> That is not true. It is based on different axioms than science, but not on lack of evidence. I
Correction. The axioms of science arose from the Judeo-Christian world view, so science has the same axioms. The main parts of the scientific method are: (a) the universe is orderly (because it was designed by an orderly God.) so it's possible to discover its regular laws (b) man is rational (because he was designed by a rational God and man is in the image of God), so it is possible for us to discover the universe through reason and observation (c) it is ethical to manipulate the universe (i.e. the universe is not God) (d) man can be irrational (because man is fallen) and delusional (due to pride and arrogance as a result of the fall) so he needs checks and balances (like the scientific community and statistical methods) to know truth.
Now the secular world drops off the reasoning Bacon and others used to formulate the scientific method, and many Christians don't bother looking up their own history and the assumptions of their own faith and assume that "science is worldly, so it's bad", but that's humanity for you.
What you're referring to when you say "different axioms" is not science but logical positivism, which states that the universe, matter/energy and natural law are all that ever existed or ever will exist and there is nothing outside of "nature" (As an aside, "nature" used to mean "God's will" but now means something far more limited.).
Logical positivism is completely compatible with some forms of Deism (i.e. God is a programmer of this "Game of Life" we call the universe, and he never debugs tweaks his program or otherwise interacts with the game), Stoicism, Epicureanism, Confucianism, Taoism (if you assume that Yi/Yang forces can be measured and quantified), and Greek Mythology (Greek Gods are just Q-like aliens which are a product of creation). But it is fundamentally opposed to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, and many other metaphysical theories.
Fortunately, science is neutral ground where these metaphysical theories may have dialog. Some metaphysical theories (e.g. Stoics who think Reason can be perfected so we don't need to do experiments, just philosophize) might think that some axioms are redundant, and some might think that some axioms are irrelevant (e.g. the world is just an illusion, so discoveries about the world are little different than wasting your time discovering the physics and science of WoW or a dream).
But for those that wish to discover their world, whatever the reason, science is a common language.
We just have to make sure that it stays a common ground.
It's not about being childish. The key problem is, Microsoft is currently using it's monopoly in one area to try to create monopolies in other areas, such as mail (MSN/Exchange), web standards (IE/ActiveX), web framework (SilverLight/.NET), games (XBox), music (Zune), DRM (WMV), office software and document formats (MSOffice, OOXML), etc. Lately, Microsoft has been hobbled in its attempt by the failure of Windows Vista, but if Windows 7 succeeds, you can expect Microsoft to return to its old ways and it may eventually succeed.
Microsoft's power to create new monopolies, lies in four areas: * Exchange * IE * MS Office * Ties to MSN (Not firm, but Microsoft has tried to tie users to Passport in the past) Windows Admins and developers can automatically assume that if you have Windows, you'll use Exchange, IE, MS Office, and anything required by these apps.
If users are given choice, it's no longer a safe bet. It can be done in a fairly straightforward manner. Force Microsoft not to install any of these apps in the default Windows install. Then provide a supplementary CD, whereby users have a choice of picking a pre-selected list of software which would include: * IE * Opera * Firefox * Google Chrome * Thunderbird * Exchange Client * OpenOffice * MS Works or MS Office Trial Version (which can be unlocked by purchasing an activation code online) with a brief blurb by each software vendor (not Microsoft) why you should pick their software over the others.
In such a situation, Microsoft would be on equal footing as other software, so it couldn't leverage it's monopoly. If people *choose* Microsoft software over the alternatives, then it will win on merit, not tie-in.
> Which is just not possible. Where is the CD burning program in GNOME that beats K3B? Where is the music player that beats Amarok? In the > other direction, where is the office suite that beats OpenOffice.org? You cannot avoid mixing GTK and Qt apps on a desktop without hurting > yourself.
This is the key difference for the desktop split. Why do you mean by "beat"? If you want a no-nonsense desktop and desktop apps that allows you to do your work without getting in your way, then GNOME and GNOME apps beat KDE and KDE apps. Personally, I can't stand either K3B and Amarok. If you want a pimped up desktop and desktop apps that allow you to do anything you want, then KDE and KDE apps beat GNOME and GNOME apps.
If one or another need dominates, except for one area, then you have a mix.
I personally have a pure desktop...not out of ideology, but simply because GNOME and GNOME apps works better for me. I'm sure plenty of KDE lovers have a pure KDE desktop for the same reason.
If, for some reason, GNOME decided to migrate to Qt (theoretically, it is possible if GNOME 3.0 moves to be more IDL driven and Qt components could be modified to support any missing feature that GNOME needed), GNOME and GNOME apps would still exist separate from KDE and KDE apps simply because GNOME users and KDE users are different.
If it's not obvious, why do children reinvent it every day?
Don't believe me? Go into a toy store and watch spoiled children. They'd point to a toy and say "I want that" and then say "I want that" and then say "I want that", etc, before their parents gather up their requests and go to the cashier.
The 1-click patent is not not only obvious, it has prior art in spoiled children. The key reason few people did online shopping before amazon is that http standards, and in particular encryption, wasn't common enough and up to the level that people would trust it. Also, people wanted to "see and feel" what they were buying. Amazon reviews and other Amazon features and trust in the technology made people feel it was "safe" to shop online.
> The *real* question is, who cares? > For the majority of us, after enough time passes our lives are pretty much irrelevant.
Well that may be the case for you, because history is irrelevant to you.
But if you could see the ebbs and flows and textures of history across many generations, you'd be able to see how significant a life can be and how seemingly minor events and decision can affect generations to come. You'd see that the winds of change that appear to erode any value and meaning out of life, do little more than blow away the irrelevant fluff off a person's life to reveal the deep grooves of that person's purpose.
Actually, in Ancient Roman society, babies were never adopted...only teens. Why? Because when children reach their teens, you can know their character and if you want to trust them with carrying on your inheritance and your family name. With babies, you never know they'll turn up. In the nature versus nurture forming of character, you might provide good nurture but still turn out bad because of nature (aka genetics).
> It's entirely possible and reasonable we can determine universal laws without having the faintest idea of *why* they are that way. > 1 + 1 = 2 will be true in any universe
Really? I find the opposite is true.
You need to know "why the laws hold" in order to know if the laws are applicable at all.
Take one liter of water and add one liter of alcohol and mix together. I guarantee you won't get two liters of the mixture. Ditto with one liter of matter and one liter of antimatter.
You might say, that you have to be referring to the same substance, so I'll counter with one ball of mud plus another ball of mud is just one ball of mud.
You might counter that if both balls of mud have the same mass (i.e. 1 kg), then the total will have 2 kg of weight. Fine. Then I can point you to the Banach Tarski paradox ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach_Tarski_paradox ) which shows that it should be possible to cut a two kilogram ball into finite number of non-overlapping pieces and put together to give two two kilogram balls, so 2=2+2.
You might counter that you can't divide a real world solid the way you can divide a mathematical solid. But in that case, you've shown that the real world is not 100% mathematical in every sense, so all the free variable are interchangeable without consequence. T
his is precisely the point and why "quantum test" is genuinely something new as opposed to "an obvious fact that was known for ages". It provides us more information on math-like the universe is. When math corresponds to reality in a nonobvious way, it is important. For instance, I'd be extremely surprised if the Banach Tarski paradox held in real life, though I'm sure someone who believes in multiverses will try to prove me wrong on that.:-)
So how does 1+1=2 in the real world? As an approximation. Most of the time the approximation is very good. But often times it's not, which is why we regularly add in fudge factors in real life (e.g. You've asked for 10 apples, but since my apples are smaller than the typical apple, I'll though in an extra one, so 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=10). People are natural engineers (as opposed to mathematicians), so they don't blink when a fudge factor is added.
That's why it's natural to distrust statistics or metrics. You can't just know the numbers and formulas involved. You need to know the nature of what's being counted.
If you claim you don't distrust statistics, then you would not ask questions if your manager (or teacher) measured your performance based on a set of formulas you trusted but didn't tell you where the numbers that plug into the formula come from.
> For most of human history, people have lived in small tribes where everything they did was known by everyone they knew,' > Dr. Malone said. 'In some sense we're becoming a global village. Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly.
There's huge difference. In the tribal setting, a small group of people knew everything about each other, but that small group of people had to deal with the consequences of misusing that trust because they lived and died based on the strength of their community.
In the global village, people are numbers with attributes associated with them. You're free to misuse this lack of privacy without bearing the consequences or even seeing the faces of the people whose lives you hurt or even destroy.
What you don't see is that Microsoft wants to have it both ways: (1) Pretend Silverlight is open and crossplatform and supported everywhere (2) In actuality, only the Microsoft version works.
The complaint merely states that anyone who buys into this doubletalk will be deceived. If you want a real crossplatform API that's more powerful than HTML+SVG, you really have only three choices: (1) Java, which is now free software (2) Pick the subset of Flash that works with Gnash so that your code will work everywhere. (3) If Gnash is too limited, stick to the minimum version of Flash that supports the feature you need...unless you're extremely advanced, that version should be available on all major platforms.
Basically, the argument is: (a) Something doesn't just pop into existence from nothing for no reason. If you do not believe this, then I have a 4 eyed flying lobster leprechaun to sell you that just popped into existence in front of me. (b) The nontheological scientific world assumed that the universe was always there, so the question of "why we are here" can be solved by the formula "time plus chance plus matter == you". One didn't need to invoke a "beyond this universe" explanation, because the universe was the foundation of reality. (c) But in the Big Bang, everything, including the laws of physics came into being, so (b) is false. (d) So (a) raises the question, who or what created the universe and thus me? (e) The cyclical model was proposed as a way out, but this was soundly disproven by science. (f) This leaves something outside our universe as being the initiator of the universe.
That something must satisfy the following criteria: It must be eternal and self-existent (i.e. no-one created it or him, he/it was always there) (g) This leaves two main hypotheses:
(g.1) an eternal uncaused creator
(g.2) a metauniverse, i.e. a universe outside our own with the suitable properties whereby this universe was created. The multiverse is the best candidate so far.
So basically, you end up with accepting either (g.1) or (g.2) or state that (a) is false (in which case, the sail price has just gone up because the lobster leprechaun now has gills made out of gold).
And it works even if all you have is punch cards for input and a dot matrix printer for screen output. And it has none of that fancy curses based rendering to slow it down.;-)
Considering that the Yahoo-Google would never have happened if the Microsoft didn't try to buy up Yahoo, I don't see how Google can be blamed. Microsoft has a history of buying companies (E.g. Stak-r, Hotmail, etc) in order to rip out it's old technology, replace it with Microsoft technology, ultimately becoming Microsoft. Yahoo succeeded precisely because they were not Microsoft, so if Microsoft did absorb Yahoo, it would have destroyed it. Some speculate that it might have ultimately destroyed Microsoft too, since it would be a huge distraction away from their OS product line (which is the one that is actually making money).
Neither deal was good for Yahoo (or the general public), but the stupid "hostile takeover" rules in the US gave Yahoo no other choice than to pick the lesser of two evils.
Facts don't stand alone. They need to be interpreted in the framework of a world view.
But that's not what the studies found.
In this case, all the article stated was that people who were told the wrong things (by Fox) about something that happened far away (Iraq) that the individuals involved could not confirm on their own, had the wrong view of reality. How on earth could this be otherwise?
Let's take a concrete example. The moon landing. You and I believe that it happened? Did it? Can you actually confirm it yourself? Practically, no (unless you are Bill Gates). So how do we know it happened? We have a trust network that verifies this fact, and that trust network has proved reliable in the past, so we have no reason to doubt it. That's just the way it is and we have to live with the consequences. The best we can do is to show that Fox has been unreliable in things that an individual can verify directly.
BTW, no form of science is possible without this sort of trust network. No person is an island. If you believe everyone loves you, and everyone tells you that they love you (but laugh at you behind your back), you'll likely believe you're lovable no matter how many experiments you run to truly verify it.
The funny thing is, the study's conclusion have been verified nonetheless, simply by the reaction to the objective facts. The objective facts said something that any 5 year old knows, but those trivial facts were extrapolated to support pet prejudices against the Bush administration (which is guilty of many things and can't be defended anyway), religion, and prejudices in favour of a "Science-only" ideology (as if Mozart has anything to do with science).
Actually, in my school, Alchemy *was* discussed in chemistry class and although Ebonics wasn't talked about in English, Pigeon English was. WRT alchemy, it was mentioned it was a precursor to chemistry, and although some ideas were sound and are still in use today, other ideas, like converting base metals into gold weren't (at least not with chemical reactions). Areas related to it, such as mercury poisoning, were also discussed. WRT Pigeon English, it was mentioned that it was a language invented by merchants who had better things to do than learn full blown English but still needed to communicate with English merchants. Do kids in the US not have a broad education in the natural sciences and liberal arts?
Back when I was in school, the boundaries between classes seemed hazy....the history of science in math class....philosophy in history class, archeology in geology class, mechanical engineering in biology class, architecture in classics class. While teaching this way isn't "efficient", every subject seemed to connect to every other subject so that knowledge was a unified whole with various facets and various perspectives.
It seems that classes these days focus more on "efficiency" or "playing it safe political correctness". Pity. No wonder post-modernism has become so wide spread. When things are not taught to fit together, no wonder people think it seems like a mixed up world.
Yes that's often the pattern, but not always, especially in the computer field. Sometimes, a seemingly minor issue is the excuse for radical change. Often the only variable is the timing.
That's how X.org started from XFree86 and XFree86 died -- it would have succeeded in 1990 not 2001. That's how IBM lost it's PC leadership (trying to force Micro Channel as "The patented successor to ISA") -- it would have succeeded in 1985 but not 1990. That might be happening with Vista too if Microsoft isn't careful -- it would have succeeded in 2000 possibly not 2006 (time will tell).
I suspect it might be too early for ISO be be junked, but it might be the excuse the highly populated countries of the world (India+Brazil make up a large percentage of the world population) to create their own ISO...especially if they can get China on board. Each of these countries are extremely nationalistic, so they are just looking for a big enough excuse with enough momentum to go their own way. If OOXML is that excuse, that separatist ISO might have preferential treatment in many countries that are trying to escape American and Euro-centric standards.
It's actually not how it's used most often in real life. Simply put, faith means trust.
Let's assume you're married but it could equally be applied in other close relationships. * Do you have faith in your wife? * Are you faithful to her? * If you close your eyes and fall backwards towards you wife, do you have faith that your wife will at least try to stop you from falling? * If she says or does something that hurt you, do you still have faith in *her* or do you immediately assume the worst about her? * If your wife were to try something new that she has no experience in, but you've seen that she's fantastic at improvising, so you have faith that she'll succeed?
On the flip side, if your parents tell you "I have faith that you will win the basket ball game" but you see them betting on the other team, do they really trust you?
> So, "faith in God" in the common senses could imply that one believes he exists, as described, without evidence (an arguably irrational position)
True, it is arguable, which in simple terms means, debatable. Ferocious former Atheist, Anthony Flew (credited for the "Invisible Gardener" parable outlining how stupid believers in God were), switched to Deism (the God of Einstein, Spinoza, Plato, Einstein, and Darwin) precisely because he determined that it was a more rational explanation of the universe and all that there is in it than Atheism.
None of these people are stupid. They looked at the evidence....all the evidence. Granted, there isn't a single piece of evidence that shows God's existence, but the bulk of it tells you that he's there.
It's no different in real life. Getting back to the wife analogy, *why* would you have faith in her? If you give any single situation to prove your point, I could just as easily argue that your interpretation is wrong. However, if you give the sum total of all your experiences, you can build a credible case.
Anyway, here's a question to ponder. Assume that the universe and everything in it is pure matter caught in a cause and effect chain. Essentially pure materialism. You are essentially a bag of marbles held together by natural forces caught in a causal chain that fully determines every move you make. A chair or a rock is no different....you're just composed of different atoms and are configured in different ways, but ultimately, everything is just a bag of causal marbles.
If you truly believe in pure materialism, you must accept the following: a) There is no difference between you and a chair. What you perceive as life is just an illusion. b) There is no fundamental difference between breaking your legs and breaking a chair's legs or smashing you to death or smashing a chair to pieces. All you're doing is breaking a few bonds and rearranging the configuration of atoms. c) All atoms in your body get replaced every decade, so there is nothing that defines who you are other than your overall appearance and even that changes with time. Ultimately, *you* don't exist. c) There is no such thing as free will....just atoms caught in a causal chain. Evangelical Atheists are thus wasting their time trying to convince anyone, but then again they can't help it, so there's no problem. d) A consequence of all the above is Humanism or other morality has no foundation in pure materialism and it's actually pretty arrogant to be a Humanist because why are human's more valuable than chairs or rats? If you expand goal of humanism to reduce the total amount of suffering in the world (whatever "suffering" means in materialistic terms),wouldn't it make more sense to sterilize all humans so that animals might flourish in a hundred or so years? e) Knowledge is irrelevant. What is kno
Actually "balanced" means treating all things equally. That means: * 1/4 True information * 1/4 False information used to justify an agenda or conspiracy theory * 1/4 Talk about things not reported to be true or false but could be verified if the commentators actually did some homework * 1/4 Irrelevant banter about Paris Hilton's new diet and how it affects everything
> Just because mainstream internet providers are dropping it doesn't mean it is dying. Usenet is immortal, > like Dracula, it will never die.
SPAM: [after SPAM's cut off both of the UseNet's arms] Look, you stupid Bastard. You've got no arms left. UseNet: Yes I have. SPAM: *Look*! UseNet: It's just a flesh wound..... SPAM: Look, I'll have your leg. [Recieves a very sharp kick] Right! [Chops off one of the UseNet's legs] UseNet: Right! I'll do you for that! SPAM: You'll what? UseNet: Come here! SPAM: What are you going to do, bleed on me?! UseNet: I'm invincible! SPAM: You're a looney. UseNet: The UseNet always triumphs! Have at you! Come on then. [Hopping on one leg towards SPAM] [SPAM chops his other leg off, leaving his body upright on the ground.] UseNet: Alright, we'll call it a draw. SPAM: Come, Patsy! UseNet: Oh, oh I see. Running away, eh?! You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!!
[Fade to black.]
Netcraft: Bring out yer dead. [Hits gong] Mass Media: Here's one. Dead UseNet: I'm not dead! Netcraft: What? Mass Media: Nothing. Here's your ninepence. Dead UseNet: I'm not dead! Netcraft: 'Ere, he says he's not dead. Mass Media: Yes he is. Dead UseNet: I'm not! Netcraft: He isn't! Mass Media: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill. Dead UseNet: I'm getting betta! Mass Media: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment. Netcraft: I can't take 'im like that! It's against regulation! Dead UseNet: I don't want to go on the cart! Mass Media: Oh, don't be such a baby! Netcraft: I can't take him. Dead UseNet: I feel fine! [Mass Media knocks UseNet dead]
> I don't think anyone would complain about Microsoft submitting standards for approval.
Why not? The ISO mandate is to have one standard per task and ensure that any new standard should reuse other ISO standards and not try to reinvent the wheel.
Any company submits a duplicate standard and reinvents ISO standardized from the date stamp to graphics files for no other reason than to get government contracts and ensure vendor lock-in, it's right to complain no matter who is doing the submission.
> I for one have a great deal of distaste for fanatics of all stripes, and I'm afraid Stallman and his more opinionated supporters do qualify as fanatics
Actually, even though I don't subscribe to Stallman's rigid views, I don't see a problem of them.
He and his followers are equivalent to the Amish. The want to live in a world with certain constraints so that they can live in a society with certain rewards.
Anyone who's been the victim of vendor lock-in or abandon-ware or forced obsolescence or had to support software where you don't have access to the source (so you don't even know what's going on) or has had to deal with security (e.g. Sony CDs) or has had to deal with paternalistic vendors that say "You don't need to now that" or "You can only run this software on hardware the vendor decides when the vendor decides for how long the vendor decides in which way the vendor decides and the vendor has the right to change terms whenever he feels like it", should feel sympathetic.
I (or my family or my work) been burned by all the above, and I can understand why someone would want to build all the tools necessary so that they can become self sufficient. OOXML violates pretty much every one of these issues raised.
I think your distaste has more to do with the evangelicalism within the Stallman camp. There's nothing wrong with evangelicalism per say. How are people supposed to know that there is a better way if they're not informed. The problem comes when the evangelical education and invitation turns pushiness and forced choice. As Sir Winston Churchill once stated, "A [bad] fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.".
Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, SUSE, and others already agree to shipping the LSB for some time now.
If at least three of these can agree to ship the same LSB version at approximately the same time, they won't be doing anything new, but they could gain the benefit of sharing bug reports, sharing device drivers (since a standard kernel would be the focal point for driver development), even sharing management tools (since they all assume the same LSB version), and better support from 3rd party proprietary products like Flash, Oracle, and VMWare (which still hasn't shipped a working version for the Ubuntu LTS kernel). Granted, the last point might cause, FSF devoties to throw fits, but unfortunately some of us wouldn't be able to move to Linux without these products (e.g. I use Oracle at work and my wife needs VMWare to access some windows specific functionality on her bank that crashes KVM and VirtualBox and does not work at all in WINE).
Given that the LSB already exists, I see little downside in taking this one step and lots of upsides.
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> That is not true. It is based on different axioms than science, but not on lack of evidence. I
Correction. The axioms of science arose from the Judeo-Christian world view, so science has the same axioms. The main parts of the scientific method are:
(a) the universe is orderly (because it was designed by an orderly God.) so it's possible to discover its regular laws
(b) man is rational (because he was designed by a rational God and man is in the image of God), so it is possible for us to discover the universe through reason and observation
(c) it is ethical to manipulate the universe (i.e. the universe is not God)
(d) man can be irrational (because man is fallen) and delusional (due to pride and arrogance as a result of the fall) so he needs checks and balances (like the scientific community and statistical methods) to know truth.
Now the secular world drops off the reasoning Bacon and others used to formulate the scientific method, and many Christians don't bother looking up their own history and the assumptions of their own faith and assume that "science is worldly, so it's bad", but that's humanity for you.
What you're referring to when you say "different axioms" is not science but logical positivism, which states that the universe, matter/energy and natural law are all that ever existed or ever will exist and there is nothing outside of "nature" (As an aside, "nature" used to mean "God's will" but now means something far more limited.).
Logical positivism is completely compatible with some forms of Deism (i.e. God is a programmer of this "Game of Life" we call the universe, and he never debugs tweaks his program or otherwise interacts with the game), Stoicism, Epicureanism, Confucianism, Taoism (if you assume that Yi/Yang forces can be measured and quantified), and Greek Mythology (Greek Gods are just Q-like aliens which are a product of creation). But it is fundamentally opposed to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, and many other metaphysical theories.
Fortunately, science is neutral ground where these metaphysical theories may have dialog. Some metaphysical theories (e.g. Stoics who think Reason can be perfected so we don't need to do experiments, just philosophize) might think that some axioms are redundant, and some might think that some axioms are irrelevant (e.g. the world is just an illusion, so discoveries about the world are little different than wasting your time discovering the physics and science of WoW or a dream).
But for those that wish to discover their world, whatever the reason, science is a common language.
We just have to make sure that it stays a common ground.
It's not about being childish. The key problem is, Microsoft is currently using it's monopoly in one area to try to create monopolies in other areas, such as mail (MSN/Exchange), web standards (IE/ActiveX), web framework (SilverLight/.NET), games (XBox), music (Zune), DRM (WMV), office software and document formats (MSOffice, OOXML), etc. Lately, Microsoft has been hobbled in its attempt by the failure of Windows Vista, but if Windows 7 succeeds, you can expect Microsoft to return to its old ways and it may eventually succeed.
Microsoft's power to create new monopolies, lies in four areas:
* Exchange
* IE
* MS Office
* Ties to MSN (Not firm, but Microsoft has tried to tie users to Passport in the past)
Windows Admins and developers can automatically assume that if you have Windows, you'll use Exchange, IE, MS Office, and anything required by these apps.
If users are given choice, it's no longer a safe bet. It can be done in a fairly straightforward manner. Force Microsoft not to install any of these apps in the default Windows install. Then provide a supplementary CD, whereby users have a choice of picking a pre-selected list of software which would include:
* IE
* Opera
* Firefox
* Google Chrome
* Thunderbird
* Exchange Client
* OpenOffice
* MS Works or MS Office Trial Version (which can be unlocked by purchasing an activation code online)
with a brief blurb by each software vendor (not Microsoft) why you should pick their software over the others.
In such a situation, Microsoft would be on equal footing as other software, so it couldn't leverage it's monopoly. If people *choose* Microsoft software over the alternatives, then it will win on merit, not tie-in.
Obviously a fridge wouldn't work -- it can't go at 88 mph.
A washing machine, however, would have no difficulty at going that fast:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_Fiction:_Boom_or_Bust
You'd just be incredibly dizzy.:-)
> Which is just not possible. Where is the CD burning program in GNOME that beats K3B? Where is the music player that beats Amarok? In the
> other direction, where is the office suite that beats OpenOffice.org? You cannot avoid mixing GTK and Qt apps on a desktop without hurting
> yourself.
This is the key difference for the desktop split. Why do you mean by "beat"?
If you want a no-nonsense desktop and desktop apps that allows you to do your work without getting in your way, then GNOME and GNOME apps beat KDE and KDE apps. Personally, I can't stand either K3B and Amarok.
If you want a pimped up desktop and desktop apps that allow you to do anything you want, then KDE and KDE apps beat GNOME and GNOME apps.
If one or another need dominates, except for one area, then you have a mix.
I personally have a pure desktop...not out of ideology, but simply because GNOME and GNOME apps works better for me. I'm sure plenty of KDE lovers have a pure KDE desktop for the same reason.
If, for some reason, GNOME decided to migrate to Qt (theoretically, it is possible if GNOME 3.0 moves to be more IDL driven and Qt components could be modified to support any missing feature that GNOME needed), GNOME and GNOME apps would still exist separate from KDE and KDE apps simply because GNOME users and KDE users are different.
If it's not obvious, why do children reinvent it every day?
Don't believe me? Go into a toy store and watch spoiled children. They'd point to a toy and say "I want that" and then say "I want that" and then say "I want that", etc, before their parents gather up their requests and go to the cashier.
The 1-click patent is not not only obvious, it has prior art in spoiled children. The key reason few people did online shopping before amazon is that http standards, and in particular encryption, wasn't common enough and up to the level that people would trust it. Also, people wanted to "see and feel" what they were buying. Amazon reviews and other Amazon features and trust in the technology made people feel it was "safe" to shop online.
> The *real* question is, who cares?
> For the majority of us, after enough time passes our lives are pretty much irrelevant.
Well that may be the case for you, because history is irrelevant to you.
But if you could see the ebbs and flows and textures of history across many generations, you'd be able to see how significant a life can be and how seemingly minor events and decision can affect generations to come. You'd see that the winds of change that appear to erode any value and meaning out of life, do little more than blow away the irrelevant fluff off a person's life to reveal the deep grooves of that person's purpose.
Actually, in Ancient Roman society, babies were never adopted...only teens. Why? Because when children reach their teens, you can know their character and if you want to trust them with carrying on your inheritance and your family name. With babies, you never know they'll turn up. In the nature versus nurture forming of character, you might provide good nurture but still turn out bad because of nature (aka genetics).
> It's entirely possible and reasonable we can determine universal laws without having the faintest idea of *why* they are that way.
> 1 + 1 = 2 will be true in any universe
Really? I find the opposite is true.
You need to know "why the laws hold" in order to know if the laws are applicable at all.
Take one liter of water and add one liter of alcohol and mix together. I guarantee you won't get two liters of the mixture. Ditto with one liter of matter and one liter of antimatter.
You might say, that you have to be referring to the same substance, so I'll counter with one ball of mud plus another ball of mud is just one ball of mud.
You might counter that if both balls of mud have the same mass (i.e. 1 kg), then the total will have 2 kg of weight. Fine. Then I can point you to the Banach Tarski paradox ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach_Tarski_paradox ) which shows that it should be possible to cut a two kilogram ball into finite number of non-overlapping pieces and put together to give two two kilogram balls, so 2=2+2.
You might counter that you can't divide a real world solid the way you can divide a mathematical solid. But in that case, you've shown that the real world is not 100% mathematical in every sense, so all the free variable are interchangeable without consequence. T
his is precisely the point and why "quantum test" is genuinely something new as opposed to "an obvious fact that was known for ages". It provides us more information on math-like the universe is. When math corresponds to reality in a nonobvious way, it is important. For instance, I'd be extremely surprised if the Banach Tarski paradox held in real life, though I'm sure someone who believes in multiverses will try to prove me wrong on that.:-)
So how does 1+1=2 in the real world? As an approximation. Most of the time the approximation is very good. But often times it's not, which is why we regularly add in fudge factors in real life (e.g. You've asked for 10 apples, but since my apples are smaller than the typical apple, I'll though in an extra one, so 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=10). People are natural engineers (as opposed to mathematicians), so they don't blink when a fudge factor is added.
That's why it's natural to distrust statistics or metrics. You can't just know the numbers and formulas involved. You need to know the nature of what's being counted.
If you claim you don't distrust statistics, then you would not ask questions if your manager (or teacher) measured your performance based on a set of formulas you trusted but didn't tell you where the numbers that plug into the formula come from.
> For most of human history, people have lived in small tribes where everything they did was known by everyone they knew,'
> Dr. Malone said. 'In some sense we're becoming a global village. Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly.
There's huge difference. In the tribal setting, a small group of people knew everything about each other, but that small group of people had to deal with the consequences of misusing that trust because they lived and died based on the strength of their community.
In the global village, people are numbers with attributes associated with them. You're free to misuse this lack of privacy without bearing the consequences or even seeing the faces of the people whose lives you hurt or even destroy.
More dangerous than you think.
Microsoft has traditionally hired heavily from Waterloo, (e.g. http://blogs.pulver.com/jarnold/archives/2005/11/google_gets_ano.html ).
What do you think when Steve "the chair tosser" Ballmer meets up with Stephen Hawking in his new position as Research Chair?
Cookies don't necessarily mean that they're tracking information. Cookies are an essential part of sessions (at least in PHP).
What you don't see is that Microsoft wants to have it both ways:
(1) Pretend Silverlight is open and crossplatform and supported everywhere
(2) In actuality, only the Microsoft version works.
The complaint merely states that anyone who buys into this doubletalk will be deceived. If you want a real crossplatform API that's more powerful than HTML+SVG, you really have only three choices:
(1) Java, which is now free software
(2) Pick the subset of Flash that works with Gnash so that your code will work everywhere.
(3) If Gnash is too limited, stick to the minimum version of Flash that supports the feature you need...unless you're extremely advanced, that version should be available on all major platforms.
Actually, it's not an infinite regression.
Basically, the argument is:
(a) Something doesn't just pop into existence from nothing for no reason. If you do not believe this, then I have a 4 eyed flying lobster leprechaun to sell you that just popped into existence in front of me.
(b) The nontheological scientific world assumed that the universe was always there, so the question of "why we are here" can be solved by the formula "time plus chance plus matter == you". One didn't need to invoke a "beyond this universe" explanation, because the universe was the foundation of reality.
(c) But in the Big Bang, everything, including the laws of physics came into being, so (b) is false.
(d) So (a) raises the question, who or what created the universe and thus me?
(e) The cyclical model was proposed as a way out, but this was soundly disproven by science.
(f) This leaves something outside our universe as being the initiator of the universe.
That something must satisfy the following criteria: It must be eternal and self-existent (i.e. no-one created it or him, he/it was always there)
(g) This leaves two main hypotheses:
(g.1) an eternal uncaused creator
(g.2) a metauniverse, i.e. a universe outside our own with the suitable properties whereby this universe was created. The multiverse is the best candidate so far.
So basically, you end up with accepting either (g.1) or (g.2) or state that (a) is false (in which case, the sail price has just gone up because the lobster leprechaun now has gills made out of gold).
Yes but wget still rules
And it works even if all you have is punch cards for input and a dot matrix printer for screen output. ;-)
And it has none of that fancy curses based rendering to slow it down.
Considering that the Yahoo-Google would never have happened if the Microsoft didn't try to buy up Yahoo, I don't see how Google can be blamed. Microsoft has a history of buying companies (E.g. Stak-r, Hotmail, etc) in order to rip out it's old technology, replace it with Microsoft technology, ultimately becoming Microsoft. Yahoo succeeded precisely because they were not Microsoft, so if Microsoft did absorb Yahoo, it would have destroyed it. Some speculate that it might have ultimately destroyed Microsoft too, since it would be a huge distraction away from their OS product line (which is the one that is actually making money).
Neither deal was good for Yahoo (or the general public), but the stupid "hostile takeover" rules in the US gave Yahoo no other choice than to pick the lesser of two evils.
Facts don't stand alone. They need to be interpreted in the framework of a world view.
But that's not what the studies found.
In this case, all the article stated was that people who were told the wrong things (by Fox) about something that happened far away (Iraq) that the individuals involved could not confirm on their own, had the wrong view of reality. How on earth could this be otherwise?
Let's take a concrete example. The moon landing. You and I believe that it happened? Did it? Can you actually confirm it yourself? Practically, no (unless you are Bill Gates). So how do we know it happened? We have a trust network that verifies this fact, and that trust network has proved reliable in the past, so we have no reason to doubt it. That's just the way it is and we have to live with the consequences. The best we can do is to show that Fox has been unreliable in things that an individual can verify directly.
BTW, no form of science is possible without this sort of trust network. No person is an island. If you believe everyone loves you, and everyone tells you that they love you (but laugh at you behind your back), you'll likely believe you're lovable no matter how many experiments you run to truly verify it.
The funny thing is, the study's conclusion have been verified nonetheless, simply by the reaction to the objective facts. The objective facts said something that any 5 year old knows, but those trivial facts were extrapolated to support pet prejudices against the Bush administration (which is guilty of many things and can't be defended anyway), religion, and prejudices in favour of a "Science-only" ideology (as if Mozart has anything to do with science).
Actually, in my school, Alchemy *was* discussed in chemistry class and although Ebonics wasn't talked about in English, Pigeon English was. WRT alchemy, it was mentioned it was a precursor to chemistry, and although some ideas were sound and are still in use today, other ideas, like converting base metals into gold weren't (at least not with chemical reactions). Areas related to it, such as mercury poisoning, were also discussed. WRT Pigeon English, it was mentioned that it was a language invented by merchants who had better things to do than learn full blown English but still needed to communicate with English merchants. Do kids in the US not have a broad education in the natural sciences and liberal arts?
Back when I was in school, the boundaries between classes seemed hazy....the history of science in math class....philosophy in history class, archeology in geology class, mechanical engineering in biology class, architecture in classics class. While teaching this way isn't "efficient", every subject seemed to connect to every other subject so that knowledge was a unified whole with various facets and various perspectives.
It seems that classes these days focus more on "efficiency" or "playing it safe political correctness". Pity. No wonder post-modernism has become so wide spread. When things are not taught to fit together, no wonder people think it seems like a mixed up world.
Yes that's often the pattern, but not always, especially in the computer field. Sometimes, a seemingly minor issue is the excuse for radical change. Often the only variable is the timing.
That's how X.org started from XFree86 and XFree86 died -- it would have succeeded in 1990 not 2001.
That's how IBM lost it's PC leadership (trying to force Micro Channel as "The patented successor to ISA") -- it would have succeeded in 1985 but not 1990.
That might be happening with Vista too if Microsoft isn't careful -- it would have succeeded in 2000 possibly not 2006 (time will tell).
I suspect it might be too early for ISO be be junked, but it might be the excuse the highly populated countries of the world (India+Brazil make up a large percentage of the world population) to create their own ISO...especially if they can get China on board. Each of these countries are extremely nationalistic, so they are just looking for a big enough excuse with enough momentum to go their own way. If OOXML is that excuse, that separatist ISO might have preferential treatment in many countries that are trying to escape American and Euro-centric standards.
That's not actually how it's used in the Bible.
To quote James 2-19, Demons have this sort of faith but they're not welcomed by God: http://net.bible.org/passage.php?search=Jas%202:18-19&passage=Jas%202:18-19
It's actually not how it's used most often in real life. Simply put, faith means trust.
Let's assume you're married but it could equally be applied in other close relationships.
* Do you have faith in your wife?
* Are you faithful to her?
* If you close your eyes and fall backwards towards you wife, do you have faith that your wife will at least try to stop you from falling?
* If she says or does something that hurt you, do you still have faith in *her* or do you immediately assume the worst about her?
* If your wife were to try something new that she has no experience in, but you've seen that she's fantastic at improvising, so you have faith that she'll succeed?
On the flip side, if your parents tell you "I have faith that you will win the basket ball game" but you see them betting on the other team, do they really trust you?
> So, "faith in God" in the common senses could imply that one believes he exists, as described, without evidence (an arguably irrational position)
True, it is arguable, which in simple terms means, debatable. Ferocious former Atheist, Anthony Flew (credited for the "Invisible Gardener" parable outlining how stupid believers in God were), switched to Deism (the God of Einstein, Spinoza, Plato, Einstein, and Darwin) precisely because he determined that it was a more rational explanation of the universe and all that there is in it than Atheism.
None of these people are stupid. They looked at the evidence....all the evidence. Granted, there isn't a single piece of evidence that shows God's existence, but the bulk of it tells you that he's there.
It's no different in real life. Getting back to the wife analogy, *why* would you have faith in her? If you give any single situation to prove your point, I could just as easily argue that your interpretation is wrong. However, if you give the sum total of all your experiences, you can build a credible case.
Anyway, here's a question to ponder. Assume that the universe and everything in it is pure matter caught in a cause and effect chain. Essentially pure materialism. You are essentially a bag of marbles held together by natural forces caught in a causal chain that fully determines every move you make. A chair or a rock is no different....you're just composed of different atoms and are configured in different ways, but ultimately, everything is just a bag of causal marbles.
If you truly believe in pure materialism, you must accept the following:
a) There is no difference between you and a chair. What you perceive as life is just an illusion.
b) There is no fundamental difference between breaking your legs and breaking a chair's legs or smashing you to death or smashing a chair to pieces. All you're doing is breaking a few bonds and rearranging the configuration of atoms.
c) All atoms in your body get replaced every decade, so there is nothing that defines who you are other than your overall appearance and even that changes with time. Ultimately, *you* don't exist.
c) There is no such thing as free will....just atoms caught in a causal chain. Evangelical Atheists are thus wasting their time trying to convince anyone, but then again they can't help it, so there's no problem.
d) A consequence of all the above is Humanism or other morality has no foundation in pure materialism and it's actually pretty arrogant to be a Humanist because why are human's more valuable than chairs or rats? If you expand goal of humanism to reduce the total amount of suffering in the world (whatever "suffering" means in materialistic terms),wouldn't it make more sense to sterilize all humans so that animals might flourish in a hundred or so years?
e) Knowledge is irrelevant. What is kno
> RIP ISO 2008
Invalid disk: Corruption found
Actually "balanced" means treating all things equally. That means:
* 1/4 True information
* 1/4 False information used to justify an agenda or conspiracy theory
* 1/4 Talk about things not reported to be true or false but could be verified if the commentators actually did some homework
* 1/4 Irrelevant banter about Paris Hilton's new diet and how it affects everything
> Just because mainstream internet providers are dropping it doesn't mean it is dying. Usenet is immortal,
> like Dracula, it will never die.
SPAM: [after SPAM's cut off both of the UseNet's arms] Look, you stupid Bastard. You've got no arms left. ....
UseNet: Yes I have.
SPAM: *Look*!
UseNet: It's just a flesh wound.
SPAM: Look, I'll have your leg. [Recieves a very sharp kick] Right! [Chops off one of the UseNet's legs]
UseNet: Right! I'll do you for that!
SPAM: You'll what?
UseNet: Come here!
SPAM: What are you going to do, bleed on me?!
UseNet: I'm invincible!
SPAM: You're a looney.
UseNet: The UseNet always triumphs! Have at you! Come on then. [Hopping on one leg towards SPAM]
[SPAM chops his other leg off, leaving his body upright on the ground.]
UseNet: Alright, we'll call it a draw.
SPAM: Come, Patsy!
UseNet: Oh, oh I see. Running away, eh?! You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!!
[Fade to black.]
Netcraft: Bring out yer dead. [Hits gong]
Mass Media: Here's one.
Dead UseNet: I'm not dead!
Netcraft: What?
Mass Media: Nothing. Here's your ninepence.
Dead UseNet: I'm not dead!
Netcraft: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Mass Media: Yes he is.
Dead UseNet: I'm not!
Netcraft: He isn't!
Mass Media: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Dead UseNet: I'm getting betta!
Mass Media: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
Netcraft: I can't take 'im like that! It's against regulation!
Dead UseNet: I don't want to go on the cart!
Mass Media: Oh, don't be such a baby!
Netcraft: I can't take him.
Dead UseNet: I feel fine!
[Mass Media knocks UseNet dead]
One counter-example for Microsoft: Windows XP. RIP.
> I don't think anyone would complain about Microsoft submitting standards for approval.
Why not? The ISO mandate is to have one standard per task and ensure that any new standard should reuse other ISO standards and not try to reinvent the wheel.
Any company submits a duplicate standard and reinvents ISO standardized from the date stamp to graphics files for no other reason than to get government contracts and ensure vendor lock-in, it's right to complain no matter who is doing the submission.
> I for one have a great deal of distaste for fanatics of all stripes, and I'm afraid Stallman and his more opinionated supporters do qualify as fanatics
Actually, even though I don't subscribe to Stallman's rigid views, I don't see a problem of them.
He and his followers are equivalent to the Amish. The want to live in a world with certain constraints so that they can live in a society with certain rewards.
Anyone who's been the victim of vendor lock-in or abandon-ware or forced obsolescence or had to support software where you don't have access to the source (so you don't even know what's going on) or has had to deal with security (e.g. Sony CDs) or has had to deal with paternalistic vendors that say "You don't need to now that" or "You can only run this software on hardware the vendor decides when the vendor decides for how long the vendor decides in which way the vendor decides and the vendor has the right to change terms whenever he feels like it", should feel sympathetic.
I (or my family or my work) been burned by all the above, and I can understand why someone would want to build all the tools necessary so that they can become self sufficient.
OOXML violates pretty much every one of these issues raised.
I think your distaste has more to do with the evangelicalism within the Stallman camp. There's nothing wrong with evangelicalism per say. How are people supposed to know that there is a better way if they're not informed. The problem comes when the evangelical education and invitation turns pushiness and forced choice. As Sir Winston Churchill once stated, "A [bad] fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.".
You're forgetting the Linux Standards Base.
Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, SUSE, and others already agree to shipping the LSB for some time now.
If at least three of these can agree to ship the same LSB version at approximately the same time, they won't be doing anything new, but they could gain the benefit of sharing bug reports, sharing device drivers (since a standard kernel would be the focal point for driver development), even sharing management tools (since they all assume the same LSB version), and better support from 3rd party proprietary products like Flash, Oracle, and VMWare (which still hasn't shipped a working version for the Ubuntu LTS kernel). Granted, the last point might cause, FSF devoties to throw fits, but unfortunately some of us wouldn't be able to move to Linux without these products (e.g. I use Oracle at work and my wife needs VMWare to access some windows specific functionality on her bank that crashes KVM and VirtualBox and does not work at all in WINE).
Given that the LSB already exists, I see little downside in taking this one step and lots of upsides.