Right. Your use of the word "PROVEN" shows how little you actually know about science.
Well I mentioned the word prove twice... once was in the context of an incorrect argument and the other time I said creationism has been disproven. I could have said discredited I suppose. I think the idea that the world/universe was created 6000 years ago in 6 days has been hugely discredited and falsified.
I'd love to teach creationism in the science classroom as a way of demonstrating the scientific method. I think it would be wonderful to try to come up with a valid, testable hypothesis with respect to creationism. Maybe I'll teach it that way next year.
I have no problem with this. Thats an excellent idea. Alas it isnt actually what the debate is about. The context of Creationism in the science class is that people are trying to teach it as an actual real alternative to the ToE.
Why can't both the THEORY of evolution and the THEORY of intelligent design both be taught in schools?
First tell me : What is the theory of Intelligent Design? What posits does it make that I can test with experiment? Who is the intelligent designer supposed to be? What problems are there in ToE that require an intelligent designer to exist?
I lurk in talk.origins and have for a long time(Like 10-12 years). Ive read every creation/ID/loonie argument put forward to discredit ToE and all have been knocked down.
The only reason I can think of that we wouldn't teach both sides of this is that we are so insecure in our own beliefs and those of our children that we'll do anything to keep them (and ourselves?) from forming a different opinion. Yes, I'm a Christian, but I grew up in public schools learning about evolution. I was taught conflicting points of view for most of my educational career (especially college). At some point, no matter how much you "protect" your kids, they are going to hear the other sides of the argument. I've looked at the evidence of both sides, and I stand firmly in my beliefs. I don't believe in forcing my beliefs on anyone else, but I believe that each perspective should be taught equally or none at all. I don't even care if you leave "God" out of the lecture. Intelligent design gets the point across.
Thats fine. Believe what you like. Thats a good thing in a free country. The problem is that in science there is no dispute. No serious biologist would suggest that evolution is completely wrong... because we have obversed it... the ToE, so far, explains the observations pretty darn well. Thats science. Speculating about hypothetical designers of organisms is unecessary as there is no problem to solve. If you want your kids taught about the christian origins myth(Im not trying to be offensive here... I beleive its a myth... Im not stepping on your right to believe anything you want), then fine. But the proponants of creationism and ID have offered no concrete theory or "killer app" type repeatable experiments that refute ToE or show the requirment for the existence of a creator of life forms.
The point is, it's very hypocritical to promote the teaching of evolution while denying intelligent design.
No. It would be wrong to teach non-science in a science class. Teach it if you want. But not in a science class.
The teacher of science would be a hypocritic, and be doing a great disservice to his/her pupils, if non-science was taught in science classes.
Scientific theory is fine, but lets try show both sides of the argument shall we?
OK, you see here is your problem right here. In Science there is no argument about the Theory of Evolution(ToE). What bothers sciene types is that ignorant arguments are put forward that often dont even apply to the ToE(such as the stupid 2nd Law of Theordynamics proves ToE wrong). Cretionism should definitely not be taught in a science class. Creationism was disproven hundreds of years ago(thru many different understanding of the universe we live in). It has no place in science. If you want to dicuss origins in a metaphysical or philisophical sense, then have a class on that.
Teaching Creationism in science class is like teaching mathematics in english lit class. It doesnt apply.
I don't believe the average company could afford to pay the number of developers who would be needed to maintain the code base for a major development language. This is all very well in principle, but in reality it is not an option.
The average company couldnt afford to do this I agreed. But the good thing about OSS is that if someone drops the ball, someone else can pick it up and run with it. Say VB6 was completely OSS. If microsoft drop the support, and another company(say IBM) see a lot of clients a screaming. They may take the code base a fork a version for them.
When I think of the question of "What more could be done that would actually be useful?" the first thing that comes to mind is OSX's Expose. Now, part of the reason Expose is so handy comes specifically from the fact that you don't have a taskbar in OSX, so you can't tell at a glance what windows are open from what apps (it's a little hard to explain if you don't use OSX). However, it's still a terrific use of OSX's 3D capabilities, and I know that Linux developers are looking into doing something similar.
OK. This is risking going off topic more. Ill shut up about this after this post. But I just had to second *you* this time. Expose is cool. The first day I discovered it on my powerbook I was instantly comfortable with it. Now when I have to use other windowing systems I find myself constantly moving my mouse into the corner and being confused by all the windows just staying put:) Whoever thought it up inside apple deserves a free beer.
I have yet to see a valid comment about how Microsoft his hiding secret apis from developers. Instead I see this post-apocolyptic wasteland created from your comments and the moderators that are falsely promoting your FUD.
Youre confusing me. You keep going on about the hidden APIs issue and I dont think that was what was being implied... Im assuming you mean this quote
IE is part of the Windows Operating System so that parts of the OS and other applications can rely on the functionality and APIs being present. To be clear there are no Operating System APIs that IE uses that are not documented on MSDN as part of the platform SDK and available to other browsers and any other software that runs on Windows..
You also start the parent post with
Hold on hold on, let me get this straight. You originally said that IE is allowing secret hidden APIs (at least that is what is interpreted from your quote) because there was a security hole that allowed VBscript to load arbitrary ActiveX controls. Yet you failed to give any example of how Microsoft has kept developers from integrating VBscript into their own applications (for sake of argument, we will say Mozilla).
I didnt interpret his post this way and I dont think others did either(I could be wrong of course). I thought that the grand daddy post was making the point was that it was actually a good thing that Firefox et al dont have access to these APIs or else the browser can start accessing things it has no right to access.
Sorry if Im wrong... but I dont think its a issue of hidden APIs that Mozilla cant implmement is the issue. The issue is these APIs are documented fine, but we shouldnt implement them.
As to how this relates directly to the article being discusssed... specifically the original quote. He is arguing(I think) that the idea of intergrating something as netward facing as a HTTP client with core functionality is "stupid".
No, because you can include vbscript in any application. I will not be a personal reference to MSDN, but I have had to integrate vbscript into applications before.
Fine. For applications. I have no problem with application using whatever APIs and technology to achieve their functionality. I do have a problem with a Web Browser being able to access arbitary systems APIs. Why on earth would a browser require access to the ability to eject the hard disk.
And if if it does require this, why does it not first ask the user (or at least inform the user that it is going to mess her hardware. The problem with the above URL is that I go there in IE and my CD player open automagically. Nobody asks me about it, and server side control of a client machine is something that needs to be handled *very* cautiously for the obvious reasons. The above example is quite harmless. It worries me what malicious uses could be in store for us.
I just want to pre-emptively respond to all the posts that are going to say, 'well, as usual, Linux is catching up to Microsoft and Apple a couple years after the fact.'
<RMS>
Thats GNU/Linux dammit !
</RMS>
Oh and to be honest with you... I dont think much has to be done to catch up with XPs GUI. It is one of the stupidest, unimaginitve UIs of recent times and does nothing particularly new or interesting or indeed useful. Oh I forgot... there is an irratating animated dog to help you use the (broken) file search features. I wonder if theyve patented that.
yeah, I saw that too. Like, how if you have a 4, and add a 1, you get a 5. It's pretty cool.
Someone was telling me about something even neater the other day. Apparently there is this thing called "subtraction" which can return the original number. So to use you cool example... if we "subtracte" one from 5 we get 4 again. Wicked.
Oh and yes... yall should have mentioned his name in the story.
The first two female executives hired at Microsoft in 1985 were recruited to meet federal affirmative action guidelines so that the company could qualify for a lucrative Air Force contract. One source says,"They would say, 'Well, let's hire two women because we can pay them half as much as we will have to pay a man, and we can give them all this other crap work to do because they are women.' That's directly out of Bill's mouth...." Gates treated one of these executives so badly that she asked to be transferred away from him.
I agree with Rei here(but only if your name is a reference to Evangelion). Usually its the code. Ive found I think about 3 bugs in compilers generating dodgey code. One was in gcc a long long time ago, another was in Watcom 10.X and the third was in MSVC which was only fixable if you turned of optimisation(to be fair... MSVC used to have the buggiest optimisation ever back in the day).
As to the resulting new build being much smaller. Could that be the old "usuing new shared libs for mysterious reason and having those new(patched you said) libs being buggy" deal ?
Well, maybe if they give a certain % in cash/change for ?-MB uploaded? Say 50 (US) cents for every 10 megs (ex)?
I suddenly find that idea extremely interesting. What if the MPAA went to a model not based on subscription or one of purchasing to download their content, but rather a per mega byte downloaded model ? If users are getting money back from the MPAA for them utilising the uplink of the user, then that user is going to, of course, report usage to the MPAA and all users can be tracked on how much has been downloaded. Has this ever been suggested before ?
How could they go after him? The software is open-source and its intentions are nothing less than noble. If Cohen was looking to *directly* make money on BitTorrent he wouldn't have released the source to it.
And if he did get sued that would, to me, be an extremely disturbing action. What would be next suing academics and researchers working on compression and queue theory and higher bitrate networking technologies. There is a big difference between suing Kazza and suing the person that came up with the technology.
And the other problem is that such systems have never worked for other products(such as software) as there is no way to centralise or authenticate a user of the movie easily and convienently when the content is being viewed. The software in dustry is lucky in a way. It is a very service orientated industry, in most domains at least(games and skrinkwrap software being exceptions).
As for
It concludes by saying that the MPAA may be able to drive BitTorrent movie downloads into what Green called "the dark corners of the Internet," but this program isn't going to go away.
The problem with this is the the MPAA as going to have to be perpetually vigilant. The yare going to have to constantly rain threats out on illegal torrentors. If they let down their guard then illegal torrents will grow like mushrooms.
Hopefully one fine day they might realise that this is almost certainly not going to succeed. What they need to be focusing on is how they can "add value" to their product to make users *want* to purchase it. Novel concept I know.
Re:In a twist of fate, Microsoft announces Visual
on
Donald Knuth On NPR
·
· Score: 1
You do. It perfectly embodies the "not invent here" attitude that dominates our industry. (Joke BTW).
"MIX's model number is 1009, which was chosen by combining the model numbers and names of other machines the author was familiar with. (Conveniently, the roman number "MIX" equals 1009.)"
certainly, I expect to pay less for the on-line version, but why should the content be free?
Why shouldnt it? Why should anything be anything? One of the things about profitable business models, is that really only have to succeed in one thing. Being a profitable business. If the online papers dont make money with free content. Fine they change their model or stop publishing. One of the reasons Im not a billionare is cause Ive yet to think up the "Business plan that will make Xiaran a billionare". I knew I was making a mistake somewhere.
And any Londoners reading out there are also aware of the Metro. The Metro is a free daily that is ad driven(and from what I understand quite profitable). It is something of a tube commuters daily routine for most... Pick up coffee, pick up metro, curse the Northern Line for being broken again.
One reason is social. Once absolutely everyone has a mobile/cell, organising spontatious events become much easier.
For example. I was walking to the tube statino the other week to leave work for the day. A ffiend of mine texted me asking if I facied a pint. I texted him back, said yes, texted another mate who I know was on his way home and coming in our direction. He texted his missus at home and within 20 mins there was a group of four people buying each other pints in the pub.
Contrast this to my missus(who happens to be American) who flat out refuses to get a mobile. She is always the one that makes things difficult to organise, it can be slightly infuriating. Not that Im avocating everyone should have a mobile or they are a weirdo. But social aspect of life drive technology up take. How people lives dictates what tools they use to live it.
(Side theory : perhaps it also has something to do with the "pub/drinking culture" being quite different in Europe/Australia/Japan).
You are a reason why there should be be more women in IT and engineering. It cries our for it really. Youre the first person Ive bothered to add as a friend on slashddot(BTW why does./ render so badly in safari). If youre ever in London lets have a drink... we can discuss why biztalk sucks.. or why patch antennas rock.
Slashdot Mirror
In which time zone ? Im currently in British Summer Time.
Right. Your use of the word "PROVEN" shows how little you actually know about science.
Well I mentioned the word prove twice... once was in the context of an incorrect argument and the other time I said creationism has been disproven. I could have said discredited I suppose. I think the idea that the world/universe was created 6000 years ago in 6 days has been hugely discredited and falsified.
I'd love to teach creationism in the science classroom as a way of demonstrating the scientific method. I think it would be wonderful to try to come up with a valid, testable hypothesis with respect to creationism. Maybe I'll teach it that way next year.
I have no problem with this. Thats an excellent idea. Alas it isnt actually what the debate is about. The context of Creationism in the science class is that people are trying to teach it as an actual real alternative to the ToE.
Why can't both the THEORY of evolution and the THEORY of intelligent design both be taught in schools?
First tell me : What is the theory of Intelligent Design? What posits does it make that I can test with experiment? Who is the intelligent designer supposed to be? What problems are there in ToE that require an intelligent designer to exist?
I lurk in talk.origins and have for a long time(Like 10-12 years). Ive read every creation/ID/loonie argument put forward to discredit ToE and all have been knocked down.
The only reason I can think of that we wouldn't teach both sides of this is that we are so insecure in our own beliefs and those of our children that we'll do anything to keep them (and ourselves?) from forming a different opinion. Yes, I'm a Christian, but I grew up in public schools learning about evolution. I was taught conflicting points of view for most of my educational career (especially college). At some point, no matter how much you "protect" your kids, they are going to hear the other sides of the argument. I've looked at the evidence of both sides, and I stand firmly in my beliefs. I don't believe in forcing my beliefs on anyone else, but I believe that each perspective should be taught equally or none at all. I don't even care if you leave "God" out of the lecture. Intelligent design gets the point across.
Thats fine. Believe what you like. Thats a good thing in a free country. The problem is that in science there is no dispute. No serious biologist would suggest that evolution is completely wrong... because we have obversed it... the ToE, so far, explains the observations pretty darn well. Thats science. Speculating about hypothetical designers of organisms is unecessary as there is no problem to solve. If you want your kids taught about the christian origins myth(Im not trying to be offensive here... I beleive its a myth... Im not stepping on your right to believe anything you want), then fine. But the proponants of creationism and ID have offered no concrete theory or "killer app" type repeatable experiments that refute ToE or show the requirment for the existence of a creator of life forms.
The point is, it's very hypocritical to promote the teaching of evolution while denying intelligent design.
No. It would be wrong to teach non-science in a science class. Teach it if you want. But not in a science class. The teacher of science would be a hypocritic, and be doing a great disservice to his/her pupils, if non-science was taught in science classes.
Scientific theory is fine, but lets try show both sides of the argument shall we?
OK, you see here is your problem right here. In Science there is no argument about the Theory of Evolution(ToE). What bothers sciene types is that ignorant arguments are put forward that often dont even apply to the ToE(such as the stupid 2nd Law of Theordynamics proves ToE wrong). Cretionism should definitely not be taught in a science class. Creationism was disproven hundreds of years ago(thru many different understanding of the universe we live in). It has no place in science. If you want to dicuss origins in a metaphysical or philisophical sense, then have a class on that.
Teaching Creationism in science class is like teaching mathematics in english lit class. It doesnt apply.
Well it cant do worse that Carly.
I just saw something that said that HP is doing something with the Hurd.
Finishing it ?
I don't believe the average company could afford to pay the number of developers who would be needed to maintain the code base for a major development language. This is all very well in principle, but in reality it is not an option.
The average company couldnt afford to do this I agreed. But the good thing about OSS is that if someone drops the ball, someone else can pick it up and run with it. Say VB6 was completely OSS. If microsoft drop the support, and another company(say IBM) see a lot of clients a screaming. They may take the code base a fork a version for them.
When I think of the question of "What more could be done that would actually be useful?" the first thing that comes to mind is OSX's Expose. Now, part of the reason Expose is so handy comes specifically from the fact that you don't have a taskbar in OSX, so you can't tell at a glance what windows are open from what apps (it's a little hard to explain if you don't use OSX). However, it's still a terrific use of OSX's 3D capabilities, and I know that Linux developers are looking into doing something similar.
:) Whoever thought it up inside apple deserves a free beer.
OK. This is risking going off topic more. Ill shut up about this after this post. But I just had to second *you* this time. Expose is cool. The first day I discovered it on my powerbook I was instantly comfortable with it. Now when I have to use other windowing systems I find myself constantly moving my mouse into the corner and being confused by all the windows just staying put
Jeez mods. The RMS thing was a joke.
I have yet to see a valid comment about how Microsoft his hiding secret apis from developers. Instead I see this post-apocolyptic wasteland created from your comments and the moderators that are falsely promoting your FUD.
Youre confusing me. You keep going on about the hidden APIs issue and I dont think that was what was being implied... Im assuming you mean this quote
IE is part of the Windows Operating System so that parts of the OS and other applications can rely on the functionality and APIs being present. To be clear there are no Operating System APIs that IE uses that are not documented on MSDN as part of the platform SDK and available to other browsers and any other software that runs on Windows..
You also start the parent post with
Hold on hold on, let me get this straight. You originally said that IE is allowing secret hidden APIs (at least that is what is interpreted from your quote) because there was a security hole that allowed VBscript to load arbitrary ActiveX controls. Yet you failed to give any example of how Microsoft has kept developers from integrating VBscript into their own applications (for sake of argument, we will say Mozilla).
I didnt interpret his post this way and I dont think others did either(I could be wrong of course). I thought that the grand daddy post was making the point was that it was actually a good thing that Firefox et al dont have access to these APIs or else the browser can start accessing things it has no right to access.
Sorry if Im wrong... but I dont think its a issue of hidden APIs that Mozilla cant implmement is the issue. The issue is these APIs are documented fine, but we shouldnt implement them.
As to how this relates directly to the article being discusssed... specifically the original quote. He is arguing(I think) that the idea of intergrating something as netward facing as a HTTP client with core functionality is "stupid".
No, because you can include vbscript in any application. I will not be a personal reference to MSDN, but I have had to integrate vbscript into applications before.
Fine. For applications. I have no problem with application using whatever APIs and technology to achieve their functionality. I do have a problem with a Web Browser being able to access arbitary systems APIs. Why on earth would a browser require access to the ability to eject the hard disk.
And if if it does require this, why does it not first ask the user (or at least inform the user that it is going to mess her hardware. The problem with the above URL is that I go there in IE and my CD player open automagically. Nobody asks me about it, and server side control of a client machine is something that needs to be handled *very* cautiously for the obvious reasons. The above example is quite harmless. It worries me what malicious uses could be in store for us.
(Actually, this might not work on IE 6.0+. Can you believe they actually fixed the problem.)
Still not fixed, at least its not fixed as of IE version 6.0.2800.1106
I just want to pre-emptively respond to all the posts that are going to say, 'well, as usual, Linux is catching up to Microsoft and Apple a couple years after the fact.'
<RMS> Thats GNU/Linux dammit ! </RMS>
Oh and to be honest with you... I dont think much has to be done to catch up with XPs GUI. It is one of the stupidest, unimaginitve UIs of recent times and does nothing particularly new or interesting or indeed useful. Oh I forgot... there is an irratating animated dog to help you use the (broken) file search features. I wonder if theyve patented that.
Actually the ancient Greeks possibly used to do this. But in navel warfare. To set opposing ships on fire.
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mirrors.htm
yeah, I saw that too. Like, how if you have a 4, and add a 1, you get a 5. It's pretty cool.
Someone was telling me about something even neater the other day. Apparently there is this thing called "subtraction" which can return the original number. So to use you cool example... if we "subtracte" one from 5 we get 4 again. Wicked.
Oh and yes... yall should have mentioned his name in the story.
Vote Quimby !
It would seem to be Hard Drive
A quote from the amazon editorial review is
The first two female executives hired at Microsoft in 1985 were recruited to meet federal affirmative action guidelines so that the company could qualify for a lucrative Air Force contract. One source says,"They would say, 'Well, let's hire two women because we can pay them half as much as we will have to pay a man, and we can give them all this other crap work to do because they are women.' That's directly out of Bill's mouth...." Gates treated one of these executives so badly that she asked to be transferred away from him.
I agree with Rei here(but only if your name is a reference to Evangelion). Usually its the code. Ive found I think about 3 bugs in compilers generating dodgey code. One was in gcc a long long time ago, another was in Watcom 10.X and the third was in MSVC which was only fixable if you turned of optimisation(to be fair... MSVC used to have the buggiest optimisation ever back in the day).
As to the resulting new build being much smaller. Could that be the old "usuing new shared libs for mysterious reason and having those new(patched you said) libs being buggy" deal ?
Well, maybe if they give a certain % in cash/change for ?-MB uploaded? Say 50 (US) cents for every 10 megs (ex)?
I suddenly find that idea extremely interesting. What if the MPAA went to a model not based on subscription or one of purchasing to download their content, but rather a per mega byte downloaded model ? If users are getting money back from the MPAA for them utilising the uplink of the user, then that user is going to, of course, report usage to the MPAA and all users can be tracked on how much has been downloaded. Has this ever been suggested before ?
How could they go after him? The software is open-source and its intentions are nothing less than noble. If Cohen was looking to *directly* make money on BitTorrent he wouldn't have released the source to it.
And if he did get sued that would, to me, be an extremely disturbing action. What would be next suing academics and researchers working on compression and queue theory and higher bitrate networking technologies. There is a big difference between suing Kazza and suing the person that came up with the technology.
And the other problem is that such systems have never worked for other products(such as software) as there is no way to centralise or authenticate a user of the movie easily and convienently when the content is being viewed. The software in dustry is lucky in a way. It is a very service orientated industry, in most domains at least(games and skrinkwrap software being exceptions).
As for
It concludes by saying that the MPAA may be able to drive BitTorrent movie downloads into what Green called "the dark corners of the Internet," but this program isn't going to go away.
The problem with this is the the MPAA as going to have to be perpetually vigilant. The yare going to have to constantly rain threats out on illegal torrentors. If they let down their guard then illegal torrents will grow like mushrooms.
Hopefully one fine day they might realise that this is almost certainly not going to succeed. What they need to be focusing on is how they can "add value" to their product to make users *want* to purchase it. Novel concept I know.
You do. It perfectly embodies the "not invent here" attitude that dominates our industry. (Joke BTW).
Now for a nice little factoid on where the name MIX comes from.
"MIX's model number is 1009, which was chosen by combining the model numbers and names of other machines the author was familiar with. (Conveniently, the roman number "MIX" equals 1009.)"
He also had a lot to do with Literate Programming movement.
certainly, I expect to pay less for the on-line version, but why should the content be free?
Why shouldnt it? Why should anything be anything? One of the things about profitable business models, is that really only have to succeed in one thing. Being a profitable business. If the online papers dont make money with free content. Fine they change their model or stop publishing. One of the reasons Im not a billionare is cause Ive yet to think up the "Business plan that will make Xiaran a billionare". I knew I was making a mistake somewhere.
And any Londoners reading out there are also aware of the Metro. The Metro is a free daily that is ad driven(and from what I understand quite profitable). It is something of a tube commuters daily routine for most... Pick up coffee, pick up metro, curse the Northern Line for being broken again.
Nemi was quite good this morning.
One reason is social. Once absolutely everyone has a mobile/cell, organising spontatious events become much easier.
For example. I was walking to the tube statino the other week to leave work for the day. A ffiend of mine texted me asking if I facied a pint. I texted him back, said yes, texted another mate who I know was on his way home and coming in our direction. He texted his missus at home and within 20 mins there was a group of four people buying each other pints in the pub.
Contrast this to my missus(who happens to be American) who flat out refuses to get a mobile. She is always the one that makes things difficult to organise, it can be slightly infuriating. Not that Im avocating everyone should have a mobile or they are a weirdo. But social aspect of life drive technology up take. How people lives dictates what tools they use to live it.
(Side theory : perhaps it also has something to do with the "pub/drinking culture" being quite different in Europe/Australia/Japan).
You are a reason why there should be be more women in IT and engineering. It cries our for it really. Youre the first person Ive bothered to add as a friend on slashddot(BTW why does ./ render so badly in safari). If youre ever in London lets have a drink... we can discuss why biztalk sucks.. or why patch antennas rock.