going to stop stupidity.
No, but a good online banking setup deals with real people instead of assuming people are machines that will always behave in some way they assumed they will, without testing to see if that is true.
This is the type of thinking that keeps people voting for Democrats. Too many people don't want the responsibility of taking care of themselves.
Too many people don't think at all. Most people vote democrat or republican. Both parties advocate and enact socialist policies that "take care of people" who don't take that responsibility. The difference is just which socialist policies. Your singling out the democrats simply demonstrates you are clueless and buying a party line.
They want someone else to do it so they can blame someone else when it goes awry
I'm in favor of many socialist policies while I'm not in favor of yet others. I'm in favor of providing free drug treatment and addiction management centers to mitigate drug addiction problems, even to the point of providing free heroin to junkies on a regular basis. Does that mean I don't want to take responsibility for my actions and want someone else to manage my nonexistent drug addiction? No, it does not. Your view on these matters seems very simplistic. I'm in favor of certain socialist programs simply because they benefit society as a whole and because we have several socialist alternatives. You do know the police are a socialist entity, right? Same with prisons. So if we're going to spend money either giving people drugs and treatments and counseling or spend money arresting people and holding them in jail, I'd rather we did whichever is better for society as whole. Since it is many orders of magnitude cheaper to just give them drugs, rather than deal with robberies and assaults they commit in a desperate attempt to get drug money and pay the police to haul them to jail and the courts to process them and the prisons to hold them.
The same concept applies to many other forms of socialism. Sometimes, despite the cost to the average person, socialism does make sense and provides a net benefit to society. It all depends upon the level of socialism and the likely end results.
Can't get a job? Here's some unemployment!
I've been there. Considering I pay money every month to provide for when and if I lose my job, I have no problem taking it back when I need it. Is this a good idea overall? Well, since so many people don't have the discretion to save for these circumstances and since the result of leaving them to their own devices is drastic increases in crime and widespread long term poverty that results in lacking education and healthcare for children who have no say in the world, I'm rather supportive of it. Removing the unemployment system results in people temporarily homeless and poverty stricken which results in poorer education and health for their ch
If you have ever moved from one state to another, you know the total nightmare process it is to move your licence and register your car.
I've moved and re-registered a car. It was annoying. I'm more than willing to put up with that annoyance, however, as it reduces the risk of centralized power. All centralized power is dangerous. The more power that accumulates in one place the more risk we run of becoming a totalitarian state. You may not consider this one power important, and by itself it may not be. Consider, if you will, old soviet states that practiced extreme amounts of socialism as their economic model. They were founded as democracies to bring power to the people. They tended to become totalitarian states. Why? Is the government mandating just one company that makes crayons a real threat to the people? What is the harm?
I'll answer my own question. Individually, the power to mandate any given market is not a huge risk to the liberty of the people. Collectively, however, too much centralized decision making moves more and more ability to abuse that decision making into fewer and fewer hands. The more power is consolidated in the federal government, the more that power will lead to abuse and we really only get one chance before we have to revolt and start over.
The scenario you paint can be accomplished just as easily by a state government, while simultaneously getting away with even more egregious violations because people don't pay that much attention to their state governments.
I disagree. In general people pay more attention to state issues, since they feel they have more influence there. Also, even if the above did happen in a state, they is a lot less people and people could flee to other states. The feds can still crack down on the abuses by the states that conflict with the US constitution. When it happens a federal level it affects a great deal more people and you may not be able to flee the country and even if you do, it could expand to other countries. The risk with a state is much, much less than the risk with the US government.
state versus nation != individual versus government
True.
anyone reading your post above would get the distinct impression that when the state of maine fights washington dc, they are fighting for your individual rights
In a way that is true. Laws like one restricting 18 year old people from drinking are anti-freedom. They remove the rights of an individual to choose for themselves. When the federal government imposes such a restriction, it restricts at least as many and perhaps more people than a federal restriction. As such, making this an issue of states rights, instead of a federal mandate results in no more, and quite likely less restriction of freedom.
seems to me that the state of maine is fighting for the rights of the state of maine
I take it you don't see the benefit of moving more power to the states.
why in a million years should i trust that the government in augusta to be a better guarantor of my rights than washington dc?
You shouldn't trust them and that isn't the reason to support state rights. Why do extremely socialist countries turn into authoritarian regimes? Many of them have a democratic process that is completely subverted, but started off very similar to our own. So why is it that those countries so commonly fail in that way? The answer is quite simply, consolidation of power. The more power you put in fewer hands the more motivation and risk of that power being seized by an individual or group. The more centralized your decision making and the more people you have answering to a single authority, the greater the risk.
The founders of our country understood this risk. They broke up the federal government into competing branches and spent a lot of time specifically writing own all the powers the feds should never have and trying to bolster state rights as much as possible. They knew the less power was concentrated in one place, the harder it would be for a single group to control that power for personal gain and to the detriment of the people. Also they understood an important facet of human nature. Power tends to consolidate. People who seek positions of power are the same sort who tend to want accumulate more power. Unchecked, they would take more and more power until they were an authoritarian system. That is why it is important to decentralize power and have multiple factions competing.
i am firmly of the opinion that my individual liberties are better preserved by undermining state's rights
On a case by case basis, this can be true, but in the grand scheme of things, every power the feds get increases the risk that the US will be completely taken over by a small group.
state capitols, it seems to be, always seem to be rotten with more corruption and social conservative agendas (agendas always at odds with personal liberties and freedoms) than what goes on washington dc
Sometimes, but the damage they can do is limited because it only applies to one state. As such, there will always be reform movements and people can always vote by walking to a new state. When it gets too bad, there are the feds to step in and clean house. If we instead centralize all power with the feds, who steps in and cleans house?
what goes on in montpelier or sacramento or bismarck is no better, and often a lot worse, and often a lot less scrutinzed
Actually the more localized an issue, the more likely people are to both get involved and feel that they can make a difference. Ask the average person if they think their vote in the general election matters. Now ask them if they think their vote on state constitution amendments matters. Now ask about the local school millage. Notice a trend? The individual would be right to. It is possible to become active and get a Green party or Libertarian party candidate elected mayor. It has even happened that they have been elected to control a state. The same sort of reform on the federal level is unlikely to ever happen beca
Well, I guess you might have a point, as the closest "comparable PC" to a propriety Apple tower is some propriety Dell piece of junk.
What an interesting assertion. Independent reviews of the quality and reliability of Apple hardware rank it at the top of the heap, usually even above Lenovo. Dell consistently is near the bottom of the heap. I think maybe your perception of things is a wee bit unreal.
However, if you build a PC yourself, you can get something a bit more flexable and easier to upgrade compared to a Mac (or OEM PC too).
I don't know about this. If you pick the right off the shelf machine it can be plenty easy to upgrade and just as flexible. Heck my old g4 tower was one of the easiest to work on machines I've ever owned. You grabbed a handle and the side hinged down, taking half the components with it. I only wish PC case vendors had something as nice. Also, speaking only to OS's, using OS X instead of Windows provides less need to upgrade as the requirements have been going down instead of up. Also, you never have to worry about Windows deciding that last piece of hardware you swapped out means you're probably a pirate and going through a rigamarole to re-activate. You don't even have to put in a serial number to start with.
Also, that argument isn't exactly weak, as All-in-one, SFF, and laptops is all you can get from Apple, unless you want to spend $2500 on a Mac Pro.
It all depends upon your needs and what you're building. As I said, if you use OS X you have much more limited selection of machines. That is a major limitation of using OS X. Trying to restate that limitation as "Apple machines are hard to upgrade if you buy a laptop, which is hard to upgrade if you buy one from another vendor too" is walking all the way around the block to get back where you started. In some instances, you can't buy an Apple machine that fits in your price point and feature set, while you can find PC hardware that does. One of those machines you can't buy might be a bottom of the line, cheap tower for low end upgradability. One of those machines might be a high end tablet. The problem, however, is not that Macs aren't upgradable or that Apple machines don't do well with styluses. The problem is that Apple ahs a limited selection of hardware and that means you might have to pay more for a model that has a given feature than you would if you have more options.
Umm, in the way that you can change any component you like without having the buy a new computer.
What component of a mac can't you change out? I've changed hard drives, controller cards, video cards, ram, optical disks, etc. I know people who have swapped out motherboards, cases, power supplies, and chips. I'm not really seeing the problem here. In fact, for my now ancient tower which still serves as a PVR and media server, I swapped out so many components over time that if it was a Windows machine I would have had to re-register and mess with Microsoft over licensing issues multiple times, while this has never ben an issue with OS X.
Ok smartass, you can't change it for a different one, or are you expecting me to believe I can just go and buy a new Mac Pro Intel board to upgrade my G5 tower? I don't think so.
If you can find a case it will fit in as well as compatible parts, why couldn't you? You're arguing a little bit of apples and oranges here though. Can you buy one of the old WinNT machines that ran on PPC and upgrade it to an x86 one easily? It is usually easier to buy a new case, power supply, and motherboard and re-use the rest of the parts
That would be because Apple...
I don't care. No really, I don't care why this particular aspect of upgrading hardware is easier for the mac any more than I are why fewer USB webcams have Windows drivers. That's the way things are and we're discussing the way things are, not why.
You can't blame Microsoft for trying to prevent piracy, unless you want to criticise Apple for using DRM on iTunes because they are assuming you are going to be a criminal and file share your downloads.
I can and do blame MS for using measures that unreasonably assume I'm pirating software and are so prone to false positives. In a free market they would never get away with treating customers so shabbily. I dislike Apple's use of DRM on music they sell and find it to be an annoyance as well. That is not, however, particularly relevant. This isn't a "macs are better... no PCs are better" discussion, although perhaps you've mistaken it for one. We're talking about the ease of upgrading hardware. MS's annoying DRM is relevant to that. Apple's music DRM is not.
...you mean like my Tiger upgrade I bought from Apple that will only install over Panther?
My tiger upgrade installs all by itself, even on a blank drive, without swapping any DVDs. Where did you get one that does not?
Back to my original point - you simply cannot make a serious comparison between 'upgrading' a Mac (by changing the graphics card, or putting in more memory) with the amount of options that are available for PC hardware, and if you are going to seriously compare that, then you are invalidating the Apple 'surgery' ad because by your logic 'Mac' should also be in plaster as he too would be having surgery to 'upgrade'.
Oh, was that your point? Well that's bullcrap for a different reason. The ad is using surgery as an analogy for upgrading parts. I haven't had to add any new parts to my 7 year old g4 tower to get it to run the latest release of OS X. y 7 year old PC, which cost slightly more at the time, cannot run Vista, and can barely run XP these days. The ad refers to the completely valid point that the requirements for running Vista are a much newer PC, than the requirements for running OS X 10.4 (or 10.5) because in general OS X releases run better on old hardware with each release while Windows releases each run slower.
Are you trying to assert that the ad was implying surgery on the PC was harder than surgery on the Mac, because I don't see that at all.
In reality his bigger, faster replacement should appear on screen, shoot him in the head and take over from him.
Do you ever just read some comment you wrote again and think, "gee I'm making emotional decisions and trying to argue complete crap that has little to do with the subject at hand because I feel threatened by people who make fun of my choices?" Yeah, have fun.
Well, one obvious example would be that it's now N days into February and only one of the MoAB bugs has a patch...
I take it you've never done commercial software development in your life? How exactly would you schedule a dev/qa cycle that gets all the bugs fixed and regression tested so that all the bugs at the beginning of the month and end of the month are fixed at the end of the month a day after the last, official bug is announced? Part of the reason the MoAB is so responsible is that spacing out bugs with one serious one every few days makes it impossible to do this with well tested fixes a responsible vendor would release. You either have to commit to fixing a given set at the beginning, or wait till the end of the month to begin your regression testing. I don't know if the MoAB guys were trying to maximize the window of opportunity for malware writers to exploit these, but they picked a great way if that was their intention. Given the comments they've made and the multiple times evidence of their own illegal exploitation of their bugs prior to publication has show up on their Web site, I sure wouldn't put it past them.
My own experience (DHCP remote root a couple years ago) was that it took 2 1/2 months for a fix during which communications was not insanely great, to put it mildly. Even your own examples (9 days, a few weeks) are more than "a few days" which was the original point being refuted here.
Was it a remote root in the DHCP server on OS X? In which case it is a non-critical issue since that service is off by default and rarely enabled by customers. Still 2.5 months is longer than it should take, under normal circumstances. Was that 2.5 months from the time you submitted it to Apple's bug database? Was is marked as a security issue?
As for "a few days" that was the original claim, but your counter claim was overbalanced in the other direction. It certainly takes more than a few days in most cases to fix and test a release for a large commercial environment. This is something people with experience primarily in open source hobby development don't get. "look a fix made it into CVS in only 4 days" and then it was redone 3 times to fix the instability it accidentally introduced and then after a few weeks of real testing it was pulled into the repositories at real companies that have money on the line.
My own experiences lead me to think this is still the exception rather than the rule. It's hard to make an objective judgement though since the data is generally unavailable outside Apple unless you submit things yourself on a regular basis.
This is true enough and I'd like Apple to go a lot further with providing information about security issues, maybe even paying a bounty for responsibly disclosed bugs from the public. There are a lot of technologies Apple might adopt to make this situation a lot better as well. To date, however, I've found their response to be acceptable, measured by the fact that while they are not some super-secure, locked down distro, they have fixed things before they become a problem for a significant number of their customers.
However long they're taking, it's not "a few days" and it may make sense for some people to take action to protect themselves in the interim rather than be hanging in the breeze for an indeterminate period of time.
This is a matter of debate. What are the chances you will experience problems because of the outstanding vulnerabilities? Partly this depends upon your use profile. What are the chances these interim fixes will cause problems of their own? What are the relative levels of damage likely to occur in either scenario? For the average home user, I'm guessing they are just as well waiting for official fixes, unless a worm or widespread Web page based exploit is spotted in the wild.
Why is this such a big thing considering that OpenOffice has the ability to import from and export to MS Word format?
Some governments have conflicting directives including support for ODF and a contract to buy MS Word. Many tools designed to allow the blind to use computers work only with specific products, like MS Word. As a result, some governments asked for a converter that would move documents back and forth between these formats and for some reason they asked that MS not contribute or control the code, just fund it.
But I don't think the ads are really aimed at making people switch to Mac. The ads are really more designed to make people who bought a Mac think they made the right decision, so they'll keep buying Macs.
Maybe other people have different experiences, but I know about 100 people who have switched to mac computers, most of them software engineers. I know one person who switched back (to Linux). I doubt Apple has as much of a problem keeping switchers as getting people to switch in the first place.
There's certainly "the faithful" who that ad appeals to, but I'm not sure if the rest of the people who buy Macs want to be identified with a prickish looking, snobby, "better than thou" character.
Apple has been getting a whole lot of customers lately (relative to a few years ago), about half of whom are not old customers returning. I seriously doubt they're aiming their advertising at current customers. I suspect their ads are aimed at average people, rather than computer geeks, which is why no one on Slashdot particularly likes them.
Tell that to anyone who's been running an OS9-based G4, who then upgrades to the latest version of OSX. You're comparing OSX to itself. It's like saying Windows XP SP2 is faster than Windows XP SP1.
Not really. There is no one to one comparison, but each shift from 10.0 to 10.1 to 10.2 etc. was a lot more significant that the shift from Win XP SP1 to WinXP SP2. Real new features were added with each release and new APIs as well. In fact, if you look at the feature set from 10.0 to 10.4, there are a lot more features and underlying changes than in the shift from Win NT to Vista.
What really matters in this case is the longevity of the machines in question. My middle of the road seven year old dual 533 G4 still runs the latest and greatest OS X just fine. The middle of the road PC tower I bought at the same time for slightly more is useless junk and people won't take it off my hands for free. It sure won't run Vista and is not to fast at running XP.
Upgrading from OS9 to any version of OSX can be *painful* unless you have upgraded your computer.
The same goes for that old Win 98 machine you bought, what's your point? When you move to a system with 300% the functionality, you pay for it in resources. Run FreeBSD if you want to run ancient hardware with minimal specs.
And I'm not being funny, but it's easier to upgrade a PC than a Mac.
Umm, in what way? If you compare Apple machines to comparable PCs, they are about the same ease of upgrading hardware. Now Apple sells more all-in-ones, laptops, and small form factor machines than average, so I suppose you could argue that Apple makes more machines that are harder to upgrade, but that is pretty, bloody weak.
for example if you want you can change the motherboard etc. - can't exactly do that with a Mac tower.
Actually you can, they're just expensive and you have more limited hardware options. Having limited hardware option != harder to upgrade though. They are different issues.
How about some counter points. When upgrading hardware on the mac, you never have to worry about calling Apple to get a new key, because your OS decided you are a criminal. You never have to worry about reinstalling the OS, or OS's in succession because you only have an "upgrade" version. If you are replacing the whole machine, say you got a new laptop, moving all your files, software, certs, accounts, etc. from the old one to the new one is an order of magnitude easier with a mac.
I also believe that *most* of the MoAB exploits that have been reported are not because of holes in 3rd party software, not the OS itself. Someone correct me if I'm wrong (I dare you!).
25-30% of the bugs reported by MoAB were in third party applications. A goodly number of them were local overflows or DoS on some service, which by themselves would result in little or no risk. At least one of them seemed to be the same issue (.dmg validation) stretched out for several days. A handful of them have real potential for widespread exploitation via a worm, virus, or Web site.
I am not a big fan of the "I am a Mac" ads. Being a Linux user, I don't care that much about OS X or Windows based PCs. So perhaps my opinion is unbiased.
I think the fact that you know what Slashdot is makes you the wrong viewer for those ads. I'm an OS X fan, and I use Linux and Windows every day. I probably have a better handle on each platform's strengths and weaknesses than most people. Those ads are targeting people who don't even know what an "OS" is. Try to put yourself in the mindset that you have never heard of Linux, and you don't know what an OS is. Now imagine, all the computers at the store(Walmart) run Windows. You don't even know where you'd get a computer that ran something else, except maybe if there was a Web site. Now imagine you've only ever run Windows, and you don't have any idea how you get viruses or worms or trojans. You've heard of Apple computer and know they sell Macintosh computers, but you don't know how you'd use one or where to get one or if they are better in any way. Now watch the ads again.
From the perspective of a computer geek these ads are patronizing and imply some inaccurate things. They are not precise and the concepts they explain are way fuzzier than in the real world. For average people, however, the messages they convey are fairly truthful and simple enough for people to understand. "Getting a mac means negligible chance of malware" is a valuable message for the clueless and I wish more would listen to it.
I think that these ads might offend Windows users instead of getting them to switch to the cool side. These ads do not show the strength of Macs. These focus more on insulting Windows based PCs.
They focus on benefits of the mac the average person can understand. I dare you to drive to the middle nowhere in Iowa and try to explain to an average person the benefits of having a capable bash shell instead of the Windows command prompt or Cygwin, in 30 seconds or less. Or explain system services or not being part of a monoculture or default network services settings.
Moreover, don't know why, but I've always felt that any company that really has superior products doesn't have to attack the competition this way.
When you're dealing with a monopolized product often the only way to market a product is to compare it to something the user does know about. If people don't know why they should go out of their way to get a mac instead of just picking up a Windows box anywhere, they aren't going to do it.
ps. I know that writing something against Apple might not go very well with my Karma, though:-(
People often complain about an anti-windows or pro-linux or pro-mac bias on Slashdot. Most of those people are incorrect in my experience. I say good and bad things about the actions/functions/features/or image of all three regularly and I haven't noticed any one being modded more than the others. I made comments both in favor of and criticizing Linux development on the desktop yesterday and both were modded way up. So long as what you say has value, in general the masses overpower the occasional fanboy who thinks Linux or Windows or Mac is some sort of religious choice.
The monies in question is related to Intel's advertising budget; if you are a system vendor and prominently display the Intel logo in your advertising, Intel will fund a certain percentage of the advertising, based on the prominence of the logo in your advertising. (Microsoft has a similar program). Am I right? If so, then the ones suing Dell are complaining about NOTHING. There is absolutely nothing stopping AMD from implementing such policies if they have not already done so.
Gee Microsoft does it too, well it must be legal then:)
Seriously, marketing dollars and the like have been channels for illegal kickbacks before. It is usually very discretionary. Say Intel decides it wants to freeze AMD out of most corporate purchasing. So they sell chips at one price to everyone, but give Dell $250,000,000 in marketing dollars for putting an Intel Inside logo on their computers. HP sells both Intel and AMD chips, so Intel gives them 4,000,000. So Dell is making 100 times as much "marketing money" for each PC they put the logo on as HP is. If the courts can show that this was likely contingent on not using AMD chips, that is discriminatory pricing, and Intel is undercharging Dell.
"So what's the big deal with charging different prices to different customers?" you might ask. Normally, there is nothing wrong with that, however, Intel controls the vast majority of the market which brings with it certain market power and legal responsibility. Intel is under investigation for anti-trust abuse. Discriminatory pricing by monopolies is often a anti-competative act. So whether they claim the money was for marketing and they're just hugely better bargainers than HP, or if they admit to it being a kickback in exchange for taking that action, Intel is opened up to possible criminal convictions.
Note, the example above was just that. I don't know how much HP was paid by Intel, or that any sort of deal between Intel and Dell was contingent upon freezing out AMD.
The earth is not a data set, it is a subject of study. Statistical probability applies to the number of different, independent methods that correlate with the temperature of the earth, in the past (for example). Those probabilities and degrees of certainty are covered in the study. Trying to apply it other things is ignorant.
You tested one earth. Your predictions (made by an independent third party who was only given your model) came true how many times? Where else would such limited information be in any way significant?
Gravity applies to the universe but has only been tested against one universe. The fact that the theory of gravity holds true for macroscopic objects was only tested in this one, and supported. Why should such limited information be considered significant. Gravity could reverse any day. Lets not make any predictions based upon such an unsupported theory.
Does the above analogy show you the logical error in your reasoning?
To save you time: You're trying to equate all scientific consensuses, regardless of how much data is available to back up each one. Then you're using that to lecture the CEI about how science works, when "how science works" has significant limitations in its applicability to studying something you only have one of.
You're mistaking statistics for science. The scientific method is as I stated and it is a separate item from determining the statistical likelihood of the accuracy of a given data set. The data sets in question are subject to a given probability of accuracy, which is quite high. A hypothesis or theory, however, is not a data set and is not subject to said probabilities. A given application of a hypothesis or theory for use in prediction can be approximated by the known uncertainties, but that is something else again, as you'd know if you had bothered to study the application of the scientific method.
"You have to test your theories!" "Have you tested your theory on earth?" "Well..."
You're confused or trying to be deceiving. A hypothesis is a prediction. Testing it is performing an experiment and seeing if it matches that prediction. Scientists predicted numerous things would disprove the theory that human intervention was resulting in increased global warming. When tested, the predictions held up. The size of tree rings, CO2 content in ice samples, growth patterns in coral reefs, etc. all, when tested, held with the predictions. The experiments with C02, and other gases also held true. This is not proof (a rarity in science) but it is a whole lot of support, such that a reasonable person is inclined to think the theory likely, or at least more likely than any other proposed theory.
In order to need multiple earths to provide support for a theory, that theory would need to include something that always happens to earths. That is not at all what we're looking at, but a process which occurs on the earth.
You haven't shown how TFA is any different than the peer review that was done (or should have been done) by the IPCC.
Peer review can be useful for discussing the methodology and potential problems with it in order to create the next set of experiments. It is not useful for finding out what is and is not true. The problem with what is described in the study is it is paying people not even to do a review, but to find some part of the science that can be argued against.
TFA says that they're looking for someone to review the paper, and to comment on its strengths and weaknesses.
It says it offers money for finding shortcomings in the study. That is not objective peer review even, and the danger is that the published studies will be presented as science (and indeed already have been).
Here is the promised example. The theory of gravity has a lot of support these days. Almost all experimentation to date has concluded that objects attract one another proportionally relative to their masses and inversely proportional to the square root of the distance between them. For our purposes, assume we're testing the attraction between masses. So we take a bunch of objects of different masses predict the attraction between them based upon this formula, then measure the attraction between them and publish. That is science. Now suppose some party offers money for any paper pointing out weaknesses in my published study. Someone might point our the relative rates of falling objects like musket balls and feathers is not close enough to the same, relative to the mass difference. Someone my point out lodestones, which repel one another, rather than attract, or which attract too much. Surely gravity is an incorrect theory?
Both of those items were pointed out as reasons why the theory of gravity was surely incorrect. They both lead to further experimentation that supported the theory. So here is what I see you failing to understand. Pointing out those discrepancies, while useful for shaping new experiments, do nothing to scientifically disprove the theory of gravity until they are made into testable hypothesis, and experiments formed to test them. Anyone can come up with items that might be reasons, based upon already known facts, why some theory could be wrong. The scientific method relies upon objectively testing unknowns to see if the support or refute a hypothesis. Publishing weaknesses of a given scientific study is useful to scientists. It is not useful for determining the truth directly. If you pay scientists to postulate reasons, then publish, they are not acting as scientists. They're acting as guessers.
This lobbying group did not ask for insight into new areas to test via the scientific method. They asked for scientists to publish support for an opinion, thus far contradicted by the scientific process to date. As such, they are trying to get non-scientific information published from supposed scientists, and information that has no process behind it. That is deceptive and it certainly is not science.
How many earths have climatological theories been tested on? What's the statistical significance?
Statistical significance applies only to the data set you're analyzing, not a probable conclusion. Please go retake our statistics class (I took it twice so I should know).
Except when the subject of climate change comes up. Then, it's all about consensus, and anyone who has a different theory, or who criticizes the current theories is a denier and a foe of science.
Making decisions is about consensus. Science establishes facts and provides support for theories.
Is it a bad thing to hear from those who don't agree with, or who think the study was not done correctly?
It is a bad thing when hearing from those people is disguised as science, but in fact does not follow the scientific method. The method is to take facts and existing scientific theories to formulate a testable hypothesis, test the hypothesis, then present the methodology and results of that testing along with analysis for peer review. That is science. It works, which is why it is important to us. Hearing opinions is not necessarily science. If a researcher looks at the existing theories and tries to find something wrong with them, or find some way to argue against them, but does not create a specific, testable hypothesis and then experiment, then they have not done any science. Trying to pass that off as science and calling that person a scientist is deceptive. A person is only a scientist when acting in that role. This company is offering to pay people to not act in that role, but publish papers anyway. That is deceptive.
Wouldn't this rather be a continuation of "interpreting the results of that testing...by peers?"
No. Unless they form a different hypothesis and test it, it is not science. The method relies upon testing to determine what is true. Looking at existing, known data (to the researcher) and trying to draw conclusions from it is not science and does not provide the same time tested method of correctly determining facts. I can find facts to support any belief. When I come up with a test for that belief, perform that test, and analyze the results openly with input from peers, I'm a scientist.
If you're still not understanding this, reply again and I'll provide you with an example of how all this works and why studies funded to look for problems are not credible or useful.
The problem up to now has been the tendency of many to assume that a) because a study is endorsed by scientists, it must therefore be valid...
Not at all. I don't have faith in a study endorsed by a "scientist" I have confidence in the scientific method, which has proven a useful tool. The problem is someone paying researchers to provide papers that claim to be science, but which are not following the scientific method, in an attempt to deceive myself and others. Science can be performed by diverse people with diverse biases and unethical opinions, so long as it is science. When you start with a conclusion, you are not following the scientific method. When you start with a conclusion because that is what you're paid for, and then write up a paper it may appear that you followed the scientific method, at first glance, but in truth that is a lie. Paying someone to lie about research that may prove vital to our survival as a species, or as an individual is unethical. Understand?
b) that if it is financed by a green organization or a government, it is therefore more trustworthy than if it were funded by a multinational corporation.
I 100% disagree. The problem is not who is funding it, but the fact that the funding is contingent upon a result, thus making any such research unscientific. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Charlie Manson, the KKK, and the ghost of Sadam Hussein can all fund studies, but so long as those studies are asked to determine if something is true and paid based upon that criteria, I have no complaint. When the study is paid based upon whether or not a specific conclusion is supported is when I take issue with calling it "science."
Of all the scientists on the planet, only a very small percentage are competent in the the analysis of climatological data, and of those, even fewer are knowledgeable with respect to the long term studies involved.
Irrelevant. With the scientific method their is disclosure of methodology and peer review. It even acts as a feedback loop educating those less competent researchers. This problem solves itself.
As to funding and impartiality, every group I can think of has an agenda here, be they environmental groups, governments, or corporations.
Again, irrelevant. So long as the funding is not contingent upon the result, it is still science and this does not necessarily bias the study.
Finally, one of the chief problems in trying to analyze the existing data is that we possess reasonably accurate data for only a very brief period of time, and from those data, we hope to extrapolate global long term trends.
This is factually untrue. We have all sorts of data sets stretching back millennia. Tree rings, ice core samples, coral reefs, magnetic evidence in geological formations, the fossil record, and dozens more I know little about are all sources of evidence. Using multiple, independent sources like this we can statistically establish probabilities of error and operating within those probabilities still have a great deal of certainty.
And let us not forget that we are still unable to reliably predict the weather more than a few days in advance, yet we have sufficient hubris to believe we can predict 100 years forward.
You're wrong. We can reliably predict the weather for next year with reasonable certainty. We can predict the average temperature of the earth for next year with reliable accuracy and have done so repeatedly. What we have trouble with is reliably predicting the specific weather in a given location, over a very small time. That is a completely different problem and requires a completely different data set.
Frankly, if someone gives notice, you want them gone as soon as is possible. They've cut the relationship, and your work is no longer their top priority.
I get the feeling most people on Slashdot work in inhumane hellholes. We have people leave for other jobs all the time. Some of them announce they are going to move on years before they actually leave. Others leave for some reason, but end up doing contract work for us for a long time. When one of my co-workers announce he was going to Google, we didn't escort him out of the office that day. He fished up a project and wrote some extra docs. Guess what his first job at Google was... evaluating the product he used to develop to see if Google wanted to purchase it for use internally. Having a good relationship with him was very useful for a business perspective.
And frankly, even from a moral point of view do you want someone walking around talking about how much better a job they are moving too?
I assume you mean "morale point of view" not "moral?" It doesn't hurt to have people talk about their new jobs. People in technical fields tend to move around a lot. New challenges are always good and this is expected. They still refer friends to us they think are good fits, talk at their new job about how cool it was working for us (free beer in the fridge), and basically serve as walking advertisements. Some of them might come back some day even.
A policy that requires people to stay 3 months is idiotic and self-defeating.
On this I agree, although an immediate termination clause is also dumb. If you treat people well they usually behave as professionals. If I want to go I'll spend time training a few people in some things and adjusting a few processes to be easier, if not as efficient, and I'll talk it out with my boss and figure out what works for the company. Heck, they may well want to keep me enough to offer me incentives like a raise or a transfer to something different (sweet jeebus not management). It is sad that so many companies treat employees so badly then wonder why the employees do the same right back. If you treat your employees in a mercenary fashion, they will reciprocate. If you treat them well, with respect and as human beings, they will reciprocate that as well. American corporations are run by people in it for the short run, where they make short term profits then move on before the long term consequences take hold. Treating employees well is a long term investment, but one that pays off, if you are in it for the long haul.
Slashdot Mirror
Because when you start to look for the secret procedure behind friendship, you start looking at people as if they were abstract personalities, with some quanitifiable set of properties, and you stop looking at them as human beings.
Long ago I read a book where two characters were discussing personality types. One character claimed he categorized people into two groups. He'd show people the idyllic garden behind his home and eventually tell them he had built that small hill, and moved those rocks so they looked like they had fallen there, and reshaped the stream to run a different way. One type of people were appalled that the beauty was not natural and felt disillusioned and the other group were amazed by his ability to create beauty and enlightened by the knowledge. The claim was that some people prefer to believe in the beauty in the natural world, while others prefer to see the beauty inside a person expressed.
I don't believe in such dichotomies, but I think there is a valuable lesson there. Understanding the processes that lay behind some phenomenon need not devalue that phenomenon and may in fact enhance one's appreciation of it. Every day I am appalled by the ignorance and meanness and stupidity and selfishness of people. They lie right to your face, care nothing for people they profess to love, and are unthinking animals in making decisions, while they are cold and calculating robot lawyers when it comes to justifying those same actions.
Every day I am amazed by how amazingly generous and giving people are. People will ruin their entire day to avoid disappointing a friend, children put us all to shame with their friendliness and wonder and lack of prejudice, and people with completely different world views and beliefs can set that aside to do some good in the world.
I've read more psychology books than some psychologists I know. I am very good at understanding people's motivations and feelings. I understand and implement a half dozen different models of the human animal. I don't think that stops me at all from being a very social person and I don't think it objectifies people. I don't have any trouble making friends and always seem to be meeting new people.
I think it is important to recognize that understanding the human mind in a scientific sense does not mean you cannot understand it from a human perspective as well, and empathize and connect. These are not mutually exclusive points of view.
Music just has the right characteristics to be a good conversation topic.
I strongly disagree. Music is often thought to be good conversation topic and a good meter for determining what type of personality someone has. 90% of the time actually starting such a conversation, however, results in canned responses based upon what social circle the person is in and what they think is "cool." Most younger people especially tend to listen to music to make a statement, rather than to reflect their real tastes. The average conversation about music goes something like this:
So, what kind of music do you like?
Umm, you know, indy music, like [pop_band_x] or [pop_band_y]
Really, huh those are okay, have you heard [band_z]
Umm, no, are they good?
...
Such conversation is dreadful and useless. If you want to get to know someone and make an impression, you need to be a bit more interesting yourself. I like to start conversations with something spontaneous, like, "hi you don't know me but I think you're really sexy. Can you think of any circumstance under which you'd murder someone?" Or start off by breaking them out of the conversational mold. I met some really interesting people by introducing them to my friends like, "hey everybody, this is my old friend Veronica, she once punched a homeless guy who said her shoes were ugly." If the random girl I'm referring to as "Veronica" is an interesting person, she'll almost always run with it and I met someone fun. If not, she runs for the door or her boyfriend and I haven't wasted 5 minutes repeating the same boring conversation about music.
My advice to everyone is to ignore the topic of music and develop some character. Be confident and interesting and you don't have to worry about picking "safe" topics to meet people.
I don't have time to reply in depth at the moment, but a state representative is not a federal anything.
Umm, perhaps I misunderstood, I thought you were referring to the state's representative in the house. It does not matter though, since it is not particularly material to the points I made. People are a lot more likely to know who their governor or mayor or secretary of transportation is than to know who their congress critter is.
Then perhaps each city should have its own drivers licences. That would be far less centralised than a state licence, and a city knows its own roads better than a state.
Why? Has the level of centralization now being used proven to be subject to unreasonable abuse? The point is to keep the federal government from turning into an authoritarian regime. If a state government does the same it still hurts people, but we can deal with it from a federal level and have in the past.
Or even better, why not have each citizen declare his or own drivers licence?
Please look up the "slippery slope" logical fallacy. It will explain why your argument is irrational. For that matter, please look up all the classic logical fallacies that are part of the rhetorical method, not because of this discussion, but because everyone should have been taught them in school in order to help them think logically and make rational decisions.
You have a puzzling perspective. You believe that "the feds" can crack down on abuses of the Constitution, and yet in the next sentence you worry about federal abuse.
If popular opinion warrants it, the feds can step in a stop abuse on a state level, and they have done so in the past. Murder, for example, is properly a federal offense. If a governor is murdering people, the feds can step in stopping the most rampant abuse and removing those people from power. With underage drinking, however, there is no justification for the feds to step in and remove some governor who was drinking when they were 18 (theoretically speaking of course). The point is to balance the power of the states and the feds and if there is any doubt, the states are a less risky bet, since any abuse they enact will be limited to one state and less likely to destroy the entire government. The power to limit rights is like a gun. Do we aim that gun at our head or our arm, when the need arises?
The solution in either case is not to flee, but to correct the problems that arise.
The best solution to a problem, especially a personal one, is not always standing up to the powerful. Fleeing to another state is a time honored and useful way to enact changes, ever since the days of slavery.
I'm not sure what measure you use to gauge attention, but media coverage of state/local issues is lesser..
The media has been nationalized, but there is still plenty of local coverage. Local newspapers, for example, are often overlooked when people talk about these things because individually, they reach few people. Collectively, they make up a lot of what people actually see.
Aside from the presidential election, if you ask most people what the most important thing to them on a ballot is, it is usually either a gubernatorial race or a local issue. In polls, more people are interested in a millage issue on a midterm election ballot, than in their congress critters.
A state representative is a federal government official. How many know who their governor is? How many know who their mayor is?
Regardless, the hypothetical described could not be pushed on the public unwillingly overnight.
No, the concentration of power more and more to the federal government and away from both states and individuals has been an ongoing process since the country was established. Every law passed instead of repealed is another nail in that coffin.
And an order of magnitude more dangerous because it affects more people and is less likely to be stopped.
Even beyond that, changing culture and social expectations may well make that scenario completely acceptable within a generation, making the whole debate irrelevant.
Do you think the power wielded by the government is not part of changing our culture? There have been widespread propaganda campaigns in active operation since the 50s. Does that make it any better?
If I setup a "lemonade-stand" labeled "B of A Deposits" in my neighborhood and tell people they can make deposits with me instead of going to the bank, should the bank be held responsible if some people actually do it? At some point, people have to take responsibility.
It's not just that people aren't taking it seriously, it is that the system was designed without taking the human element into account. You say "what if I set up a lemonade stand" but that is exactly the same issue. That scam wouldn't work because it does not take the human element into account and no one would believe it. Part of the problem is the current crop of "security experts" often completely neglect the computer-human interaction component of security then try to excuse that by placing blame elsewhere. Guess what, if you goal is to not be blamed, that might work, but the supposed goal is to increase security and they are failing. Malware writers and phishers are not ignoring the human element and that is partly why they are succeeding so much.
No online banking security measure that is put in place is ever going to stop stupidity.
No, but a good online banking setup deals with real people instead of assuming people are machines that will always behave in some way they assumed they will, without testing to see if that is true.
This is the type of thinking that keeps people voting for Democrats. Too many people don't want the responsibility of taking care of themselves.
Too many people don't think at all. Most people vote democrat or republican. Both parties advocate and enact socialist policies that "take care of people" who don't take that responsibility. The difference is just which socialist policies. Your singling out the democrats simply demonstrates you are clueless and buying a party line.
They want someone else to do it so they can blame someone else when it goes awry
I'm in favor of many socialist policies while I'm not in favor of yet others. I'm in favor of providing free drug treatment and addiction management centers to mitigate drug addiction problems, even to the point of providing free heroin to junkies on a regular basis. Does that mean I don't want to take responsibility for my actions and want someone else to manage my nonexistent drug addiction? No, it does not. Your view on these matters seems very simplistic. I'm in favor of certain socialist programs simply because they benefit society as a whole and because we have several socialist alternatives. You do know the police are a socialist entity, right? Same with prisons. So if we're going to spend money either giving people drugs and treatments and counseling or spend money arresting people and holding them in jail, I'd rather we did whichever is better for society as whole. Since it is many orders of magnitude cheaper to just give them drugs, rather than deal with robberies and assaults they commit in a desperate attempt to get drug money and pay the police to haul them to jail and the courts to process them and the prisons to hold them.
The same concept applies to many other forms of socialism. Sometimes, despite the cost to the average person, socialism does make sense and provides a net benefit to society. It all depends upon the level of socialism and the likely end results.
Can't get a job? Here's some unemployment!
I've been there. Considering I pay money every month to provide for when and if I lose my job, I have no problem taking it back when I need it. Is this a good idea overall? Well, since so many people don't have the discretion to save for these circumstances and since the result of leaving them to their own devices is drastic increases in crime and widespread long term poverty that results in lacking education and healthcare for children who have no say in the world, I'm rather supportive of it. Removing the unemployment system results in people temporarily homeless and poverty stricken which results in poorer education and health for their ch
If you have ever moved from one state to another, you know the total nightmare process it is to move your licence and register your car.
I've moved and re-registered a car. It was annoying. I'm more than willing to put up with that annoyance, however, as it reduces the risk of centralized power. All centralized power is dangerous. The more power that accumulates in one place the more risk we run of becoming a totalitarian state. You may not consider this one power important, and by itself it may not be. Consider, if you will, old soviet states that practiced extreme amounts of socialism as their economic model. They were founded as democracies to bring power to the people. They tended to become totalitarian states. Why? Is the government mandating just one company that makes crayons a real threat to the people? What is the harm?
I'll answer my own question. Individually, the power to mandate any given market is not a huge risk to the liberty of the people. Collectively, however, too much centralized decision making moves more and more ability to abuse that decision making into fewer and fewer hands. The more power is consolidated in the federal government, the more that power will lead to abuse and we really only get one chance before we have to revolt and start over.
The scenario you paint can be accomplished just as easily by a state government, while simultaneously getting away with even more egregious violations because people don't pay that much attention to their state governments.
I disagree. In general people pay more attention to state issues, since they feel they have more influence there. Also, even if the above did happen in a state, they is a lot less people and people could flee to other states. The feds can still crack down on the abuses by the states that conflict with the US constitution. When it happens a federal level it affects a great deal more people and you may not be able to flee the country and even if you do, it could expand to other countries. The risk with a state is much, much less than the risk with the US government.
state versus nation != individual versus government
True.
anyone reading your post above would get the distinct impression that when the state of maine fights washington dc, they are fighting for your individual rights
In a way that is true. Laws like one restricting 18 year old people from drinking are anti-freedom. They remove the rights of an individual to choose for themselves. When the federal government imposes such a restriction, it restricts at least as many and perhaps more people than a federal restriction. As such, making this an issue of states rights, instead of a federal mandate results in no more, and quite likely less restriction of freedom.
seems to me that the state of maine is fighting for the rights of the state of maine
I take it you don't see the benefit of moving more power to the states.
why in a million years should i trust that the government in augusta to be a better guarantor of my rights than washington dc?
You shouldn't trust them and that isn't the reason to support state rights. Why do extremely socialist countries turn into authoritarian regimes? Many of them have a democratic process that is completely subverted, but started off very similar to our own. So why is it that those countries so commonly fail in that way? The answer is quite simply, consolidation of power. The more power you put in fewer hands the more motivation and risk of that power being seized by an individual or group. The more centralized your decision making and the more people you have answering to a single authority, the greater the risk.
The founders of our country understood this risk. They broke up the federal government into competing branches and spent a lot of time specifically writing own all the powers the feds should never have and trying to bolster state rights as much as possible. They knew the less power was concentrated in one place, the harder it would be for a single group to control that power for personal gain and to the detriment of the people. Also they understood an important facet of human nature. Power tends to consolidate. People who seek positions of power are the same sort who tend to want accumulate more power. Unchecked, they would take more and more power until they were an authoritarian system. That is why it is important to decentralize power and have multiple factions competing.
i am firmly of the opinion that my individual liberties are better preserved by undermining state's rights
On a case by case basis, this can be true, but in the grand scheme of things, every power the feds get increases the risk that the US will be completely taken over by a small group.
state capitols, it seems to be, always seem to be rotten with more corruption and social conservative agendas (agendas always at odds with personal liberties and freedoms) than what goes on washington dc
Sometimes, but the damage they can do is limited because it only applies to one state. As such, there will always be reform movements and people can always vote by walking to a new state. When it gets too bad, there are the feds to step in and clean house. If we instead centralize all power with the feds, who steps in and cleans house?
what goes on in montpelier or sacramento or bismarck is no better, and often a lot worse, and often a lot less scrutinzed
Actually the more localized an issue, the more likely people are to both get involved and feel that they can make a difference. Ask the average person if they think their vote in the general election matters. Now ask them if they think their vote on state constitution amendments matters. Now ask about the local school millage. Notice a trend? The individual would be right to. It is possible to become active and get a Green party or Libertarian party candidate elected mayor. It has even happened that they have been elected to control a state. The same sort of reform on the federal level is unlikely to ever happen beca
Well, I guess you might have a point, as the closest "comparable PC" to a propriety Apple tower is some propriety Dell piece of junk.
What an interesting assertion. Independent reviews of the quality and reliability of Apple hardware rank it at the top of the heap, usually even above Lenovo. Dell consistently is near the bottom of the heap. I think maybe your perception of things is a wee bit unreal.
However, if you build a PC yourself, you can get something a bit more flexable and easier to upgrade compared to a Mac (or OEM PC too).
I don't know about this. If you pick the right off the shelf machine it can be plenty easy to upgrade and just as flexible. Heck my old g4 tower was one of the easiest to work on machines I've ever owned. You grabbed a handle and the side hinged down, taking half the components with it. I only wish PC case vendors had something as nice. Also, speaking only to OS's, using OS X instead of Windows provides less need to upgrade as the requirements have been going down instead of up. Also, you never have to worry about Windows deciding that last piece of hardware you swapped out means you're probably a pirate and going through a rigamarole to re-activate. You don't even have to put in a serial number to start with.
Also, that argument isn't exactly weak, as All-in-one, SFF, and laptops is all you can get from Apple, unless you want to spend $2500 on a Mac Pro.
It all depends upon your needs and what you're building. As I said, if you use OS X you have much more limited selection of machines. That is a major limitation of using OS X. Trying to restate that limitation as "Apple machines are hard to upgrade if you buy a laptop, which is hard to upgrade if you buy one from another vendor too" is walking all the way around the block to get back where you started. In some instances, you can't buy an Apple machine that fits in your price point and feature set, while you can find PC hardware that does. One of those machines you can't buy might be a bottom of the line, cheap tower for low end upgradability. One of those machines might be a high end tablet. The problem, however, is not that Macs aren't upgradable or that Apple machines don't do well with styluses. The problem is that Apple ahs a limited selection of hardware and that means you might have to pay more for a model that has a given feature than you would if you have more options.
Umm, in the way that you can change any component you like without having the buy a new computer.
What component of a mac can't you change out? I've changed hard drives, controller cards, video cards, ram, optical disks, etc. I know people who have swapped out motherboards, cases, power supplies, and chips. I'm not really seeing the problem here. In fact, for my now ancient tower which still serves as a PVR and media server, I swapped out so many components over time that if it was a Windows machine I would have had to re-register and mess with Microsoft over licensing issues multiple times, while this has never ben an issue with OS X.
Ok smartass, you can't change it for a different one, or are you expecting me to believe I can just go and buy a new Mac Pro Intel board to upgrade my G5 tower? I don't think so.
If you can find a case it will fit in as well as compatible parts, why couldn't you? You're arguing a little bit of apples and oranges here though. Can you buy one of the old WinNT machines that ran on PPC and upgrade it to an x86 one easily? It is usually easier to buy a new case, power supply, and motherboard and re-use the rest of the parts
That would be because Apple...
I don't care. No really, I don't care why this particular aspect of upgrading hardware is easier for the mac any more than I are why fewer USB webcams have Windows drivers. That's the way things are and we're discussing the way things are, not why.
You can't blame Microsoft for trying to prevent piracy, unless you want to criticise Apple for using DRM on iTunes because they are assuming you are going to be a criminal and file share your downloads.
I can and do blame MS for using measures that unreasonably assume I'm pirating software and are so prone to false positives. In a free market they would never get away with treating customers so shabbily. I dislike Apple's use of DRM on music they sell and find it to be an annoyance as well. That is not, however, particularly relevant. This isn't a "macs are better... no PCs are better" discussion, although perhaps you've mistaken it for one. We're talking about the ease of upgrading hardware. MS's annoying DRM is relevant to that. Apple's music DRM is not.
My tiger upgrade installs all by itself, even on a blank drive, without swapping any DVDs. Where did you get one that does not?
Back to my original point - you simply cannot make a serious comparison between 'upgrading' a Mac (by changing the graphics card, or putting in more memory) with the amount of options that are available for PC hardware, and if you are going to seriously compare that, then you are invalidating the Apple 'surgery' ad because by your logic 'Mac' should also be in plaster as he too would be having surgery to 'upgrade'.
Oh, was that your point? Well that's bullcrap for a different reason. The ad is using surgery as an analogy for upgrading parts. I haven't had to add any new parts to my 7 year old g4 tower to get it to run the latest release of OS X. y 7 year old PC, which cost slightly more at the time, cannot run Vista, and can barely run XP these days. The ad refers to the completely valid point that the requirements for running Vista are a much newer PC, than the requirements for running OS X 10.4 (or 10.5) because in general OS X releases run better on old hardware with each release while Windows releases each run slower.
Are you trying to assert that the ad was implying surgery on the PC was harder than surgery on the Mac, because I don't see that at all.
In reality his bigger, faster replacement should appear on screen, shoot him in the head and take over from him.
Do you ever just read some comment you wrote again and think, "gee I'm making emotional decisions and trying to argue complete crap that has little to do with the subject at hand because I feel threatened by people who make fun of my choices?" Yeah, have fun.
Well, one obvious example would be that it's now N days into February and only one of the MoAB bugs has a patch...
I take it you've never done commercial software development in your life? How exactly would you schedule a dev/qa cycle that gets all the bugs fixed and regression tested so that all the bugs at the beginning of the month and end of the month are fixed at the end of the month a day after the last, official bug is announced? Part of the reason the MoAB is so responsible is that spacing out bugs with one serious one every few days makes it impossible to do this with well tested fixes a responsible vendor would release. You either have to commit to fixing a given set at the beginning, or wait till the end of the month to begin your regression testing. I don't know if the MoAB guys were trying to maximize the window of opportunity for malware writers to exploit these, but they picked a great way if that was their intention. Given the comments they've made and the multiple times evidence of their own illegal exploitation of their bugs prior to publication has show up on their Web site, I sure wouldn't put it past them.
My own experience (DHCP remote root a couple years ago) was that it took 2 1/2 months for a fix during which communications was not insanely great, to put it mildly. Even your own examples (9 days, a few weeks) are more than "a few days" which was the original point being refuted here.
Was it a remote root in the DHCP server on OS X? In which case it is a non-critical issue since that service is off by default and rarely enabled by customers. Still 2.5 months is longer than it should take, under normal circumstances. Was that 2.5 months from the time you submitted it to Apple's bug database? Was is marked as a security issue?
As for "a few days" that was the original claim, but your counter claim was overbalanced in the other direction. It certainly takes more than a few days in most cases to fix and test a release for a large commercial environment. This is something people with experience primarily in open source hobby development don't get. "look a fix made it into CVS in only 4 days" and then it was redone 3 times to fix the instability it accidentally introduced and then after a few weeks of real testing it was pulled into the repositories at real companies that have money on the line.
My own experiences lead me to think this is still the exception rather than the rule. It's hard to make an objective judgement though since the data is generally unavailable outside Apple unless you submit things yourself on a regular basis.
This is true enough and I'd like Apple to go a lot further with providing information about security issues, maybe even paying a bounty for responsibly disclosed bugs from the public. There are a lot of technologies Apple might adopt to make this situation a lot better as well. To date, however, I've found their response to be acceptable, measured by the fact that while they are not some super-secure, locked down distro, they have fixed things before they become a problem for a significant number of their customers.
However long they're taking, it's not "a few days" and it may make sense for some people to take action to protect themselves in the interim rather than be hanging in the breeze for an indeterminate period of time.
This is a matter of debate. What are the chances you will experience problems because of the outstanding vulnerabilities? Partly this depends upon your use profile. What are the chances these interim fixes will cause problems of their own? What are the relative levels of damage likely to occur in either scenario? For the average home user, I'm guessing they are just as well waiting for official fixes, unless a worm or widespread Web page based exploit is spotted in the wild.
Why is this such a big thing considering that OpenOffice has the ability to import from and export to MS Word format?
Some governments have conflicting directives including support for ODF and a contract to buy MS Word. Many tools designed to allow the blind to use computers work only with specific products, like MS Word. As a result, some governments asked for a converter that would move documents back and forth between these formats and for some reason they asked that MS not contribute or control the code, just fund it.
But I don't think the ads are really aimed at making people switch to Mac. The ads are really more designed to make people who bought a Mac think they made the right decision, so they'll keep buying Macs.
Maybe other people have different experiences, but I know about 100 people who have switched to mac computers, most of them software engineers. I know one person who switched back (to Linux). I doubt Apple has as much of a problem keeping switchers as getting people to switch in the first place.
There's certainly "the faithful" who that ad appeals to, but I'm not sure if the rest of the people who buy Macs want to be identified with a prickish looking, snobby, "better than thou" character.
Apple has been getting a whole lot of customers lately (relative to a few years ago), about half of whom are not old customers returning. I seriously doubt they're aiming their advertising at current customers. I suspect their ads are aimed at average people, rather than computer geeks, which is why no one on Slashdot particularly likes them.
Tell that to anyone who's been running an OS9-based G4, who then upgrades to the latest version of OSX. You're comparing OSX to itself. It's like saying Windows XP SP2 is faster than Windows XP SP1.
Not really. There is no one to one comparison, but each shift from 10.0 to 10.1 to 10.2 etc. was a lot more significant that the shift from Win XP SP1 to WinXP SP2. Real new features were added with each release and new APIs as well. In fact, if you look at the feature set from 10.0 to 10.4, there are a lot more features and underlying changes than in the shift from Win NT to Vista.
What really matters in this case is the longevity of the machines in question. My middle of the road seven year old dual 533 G4 still runs the latest and greatest OS X just fine. The middle of the road PC tower I bought at the same time for slightly more is useless junk and people won't take it off my hands for free. It sure won't run Vista and is not to fast at running XP.
Upgrading from OS9 to any version of OSX can be *painful* unless you have upgraded your computer.
The same goes for that old Win 98 machine you bought, what's your point? When you move to a system with 300% the functionality, you pay for it in resources. Run FreeBSD if you want to run ancient hardware with minimal specs.
And I'm not being funny, but it's easier to upgrade a PC than a Mac.
Umm, in what way? If you compare Apple machines to comparable PCs, they are about the same ease of upgrading hardware. Now Apple sells more all-in-ones, laptops, and small form factor machines than average, so I suppose you could argue that Apple makes more machines that are harder to upgrade, but that is pretty, bloody weak.
for example if you want you can change the motherboard etc. - can't exactly do that with a Mac tower.
Actually you can, they're just expensive and you have more limited hardware options. Having limited hardware option != harder to upgrade though. They are different issues.
How about some counter points. When upgrading hardware on the mac, you never have to worry about calling Apple to get a new key, because your OS decided you are a criminal. You never have to worry about reinstalling the OS, or OS's in succession because you only have an "upgrade" version. If you are replacing the whole machine, say you got a new laptop, moving all your files, software, certs, accounts, etc. from the old one to the new one is an order of magnitude easier with a mac.
I also believe that *most* of the MoAB exploits that have been reported are not because of holes in 3rd party software, not the OS itself. Someone correct me if I'm wrong (I dare you!).
25-30% of the bugs reported by MoAB were in third party applications. A goodly number of them were local overflows or DoS on some service, which by themselves would result in little or no risk. At least one of them seemed to be the same issue (.dmg validation) stretched out for several days. A handful of them have real potential for widespread exploitation via a worm, virus, or Web site.
I am not a big fan of the "I am a Mac" ads. Being a Linux user, I don't care that much about OS X or Windows based PCs. So perhaps my opinion is unbiased.
I think the fact that you know what Slashdot is makes you the wrong viewer for those ads. I'm an OS X fan, and I use Linux and Windows every day. I probably have a better handle on each platform's strengths and weaknesses than most people. Those ads are targeting people who don't even know what an "OS" is. Try to put yourself in the mindset that you have never heard of Linux, and you don't know what an OS is. Now imagine, all the computers at the store(Walmart) run Windows. You don't even know where you'd get a computer that ran something else, except maybe if there was a Web site. Now imagine you've only ever run Windows, and you don't have any idea how you get viruses or worms or trojans. You've heard of Apple computer and know they sell Macintosh computers, but you don't know how you'd use one or where to get one or if they are better in any way. Now watch the ads again.
From the perspective of a computer geek these ads are patronizing and imply some inaccurate things. They are not precise and the concepts they explain are way fuzzier than in the real world. For average people, however, the messages they convey are fairly truthful and simple enough for people to understand. "Getting a mac means negligible chance of malware" is a valuable message for the clueless and I wish more would listen to it.
I think that these ads might offend Windows users instead of getting them to switch to the cool side. These ads do not show the strength of Macs. These focus more on insulting Windows based PCs.
They focus on benefits of the mac the average person can understand. I dare you to drive to the middle nowhere in Iowa and try to explain to an average person the benefits of having a capable bash shell instead of the Windows command prompt or Cygwin, in 30 seconds or less. Or explain system services or not being part of a monoculture or default network services settings.
Moreover, don't know why, but I've always felt that any company that really has superior products doesn't have to attack the competition this way.
When you're dealing with a monopolized product often the only way to market a product is to compare it to something the user does know about. If people don't know why they should go out of their way to get a mac instead of just picking up a Windows box anywhere, they aren't going to do it.
ps. I know that writing something against Apple might not go very well with my Karma, though :-(
People often complain about an anti-windows or pro-linux or pro-mac bias on Slashdot. Most of those people are incorrect in my experience. I say good and bad things about the actions/functions/features/or image of all three regularly and I haven't noticed any one being modded more than the others. I made comments both in favor of and criticizing Linux development on the desktop yesterday and both were modded way up. So long as what you say has value, in general the masses overpower the occasional fanboy who thinks Linux or Windows or Mac is some sort of religious choice.
The monies in question is related to Intel's advertising budget; if you are a system vendor and prominently display the Intel logo in your advertising, Intel will fund a certain percentage of the advertising, based on the prominence of the logo in your advertising. (Microsoft has a similar program). Am I right? If so, then the ones suing Dell are complaining about NOTHING. There is absolutely nothing stopping AMD from implementing such policies if they have not already done so.
Gee Microsoft does it too, well it must be legal then :)
Seriously, marketing dollars and the like have been channels for illegal kickbacks before. It is usually very discretionary. Say Intel decides it wants to freeze AMD out of most corporate purchasing. So they sell chips at one price to everyone, but give Dell $250,000,000 in marketing dollars for putting an Intel Inside logo on their computers. HP sells both Intel and AMD chips, so Intel gives them 4,000,000. So Dell is making 100 times as much "marketing money" for each PC they put the logo on as HP is. If the courts can show that this was likely contingent on not using AMD chips, that is discriminatory pricing, and Intel is undercharging Dell.
"So what's the big deal with charging different prices to different customers?" you might ask. Normally, there is nothing wrong with that, however, Intel controls the vast majority of the market which brings with it certain market power and legal responsibility. Intel is under investigation for anti-trust abuse. Discriminatory pricing by monopolies is often a anti-competative act. So whether they claim the money was for marketing and they're just hugely better bargainers than HP, or if they admit to it being a kickback in exchange for taking that action, Intel is opened up to possible criminal convictions.
Note, the example above was just that. I don't know how much HP was paid by Intel, or that any sort of deal between Intel and Dell was contingent upon freezing out AMD.
So what?
The earth is not a data set, it is a subject of study. Statistical probability applies to the number of different, independent methods that correlate with the temperature of the earth, in the past (for example). Those probabilities and degrees of certainty are covered in the study. Trying to apply it other things is ignorant.
You tested one earth. Your predictions (made by an independent third party who was only given your model) came true how many times? Where else would such limited information be in any way significant?
Gravity applies to the universe but has only been tested against one universe. The fact that the theory of gravity holds true for macroscopic objects was only tested in this one, and supported. Why should such limited information be considered significant. Gravity could reverse any day. Lets not make any predictions based upon such an unsupported theory.
Does the above analogy show you the logical error in your reasoning?
To save you time: You're trying to equate all scientific consensuses, regardless of how much data is available to back up each one. Then you're using that to lecture the CEI about how science works, when "how science works" has significant limitations in its applicability to studying something you only have one of.
You're mistaking statistics for science. The scientific method is as I stated and it is a separate item from determining the statistical likelihood of the accuracy of a given data set. The data sets in question are subject to a given probability of accuracy, which is quite high. A hypothesis or theory, however, is not a data set and is not subject to said probabilities. A given application of a hypothesis or theory for use in prediction can be approximated by the known uncertainties, but that is something else again, as you'd know if you had bothered to study the application of the scientific method.
"You have to test your theories!" "Have you tested your theory on earth?" "Well ..."
You're confused or trying to be deceiving. A hypothesis is a prediction. Testing it is performing an experiment and seeing if it matches that prediction. Scientists predicted numerous things would disprove the theory that human intervention was resulting in increased global warming. When tested, the predictions held up. The size of tree rings, CO2 content in ice samples, growth patterns in coral reefs, etc. all, when tested, held with the predictions. The experiments with C02, and other gases also held true. This is not proof (a rarity in science) but it is a whole lot of support, such that a reasonable person is inclined to think the theory likely, or at least more likely than any other proposed theory.
In order to need multiple earths to provide support for a theory, that theory would need to include something that always happens to earths. That is not at all what we're looking at, but a process which occurs on the earth.
You haven't shown how TFA is any different than the peer review that was done (or should have been done) by the IPCC.
Peer review can be useful for discussing the methodology and potential problems with it in order to create the next set of experiments. It is not useful for finding out what is and is not true. The problem with what is described in the study is it is paying people not even to do a review, but to find some part of the science that can be argued against.
TFA says that they're looking for someone to review the paper, and to comment on its strengths and weaknesses.
It says it offers money for finding shortcomings in the study. That is not objective peer review even, and the danger is that the published studies will be presented as science (and indeed already have been).
Here is the promised example. The theory of gravity has a lot of support these days. Almost all experimentation to date has concluded that objects attract one another proportionally relative to their masses and inversely proportional to the square root of the distance between them. For our purposes, assume we're testing the attraction between masses. So we take a bunch of objects of different masses predict the attraction between them based upon this formula, then measure the attraction between them and publish. That is science. Now suppose some party offers money for any paper pointing out weaknesses in my published study. Someone might point our the relative rates of falling objects like musket balls and feathers is not close enough to the same, relative to the mass difference. Someone my point out lodestones, which repel one another, rather than attract, or which attract too much. Surely gravity is an incorrect theory?
Both of those items were pointed out as reasons why the theory of gravity was surely incorrect. They both lead to further experimentation that supported the theory. So here is what I see you failing to understand. Pointing out those discrepancies, while useful for shaping new experiments, do nothing to scientifically disprove the theory of gravity until they are made into testable hypothesis, and experiments formed to test them. Anyone can come up with items that might be reasons, based upon already known facts, why some theory could be wrong. The scientific method relies upon objectively testing unknowns to see if the support or refute a hypothesis. Publishing weaknesses of a given scientific study is useful to scientists. It is not useful for determining the truth directly. If you pay scientists to postulate reasons, then publish, they are not acting as scientists. They're acting as guessers.
This lobbying group did not ask for insight into new areas to test via the scientific method. They asked for scientists to publish support for an opinion, thus far contradicted by the scientific process to date. As such, they are trying to get non-scientific information published from supposed scientists, and information that has no process behind it. That is deceptive and it certainly is not science.
How many earths have climatological theories been tested on? What's the statistical significance?
Statistical significance applies only to the data set you're analyzing, not a probable conclusion. Please go retake our statistics class (I took it twice so I should know).
Except when the subject of climate change comes up. Then, it's all about consensus, and anyone who has a different theory, or who criticizes the current theories is a denier and a foe of science.
Making decisions is about consensus. Science establishes facts and provides support for theories.
Is it a bad thing to hear from those who don't agree with, or who think the study was not done correctly?
It is a bad thing when hearing from those people is disguised as science, but in fact does not follow the scientific method. The method is to take facts and existing scientific theories to formulate a testable hypothesis, test the hypothesis, then present the methodology and results of that testing along with analysis for peer review. That is science. It works, which is why it is important to us. Hearing opinions is not necessarily science. If a researcher looks at the existing theories and tries to find something wrong with them, or find some way to argue against them, but does not create a specific, testable hypothesis and then experiment, then they have not done any science. Trying to pass that off as science and calling that person a scientist is deceptive. A person is only a scientist when acting in that role. This company is offering to pay people to not act in that role, but publish papers anyway. That is deceptive.
Wouldn't this rather be a continuation of "interpreting the results of that testing...by peers?"
No. Unless they form a different hypothesis and test it, it is not science. The method relies upon testing to determine what is true. Looking at existing, known data (to the researcher) and trying to draw conclusions from it is not science and does not provide the same time tested method of correctly determining facts. I can find facts to support any belief. When I come up with a test for that belief, perform that test, and analyze the results openly with input from peers, I'm a scientist.
If you're still not understanding this, reply again and I'll provide you with an example of how all this works and why studies funded to look for problems are not credible or useful.
The problem up to now has been the tendency of many to assume that a) because a study is endorsed by scientists, it must therefore be valid...
Not at all. I don't have faith in a study endorsed by a "scientist" I have confidence in the scientific method, which has proven a useful tool. The problem is someone paying researchers to provide papers that claim to be science, but which are not following the scientific method, in an attempt to deceive myself and others. Science can be performed by diverse people with diverse biases and unethical opinions, so long as it is science. When you start with a conclusion, you are not following the scientific method. When you start with a conclusion because that is what you're paid for, and then write up a paper it may appear that you followed the scientific method, at first glance, but in truth that is a lie. Paying someone to lie about research that may prove vital to our survival as a species, or as an individual is unethical. Understand?
b) that if it is financed by a green organization or a government, it is therefore more trustworthy than if it were funded by a multinational corporation.
I 100% disagree. The problem is not who is funding it, but the fact that the funding is contingent upon a result, thus making any such research unscientific. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Charlie Manson, the KKK, and the ghost of Sadam Hussein can all fund studies, but so long as those studies are asked to determine if something is true and paid based upon that criteria, I have no complaint. When the study is paid based upon whether or not a specific conclusion is supported is when I take issue with calling it "science."
Of all the scientists on the planet, only a very small percentage are competent in the the analysis of climatological data, and of those, even fewer are knowledgeable with respect to the long term studies involved.
Irrelevant. With the scientific method their is disclosure of methodology and peer review. It even acts as a feedback loop educating those less competent researchers. This problem solves itself.
As to funding and impartiality, every group I can think of has an agenda here, be they environmental groups, governments, or corporations.
Again, irrelevant. So long as the funding is not contingent upon the result, it is still science and this does not necessarily bias the study.
Finally, one of the chief problems in trying to analyze the existing data is that we possess reasonably accurate data for only a very brief period of time, and from those data, we hope to extrapolate global long term trends.
This is factually untrue. We have all sorts of data sets stretching back millennia. Tree rings, ice core samples, coral reefs, magnetic evidence in geological formations, the fossil record, and dozens more I know little about are all sources of evidence. Using multiple, independent sources like this we can statistically establish probabilities of error and operating within those probabilities still have a great deal of certainty.
And let us not forget that we are still unable to reliably predict the weather more than a few days in advance, yet we have sufficient hubris to believe we can predict 100 years forward.
You're wrong. We can reliably predict the weather for next year with reasonable certainty. We can predict the average temperature of the earth for next year with reliable accuracy and have done so repeatedly. What we have trouble with is reliably predicting the specific weather in a given location, over a very small time. That is a completely different problem and requires a completely different data set.
You seem to have been misled.
Frankly, if someone gives notice, you want them gone as soon as is possible. They've cut the relationship, and your work is no longer their top priority.
I get the feeling most people on Slashdot work in inhumane hellholes. We have people leave for other jobs all the time. Some of them announce they are going to move on years before they actually leave. Others leave for some reason, but end up doing contract work for us for a long time. When one of my co-workers announce he was going to Google, we didn't escort him out of the office that day. He fished up a project and wrote some extra docs. Guess what his first job at Google was... evaluating the product he used to develop to see if Google wanted to purchase it for use internally. Having a good relationship with him was very useful for a business perspective.
And frankly, even from a moral point of view do you want someone walking around talking about how much better a job they are moving too?
I assume you mean "morale point of view" not "moral?" It doesn't hurt to have people talk about their new jobs. People in technical fields tend to move around a lot. New challenges are always good and this is expected. They still refer friends to us they think are good fits, talk at their new job about how cool it was working for us (free beer in the fridge), and basically serve as walking advertisements. Some of them might come back some day even.
A policy that requires people to stay 3 months is idiotic and self-defeating.
On this I agree, although an immediate termination clause is also dumb. If you treat people well they usually behave as professionals. If I want to go I'll spend time training a few people in some things and adjusting a few processes to be easier, if not as efficient, and I'll talk it out with my boss and figure out what works for the company. Heck, they may well want to keep me enough to offer me incentives like a raise or a transfer to something different (sweet jeebus not management). It is sad that so many companies treat employees so badly then wonder why the employees do the same right back. If you treat your employees in a mercenary fashion, they will reciprocate. If you treat them well, with respect and as human beings, they will reciprocate that as well. American corporations are run by people in it for the short run, where they make short term profits then move on before the long term consequences take hold. Treating employees well is a long term investment, but one that pays off, if you are in it for the long haul.