Funny, you'd think this crowd would love things that go boom.
Big ba-da-boom
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: 1
>trial version corrupted *all* of my.doc files to be only compatible with the new Office 2007
I searched for and re-saved all the.doc files on your machine?! wow And you didn't check to see if files were back-compatible before continuing on newer ones?! wow
> The vacuum argument is there, but it's far from the only argument he makes
I just had a hard time getting around it. Everything I read ended up coming through the lens of "well, if he's missing this, what else is he missing that I'm not thinking of?" Sure, science does OK with the info is free angle, but it had a long tradition of that, with a tumultuous period where that changed. What will that tumult look like in our society for it to happen to everything else? Without addressing that (which I didn't see), how can anyone say that anarchy would be better?
> Or consider this: Win Wenger once commented that he knows many engineers, quite a few of them in the automotive and energy fields; and he reports that many of these engineers believe world-changing breakthroughs have been made in their fields, but patented and buried by large corporations to protect profits from old technologies. Inadmissible hearsay, I know, I know. But sometimes a rumor is all you hear until long after.
I find this suspicious. If they were patented, they'd be public info. I can't imagine that not a single one of these guys hasn't leaked the name or number of a patent related to them. Can't researchers work on patented stuff, and come up with advances for it? They just can't make a profit on it. (Or do I misunderstand how patents are supposed to work)
If they're there, what's stopping an individual from building it on his own? I can look at a patent, and legally build one for myself, can't I? I just can't sell it or make a profit from it.
I haven't made it all the way through the essay yet, but I'm finding that it keeps coming back to the vacuum concept.
IP is bad because the person who created it didn't create it in a vacuum, so not everyone who was a part it gets to benefit. Your teachers don't get royalties for teaching you the tools you used, etc. My problem is that they all actually do seem to be covered in one way or another. Teachers, trainers, etc all get covered as basically works for hire, so they have bargained their part of the IP process off, or they are sharing public domain info, etc...
I feel "Listeners of music should be reimbursed because without them there would be no value either" just around the corner, and I'm having a hard time taking the rest of this seriously.
>Since the mid 1980s, US and Japanese corporations have taken out over a dozen patents on neem-based materials I would think if it'd been done in India for ages, these things would fall under the "obvious" bit, and not be patent worthy...
> As you know, nuclear proponents continually ignore the major immediate problem with nuclear power -- waste storage. Nobody wants more glass-encased nuclear waste in their neighborhood
As long as I get to see how it's being run and it actually makes some sense, and have monitoring of my own, and some sort of financial recourse in the event my house becomes uninhablitable, I wouldn't mind a nuclear waste dump in my back yard.
Then again, I'm in earthquake country, near the ocean, and several other not such great factors, so It will never come my way. But some of us wouldn't mind =-)
Maybe he figured that most everyone else would answer his direct question, but he thought might have deeper insight into the problem?
I don't know how many times I've been focused on a problem for a long time, ventured down a solution path, and ended up asking for help for something complicated; only to have that guy ask me what I was thinking. When I explained the problem, it turns out I had missed something that drastically reduced it.
Sort of like the ol' America space pen vs. Russian Pencil story.
In other words, he was getting at the underlying concern, not the question asked. (think "Do I look fat?"... that's really not what they're asking)
I spend an unfortunate amount of time in VBScript land, and find it amusing that the main language I actually need to search for info on isn't in Google CodeSearch. (No, I don't want VB, and no they're not the same thing, though they are annoyingly close)
> consumer VoIP was non-existent and unforeseen 10 years ago
Not true... I know AOL (believe it or not) had this on target at least 10 years ago. It just stayed on the shelf for unspecified reasons. (read: couldn't figure out how to make it simple enough for the consumer, and couldn't figure out how to market it appropriately)
But they did foresee it, and I'm sure many other companies did as well.
"No evidence of a reversal? It goes down very fast, then it goes down slower, then it seems to flatten out. If you draw the "obvious" conclusion, the next step is to start increasing, then to start increasing faster.
No evidence? Who cares! I've got a graph that supports what I already think, so I've got proof enough."
As I mentioned before, and I don't think is coming across clearly: I don't believe there is any causation here myself.
My point is that if these graphs are shown in such a way that a normal person sees them, and doesn't bother to read the setup you have for them (which is the only place you now have to undo their incorrect interpretations), they will just believe what they already believe, but even stronger. In fact, now there's a good chance many of them will see you as a liar trying to misuse statistics to warp the world to your point of view. (When in fact, that's what they're doing)
You will have just confirmed to them that they are right, and any logic that would have worked before, now has to work extra hard to be understood... which means most people won't do it.
If you're going to use a set of graphs, make sure that the only obvious interpretations are the ones you intend them to make. Otherwise they will just strengthen the opposition to what you are trying to say.
To repeat: There is no need to try to debunk anything about what I said about these graphs, as I don't believe what I wrote... I was just saying that's a possible way of interpreting them if you don't think too clearly about it, and we know folks in general don't think clearly and critically in general.
Right, but the newer realistic games might be undoing the good previous generations of games have done, and if that reversal keeps true, then it will escalate. So, when we get to 1024 bit games, there won't be anyone left to play them because we'll all be dead.
The data in those two charts in concert can be read either way... that was my only point.
If these charts are going to be used anywhere other than here, preaching to the choir, they can very easily make exactly the opposite point.
Right, so 8-bit graphics really helped things, 16-bit graphics didn't help as much, and 32+ bit helped even less. It seems that the more realistic the games are, the more violence we.
Or in Jacko's terms... the more realistic the murder simulator, the more damaging to society.
> We also only have two viable political parties, so it's less likely that we agree with our elected representatives on every issue.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around this one... With 2 parties, they winners had to compromise with lots of people in order to get elected, so you end up not so much with "the favorite" person, but the "least unfavorite"... the one who is likely to piss the fewest people off. With 10 parties, you don't have to compromise as much, so you end up with someone who will piss more people off more severely.
I'm not sure the graphs clearly show what you think they show.
The first graph shows Violent crime dramatically dropping from 1973-2003. The second shows a dramatic increase in modern Video Game consoles from 2000-2003.
If you notice on the first graph, right around the year 2000, that dramatic decrease is getting much less dramatic, Almost like the steady decrease is being slowed down by the sales of game consoles.
Who's to say the violence graph doesn't just start increasing after 2005, once people have had a few years to be corrupted by violent games?
Disclaimer: Jack is nuts, and I don't think video games cause violence... just be careful with graphs
Personally, I'd love access to the source code so I can better determine how systems are interacting when something goes wrong with something we paid for, but it's not necessary.
Feedback like this can help open up other avenues for troubleshooting and understanding, and working with our TAM, I've had more than one instance where something we've seen has turned into a note in one of these KBs, or has caused part of a KB to not go public.
I can kinda understand it though... I've had to fight off more than my share of "We should do this because Microsoft says so" from the technical management (who don't have the time to take a nuanced understanding of the issue at hand)
If they say it, thousands of customers will implement it without understanding the things that might break by removing that setting. Then they call Microsoft for help fixing it. (Oddly enough, you'd think that would actually drive them to do this, since it would guarantee more partner hours to burn off)
(Yes, we have a parallel dev and test environment before things go production, but there is no way that blackbox testing for the scope we deal with is going to catch all of even the most glaring of issues. You have to actually know what's going on, and understand how things interact. Wanna disable the DHCP client on your statically assigned server? careful... might screw up DNS a couple weeks from now when things start expiring.)
There are many situations where the threat of dragging someone into court is just a cost factored into the dealings... They figure there's a limit under which most people will just say "Aw screw it, let's get this over with", and move on.
If you're getting involved in something important to you (and losing your data would be to me), always consider what it would take to enforce your agreement, and factor that in against what you'd be willing to do, your likelyhood of success, your tolerance, etc...
I've read several posts, and I still don't get it.
If you want your stuff back, make sure that's part of the up front agreement. Maybe they're able to lower their prices (doubtful seeing their prices, but hey, for sake of argument) by factoring in their ability to refurbish the replaced part. If that's the theory at all, the difference in price is effectively what they're paying you to make your old drive theirs.
Or more concretely... why is that drive still yours? Contracts require consideration. You have entered into a contract with them, trading the consideration of "making my computer do something useful again" for "some money and and whatever parts we replace". Doesn't seem patently unfair, as long as it's understood up front.
Others have mentioned the car analogy... but failed to mention that in most cases you have to ask for the return parts "UP FRONT". If you don't make that request at the beginning of your transaction, the shop is under no obligation to save your parts for you. And as I understand it, that's more or less Apple's policy as well. So, it's really no different. (And the "UP FRONT" part largely disclaims anyone's idea that it's your natural property rights that caused this law to come into effect... it was entirely a way to deal with constant fraud on the mechanic's part)
The only thing I'm seeing that Apple would have to do to come in line with the auto-repair law would be to post a sign in their shop (that you're not going to read anyway) informing you of the ask/deliver policy on parts.
> How about they fire him and he leaves with NO money?
I'm guessing you've never had to fire someone at a large corporation? With HR and the lawyers advising you, it can be nearly impossible to do in a short period of time. I had one low level employee I wanted to fire, because he really did not do his job well enough, but it took me 4 months to make it happen. (I'm in an at will state, and so are the headquarters...)
On top of that, with millions of dollars at stake, he's HIGHLY motivated to fight the firing, now costing millions in attorney's fees, bad publicity, and organizational distraction.
Now factor in the high correlation between sociopathic behaviors and the CxO levels folks, and you've got a really exciting playing field.
> You misunderstand. Its predicated upon the *woman* being a person
No, I don't. There is no question of her being a person.
From the Amendment: "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
If the fetus is a "person", then you have conflicting personal interests. Mom's right to life, liberty, and property. Fetus's right to life at that moment. Does mom's constitutional right to property and liberty override fetus's right to life? Do we equate the importance of life and property?
Mom has a chance at due process, but arguably the fetus does not. That is unless you allow mom to answer on its behalf, in which case, why would or wouldn't you factor other restrictions that are in place... ie, a Mom can't just decide their 13 year should be killed because they're too expensive... Is there a difference between life at 2nd trimester and life at 31st trimester? If mom was raped, should abortion be legal? If separated-Dad drops a kid of at Mom's and disappears, can mom just kick the kid out or does she have to provide? (while tracking that jerk down)
If the fetus is not a person, then things get much simpler legally... but that is an extremely distasteful statement to most people. Some can shrug that off, some get bogged down with it. Some thoughtfully come up with a consistent answer...
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, you'd think this crowd would love things that go boom.
Big ba-da-boom
>trial version corrupted *all* of my .doc files to be only compatible with the new Office 2007
.doc files on your machine?! wow
I searched for and re-saved all the
And you didn't check to see if files were back-compatible before continuing on newer ones?! wow
> The vacuum argument is there, but it's far from the only argument he makes
I just had a hard time getting around it. Everything I read ended up coming through the lens of "well, if he's missing this, what else is he missing that I'm not thinking of?"
Sure, science does OK with the info is free angle, but it had a long tradition of that, with a tumultuous period where that changed.
What will that tumult look like in our society for it to happen to everything else? Without addressing that (which I didn't see), how can anyone say that anarchy would be better?
> Or consider this: Win Wenger once commented that he knows many engineers, quite a few of them in the automotive and energy fields; and he reports that many of these engineers believe world-changing breakthroughs have been made in their fields, but patented and buried by large corporations to protect profits from old technologies. Inadmissible hearsay, I know, I know. But sometimes a rumor is all you hear until long after.
I find this suspicious. If they were patented, they'd be public info.
I can't imagine that not a single one of these guys hasn't leaked the name or number of a patent related to them.
Can't researchers work on patented stuff, and come up with advances for it? They just can't make a profit on it. (Or do I misunderstand how patents are supposed to work)
If they're there, what's stopping an individual from building it on his own? I can look at a patent, and legally build one for myself, can't I?
I just can't sell it or make a profit from it.
I haven't made it all the way through the essay yet, but I'm finding that it keeps coming back to the vacuum concept.
IP is bad because the person who created it didn't create it in a vacuum, so not everyone who was a part it gets to benefit.
Your teachers don't get royalties for teaching you the tools you used, etc.
My problem is that they all actually do seem to be covered in one way or another.
Teachers, trainers, etc all get covered as basically works for hire, so they have bargained their part of the IP process off, or they are sharing public domain info, etc...
I feel "Listeners of music should be reimbursed because without them there would be no value either" just around the corner, and I'm having a hard time taking the rest of this seriously.
>Since the mid 1980s, US and Japanese corporations have taken out over a dozen patents on neem-based materials
I would think if it'd been done in India for ages, these things would fall under the "obvious" bit, and not be patent worthy...
7 still says it made the top ten though, so it's not all bad.
> As you know, nuclear proponents continually ignore the major immediate problem with nuclear power -- waste storage. Nobody wants more glass-encased nuclear waste in their neighborhood
As long as I get to see how it's being run and it actually makes some sense, and have monitoring of my own, and some sort of financial recourse in the event my house becomes uninhablitable, I wouldn't mind a nuclear waste dump in my back yard.
Then again, I'm in earthquake country, near the ocean, and several other not such great factors, so It will never come my way. But some of us wouldn't mind =-)
I wasn't meaning to represent it as the truth. I assumed everyone here already knew. (Otherwise I would have actually told the story)
The moral of the story was the point.
Maybe he figured that most everyone else would answer his direct question, but he thought might have deeper insight into the problem?
I don't know how many times I've been focused on a problem for a long time, ventured down a solution path, and ended up asking for help for something complicated; only to have that guy ask me what I was thinking. When I explained the problem, it turns out I had missed something that drastically reduced it.
Sort of like the ol' America space pen vs. Russian Pencil story.
In other words, he was getting at the underlying concern, not the question asked. (think "Do I look fat?"... that's really not what they're asking)
I spend an unfortunate amount of time in VBScript land, and find it amusing that the main language I actually need to search for info on isn't in Google CodeSearch.
(No, I don't want VB, and no they're not the same thing, though they are annoyingly close)
Top numbers from 1 to 10:
1. 10
2. 1
3. 9
4. 2
5. 5
6. 3
7. 8
8. 4
9. 6
10.7
> consumer VoIP was non-existent and unforeseen 10 years ago
Not true... I know AOL (believe it or not) had this on target at least 10 years ago. It just stayed on the shelf for unspecified reasons. (read: couldn't figure out how to make it simple enough for the consumer, and couldn't figure out how to market it appropriately)
But they did foresee it, and I'm sure many other companies did as well.
"No evidence of a reversal? It goes down very fast, then it goes down slower, then it seems to flatten out. If you draw the "obvious" conclusion, the next step is to start increasing, then to start increasing faster.
No evidence? Who cares! I've got a graph that supports what I already think, so I've got proof enough."
As I mentioned before, and I don't think is coming across clearly: I don't believe there is any causation here myself.
My point is that if these graphs are shown in such a way that a normal person sees them, and doesn't bother to read the setup you have for them (which is the only place you now have to undo their incorrect interpretations), they will just believe what they already believe, but even stronger. In fact, now there's a good chance many of them will see you as a liar trying to misuse statistics to warp the world to your point of view. (When in fact, that's what they're doing)
You will have just confirmed to them that they are right, and any logic that would have worked before, now has to work extra hard to be understood... which means most people won't do it.
If you're going to use a set of graphs, make sure that the only obvious interpretations are the ones you intend them to make. Otherwise they will just strengthen the opposition to what you are trying to say.
To repeat: There is no need to try to debunk anything about what I said about these graphs, as I don't believe what I wrote... I was just saying that's a possible way of interpreting them if you don't think too clearly about it, and we know folks in general don't think clearly and critically in general.
Right, but the newer realistic games might be undoing the good previous generations of games have done, and if that reversal keeps true, then it will escalate. So, when we get to 1024 bit games, there won't be anyone left to play them because we'll all be dead.
The data in those two charts in concert can be read either way... that was my only point.
If these charts are going to be used anywhere other than here, preaching to the choir, they can very easily make exactly the opposite point.
OK, taking it that way it still stands.
Right, so 8-bit graphics really helped things, 16-bit graphics didn't help as much, and 32+ bit helped even less.
It seems that the more realistic the games are, the more violence we.
Or in Jacko's terms... the more realistic the murder simulator, the more damaging to society.
> We also only have two viable political parties, so it's less likely that we agree with our elected representatives on every issue.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around this one...
With 2 parties, they winners had to compromise with lots of people in order to get elected, so you end up not so much with "the favorite" person, but the "least unfavorite"... the one who is likely to piss the fewest people off.
With 10 parties, you don't have to compromise as much, so you end up with someone who will piss more people off more severely.
I'm not sure the graphs clearly show what you think they show.
The first graph shows Violent crime dramatically dropping from 1973-2003.
The second shows a dramatic increase in modern Video Game consoles from 2000-2003.
If you notice on the first graph, right around the year 2000, that dramatic decrease is getting much less dramatic,
Almost like the steady decrease is being slowed down by the sales of game consoles.
Who's to say the violence graph doesn't just start increasing after 2005, once people have had a few years to be corrupted by violent games?
Disclaimer: Jack is nuts, and I don't think video games cause violence... just be careful with graphs
We're not all developers out here.
Personally, I'd love access to the source code so I can better determine how systems are interacting when something goes wrong with something we paid for, but it's not necessary.
Feedback like this can help open up other avenues for troubleshooting and understanding, and working with our TAM, I've had more than one instance where something we've seen has turned into a note in one of these KBs, or has caused part of a KB to not go public.
I can kinda understand it though... I've had to fight off more than my share of "We should do this because Microsoft says so" from the technical management (who don't have the time to take a nuanced understanding of the issue at hand)
If they say it, thousands of customers will implement it without understanding the things that might break by removing that setting.
Then they call Microsoft for help fixing it. (Oddly enough, you'd think that would actually drive them to do this, since it would guarantee more partner hours to burn off)
(Yes, we have a parallel dev and test environment before things go production, but there is no way that blackbox testing for the scope we deal with is going to catch all of even the most glaring of issues. You have to actually know what's going on, and understand how things interact. Wanna disable the DHCP client on your statically assigned server? careful... might screw up DNS a couple weeks from now when things start expiring.)
That's an excellent point.
There are many situations where the threat of dragging someone into court is just a cost factored into the dealings... They figure there's a limit under which most people will just say "Aw screw it, let's get this over with", and move on.
If you're getting involved in something important to you (and losing your data would be to me), always consider what it would take to enforce your agreement, and factor that in against what you'd be willing to do, your likelyhood of success, your tolerance, etc...
I've read several posts, and I still don't get it.
If you want your stuff back, make sure that's part of the up front agreement.
Maybe they're able to lower their prices (doubtful seeing their prices, but hey, for sake of argument) by factoring in their ability to refurbish the replaced part. If that's the theory at all, the difference in price is effectively what they're paying you to make your old drive theirs.
Or more concretely... why is that drive still yours? Contracts require consideration. You have entered into a contract with them, trading the consideration of "making my computer do something useful again" for "some money and and whatever parts we replace". Doesn't seem patently unfair, as long as it's understood up front.
Others have mentioned the car analogy... but failed to mention that in most cases you have to ask for the return parts "UP FRONT". If you don't make that request at the beginning of your transaction, the shop is under no obligation to save your parts for you. And as I understand it, that's more or less Apple's policy as well. So, it's really no different. (And the "UP FRONT" part largely disclaims anyone's idea that it's your natural property rights that caused this law to come into effect... it was entirely a way to deal with constant fraud on the mechanic's part)
The only thing I'm seeing that Apple would have to do to come in line with the auto-repair law would be to post a sign in their shop (that you're not going to read anyway) informing you of the ask/deliver policy on parts.
> How about they fire him and he leaves with NO money?
I'm guessing you've never had to fire someone at a large corporation? With HR and the lawyers advising you, it can be nearly impossible to do in a short period of time.
I had one low level employee I wanted to fire, because he really did not do his job well enough, but it took me 4 months to make it happen. (I'm in an at will state, and so are the headquarters...)
On top of that, with millions of dollars at stake, he's HIGHLY motivated to fight the firing, now costing millions in attorney's fees, bad publicity, and organizational distraction.
Now factor in the high correlation between sociopathic behaviors and the CxO levels folks, and you've got a really exciting playing field.
>I am so confused.
Now you're getting it!
heh, or bad enough luck
He shows CVE-2007-3896 only in July, but it was reissued in November as well... why wasn't that counted in November?
The July patch closed that CVE, and the November patched more of it... It should count both times, since they said it was closed.
I'd be interested to analyze them all next to each other, but not interested enough to actually dig into it myself =-)
> You misunderstand. Its predicated upon the *woman* being a person
No, I don't. There is no question of her being a person.
From the Amendment: "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
If the fetus is a "person", then you have conflicting personal interests.
Mom's right to life, liberty, and property.
Fetus's right to life at that moment.
Does mom's constitutional right to property and liberty override fetus's right to life? Do we equate the importance of life and property?
Mom has a chance at due process, but arguably the fetus does not.
That is unless you allow mom to answer on its behalf, in which case, why would or wouldn't you factor other restrictions that are in place... ie, a Mom can't just decide their 13 year should be killed because they're too expensive... Is there a difference between life at 2nd trimester and life at 31st trimester?
If mom was raped, should abortion be legal? If separated-Dad drops a kid of at Mom's and disappears, can mom just kick the kid out or does she have to provide? (while tracking that jerk down)
If the fetus is not a person, then things get much simpler legally... but that is an extremely distasteful statement to most people. Some can shrug that off, some get bogged down with it. Some thoughtfully come up with a consistent answer...
It's just not simple.