"I'm just curious as to why it is still a half duplex 10Mbit network..."
Because any change on the systems aboard brings a paperweight of about 10MTon half duplex (first you send your request for change, then the change office challenges your intention, then you reissue, etc.) on average.
"If you have military secrets that someone would be willing to invest a lot of time and money in to recovering, then the DoD standard might be warranted."
But in that case, is it not the DoD standard just mechanically destroy them to small pellets? Software sweep is only valid for low level private information, not the kind of "military secrets that someone would be willing to invest a lot of time and money in to recover".
"Didn't Copernicus just say that so the Church wouldn't go Galileo on him?"
Who knows? We know what he wrote, not why. On the other hand, it makes sense within Khun's ideas about those kinds of "copernican revolutions" where the "revolutioner" is in fact the very last high member from the "old school".
"Then again, Tycho Brahe took Copernicus' heliocentric model and tried to revert us back to a geocentric model to appease the church"
So what? Copernicus always said his model only had operational significance by avoiding some hard work on the calculus of depherents at the price of being less exact than ptolemaic calculus, but it wasn't a real depict of the solar system, so are you going to ban Copernicus too?
"What you attribute to facts are actually observations and can be proven wrong just like anything else in science."
Not at all, observations can be false in the sense that they are understood improperly (a film of an apple falling taken for a real apple falling), but facts can't be wrong, since they are absolutly external to the observer (even on quantics).
"When you call something a fact then it can't be questioned"
Indeed. It's your measure the one that can be questioned. The moment you question the facts (not the observations about them) you entry the nihilist realm which is void to science.
"the scientific method doesn't allow for such a dead-end. Or at the very least, it shouldn't as it closes the mind."
Again, we were not talking about the scientific method, but about science. Science has a property the scientific method lacks of and that is metaphysicial in nature: science treats about reality, that is, about facts. You can't have science without reality.
"Theories are supported by observations"
True but incomplete. Theories are supported by observations of facts.
"here have been plenty of theories that have not stood up to scrutiny because observations were either falsified or incorrect."
Wrong! If that were the case then you were not in front of a properly formed theory. What you are claming is that, somehow, an apple doesn't fall with an acceleration of 9.8m/s^2 on Earth surface. Hint: it *does* fall at such a speed, and that's a fact. From the measure of that fact (and others) Newton built his theory about facts of thing weigthing and moving explined on his Principia. His theory made assertions about facts still unobserved, like two guys crossing at 250.000Km/s each. It resulted that observations about such facts were never made while some new theory from Einstein could cope with such kind of facts as revealed by observations. Please note that the case was not that an apple doesn't fall 9.8m/s^2 on Earth but that the theory doesn't properly predict how some speedy and big apples yet unobserved are to fall.
""Facts" certainly exist in our common understanding, and have a place in language. They just don't have anything to do with the scientific method."
So what? We were not talking about the scientific method but about science; the latter uses the former but it is *not* the former. In a sense, science without facts is "just" mathematics.
"But in science, there's really no such thing as a "fact""
What the hell did you smoke? it must be good!
Science it's aplenty of facts: apples come to ground, planets orbit, fire rises temperature... So aplenty of them that, indeed, Science deals with facts *exclusively*.
Now, a theory is an ideal framework where you put all those facts as a means to explain their trends.
From an epystemologic point of view, that such a theory is accepted or not as a valid intent to describe reality is irrelevant. It's neither more nor less "a theory" newtonian dynamics than Einstein's.
"You don't actually learn anything through memorization."
Completly wrong. You *do* learn by memorization: the facts you memorize themselves. Probably what you meant is that you don't *understand* anything through memorization. But then, that's wrong too. What you memorize are the bricks which you will use to build your vision of a reality: how can you expect to have an understanding about, say, if a man going to the Moon is a big gest or not if you ignore if the Moon is near or far away? Remember that those that ignore their history are condemned to repeat it, so in order to avoid failures of past days you must remember (memorize) them. If you don't know the facts you are open for instance for a politician to distort your vision of reality, that's (one) way demagogy works. The more (relevant) facts you can recall from your memory on sport the more elements you will have to make your mind about an issue.
You your phrase must be rewritten this way: "You don't actually learn anything through *mere* memorization."
For the most part memorization is not the issue, but is a most needed precondition.
"On the contrary the internet makes knowing 'facts' irrelevant, no one has to memorise information anymore."
If you really think "knowing facts" to be irrelevant, I beg you to re-read the first chapter from Descartes' "Discourse on the Method". Maybe you forgot about it and this made you state such a naive statement, which self-demonstrates false, by the way.
"And if they spend the resources, how do they know they can trust what the person they pay tells them?"
I wonder how is it possible to be so lacking on common sense whenever these "new technologies" are involved.
How can you know? Exactly like in *everything* else. How can you be confident about press, about science or about an airplane? In fact, take an airliner for an example: there are exactly *zero* persons in the whole world able to build a multijet civil airplane on their own, even if given a (theoretical) infinite amount of time and money, from the rubber composition of the tires, to the blueprints, controlling software, metal alloys, etc. still we know those things do flight (because we see them) and we are (and certainly can be) quite confident about the flying conditions of a new model once they reach civil aviation companies: peer review, proper auditable techniques and even ethic track records are available just the same about source code than about everything else.
If not the only, maybe the most important reason (within limits) to be confident about the audit given by a proven proffesional is that *both* you and him do know there's nothing that prevents you to contact a second unrelated auditor to check his results quite akind the so known "panoptic effect".
"After all, this entire discussion is predicated on the fact that they already can't trust other people who are being paid for their services and software."
Not at all. Regarding privative software is not that you can't trust *anybody* but that you can't trust any party when said party is confident about his cheating going unnoticed. In other words, this is not about software, but about the fact that you can't trust everybody to pay respect to Kant's cathegorical imperative.
"Since most people lack the resources to audit source code..."
While that's true, it's false within context.
It's true that most people lack the resources to audit source code since it's true that most people (as in 2 out of 3) lack resources beyond bare survival.
It's false within context since you were obviously talking about first world people and they do not lack resources to audit source code as long as there are those funny colored paper notes within their wallets: they pay really big mortages for their homes, for their cars, for their plasma TVs... What they are lacking is interest to expend resources towards such a goal. Not to say this is good or bad, it's free market after all, but please don't tell they lack the resources.
"That is the default position here on/.; that of a sysadmin. My perspective is that of a user. IT is often too insular and unresponsive to the needs of its users."
I'm on IT and I have to tell you some two things: 1) I'm a user as much as a sysadmin, or what did you think? So please consider I do see it from both perspectives: that of the sysadmin I am and that of the user I am too so it might be, just from this assertion only that I'm on a more relevant position regarding this issue than you. 2) More often than not, IT is not insular nor unresponsive, since it holds no power to do one way or the other. Just like in everything else is management the one that provides strategies and objectives that IT just put in practice. More times than not, it is not IT the one that will cut you off your RSS feed but a manager that told that "all that lost time blogging and what-not must finish" being IT just the executory arm.
There is a time where IT is really unresponsive and that's when, as usual, IT is heavily understaffed and overburdened and holding all responsibility for "IT matters" instead of ask for employee's matureness: when somebody loses a check supposed to be taken to a bank office it's the employee responsibility for not being cautious enough; when his PC is flowed with worms because he was at goatse on office time it's an IT problem more times than not. In the end, if the employee visits goatse is IT's fault but if -as expected, trying to cope with HR problems via technical solutions affects somebody's productivity it's IT's fault too!
"My having to circumvent IT to work means that there is dissonance between how IT sees my role and I (and my boss) see my role"
You forget that most probably is you boss the one that asked directly or indirectly for your RSS feeds to be cut off and it's your boss direct or indirectly the one responsible for asking contradictory efforts to different parts of the company's staff. On the other hand you too are a bit at fault: "my having to circumvent IT..." Would you dare to circumvent the beancounters so you can get your stuff for a given project faster? Would you dare to think you surely see the "whole picture" regarding your company financials better than the beancounters so it's in your company's overall best interest for you to circumvent financial policies and procedures?
"I tend to view new security measures as productivity killers because they are not accompanied by contextual interviews to see how I work."
And you are probably right at that. But do you really think it's IT the one that decided not to spend the effort, time and money for such interview?
What's wrong with SuSE? That SuSE is an acrostic for "Software und System-Entwicklungsgesellschaft" and the product name for Novell's Linux distribution is "Software und System-Entwicklungsgesellschaft" no more thus the old acrostic doesn't hold water.
Current Novell's Linux distribution's name is SUSE. What is wrong with that?
"Unless you have ancestors who were indigenous to south America, your ancestors wouldnt have come in contact with potatoes until a couple of centuries ago."
Well, five is a bit more than "a couple". In fact, about a couple centuries ago, european people was already so dependant on potatoes that its sudden scarciness provoked famine (1845: irish potato famine).
"Italian english beginners also tend to speak english words, but using italian grammar."
Whomever foreign language beginners tend to speak foreign language words using their own grammar. Not a surprise, since being beginners, they don't know any other.
"in the modern languages descended from Latin it is has been lost and is found, if at all, only in words borrowed from other languages. "
I don't know if you meant the sound or the letter, but while in latin-derived languages the "h" is usually mute, at least both Spanish and French do retain it in quite a lot of words.
Re:something going mainstream does not become bad
on
The Rise of Geekdom
·
· Score: 1
"if a set of behaviours you are practicing now is good, the SAME set is gonna keep on being the same"
So it seems, isn't it?
But then, when I started on nntp you were able to talk to "top notch" field specialists, having very interesting conversations. Then, nntp flooded, noise to signal ratio skyrocketed and all valuable people fleed out and I myself abandoned that "behaviour".
"Being an ass to your boss will make life difficult for those who need to fill your roll. You're not just screwing over your boss, you're also doing in the guy who has to live with the mess you've made."
I'm sure management will love you, since you basically are an ass-licking fellow.
Being an ass to your boss? It is the employee the one that tried to document and being usefull both to the company and his mates and it is the manager the one that revoked his privileges so it was impossible for the employee to comply. It is the manager the one being an ass both to the company and to the employee, it is the manager the one screwing over that employee's colleagues.
You probably are one of those that when a project manager rises an impossible milestone will fault the employee that just does his work because he is screwing and overloading his colleagues instead of turning against the manager that created the death-march in first place, aren't you?
"If some distributions use a common set of libraries and applications then why shouldn't they be interested in better synchronization with upstream development? It doesn't matter who the distribution is targeted at."
This would be perfect. If Ubuntu and Red Hat CEOs meet and decide they'll cooperate to, say, offer the same version of glibc or Gnome, so be it, that would a matter between Ubuntu and Red Hat. But this is not, and can't be, a "Linux issue" as Sutthelworth tries to make it appear.
On the other hand, to those that say what a fantastic thing it would be for all Linux distributions to somehow merge into one (common package managers, common desktops, common launch dates, etc.) I propose a little mental experiment: think for a moment you are Red Hat's CEO (or any other distribution for that matter). Well, I'm Red Hat CEO now, what a wonderful thing it would be if we had the same package manager, desktop, launch dates... than Novell's Suse in order to ease user's experience and interchangeability. Hummm... wait a minute, if we are *so* interchangeable with Suse, why the hell would people take Red Hat over Suse? What would be our market advantage? All I can think of is being cheaper than them, maybe offer more for less (which is just another for being "cheaper"), and so exactly Novell's CEO would think; we would end up on a decreasing profit margins war till one would buy the other -or more probably a more profitable company would take us both out of the market. Hummm... I'm a worthable CEO, so I think I'll stick with being *different* and then use all my experience, knowledge and tools -marketing, price, technical excelence, market partition... to make my difference into bussiness advantage. And so will think Novell's CEO, and so the worlds keeps running.
Slashdot Mirror
"If it wasn't true, then a site owner would have no way to remove his content from the Wayback Machine retrospectively."
Well, what the heck is the point for a Wayback Machine that refuses to way back, then?
"I'm just curious as to why it is still a half duplex 10Mbit network..."
Because any change on the systems aboard brings a paperweight of about 10MTon half duplex (first you send your request for change, then the change office challenges your intention, then you reissue, etc.) on average.
And it's a good thing too.
"If you have military secrets that someone would be willing to invest a lot of time and money in to recovering, then the DoD standard might be warranted."
But in that case, is it not the DoD standard just mechanically destroy them to small pellets? Software sweep is only valid for low level private information, not the kind of "military secrets that someone would be willing to invest a lot of time and money in to recover".
"But, diamond is one of the hardest metals (If not THE hardest metal) known the man!"
When did carbon become a metal?
"Did you even RTFA? The corona around the sun is a million degrees."
Humpf! That's why it's impossible for them go during an eclipse: the corona is still there, so the spaceship would burn up.
At night, I say, it's the only sane option!
"Didn't Copernicus just say that so the Church wouldn't go Galileo on him?"
Who knows? We know what he wrote, not why. On the other hand, it makes sense within Khun's ideas about those kinds of "copernican revolutions" where the "revolutioner" is in fact the very last high member from the "old school".
"Then again, Tycho Brahe took Copernicus' heliocentric model and tried to revert us back to a geocentric model to appease the church"
So what? Copernicus always said his model only had operational significance by avoiding some hard work on the calculus of depherents at the price of being less exact than ptolemaic calculus, but it wasn't a real depict of the solar system, so are you going to ban Copernicus too?
"What you attribute to facts are actually observations and can be proven wrong just like anything else in science."
Not at all, observations can be false in the sense that they are understood improperly (a film of an apple falling taken for a real apple falling), but facts can't be wrong, since they are absolutly external to the observer (even on quantics).
"When you call something a fact then it can't be questioned"
Indeed. It's your measure the one that can be questioned. The moment you question the facts (not the observations about them) you entry the nihilist realm which is void to science.
"the scientific method doesn't allow for such a dead-end. Or at the very least, it shouldn't as it closes the mind."
Again, we were not talking about the scientific method, but about science. Science has a property the scientific method lacks of and that is metaphysicial in nature: science treats about reality, that is, about facts. You can't have science without reality.
"Theories are supported by observations"
True but incomplete. Theories are supported by observations of facts.
"here have been plenty of theories that have not stood up to scrutiny because observations were either falsified or incorrect."
Wrong! If that were the case then you were not in front of a properly formed theory. What you are claming is that, somehow, an apple doesn't fall with an acceleration of 9.8m/s^2 on Earth surface. Hint: it *does* fall at such a speed, and that's a fact. From the measure of that fact (and others) Newton built his theory about facts of thing weigthing and moving explined on his Principia. His theory made assertions about facts still unobserved, like two guys crossing at 250.000Km/s each. It resulted that observations about such facts were never made while some new theory from Einstein could cope with such kind of facts as revealed by observations. Please note that the case was not that an apple doesn't fall 9.8m/s^2 on Earth but that the theory doesn't properly predict how some speedy and big apples yet unobserved are to fall.
""Facts" certainly exist in our common understanding, and have a place in language. They just don't have anything to do with the scientific method."
So what? We were not talking about the scientific method but about science; the latter uses the former but it is *not* the former. In a sense, science without facts is "just" mathematics.
"But in science, there's really no such thing as a "fact""
What the hell did you smoke? it must be good!
Science it's aplenty of facts: apples come to ground, planets orbit, fire rises temperature... So aplenty of them that, indeed, Science deals with facts *exclusively*.
Now, a theory is an ideal framework where you put all those facts as a means to explain their trends.
From an epystemologic point of view, that such a theory is accepted or not as a valid intent to describe reality is irrelevant. It's neither more nor less "a theory" newtonian dynamics than Einstein's.
"Gravity is just a theory."
Apples falling is a fact.
"The Sun-centered solar system is just a theory"
An eclipse is a fact.
"Radio waves are just a theory"
Music going out a funny box is a fact.
"You don't actually learn anything through memorization."
Completly wrong. You *do* learn by memorization: the facts you memorize themselves. Probably what you meant is that you don't *understand* anything through memorization. But then, that's wrong too. What you memorize are the bricks which you will use to build your vision of a reality: how can you expect to have an understanding about, say, if a man going to the Moon is a big gest or not if you ignore if the Moon is near or far away? Remember that those that ignore their history are condemned to repeat it, so in order to avoid failures of past days you must remember (memorize) them. If you don't know the facts you are open for instance for a politician to distort your vision of reality, that's (one) way demagogy works. The more (relevant) facts you can recall from your memory on sport the more elements you will have to make your mind about an issue.
You your phrase must be rewritten this way: "You don't actually learn anything through *mere* memorization."
For the most part memorization is not the issue, but is a most needed precondition.
"On the contrary the internet makes knowing 'facts' irrelevant, no one has to memorise information anymore."
If you really think "knowing facts" to be irrelevant, I beg you to re-read the first chapter from Descartes' "Discourse on the Method". Maybe you forgot about it and this made you state such a naive statement, which self-demonstrates false, by the way.
"Don't forget about the now mutated sharks living in the coolant water growing frickin' laser beams on their heads."
Wow! Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
"And if they spend the resources, how do they know they can trust what the person they pay tells them?"
I wonder how is it possible to be so lacking on common sense whenever these "new technologies" are involved.
How can you know? Exactly like in *everything* else. How can you be confident about press, about science or about an airplane? In fact, take an airliner for an example: there are exactly *zero* persons in the whole world able to build a multijet civil airplane on their own, even if given a (theoretical) infinite amount of time and money, from the rubber composition of the tires, to the blueprints, controlling software, metal alloys, etc. still we know those things do flight (because we see them) and we are (and certainly can be) quite confident about the flying conditions of a new model once they reach civil aviation companies: peer review, proper auditable techniques and even ethic track records are available just the same about source code than about everything else.
If not the only, maybe the most important reason (within limits) to be confident about the audit given by a proven proffesional is that *both* you and him do know there's nothing that prevents you to contact a second unrelated auditor to check his results quite akind the so known "panoptic effect".
"After all, this entire discussion is predicated on the fact that they already can't trust other people who are being paid for their services and software."
Not at all. Regarding privative software is not that you can't trust *anybody* but that you can't trust any party when said party is confident about his cheating going unnoticed. In other words, this is not about software, but about the fact that you can't trust everybody to pay respect to Kant's cathegorical imperative.
"Since most people lack the resources to audit source code..."
While that's true, it's false within context.
It's true that most people lack the resources to audit source code since it's true that most people (as in 2 out of 3) lack resources beyond bare survival.
It's false within context since you were obviously talking about first world people and they do not lack resources to audit source code as long as there are those funny colored paper notes within their wallets: they pay really big mortages for their homes, for their cars, for their plasma TVs... What they are lacking is interest to expend resources towards such a goal. Not to say this is good or bad, it's free market after all, but please don't tell they lack the resources.
"That is the default position here on /.; that of a sysadmin. My perspective is that of a user. IT is often too insular and unresponsive to the needs of its users."
I'm on IT and I have to tell you some two things:
1) I'm a user as much as a sysadmin, or what did you think? So please consider I do see it from both perspectives: that of the sysadmin I am and that of the user I am too so it might be, just from this assertion only that I'm on a more relevant position regarding this issue than you.
2) More often than not, IT is not insular nor unresponsive, since it holds no power to do one way or the other. Just like in everything else is management the one that provides strategies and objectives that IT just put in practice. More times than not, it is not IT the one that will cut you off your RSS feed but a manager that told that "all that lost time blogging and what-not must finish" being IT just the executory arm.
There is a time where IT is really unresponsive and that's when, as usual, IT is heavily understaffed and overburdened and holding all responsibility for "IT matters" instead of ask for employee's matureness: when somebody loses a check supposed to be taken to a bank office it's the employee responsibility for not being cautious enough; when his PC is flowed with worms because he was at goatse on office time it's an IT problem more times than not. In the end, if the employee visits goatse is IT's fault but if -as expected, trying to cope with HR problems via technical solutions affects somebody's productivity it's IT's fault too!
"My having to circumvent IT to work means that there is dissonance between how IT sees my role and I (and my boss) see my role"
You forget that most probably is you boss the one that asked directly or indirectly for your RSS feeds to be cut off and it's your boss direct or indirectly the one responsible for asking contradictory efforts to different parts of the company's staff. On the other hand you too are a bit at fault: "my having to circumvent IT..." Would you dare to circumvent the beancounters so you can get your stuff for a given project faster? Would you dare to think you surely see the "whole picture" regarding your company financials better than the beancounters so it's in your company's overall best interest for you to circumvent financial policies and procedures?
"I tend to view new security measures as productivity killers because they are not accompanied by contextual interviews to see how I work."
And you are probably right at that. But do you really think it's IT the one that decided not to spend the effort, time and money for such interview?
"What was wrong with SuSE?"
You answered your own question.
What's wrong with SuSE? That SuSE is an acrostic for "Software und System-Entwicklungsgesellschaft" and the product name for Novell's Linux distribution is "Software und System-Entwicklungsgesellschaft" no more thus the old acrostic doesn't hold water.
Current Novell's Linux distribution's name is SUSE. What is wrong with that?
"I asked our guy in charge of environmental compliance if "dihydrogen monoxide" could be put down the drain. He said no."
And properly he said it. Dihydrogen monoxide can only be put down the drain if at all when diluted 100/0 on distilled water.
"Unless you have ancestors who were indigenous to south America, your ancestors wouldnt have come in contact with potatoes until a couple of centuries ago."
Well, five is a bit more than "a couple". In fact, about a couple centuries ago, european people was already so dependant on potatoes that its sudden scarciness provoked famine (1845: irish potato famine).
"fusion is a pipe dream"
Yes, that's why all those pampflets talk so much about it. Specially the Daily Mirror. Or was it... The Sun?
"Italian english beginners also tend to speak english words, but using italian grammar."
Whomever foreign language beginners tend to speak foreign language words using their own grammar. Not a surprise, since being beginners, they don't know any other.
"in the modern languages descended from Latin it is has been lost and is found, if at all, only in words borrowed from other languages. "
I don't know if you meant the sound or the letter, but while in latin-derived languages the "h" is usually mute, at least both Spanish and French do retain it in quite a lot of words.
"if a set of behaviours you are practicing now is good, the SAME set is gonna keep on being the same"
So it seems, isn't it?
But then, when I started on nntp you were able to talk to "top notch" field specialists, having very interesting conversations. Then, nntp flooded, noise to signal ratio skyrocketed and all valuable people fleed out and I myself abandoned that "behaviour".
Sometimes, the same is just not the same.
"Being an ass to your boss will make life difficult for those who need to fill your roll. You're not just screwing over your boss, you're also doing in the guy who has to live with the mess you've made."
I'm sure management will love you, since you basically are an ass-licking fellow.
Being an ass to your boss? It is the employee the one that tried to document and being usefull both to the company and his mates and it is the manager the one that revoked his privileges so it was impossible for the employee to comply. It is the manager the one being an ass both to the company and to the employee, it is the manager the one screwing over that employee's colleagues.
You probably are one of those that when a project manager rises an impossible milestone will fault the employee that just does his work because he is screwing and overloading his colleagues instead of turning against the manager that created the death-march in first place, aren't you?
"If some distributions use a common set of libraries and applications then why shouldn't they be interested in better synchronization with upstream development? It doesn't matter who the distribution is targeted at."
This would be perfect. If Ubuntu and Red Hat CEOs meet and decide they'll cooperate to, say, offer the same version of glibc or Gnome, so be it, that would a matter between Ubuntu and Red Hat. But this is not, and can't be, a "Linux issue" as Sutthelworth tries to make it appear.
On the other hand, to those that say what a fantastic thing it would be for all Linux distributions to somehow merge into one (common package managers, common desktops, common launch dates, etc.) I propose a little mental experiment: think for a moment you are Red Hat's CEO (or any other distribution for that matter). Well, I'm Red Hat CEO now, what a wonderful thing it would be if we had the same package manager, desktop, launch dates... than Novell's Suse in order to ease user's experience and interchangeability. Hummm... wait a minute, if we are *so* interchangeable with Suse, why the hell would people take Red Hat over Suse? What would be our market advantage? All I can think of is being cheaper than them, maybe offer more for less (which is just another for being "cheaper"), and so exactly Novell's CEO would think; we would end up on a decreasing profit margins war till one would buy the other -or more probably a more profitable company would take us both out of the market. Hummm... I'm a worthable CEO, so I think I'll stick with being *different* and then use all my experience, knowledge and tools -marketing, price, technical excelence, market partition... to make my difference into bussiness advantage. And so will think Novell's CEO, and so the worlds keeps running.