You don't own the airspace above your property. The relevant regulation for airplanes specifies that (unless necessary for takeoff or landing), over sparsely populated areas or open water, airplanes shall remain at least 500 feet from 'any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.' - with the definition of a structure being left vague. A house probably qualifies, and a fence post probably doesn't. The full regulation is below.
There is an exception, though. Certain special people, such as ex-Presidents, get Prohibited Areas over their houses which prohibits overflying them at less than (typically) 18,000 MSL. So, run for President, win, fix things up a bit, don't get whacked or impeached, and then you can have your home legally protected from overflights!
Assuming that the operators of the UAVs will obey the law, of course. I'm sure someone reputable will be watching the watchers, since you would take care of that problem when you were the Prez, right?;)
To adapt your piano analogy a bit: How impoverished are we by the loss of knowledge for building harpsichords?
Look up Mozart K.107 and listen. You may change your mind about the value of that knowledge - which, fortunately, we still have and take efforts to preserve. Not having factories cranking out harpsichords is fine - as long as we carefully preserve the knowledge about how to build one, play on it, and write the music that can be played on it.
It's not just that we have enough other instruments, it's that the world of music left behind certain instruments, but still keeps expanding, none the poorer for not having composers still writing symphonies for the muselar. To call the loss of something that passed or is passing naturally out of use a tragedy is to pine for a museum world where nothing is lost but less and less continues to actually live.
When things are lost, the remainer is poorer for the loss, even if 'better' things rise to take their place. How can you even tell if the present is better, or merely different, or devolved, if you don't know about the past? As for living in a museum world, last I checked, the existence of multiple vast museums along the West side of Central Park hasn't stifled the local culture much. If anything, it is easier and easier to preserve knowledge. How does preserving knowledge stifle life?
No one is saying that we shouldn't retain as much knowledge as possible in archives and libraries and academia. But what more can we do when the Dee-ni in Oregon decide they'd rather learn English than speak in a dying tongue?
"So, in the future, it will be easier for people to communicate globally. Who cares about the old cruft?"
To be fair, that's only one comment. I suppose I should have responded directly to it. And I don't advocate the impossible - people will speak what they want to speak, and it would be crazy not to let them learn what they decide they want to. I suppose what I was responding to was the 'feel' of the comments, that there was no big loss in losing these little languages, that they are not worth preserving, at all. There is just something incredibly arrogant and chilling about the ease some have with banishing an entire culture's thoughts, views, and dreams to non-existence because we don't want to take a little trouble to preserve them. Someday that may be us.
Languages are worth preserving, but not necessarily worth preserving as live languages. Not that you get the choice. If a language is going to die it's not as if there's much you can do to stop it.
Agreed on both counts. What just surprised me was that so many posters didn't see any value to preserving the knowledge of what a language is. Languages as living things will come and go as civilizations do, but it's worth trying to preserve knowledge about them.
...the arrogance and small-mindedness of some of the normally (IMHO) insightful posters here is stunning.
My father spoke five languages - none of which I learned to speak more than a few mumbles here and there. But I could see how different languages were better at expressing different emotions, different ideas, different viewpoints in life. Some languages have such a strong system of honorifics and class in them - others are deviod of that, but have different terms spoken by the different sexes as a reflection of cultural differences. There are some with phonetic alphabets, others more pictoral, some with a blend of the two. The variety and beauty of human languages is every bit as beautiful as works of music, painting, sculpture.... Should we let the last man who knows how to build a piano die because there are enough other musical instruments out there?
Forget the structure of languages - what about all the ideas WRITTEN or SPOKEN in them that become forever inaccesable? How many of the Shakespeare's, Archemedes', Sun-Tzu's will be gone forever?
Should we apply the same concepts to computer languages? Data structures? 'Who cares, we have better stuff now, we'll never need to read that old stuff again.'
Language is a unique expression of humanity, and I think it is something worth preserving - even if it is not as practical as having Chinglish taking over the world.
Still for sale, brand new, courtesy of Jeppesen. I always appreciated the things, even if the metal one adds an extra few ounces to the kit. I just liked them for the way they made vector math clear by literally drawing out the far end of the triangle when calculating wind drift. There is something special about a tool that can do so much, yet you could assemble it from scratch with a bit of knowledge and a bit of patience.
*sigh* - I've read some of your other posts, and you seem sincere, and not just trolling, so I'll try and give you a serious answer.
I'm not trying to make some libertarian point. I think that like a sibling post said, that given enough latitude companies will take on roles traditionally associated with governments.
And by government support, I mean nothing. Microsoft would not exist without strict copyright laws and such, as would be the case in a truly free market.
Well, you made a very strong assertion ('Microsoft would not exist') about an extremely hypothetical situation ('...without strict copyright laws and such, as would be the case in a truly free market.'). In my experience, libertarians are prone to make such statements involving how things would be better if a truly free market was in place, so that's what led me to conclude that, in fact, you are trying to make a libertarian point, and thus your question was a loaded one.
Can you give us an example of a monopoly that has existed without government support?
...and it's sibling in the next post,
But I do think that an economy is so diverse and complex so as to almost rule out the possibility of one company taking over an entire industry long-term without the force of law behind them. I'm always interested to hear about counter-examples in history, as I've found none.
In my experience, a person who is interested in learning something as opposed to making a point rarely asks questions phrased as, 'We'd like to know....', or 'Tell us why you think...' but instead ask, 'I would like to know'. In addition, you state in your question that you think you know the answer already, but just in case you missed something, you're being (generously) open-minded enough to hear about counter-examples. So, perhaps you will forgive me for suspecting that your mind is already made up, and you are not really looking to learn anything new?
However, if you want a different point of view, here is mine. I think the question, 'Can you give us an example of a monopoly that has existed without government support?' is silly because it is inherently loaded, much as asking 'Can you give us an example of a criminal that was born without parents being responsible?' is. Almost every societal structure exists because of government 'support', in the sense of a framework of laws and the ability to use force and punishment to enforce them. If there was not a government with such powers, anarchy would reign, and you look at the history of collapsed empires and civilizations, such times are NOT remembered fondly, but as times when life was 'Nasty, Brutish, and Short', or as the old Chinese curse goes, 'May you live in Interesting Times.' There is a reason that EVERY group of people on the planet with a decent living standard live in a place ruled by a government. The converse is not true, of course - government powers can be abused, and are on a regular basis in the most horrific ways. But having a government just beats the alternative so clearly that most of the world is 'owned' by governments, and you probably wouldn't want to live in the parts that aren't.
Hopefully you accept the idea that some level of government is necessary for a sophisticated economy to even exist. If by 'government support' you mean the existence of laws that define property rights (corporate or individual or both), well, you've just created the possibility for a monopoly by definition, as someone could 'have rights' over enough property to seriously impede free trading of that type of property. Therefore, I can't give you an example of a monopoly that has existed without the above kind of 'government support'. I don't think I could give you an example of a stock market, or a trading company, or a futures exchange, or a corporation, that has existed without 'government supp
Can you give us an example of a monopoly that has existed without government support?
(That's the royal 'us', I take it?) Well, nope. Can you give me an example of a stable free market that has existed without government support?
And what does this have to do with Linux vs. Solaris? Is this what happens when you descend into the double-digit thread depths of slashdot, you get thread-jacked by passing gangs of Libertarians? Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can 'free-market' at will to old socialists!
True, but the trend is towards their defeat, by the combined pressure of free software and the surprisingly powerful Apple force. And the Apple force is deliberately not poised for commodity position, relying on proprietary, vendor-locked hardware. We're not through with Microsoft yet, but the situation now is much better than in 1999, even with the years of inertia building.
Yep - I think that just the awareness of alternatives caused by Apple is good; once you look at one alternative, it's easier to look at others.
Lots of the biggest companies have already switched to Linux in critical positions, and this trend is only increasing, and the big companies end up setting examples for the little companies. It'll all happen, sooner or later, and I'm just glad that, right now, 'most of us' can already run Linux with high confidence.
True - it is easier than it ever was to just install Linux on a random box lying around and put it to use. I work mostly with small businesses, which generally are too small to have their own dedicated IT departments, and so they tend to go with 'the default', so my view is limited.
Besides, speaking of WWII, the (reasonably) free market of the US won. It's only lately that the US has declined to abysmal levels of deficit and sanity, due in no small part to the kind of market practices that make Microsoft possible to begin with. The freest market tends to win, and open source may be the next big victor. Maybe I sound a bit too ideological saying that.
It's worth remembering that truly free markets are truly unstable and lead to monopoly without a power structure that actively resists and breaks up incipient monopolies... as for WWII.... well, my response is too long for this text-box to contain without skidding off into serious off-topic land...;)
I think you are right about open source being the eventual victor, but I want eventual to be before I retire! The landscape does look more promising than in 1999, though. I think Microsoft just needs one more really big, enterprise screwing bomb to push it over the edge.
Why do you think Microsoft is scrambling for OOXML standardization? Because the document format lockin is a huge, huge part of Microsoft's monopoly strategy. If they're forced to be an equal player in the office suite space, making Office largely replaceable, then Windows is largely replaceable too. When Linux + KDE + Firefox + OpenOffice.org can replace a Windows + Office + IE setup with lower costs, minimal training and solid vendor support (Canonical, Red Hat,...), how much incentive is there to run Windows any more?
I have little incentive to run Windows NOW. And you are absolutely correct, it's the standards lock-in that Microsoft is aiming for, because that is the essential thing - businesses want to be able to read their own (and other businesses') documents. But the potential to replace Windows has been around for a while. It's like watching mud harden, while Microsoft keeps dribbling in drops of water and stirring from time to time. The inertia Windows has in the business world is astonishing.
Gradually the government switches, corporations switch, and finally users switch. The numbers indicate it's happening anyway, and the format war is just going to nail the coffin on Microsoft's monopoly. They never even had a monopoly on servers, gaming technology, etc. so the office is their last stand, and in a matter of days it will be confirmed that they have lost that too.
Not too many governments have switched, because unfortunately the importance of an open and SIMPLE (meaning, simple to implement) standard for documents and archives hasn't 'clicked' - most people in those positions still think in terms of safety = 'paper' or 'Big Company', rather than 'clear standard'. Don't get me wrong, I would be delighted if the Office standard monopoly was broken, because that is still the key thing that keeps Microsoft relevant. But it's not happening yet. For instance, I use rather sophisticated spreadsheets that are highly tuned to the businesses they are made for, and they break under OpenOffice. The amount of time I spend tweaking them to just work even between versions of Excel is as great as the amount of time it took to design them in the first place! I would be delighted if a better spreadsheet standard, or just open document standard that incorporates typical spreadsheet functionality, was out there and useable TODAY... the lack of a clear and transparent document standard that 'just works' probably holds back a lot of businesses and wastes a lot of time.
And of course, as the demand for Linux installations grows, and more vendors sell pre-packaged Linux, then hardware contracts will also require useful drivers or even documentation, and the hardware situation will be largely solved too. Sit back and relax, freedom has won and the liberation continues as planned.
(Must... resistl....Godwin....Nooooooo....) You know, after Germany absorbed Austria, Czechoslovakia, mashed France and Poland, was bombing Britian, and Hitler signed the alliance with Stalin, and looked just about invincible, the Brits still managed to fight back, even bombing Berlin from time to time. One night, when Ribbentrop and Molotov were dining out, an air-raid siren went off from a British raid, and they had to scamper into an air-raid shelter. Ribbentrop kept insisting to Molotov that the Brits were done and finished. So, Molotov, responded, "If you are so sure that Britian is finished, then why are we in this shelter, and whose are these bombs which fall?"
Don't underestimate your enemy; things only appear inevitable to those not actually watching the details. People said Microsoft was done and finished for the exact same reasons when they were delcared in 1999 by Judge Jackson a monopoly, and an abusive one, and recommended seperating them into an application and an OS company. Almost 10 years later, and they are still here in force. I ain't relaxing yet.
I encourage more competition for Linux. A free market is built on competition. Now that Microsoft is becoming a competitor rather than an oppressive regime, it'll be naturally selected out and increasingly powerful Unix systems will dominate the market. A Linux monopoly is not a good thing either, and whether BSDs or Solaris share the market, we all stand to benefit.
Your faith in Microsoft being 'naturally selected out' is.... amusing. Considering, after years of barely adequate products, they still have 90% plus marketshare of desktops, and last I checked, they were still oppressing various standards bodies, hardware manufacturers, small software houses, etc., I think the corpse is still walking around, talking FUD, and otherwise making a nuisance of itself. The Linux Monopoly you fear is... a bit far-fetched just yet, IMHO. When I start seeing KDE desktops in some of the small offices I walk into, then I'll believe it.
Of course, this move by Sun is to try and make that happen; many non-computer people like 'simplicity', in the sense of getting everything from one computer vendor with minimum fuss on their part, assuming that things will work together more smoothly then. So, Sun offers a machine running OpenSolaris, with StarOffice preinstalled, as well as a really fast JVM. Worth a shot...
Yeah, I received 5 troll/flamebait mods within a minute or so, probably one guy. To be honest, though, my posts indeed were a bit flamebait-y, which I kind of regret. I mainly vented, and just can't be bothered anymore to explain myself in these/. topics, the stupidity of some of the libertarian and "conservative" crowd rivals that of the creationists in their stories.
I understand the urge! I just find that when I sit down to type a response, the 'logical justification' engine kicks in, the reply starts expanding in length and time, and then I realize - am I actually going to change anyone's mind? Is this effort going to result in a change in someone else's behavior? Perhaps just open up their eyes a little? And since the comment I would usually be responding to is one of the more dogmatic and close-minded ones, the answer appears in neon - NO. So I sigh, and don't bother.
Of course, if everybody did this, the discourse would be left to the rabid and would become a verbal slugging match... which sadly is a good first-order approximation to the political discourse in the U.S.A. today! So this is not a healthly long term strategy.
But try to remember, they are not 'stupid' (mostly) - that's just the first epithet intellegent people reach for when describing someone acting... blindly. I've found that the usual intellectual habit that is the most enraging, the most destructive, is that of being blind to one's impact on the world. It takes some deliberation and care to make sure that the idea we like, the thing we espouse, really is as good or has the effects we think it does; in other words, keeping an eye on ourselves to make sure that the intensity of our beliefs does not outrun the accumulation of evidence for them. This belief in questioning your own beliefs is not something that comes hand-in-hand with intellegence; as a matter of fact, intellegence may convince its possessor of the opposite! If you are frequently right and other not-as-intellegent people wrong, it is easy to start trusting your own beliefs and intuitions to a dogmatic level, since they are right... MOST of the time.
The belief that you must always question your own beliefs with as much honesty as you can (wisdom?) I think is more strongly associated with a variety of life experiences; being forced to see the world from different economic, religious, and physical perspectives (or perhaps just being proven spectacularly wrong in public from time to time), and that probably has less to do with intellegence or stupidity than luck...
Of course, if you don't have some primal motive belief in 'doing the right thing' or 'being good' or 'improving yourself' (I put these really nebulous concepts in quotes, because I don't really know how to break them down further!), it probably won't make much of a difference what your life-experiences are if you're only in it for yourself. That, unfortunately, also covers many cases of what you call stupidity above. You can open someone's eyes to a new perspective, but you can't make them care about someone else's fortunes.
Yes, The Blank Slate was a superb book... both in being informative and disturbing - it's one of my favorites, but Pinker is unusual. He brings a level of rigor to most things he investigates, and some of the soft sciences (Mr. Econ, I'm looking at you!) really need it. I have to admit, I have a hard time rising to the bait any more in political discussions here, because they very rapidly turn into a '-ism' flinging contest, and the '-isms' have been warped so much in the last 30 years by people and parties seeking to appropriate the title (if not the beliefs) of 'Champion of the foo-ists!'. I usually have to do the same thing at work - I tend to work with many priviliged individuals, and not surprisingly, they associate their good fortune as being a result of their own innate skill vs. a bit of luck. So, they tend to believe in the party that trumpted 'individual hard-work' at various times in the past as a campain slogan.
I have a new -ism. 'Stupido-practicalism'. It basically says, economics is so complex that we are too stupid to understand the consequences of various economic policies (as evidenced by the fact that if there was a clear best choice in all times, places and cultures, it would have spread world-wide by now), so let's keep trying different stuff and see what actually works in practice, remembering that we are too stupid to know if the same thing will work in 20 years time, so we'll always have to keep experimenting. Sounds good? Kull in '08! Send me your donations!;)
Please someone correct the moderation abuse in the parent post, which is not flamebait at all.
There are a LOT of 'flamebait' moderation abuses in this thread, of which you got more than your share... hopefully metamods will rate those appropriately. Thanks for participating anyway - I think the reason many people are discouraged from participating in politics today is that the environment is like this thread; when people stand up and respectfully but clearly state their opinions and ideas, they are tarred with 'negative moderation'... or Fox News specials on them. People watching from the sidelines observe this, and decide it's not worth participating.
Actually, we don't know that, as we've been unable to remove all the other mass in the universe in order to test [it].
Depending on precisely what you mean by "know," there's a great many things we don't know. And you're certainly correct that new theories or evidence could arise at any time and cause a reinterpretation of what we believe. That beings said, Relativity says that the apparent force is caused by the external mass, and that's just as correct to view the top as sitting still while the universe spins around it and tries to drag you along with it. Relativity has produced a number of predictions that have been tested, and they've all been quite accurate. So yes, it's possible that the prevailing consensus is incorrect but I'll stick with it until I see some evidence indicating otherwise.
I think you missed my point and may not understand Relativity as well as you think you do. You are confusing General Relativity with Mach's Principle, which Einstein interpeted as meaning that inertia (both linear and rotational) is an effect of mass 'elsewhere'. He thought highly of the principle, and it motivated much of development of GR. However, GR does NOT depend on it - the assumption that non-rotating reference frames only can be defined WRT mass 'elsewhere' - so I was not suggesting you dump GR. What I was trying to point out is that you can determine if a reference frame is rotating or inertial by means of experiment, without refering to external reference frames, and thus it is not a nonsensical concept that the universe as a whole possesses angular momentum, but a physically defined question that can be (in principle) resolved by experiment. Specifically, if we observe that most of the matter in the universe 'rotates' compared to what is measured to be a non-rotating reference frame, then there is a difference between what 'should be' a non-rotating reference frame and what is a non-rotating reference frame as measured by the distribution and motion of the rest of the mass in the observable universe. Why this would be would be quite mysterious.... as mysterious as the observation that the rate of expansion of the Universe appears to be increasing rather than decreasing, leading to all of the dark matter and energy hypotheses! But that's what makes it interesting - the observation is what it is, regardless of whether it fits our best theories. Perhaps the observation is wrong, or perhaps we have found something unexpected - but either way, this particular one (the alignment of the axes of rotation of these galaxies) doesn't contradict GR.
You'd feel centrifugal force (actually centripetal force - centrifugal force is actually a convenient fiction) only because of the mass outside the top which you're spinning in relation to.
Actually, we don't know that, as we've been unable to remove all the other mass in the universe in order to test whether the differences observed in the physics between a rotating and non-rotating reference frame are due to the mass external to them. Before you jump in and say, 'of course it's due to the mass external to them!', remember that we have been unable to observe any differences in the laws of physics inside of reference frames moving in straight lines at constant velocity - called 'inertial' reference frames because the laws of inertia are correct within them. Surely these different reference frames are moving differently with respect to the mass outside them (the mass of the whole universe)? Newton considered that there might be special, 'priviliged' reference frames, namely those at rest WRT the center of gravity of the universe taken as a whole - the concept of absolute motion can be made rigorous in this way. As it turned out, once we were able to experiment sensitively with EM, the absolute reference frame hypothesis was contradicted by experiment - light admits no privilged 'rest' frame from which to observe it. So, perhaps you see that whether or not mass external to a reference frame affects the physics within the reference frame is not obvious at all, but an open question, which we may need new physics to ultimately resolve. (Unless you can think of a way of performing the experiment of removing the rest of the mass in the universe to test it directly!)
"How many power plants would you have to take out to cripple New York City?"
Okay, but how many water-treatment plants would you need to take out? Two?
Take out all the water treatment plants you want. We don't use them, thanks to the wisdom of the city planners of 150 years ago - it's estimated that NYC could have 20 million people before we would start having fresh water issues. Feel free to visit some day and drink from the tap.
Like Stalin did?
I think I hear the Secret Service calling you...
Sorry, that didn't deserve a Flamebait mod. It deserved 'Insightful' - almost every major revolution has occurred due to widespread dissatisfaction with the current (current in the country of revolution, just to be clear) leadership, and thus the temptation to just 'purge' the whole lot and let god sort them out is strong. It is also the essence of evil - once you give up on your responsibility to judge each individual as an individual, it becomes much easier for others to do the same... and that's when you get genocides and other enormities.
Much as I dislike the current bunch of Republican clowns in power, I would hate far more the destruction of the democratic U.S.A. that would occur if they were 'purged', in the Stalinist sense. I don't think that's the sense the GP meant it, but I thought the reminder was perfectly valid, and not 'flamebait'. Sheesh.
Preferably, in a long, extremely expensive way. Then, maybe, a standard without all the fancy DRM nonsense laced into it that actually gives purchasers a benefit might come out.
While I'm dreaming, maybe Microsoft will adopt the Linux kernel and open source its next OS as well.
Unfortunately, we are not paid for our skills, we are paid by our experience level in a field (whether or not this correlates to skill level is highly debateable); so each 'do-over' has a very significant financial cost associated with it. Easy to do if you are single and have no other obligations. By the time you reach your 30's, you probably have one or more ill parents or grandparents, possibly children, debt, or some responsibility that you can't just walk away from. Then, it gets very difficult to find enough time to a) learn a new field + b) keep earning enough money at the old field + c) enjoy the rest of your time.
I agree, it is utterly wacky to expect a high schooler to figure out what they want to do with their life, and it's equally wacky to expect an adult to put the best of themselves into a particular career (even if they are well suited toward it and enthusiastic about it to start) for their entire life. But the system does not encourage switching at any level. Glad to hear you're bucking it successfully - perhaps a bit more tolerance for the 'losers' would be nice....;)
...folks should really read the article. I have always enjoyed reading Freeman Dyson, because he doesn't strongly advocate a point of view - other than thinking a bit, taking a step back, and reconsidering your beliefs; perhaps believing in them more strongly than before, perhaps not. The article is really about the value of heretics, about unconventional thinking, and not allowing your beliefs to run too far ahead of your facts. The brief 'summaries' written here do not do justice to the subtleies of his opinions. As he makes clear, he picks global warming because in the scientific community there is virtually no doubt it is occuring, and thus a good candidate for needing some heretics to keep things fresh and honest. As for his own ego, read the article and see what advice he gave to Crick on becoming a biologist.
...From peppercorn hair to multi-base counting systems, the vast majority of human biology, language and tradition has been lost, and a few selected strains and languages grow uncontrollably like some kind of bizarre algal bloom. Made of people....
Well, if you have ever tried to do basic arithmetic in multi-base counting systems, you would understand why consistent bases, along with place value notation (even in non-romanic character languages like Japanese), have taken over the world. They are VASTLY easier to deal with in practical terms. As for whether we are losing a certain beauty in the world, by winnowing out a huge amount of... culture... (for lack of a better term), the answer is yes.
I fly for a living, and one of the things I found a certain beauty in while growing up was navigating boats. It required a mix of skill, experience, and knowledge to figure out where you were going - the ingenuity people have used over the centuries to locate and navigate themselves is remarkable.
Nowadays in my aircraft, we have a pair of IRSs, dual GPSs, and two auto-tuning VORs that constantly switch from navaid to navaid, all of which feed position information into a computer known as an FMS. The end result? Our position is incredibly accurately displayed on a moving map display. No art, no intellectual ability, no skill. There it is. Is it safer than dead reckoning, calculating estimated wind drifts, shooting star sights, looking for big rivers, and so on? Absolutely. It is safer, more reliable, more accurate, faster... but it does seem to have squeezed some of the art, beauty and satisfaction out of it.
The point is, where do you think we should stop? When is something practical, but too ugly, degrading, or just plain boring to be used in practice? And I ask you, because I really don't have a good answer.
It's misconceptions like these that make it easier for cranky American Protestants to think of 'Evolutionism' as just another faith.
It's not that it's a "faith", per se. It's just that it's a theory based on the NON-existence of a creator. If you don't believe in a creator, you can I can look at the same data all day, and come to different conclusions. The non-believers, or course, claim to have the "unbiased" view, but there's really no such thing. You might say, "ID is stupid when there's this perfectly good scientific explanation". Well, if you regard invoking a creator as "stupid", then you've shown that you're biased against that idea, just as I am biased against the idea that the universe "just happened" without a purposeful, creative agent behind it. And yes, I realize there are a lot of people who believe both -- the "God created the mechanism of evolution" view. That's fine, but for me I think that view assumes a solider scientific foundation for evolution than actually exists.
No, evolution is based on NOT ASSUMING a creator exists, not on a creator's definitive NON-EXISTENCE. A creator could have put together the first DNA, or removed a few annoying individuals from the gene pool via an accidental lightning bolt here and there. Evolution does not speak to the specifics. Most creationists find this distinction hard to understand, because they ASSUME a creator's existence, and don't understand the idea of not assuming, one way or the other, things for which you have no evidence.
The reason, since you appear to need reminding, that science does not make assumptions about a supernatural creator, is because it is a useless assumption. Once you allow for a creator that can defy natural law, at will, at random, whenever he, or she, or it, feels like it, you can no longer make predictions, and science is above all a tool that attempts to make predictions about things that have not occurred yet.
But perhaps, you object, the creator is consistent; for instance, she has a tendency, that when massive objects are around each other, she always directs them to accelerate toward each other at a rate inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, and in direct proportion to their masses. She, of course, having created the universe, could chose to defy this 'Natural Law' at any time. Well, yes. Sure. We never know what will happen for sure until it happens. But in EVERY case we observe, gravity occurs, creatures evolve, magnets have poles, and they do so in pretty sharp accordance with what are best theories predict should occur. Might we be wrong tomorrow? Might the creator have a cranky day and make gravity follow an inverse cube law? Sure. It's possible. BUT IT IS UTTERLY USELESS TO SPECULATE ON IT, BECAUSE NO ONE HAS ANY BETTER WAY OF JUDGING WHETHER IT WILL OCCUR DIFFERENTLY TOMORROW. So, instead of constantly interrupting our statement of hypothesis and theories with the disclaimer, 'But tomorrow, the creator may intervene and then things will not behave according to theory', they assume their readers have a minimum level of wisdom and don't waste the print on saying so explicitly.
Re:"The silent majority" is uninformed.
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No. "The silent majority" believe that this is the way computers just "work".
They've been shown that in countless movies and TV shows and by "experts" on the news.
They're the ones you see claiming that Linux and Mac's will have the "same problems" as their market share increases.
With all the past outbreaks on Windows machines, anyone who wanted to migrate has already started their migration. This won't change anything for anyone else.
I don't think that's quite the case any more. Many of the people I work with, toting around notebooks running XP or Vista on them, now openly admire and know about OS X (Linux.... not so much. One step at a time...), and say they would switch 'IF'... and the usual reasons, some quite legitimate, are brought out. However, the fact that many people are AWARE there is an alternative that appears better in their eyes, is a new & positive development. It just takes time, time where products from Redmond continue to be mediocre, and time where other OS's consistently improve in stability, security, usability, and interoperability. These conditions have been occuring consistently for the last 5 years now.
We might get to see Microsoft's OSes slowly head the way of the dino in the next 5 years, especially the more incidents like the above 'worm' occur.
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There is an exception, though. Certain special people, such as ex-Presidents, get Prohibited Areas over their houses which prohibits overflying them at less than (typically) 18,000 MSL. So, run for President, win, fix things up a bit, don't get whacked or impeached, and then you can have your home legally protected from overflights!
Assuming that the operators of the UAVs will obey the law, of course. I'm sure someone reputable will be watching the watchers, since you would take care of that problem when you were the Prez, right? ;)
You may already know this, but you just made a sexual reference yet again... Enjoy the letter below.
Advice on the Choice of a Mistress, by Ben Franklin
Look up Mozart K.107 and listen. You may change your mind about the value of that knowledge - which, fortunately, we still have and take efforts to preserve. Not having factories cranking out harpsichords is fine - as long as we carefully preserve the knowledge about how to build one, play on it, and write the music that can be played on it.
When things are lost, the remainer is poorer for the loss, even if 'better' things rise to take their place. How can you even tell if the present is better, or merely different, or devolved, if you don't know about the past? As for living in a museum world, last I checked, the existence of multiple vast museums along the West side of Central Park hasn't stifled the local culture much. If anything, it is easier and easier to preserve knowledge. How does preserving knowledge stifle life?
"So, in the future, it will be easier for people to communicate globally. Who cares about the old cruft?"
To be fair, that's only one comment. I suppose I should have responded directly to it. And I don't advocate the impossible - people will speak what they want to speak, and it would be crazy not to let them learn what they decide they want to. I suppose what I was responding to was the 'feel' of the comments, that there was no big loss in losing these little languages, that they are not worth preserving, at all. There is just something incredibly arrogant and chilling about the ease some have with banishing an entire culture's thoughts, views, and dreams to non-existence because we don't want to take a little trouble to preserve them. Someday that may be us.
Agreed on both counts. What just surprised me was that so many posters didn't see any value to preserving the knowledge of what a language is. Languages as living things will come and go as civilizations do, but it's worth trying to preserve knowledge about them.
My father spoke five languages - none of which I learned to speak more than a few mumbles here and there. But I could see how different languages were better at expressing different emotions, different ideas, different viewpoints in life. Some languages have such a strong system of honorifics and class in them - others are deviod of that, but have different terms spoken by the different sexes as a reflection of cultural differences. There are some with phonetic alphabets, others more pictoral, some with a blend of the two. The variety and beauty of human languages is every bit as beautiful as works of music, painting, sculpture.... Should we let the last man who knows how to build a piano die because there are enough other musical instruments out there?
Forget the structure of languages - what about all the ideas WRITTEN or SPOKEN in them that become forever inaccesable? How many of the Shakespeare's, Archemedes', Sun-Tzu's will be gone forever?
Should we apply the same concepts to computer languages? Data structures? 'Who cares, we have better stuff now, we'll never need to read that old stuff again.'
Language is a unique expression of humanity, and I think it is something worth preserving - even if it is not as practical as having Chinglish taking over the world.
Still for sale, brand new, courtesy of Jeppesen. I always appreciated the things, even if the metal one adds an extra few ounces to the kit. I just liked them for the way they made vector math clear by literally drawing out the far end of the triangle when calculating wind drift. There is something special about a tool that can do so much, yet you could assemble it from scratch with a bit of knowledge and a bit of patience.
Watch the movie Blazing Saddles. You won't regret it. You will also get jokes more often, like the line from the movie above.
Well, you made a very strong assertion ('Microsoft would not exist') about an extremely hypothetical situation ('...without strict copyright laws and such, as would be the case in a truly free market.'). In my experience, libertarians are prone to make such statements involving how things would be better if a truly free market was in place, so that's what led me to conclude that, in fact, you are trying to make a libertarian point, and thus your question was a loaded one.
In my experience, a person who is interested in learning something as opposed to making a point rarely asks questions phrased as, 'We'd like to know....', or 'Tell us why you think...' but instead ask, 'I would like to know'. In addition, you state in your question that you think you know the answer already, but just in case you missed something, you're being (generously) open-minded enough to hear about counter-examples. So, perhaps you will forgive me for suspecting that your mind is already made up, and you are not really looking to learn anything new?
However, if you want a different point of view, here is mine. I think the question, 'Can you give us an example of a monopoly that has existed without government support?' is silly because it is inherently loaded, much as asking 'Can you give us an example of a criminal that was born without parents being responsible?' is. Almost every societal structure exists because of government 'support', in the sense of a framework of laws and the ability to use force and punishment to enforce them. If there was not a government with such powers, anarchy would reign, and you look at the history of collapsed empires and civilizations, such times are NOT remembered fondly, but as times when life was 'Nasty, Brutish, and Short', or as the old Chinese curse goes, 'May you live in Interesting Times.' There is a reason that EVERY group of people on the planet with a decent living standard live in a place ruled by a government. The converse is not true, of course - government powers can be abused, and are on a regular basis in the most horrific ways. But having a government just beats the alternative so clearly that most of the world is 'owned' by governments, and you probably wouldn't want to live in the parts that aren't.
Hopefully you accept the idea that some level of government is necessary for a sophisticated economy to even exist. If by 'government support' you mean the existence of laws that define property rights (corporate or individual or both), well, you've just created the possibility for a monopoly by definition, as someone could 'have rights' over enough property to seriously impede free trading of that type of property. Therefore, I can't give you an example of a monopoly that has existed without the above kind of 'government support'. I don't think I could give you an example of a stock market, or a trading company, or a futures exchange, or a corporation, that has existed without 'government supp
(That's the royal 'us', I take it?) Well, nope. Can you give me an example of a stable free market that has existed without government support?
And what does this have to do with Linux vs. Solaris? Is this what happens when you descend into the double-digit thread depths of slashdot, you get thread-jacked by passing gangs of Libertarians? Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can 'free-market' at will to old socialists!
Yep - I think that just the awareness of alternatives caused by Apple is good; once you look at one alternative, it's easier to look at others.
True - it is easier than it ever was to just install Linux on a random box lying around and put it to use. I work mostly with small businesses, which generally are too small to have their own dedicated IT departments, and so they tend to go with 'the default', so my view is limited.
It's worth remembering that truly free markets are truly unstable and lead to monopoly without a power structure that actively resists and breaks up incipient monopolies... as for WWII.... well, my response is too long for this text-box to contain without skidding off into serious off-topic land... ;)
I think you are right about open source being the eventual victor, but I want eventual to be before I retire! The landscape does look more promising than in 1999, though. I think Microsoft just needs one more really big, enterprise screwing bomb to push it over the edge.
I have little incentive to run Windows NOW. And you are absolutely correct, it's the standards lock-in that Microsoft is aiming for, because that is the essential thing - businesses want to be able to read their own (and other businesses') documents. But the potential to replace Windows has been around for a while. It's like watching mud harden, while Microsoft keeps dribbling in drops of water and stirring from time to time. The inertia Windows has in the business world is astonishing.
Not too many governments have switched, because unfortunately the importance of an open and SIMPLE (meaning, simple to implement) standard for documents and archives hasn't 'clicked' - most people in those positions still think in terms of safety = 'paper' or 'Big Company', rather than 'clear standard'. Don't get me wrong, I would be delighted if the Office standard monopoly was broken, because that is still the key thing that keeps Microsoft relevant. But it's not happening yet. For instance, I use rather sophisticated spreadsheets that are highly tuned to the businesses they are made for, and they break under OpenOffice. The amount of time I spend tweaking them to just work even between versions of Excel is as great as the amount of time it took to design them in the first place! I would be delighted if a better spreadsheet standard, or just open document standard that incorporates typical spreadsheet functionality, was out there and useable TODAY... the lack of a clear and transparent document standard that 'just works' probably holds back a lot of businesses and wastes a lot of time.
(Must... resistl....Godwin....Nooooooo....) You know, after Germany absorbed Austria, Czechoslovakia, mashed France and Poland, was bombing Britian, and Hitler signed the alliance with Stalin, and looked just about invincible, the Brits still managed to fight back, even bombing Berlin from time to time. One night, when Ribbentrop and Molotov were dining out, an air-raid siren went off from a British raid, and they had to scamper into an air-raid shelter. Ribbentrop kept insisting to Molotov that the Brits were done and finished. So, Molotov, responded, "If you are so sure that Britian is finished, then why are we in this shelter, and whose are these bombs which fall?"
Don't underestimate your enemy; things only appear inevitable to those not actually watching the details. People said Microsoft was done and finished for the exact same reasons when they were delcared in 1999 by Judge Jackson a monopoly, and an abusive one, and recommended seperating them into an application and an OS company. Almost 10 years later, and they are still here in force. I ain't relaxing yet.
Your faith in Microsoft being 'naturally selected out' is.... amusing. Considering, after years of barely adequate products, they still have 90% plus marketshare of desktops, and last I checked, they were still oppressing various standards bodies, hardware manufacturers, small software houses, etc., I think the corpse is still walking around, talking FUD, and otherwise making a nuisance of itself. The Linux Monopoly you fear is... a bit far-fetched just yet, IMHO. When I start seeing KDE desktops in some of the small offices I walk into, then I'll believe it.
Of course, this move by Sun is to try and make that happen; many non-computer people like 'simplicity', in the sense of getting everything from one computer vendor with minimum fuss on their part, assuming that things will work together more smoothly then. So, Sun offers a machine running OpenSolaris, with StarOffice preinstalled, as well as a really fast JVM. Worth a shot...
I understand the urge! I just find that when I sit down to type a response, the 'logical justification' engine kicks in, the reply starts expanding in length and time, and then I realize - am I actually going to change anyone's mind? Is this effort going to result in a change in someone else's behavior? Perhaps just open up their eyes a little? And since the comment I would usually be responding to is one of the more dogmatic and close-minded ones, the answer appears in neon - NO. So I sigh, and don't bother.
Of course, if everybody did this, the discourse would be left to the rabid and would become a verbal slugging match... which sadly is a good first-order approximation to the political discourse in the U.S.A. today! So this is not a healthly long term strategy.
But try to remember, they are not 'stupid' (mostly) - that's just the first epithet intellegent people reach for when describing someone acting... blindly. I've found that the usual intellectual habit that is the most enraging, the most destructive, is that of being blind to one's impact on the world. It takes some deliberation and care to make sure that the idea we like, the thing we espouse, really is as good or has the effects we think it does; in other words, keeping an eye on ourselves to make sure that the intensity of our beliefs does not outrun the accumulation of evidence for them. This belief in questioning your own beliefs is not something that comes hand-in-hand with intellegence; as a matter of fact, intellegence may convince its possessor of the opposite! If you are frequently right and other not-as-intellegent people wrong, it is easy to start trusting your own beliefs and intuitions to a dogmatic level, since they are right... MOST of the time.
The belief that you must always question your own beliefs with as much honesty as you can (wisdom?) I think is more strongly associated with a variety of life experiences; being forced to see the world from different economic, religious, and physical perspectives (or perhaps just being proven spectacularly wrong in public from time to time), and that probably has less to do with intellegence or stupidity than luck...
Of course, if you don't have some primal motive belief in 'doing the right thing' or 'being good' or 'improving yourself' (I put these really nebulous concepts in quotes, because I don't really know how to break them down further!), it probably won't make much of a difference what your life-experiences are if you're only in it for yourself. That, unfortunately, also covers many cases of what you call stupidity above. You can open someone's eyes to a new perspective, but you can't make them care about someone else's fortunes.
But keep posting - it's worth a try!
Cheers,
I have a new -ism. 'Stupido-practicalism'. It basically says, economics is so complex that we are too stupid to understand the consequences of various economic policies (as evidenced by the fact that if there was a clear best choice in all times, places and cultures, it would have spread world-wide by now), so let's keep trying different stuff and see what actually works in practice, remembering that we are too stupid to know if the same thing will work in 20 years time, so we'll always have to keep experimenting. Sounds good? Kull in '08! Send me your donations! ;)
There are a LOT of 'flamebait' moderation abuses in this thread, of which you got more than your share... hopefully metamods will rate those appropriately. Thanks for participating anyway - I think the reason many people are discouraged from participating in politics today is that the environment is like this thread; when people stand up and respectfully but clearly state their opinions and ideas, they are tarred with 'negative moderation'... or Fox News specials on them. People watching from the sidelines observe this, and decide it's not worth participating.
I think you missed my point and may not understand Relativity as well as you think you do. You are confusing General Relativity with Mach's Principle, which Einstein interpeted as meaning that inertia (both linear and rotational) is an effect of mass 'elsewhere'. He thought highly of the principle, and it motivated much of development of GR. However, GR does NOT depend on it - the assumption that non-rotating reference frames only can be defined WRT mass 'elsewhere' - so I was not suggesting you dump GR. What I was trying to point out is that you can determine if a reference frame is rotating or inertial by means of experiment, without refering to external reference frames, and thus it is not a nonsensical concept that the universe as a whole possesses angular momentum, but a physically defined question that can be (in principle) resolved by experiment. Specifically, if we observe that most of the matter in the universe 'rotates' compared to what is measured to be a non-rotating reference frame, then there is a difference between what 'should be' a non-rotating reference frame and what is a non-rotating reference frame as measured by the distribution and motion of the rest of the mass in the observable universe. Why this would be would be quite mysterious.... as mysterious as the observation that the rate of expansion of the Universe appears to be increasing rather than decreasing, leading to all of the dark matter and energy hypotheses! But that's what makes it interesting - the observation is what it is, regardless of whether it fits our best theories. Perhaps the observation is wrong, or perhaps we have found something unexpected - but either way, this particular one (the alignment of the axes of rotation of these galaxies) doesn't contradict GR.
Actually, we don't know that, as we've been unable to remove all the other mass in the universe in order to test whether the differences observed in the physics between a rotating and non-rotating reference frame are due to the mass external to them. Before you jump in and say, 'of course it's due to the mass external to them!', remember that we have been unable to observe any differences in the laws of physics inside of reference frames moving in straight lines at constant velocity - called 'inertial' reference frames because the laws of inertia are correct within them. Surely these different reference frames are moving differently with respect to the mass outside them (the mass of the whole universe)? Newton considered that there might be special, 'priviliged' reference frames, namely those at rest WRT the center of gravity of the universe taken as a whole - the concept of absolute motion can be made rigorous in this way. As it turned out, once we were able to experiment sensitively with EM, the absolute reference frame hypothesis was contradicted by experiment - light admits no privilged 'rest' frame from which to observe it. So, perhaps you see that whether or not mass external to a reference frame affects the physics within the reference frame is not obvious at all, but an open question, which we may need new physics to ultimately resolve. (Unless you can think of a way of performing the experiment of removing the rest of the mass in the universe to test it directly!)
Take out all the water treatment plants you want. We don't use them, thanks to the wisdom of the city planners of 150 years ago - it's estimated that NYC could have 20 million people before we would start having fresh water issues. Feel free to visit some day and drink from the tap.
Sorry, that didn't deserve a Flamebait mod. It deserved 'Insightful' - almost every major revolution has occurred due to widespread dissatisfaction with the current (current in the country of revolution, just to be clear) leadership, and thus the temptation to just 'purge' the whole lot and let god sort them out is strong. It is also the essence of evil - once you give up on your responsibility to judge each individual as an individual, it becomes much easier for others to do the same... and that's when you get genocides and other enormities.
Much as I dislike the current bunch of Republican clowns in power, I would hate far more the destruction of the democratic U.S.A. that would occur if they were 'purged', in the Stalinist sense. I don't think that's the sense the GP meant it, but I thought the reminder was perfectly valid, and not 'flamebait'. Sheesh.
While I'm dreaming, maybe Microsoft will adopt the Linux kernel and open source its next OS as well.
Unfortunately, we are not paid for our skills, we are paid by our experience level in a field (whether or not this correlates to skill level is highly debateable); so each 'do-over' has a very significant financial cost associated with it. Easy to do if you are single and have no other obligations. By the time you reach your 30's, you probably have one or more ill parents or grandparents, possibly children, debt, or some responsibility that you can't just walk away from. Then, it gets very difficult to find enough time to a) learn a new field + b) keep earning enough money at the old field + c) enjoy the rest of your time.
I agree, it is utterly wacky to expect a high schooler to figure out what they want to do with their life, and it's equally wacky to expect an adult to put the best of themselves into a particular career (even if they are well suited toward it and enthusiastic about it to start) for their entire life. But the system does not encourage switching at any level. Glad to hear you're bucking it successfully - perhaps a bit more tolerance for the 'losers' would be nice.... ;)
...folks should really read the article. I have always enjoyed reading Freeman Dyson, because he doesn't strongly advocate a point of view - other than thinking a bit, taking a step back, and reconsidering your beliefs; perhaps believing in them more strongly than before, perhaps not. The article is really about the value of heretics, about unconventional thinking, and not allowing your beliefs to run too far ahead of your facts. The brief 'summaries' written here do not do justice to the subtleies of his opinions. As he makes clear, he picks global warming because in the scientific community there is virtually no doubt it is occuring, and thus a good candidate for needing some heretics to keep things fresh and honest. As for his own ego, read the article and see what advice he gave to Crick on becoming a biologist.
Well, if you have ever tried to do basic arithmetic in multi-base counting systems, you would understand why consistent bases, along with place value notation (even in non-romanic character languages like Japanese), have taken over the world. They are VASTLY easier to deal with in practical terms. As for whether we are losing a certain beauty in the world, by winnowing out a huge amount of... culture... (for lack of a better term), the answer is yes.
I fly for a living, and one of the things I found a certain beauty in while growing up was navigating boats. It required a mix of skill, experience, and knowledge to figure out where you were going - the ingenuity people have used over the centuries to locate and navigate themselves is remarkable.
Nowadays in my aircraft, we have a pair of IRSs, dual GPSs, and two auto-tuning VORs that constantly switch from navaid to navaid, all of which feed position information into a computer known as an FMS. The end result? Our position is incredibly accurately displayed on a moving map display. No art, no intellectual ability, no skill. There it is. Is it safer than dead reckoning, calculating estimated wind drifts, shooting star sights, looking for big rivers, and so on? Absolutely. It is safer, more reliable, more accurate, faster... but it does seem to have squeezed some of the art, beauty and satisfaction out of it.
The point is, where do you think we should stop? When is something practical, but too ugly, degrading, or just plain boring to be used in practice? And I ask you, because I really don't have a good answer.
No, evolution is based on NOT ASSUMING a creator exists, not on a creator's definitive NON-EXISTENCE. A creator could have put together the first DNA, or removed a few annoying individuals from the gene pool via an accidental lightning bolt here and there. Evolution does not speak to the specifics. Most creationists find this distinction hard to understand, because they ASSUME a creator's existence, and don't understand the idea of not assuming, one way or the other, things for which you have no evidence.
The reason, since you appear to need reminding, that science does not make assumptions about a supernatural creator, is because it is a useless assumption. Once you allow for a creator that can defy natural law, at will, at random, whenever he, or she, or it, feels like it, you can no longer make predictions, and science is above all a tool that attempts to make predictions about things that have not occurred yet.
But perhaps, you object, the creator is consistent; for instance, she has a tendency, that when massive objects are around each other, she always directs them to accelerate toward each other at a rate inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, and in direct proportion to their masses. She, of course, having created the universe, could chose to defy this 'Natural Law' at any time. Well, yes. Sure. We never know what will happen for sure until it happens. But in EVERY case we observe, gravity occurs, creatures evolve, magnets have poles, and they do so in pretty sharp accordance with what are best theories predict should occur. Might we be wrong tomorrow? Might the creator have a cranky day and make gravity follow an inverse cube law? Sure. It's possible. BUT IT IS UTTERLY USELESS TO SPECULATE ON IT, BECAUSE NO ONE HAS ANY BETTER WAY OF JUDGING WHETHER IT WILL OCCUR DIFFERENTLY TOMORROW. So, instead of constantly interrupting our statement of hypothesis and theories with the disclaimer, 'But tomorrow, the creator may intervene and then things will not behave according to theory', they assume their readers have a minimum level of wisdom and don't waste the print on saying so explicitly.
I don't think that's quite the case any more. Many of the people I work with, toting around notebooks running XP or Vista on them, now openly admire and know about OS X (Linux.... not so much. One step at a time...), and say they would switch 'IF'... and the usual reasons, some quite legitimate, are brought out. However, the fact that many people are AWARE there is an alternative that appears better in their eyes, is a new & positive development. It just takes time, time where products from Redmond continue to be mediocre, and time where other OS's consistently improve in stability, security, usability, and interoperability. These conditions have been occuring consistently for the last 5 years now.
We might get to see Microsoft's OSes slowly head the way of the dino in the next 5 years, especially the more incidents like the above 'worm' occur.