This isn't exactly new information. It's been widely available for decades that yes, in fact, you do register subliminal messages. But it's also been proven time and again, that they have a statistically insignificant effect on your desires, and CERTAINLY not enough to change your opinions.
100% true, but it is a complaint against the summary, not the actual article (as usual). TFA is about a more specific topic, and has humbler conclusions than the summary would indicate.
Regarding the summary, as you say, this is old news. Subliminal effects are easy to see in the lab - priming, for example - but have very minor effects. Not enough to base an ad campaign on.
You do realize that the "Trail of Tears" is what the forced relocation of the Cherokee people, during which about 1/4 were killed off from disease, is called, don't you*?
*If you aren't from the US, then I back off the "you should know this" attitude.
Well, I learned something just now, I had no idea that that was a US cultural reference; I am, in fact, not from the US (lived there as a child for a few years, decades ago). Actually I didn't even think it might be a reference, so I didn't Google it. It didn't have the 'look' of a quote, to me. (I guess that shows what I know)
Ok, now that I am informed, I agree with you completely, 'trail of tears' is definitely extreme for this situation.
Extreme? Not in the least, some people live off of their inboxes. This can cause real personal and financial damage.
Speaking of tears, I had a good laugh when I read this:
After the latest update which required a restart
I really don't intend to be mean, but this just took me back a few years to when I was using Windows. I had totally forgotten about updates that require reboots (well, kernel updates do, even on Linux). Amusing, to me at least.
Anyhow, OneCare has bugs, not that surprising really, all software projects have bugs, Microsoft, open-source, or whatever.
...and some of this is just plain wrong. For example, he writes
Let's take indemnification; this should be a topic every company should suddenly be looking very closely at. Microsoft just got nailed with a whopping $1.53 Billion, that's with a "B", judgment for the use of a common music standard. They did this because they indemnified Dell and Gateway, the companies initially targeted. If they had used Linux instead of Windows, it would be Dell and Gateway hit with some fraction of this judgment (and even a fraction of $1.52B is a big number). So where is the coverage? Don't you think it should be a hot topic right now, so where is the chatter?
(emphasis mine)
This is just misleading. Surely Enderle knows the truth, which is that the major vendors do provide indemnification, just like Microsoft? Red Hat do, as do Novell; heck, even Oracle [PDF warning].
"Don't you think it should be a hot topic right now, so where is the chatter?" writes Enderle. Yes, this was a hot topic - many months ago. As a result of that chatter, the major vendors started to provide or emphasized that they already provide indemnification. Is Enderle really qualified to write about Linux if he doesn't know that? (I am giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he isn't intentionally misleading readers)
That's a list for the Linux kernel, and yes, Ubuntu (Canonical) don't appear there. But Ubuntu do provide support for several non-kernel FOSS projects. For example, Upstart, Nouveau, GNOME (they provided a Subversion server for the recent GNOME migration from CVS), and probably others I forgot or haven't heard of.
Yes, I am puzzled too. TFA seems to use 'open source' in a way that I, at least, am not familiar with. Basically they call 'open source' something that includes the open access movement (mentioned recently on Slashdot - duped, even) and related things. This is very close to what Eben Moglen (of the FSF, etc.) calls 'free culture'. Freedom as a whole would include FOSS, but FOSS is just one part of it; another is free sharing of information and culture, which includes filesharing as well as projects like MIT's Open CourseWare.
True, but as I said elsewhere in this thread, Microsoft are paying Novell far more for their patents than vice versa. So, I don't think this deal is meant to be the basis for patent lawsuits against Novell (Novell would have more to gain).
Microsoft's angle is probably something else - lawsuits against other people, or insurance against Linux taking off (by making money off of it through Novell), or by getting legitimization through Novell (as shown in TFA), etc.
If I recall correctly, the deal with Microsoft is only for five years. If in five years Microsoft thinks that Linux is a serious threat, they simply won't renew the patent deal.
That is true, it is for a limited period of time. It may also have clauses to cancel it beforehand (we simply don't know). Yet, this isn't a useful angle to use against Novell, I don't think. After all, Microsoft are paying Novell more for Novell's patents than vice versa. So patent litigation against Novell wouldn't be wise; Novell have more to gain.
3. Novell does patent deal with Microsoft
[...]
5. Microsoft starts raising legitimate lawsuits against [...] Novel (mono)
So, you are saying that Novell entered into a patent deal with Microsoft, so that they could get sued by Microsoft for infringing patents? I don't think that makes any sense. Novell's lawyers did read the contract, after all.
Your argument that other parties could get sued, however, is plausible in theory.
I'd believe it if similar gene pools showed the same breakdown - here in NZ it's more 50-50
Good point. That is one objection to the "Humans are hardwired to believe in a supernatural deity" theory.
Another is that 'supernatural deity' shows cultural bias. There are plenty of people who do not believe in a deity, they believe in deities. Or in spirits, or the forces of nature, etc. So certainly the belief in a 'deity' isn't inborn.
Perhaps the belief in the supernatural, then? But that too is a cultural construct. The division of the natural from the supernatural is a fairly modern western invention (Enlightenment onward, if I am not mistaken). To (say) spirit-worshipers, there is nothing 'supernatural' about spirits, they are perfectly natural.
Really the only thing we can say is that most people believe in things that are not scientifically provable. But that says nothing. Science is fairly recent, so it makes perfect sense that many people would believe in things that are not provable by science, if only because they have not even been exposed to it. More interesting are people that have been exposed to science, and also believe in other things. This is perhaps the best issue to consider in the entire matter, and an interesting one (I won't waste space by writing my own speculations here).
I'm concerned that standardising on ODF will come to bite us
Since ODF is an open and free standard, converters can be written between ODF and XHTML+CSS. So we won't get bitten in the bad sense of being stuck, like.DOC and possibly OOXML (with its MS-only undefined sections). If XHTML+CSS turns out to be so much better in a few years, we will be able to convert our documents to it. Yes, this might not be perfect, but then neither is XHTML+CSS right now.
That congress-Microsoft DST conspiracy theory seems a tad... overboard, to me at least. They do plenty of corrupt things we know about, theorizing about something as odd as this is unnecessary.
As for the summary saying "it seems a bit pricey for a patch to a product you've already paid for." - well, no, that isn't true. Customers paid for a product and for support for it; the support for Windows 2000 is over, as per the original agreements. They got what they paid for. This is the same issue with any proprietary, closed-source software - the client is left to depend on a single vendor for patches once the official support is over, and can effectively be taken hostage (I wouldn't trust patches from anyone who doesn't have access to all the source code). Microsoft isn't doing anything 'special' here beyond typical closed-source tactics. But those are enough to show the importance of using FOSS.
Given these details, this raises the (recurring) issue of where it is safe to get software from. I generally assume that I am fairly safe in using only stuff from my distro's repositories, rather than getting the bleeding-edge versions from individual sources. But I guess I am presuming that central repos are better-secured and more carefully monitored than separate ones - well, perhaps not necessarily on average, but at least from a worst-case perspective (lots of different sources means more chances for at least one mistake to occur).
I don't care how you spin it. 1024 is the multiple. NOT 1000!
The real issue here is that the mathematical community didn't have the foresight to see what having 2^10 = 1024 != 1000 would cause. But let's not play the blame game; solutions are what we need. For example, we can change math so that 2^10 = 1000, by setting 10 = 9.965. That would solve everything. Or we could change 2 = 1.995.
Both of these options are simple compromise solutions that the mathematical community can surely accept. If not, congress can pass it as legislation. Meanwhile, I'm going to fix the relevant Wikipedia pages right now.
arXiv is excellent. In fact I believe someone said that it was "the greatest contribution to humanity from string theory thus far";)
It is interesting that physics is a pioneer in this field. It may have something to do with their research culture, I have been told; not being a physicist, I can't say. Yet, closer to my field, there is also some positive movement. The closed-access "Journal of Machine Learning" gained competition by the name of the "Journal of Machine Learning Research", where the latter is open-access, leaves copyrights with the authors, etc. In a very short time this has become an important journal.
Wikipedia is a source of information. If the people that are de-facto managing the process of collecting that information are willing to lie without a second thought, then Wikipedia as a valid source of information is discredited.
That, in general. More personally, I as a user of and contributer to Wikipedia feel disappointed at this news. Perhaps my expectations of Wikipedia were too high. I am now lowering them.
There are a bunch of other users on Wikipedia who say that they are professors. But, many of them are hyper-active. No one can edit Wikipedia that much and still have even a job.
I disagree. Actually many university professors can have free time, if they want. They generally manage themselves - except for teaching a few courses. In campuses with which I am familiar, the course teaching isn't most of the work, the research is, and they have a free hand with that. Especially after getting tenured.
Furthermore, devoting time to Wikipedia may even be 'job-related'. If a professor spends time writing and editing articles related to his field, that is in fact pretty much what the whole idea of universities is - to spread knowledge. Personally, I would much appreciate it if a few professors spent some-odd hours a week improving Wikipedia. (However, general community interaction is a little more distant, that is true.)
All of that said, I do agree with your other comments about being skeptical of the credentials of Wikipedia people. After this scandal (I use the word purposefully), I am highly skeptical myself. I will personally consider all credentials false until proven otherwise.
Furthermore, the fake credentials were used specifically for the purpose of bolstering Wikipedia's integrity. Therefore when they turned out to be fake, they slight Wikipedia's credibility all the more.
This is terrible publicity, and I am surprised that Wales isn't pissed off. I know I am ashamed for Wikipedia, which I hold in very high regard. This guy makes it look like Wikipedia 'community leaders' are a bunch of amateurs that have no qualms about lying or deceiving.
If that is the case, then I better stop using Windows as it is very clear I do not have license to use all the patented systems in it. I need to stop using a DVD player for the same reason.. Um Apple, Sans Disk, RCA, Iriver, and any other MP3 player.. Do any of them have proper licenses to play MP3 files? How is an end user to know?
Exactly, the end-user cannot know such things. To prevent these issues, generally the vendors promise to indemnify their customers. This is exactly why Microsoft is in the lawsuit with Alcatel-Lucent (hardware vendors were targeted first; Microsoft stepped in). Likewise, in recent years we have seen more Linux vendors offering indemnification. Sadly, under the current patent system, this is necessary.
It's also worth mentioning that many of the Catholic church's oft-mentioned errors are in the past, not the present. For example, they accept evolution. Creationism is a Protestant thing, not a Catholic one, for the most part (although there are also Jewish, etc., creationists, perhaps under other names).
Yes, the Inquisition was wrong, and persecuting scientists was wrong. But, interestingly, Catholicism has moved past that. (Perhaps Americans are not aware enough of that fact given the strength of Protestantism in their country, hence Protestantism is often considered simply 'Christianity'? No idea, I don't like in the US.)
So why didn't they sue Fraunhofer for selling the license in the first place? I would hate to buy a copy of Vista and have Apple sue me for having a 3D desktop.
Perhaps I don't understand your point (please explain again if so), but why sue Fraunhofer? Fraunhofer do have patents to part of MP3 functionality, and they are fully capably of licensing them. Fraunhofer can license their patents, and Alcatel-Lucent can license theirs; apparently, both are needed for a complete system (both encoding and decoding, etc. etc.). So Alcatel-Lucent has no beef with Fraunhofer; in fact, the set of patents derives from work done in cooperation with them.
Now, if Fraunhofer claimed they were selling complete licenses to MP3 functionality, then Microsoft could, theoretically, sue Fraunhofer (for fraud). Yet Fraunhofer's defense might be, in such a case, that they acted in good faith and were not aware of the implications of the Alcatel-Lucent patents - which might be the complete truth; only fairly recently have Alcatel-Lucent themselves claimed their patents were of relevance.
This is like SCO suing Auto Zone instead of suing Novell, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Knoppix,...
Well, this is part of the problem with the patent system. SCO can sue people that use systems, and not just those making them. Since, in fact, the people using the patented systems are committing actual infringement (i.e. using a system that is under patent, without a license).
As I see it, there are only 2 fishy things about this entire case: (1) Alcatel-Lucent waiting so long to demand their patents be licensed, and (2) that the entire patent system is fishy. Aside from these two things, the case is cut-and-dry: patents were infringed upon, a company refused to pay up, and got sued. The enormous amount of money involved also makes perfect sense, considering that it is for every single Windows user.
The chilling effect is the fact Microsoft did pay for the MP3 format. Even though they had a fully paid up license, another party claimed otherwise and won.
No. Well, not unless you believe Microsoft's lawyers. If you believe Alcatel-Lucent's lawyers and the court, then Microsoft did not have a 'fully paid up license'.
What Microsoft had (according to the ruling) was a license from one body that covers some aspects of MP3. Other aspects of MP3 were covered by other patents, which Microsoft did not have a license for, and for which they refused to pay. The best defense they had seems to be to look pitiful and say 'but we paid!' But finding some kid on your block to license MP3 to you for cheap isn't worth squat if that kid doesn't actually own all the relevant patents. Yes, Fraunhofer was the 'industry-recognized licenser of MP3'. But the fact that most people agree paying Fraunhofer is the thing to do doesn't make it so. The patents are what count, not community opinion.
At least that is how things work with the patent system in the US. Being a strong supporter of that system, Microsoft have nothing to complain about, I would say, they got what they deserved. So, I would say that there is nothing 'chilling' about this at all - Microsoft did not have licenses, and they got sued, and lost. End of story (for now).
Slashdot Mirror
100% true, but it is a complaint against the summary, not the actual article (as usual). TFA is about a more specific topic, and has humbler conclusions than the summary would indicate.
Regarding the summary, as you say, this is old news. Subliminal effects are easy to see in the lab - priming, for example - but have very minor effects. Not enough to base an ad campaign on.
Well, I learned something just now, I had no idea that that was a US cultural reference; I am, in fact, not from the US (lived there as a child for a few years, decades ago). Actually I didn't even think it might be a reference, so I didn't Google it. It didn't have the 'look' of a quote, to me. (I guess that shows what I know)
Ok, now that I am informed, I agree with you completely, 'trail of tears' is definitely extreme for this situation.
Speaking of tears, I had a good laugh when I read this: I really don't intend to be mean, but this just took me back a few years to when I was using Windows. I had totally forgotten about updates that require reboots (well, kernel updates do, even on Linux). Amusing, to me at least.
Anyhow, OneCare has bugs, not that surprising really, all software projects have bugs, Microsoft, open-source, or whatever.
This is just misleading. Surely Enderle knows the truth, which is that the major vendors do provide indemnification, just like Microsoft? Red Hat do, as do Novell; heck, even Oracle [PDF warning].
"Don't you think it should be a hot topic right now, so where is the chatter?" writes Enderle. Yes, this was a hot topic - many months ago. As a result of that chatter, the major vendors started to provide or emphasized that they already provide indemnification. Is Enderle really qualified to write about Linux if he doesn't know that? (I am giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he isn't intentionally misleading readers)
That's a list for the Linux kernel, and yes, Ubuntu (Canonical) don't appear there. But Ubuntu do provide support for several non-kernel FOSS projects. For example, Upstart, Nouveau, GNOME (they provided a Subversion server for the recent GNOME migration from CVS), and probably others I forgot or haven't heard of.
I'm puzzled. In what way is Google open source?
Yes, I am puzzled too. TFA seems to use 'open source' in a way that I, at least, am not familiar with. Basically they call 'open source' something that includes the open access movement (mentioned recently on Slashdot - duped, even) and related things. This is very close to what Eben Moglen (of the FSF, etc.) calls 'free culture'. Freedom as a whole would include FOSS, but FOSS is just one part of it; another is free sharing of information and culture, which includes filesharing as well as projects like MIT's Open CourseWare.
True, but as I said elsewhere in this thread, Microsoft are paying Novell far more for their patents than vice versa. So, I don't think this deal is meant to be the basis for patent lawsuits against Novell (Novell would have more to gain).
Microsoft's angle is probably something else - lawsuits against other people, or insurance against Linux taking off (by making money off of it through Novell), or by getting legitimization through Novell (as shown in TFA), etc.
That is true, it is for a limited period of time. It may also have clauses to cancel it beforehand (we simply don't know). Yet, this isn't a useful angle to use against Novell, I don't think. After all, Microsoft are paying Novell more for Novell's patents than vice versa. So patent litigation against Novell wouldn't be wise; Novell have more to gain.
So, you are saying that Novell entered into a patent deal with Microsoft, so that they could get sued by Microsoft for infringing patents? I don't think that makes any sense. Novell's lawyers did read the contract, after all.
Your argument that other parties could get sued, however, is plausible in theory.
I'd believe it if similar gene pools showed the same breakdown - here in NZ it's more 50-50
Good point. That is one objection to the "Humans are hardwired to believe in a supernatural deity" theory.
Another is that 'supernatural deity' shows cultural bias. There are plenty of people who do not believe in a deity, they believe in deities. Or in spirits, or the forces of nature, etc. So certainly the belief in a 'deity' isn't inborn.
Perhaps the belief in the supernatural, then? But that too is a cultural construct. The division of the natural from the supernatural is a fairly modern western invention (Enlightenment onward, if I am not mistaken). To (say) spirit-worshipers, there is nothing 'supernatural' about spirits, they are perfectly natural.
Really the only thing we can say is that most people believe in things that are not scientifically provable. But that says nothing. Science is fairly recent, so it makes perfect sense that many people would believe in things that are not provable by science, if only because they have not even been exposed to it. More interesting are people that have been exposed to science, and also believe in other things. This is perhaps the best issue to consider in the entire matter, and an interesting one (I won't waste space by writing my own speculations here).
I'm concerned that standardising on ODF will come to bite us
.DOC and possibly OOXML (with its MS-only undefined sections). If XHTML+CSS turns out to be so much better in a few years, we will be able to convert our documents to it. Yes, this might not be perfect, but then neither is XHTML+CSS right now.
Since ODF is an open and free standard, converters can be written between ODF and XHTML+CSS. So we won't get bitten in the bad sense of being stuck, like
That congress-Microsoft DST conspiracy theory seems a tad... overboard, to me at least. They do plenty of corrupt things we know about, theorizing about something as odd as this is unnecessary.
As for the summary saying "it seems a bit pricey for a patch to a product you've already paid for." - well, no, that isn't true. Customers paid for a product and for support for it; the support for Windows 2000 is over, as per the original agreements. They got what they paid for. This is the same issue with any proprietary, closed-source software - the client is left to depend on a single vendor for patches once the official support is over, and can effectively be taken hostage (I wouldn't trust patches from anyone who doesn't have access to all the source code). Microsoft isn't doing anything 'special' here beyond typical closed-source tactics. But those are enough to show the importance of using FOSS.
Given these details, this raises the (recurring) issue of where it is safe to get software from. I generally assume that I am fairly safe in using only stuff from my distro's repositories, rather than getting the bleeding-edge versions from individual sources. But I guess I am presuming that central repos are better-secured and more carefully monitored than separate ones - well, perhaps not necessarily on average, but at least from a worst-case perspective (lots of different sources means more chances for at least one mistake to occur).
I don't care how you spin it. 1024 is the multiple. NOT 1000!
The real issue here is that the mathematical community didn't have the foresight to see what having 2^10 = 1024 != 1000 would cause. But let's not play the blame game; solutions are what we need. For example, we can change math so that 2^10 = 1000, by setting 10 = 9.965. That would solve everything. Or we could change 2 = 1.995.
Both of these options are simple compromise solutions that the mathematical community can surely accept. If not, congress can pass it as legislation. Meanwhile, I'm going to fix the relevant Wikipedia pages right now.
A little more precisely, it bases itself on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian (like many Debian derivatives do these days, it seems).
I am probably not free to copy the whole paragraph about the program, but here's the gist
Dude, you're on the internet, you can do anything. Just make sure to tick the 'post anonymously' box.
(Perhaps what I should have done right now, but whatever)
arXiv is excellent. In fact I believe someone said that it was "the greatest contribution to humanity from string theory thus far" ;)
It is interesting that physics is a pioneer in this field. It may have something to do with their research culture, I have been told; not being a physicist, I can't say. Yet, closer to my field, there is also some positive movement. The closed-access "Journal of Machine Learning" gained competition by the name of the "Journal of Machine Learning Research", where the latter is open-access, leaves copyrights with the authors, etc. In a very short time this has become an important journal.
Wikipedia is a source of information. If the people that are de-facto managing the process of collecting that information are willing to lie without a second thought, then Wikipedia as a valid source of information is discredited.
That, in general. More personally, I as a user of and contributer to Wikipedia feel disappointed at this news. Perhaps my expectations of Wikipedia were too high. I am now lowering them.
I disagree. Actually many university professors can have free time, if they want. They generally manage themselves - except for teaching a few courses. In campuses with which I am familiar, the course teaching isn't most of the work, the research is, and they have a free hand with that. Especially after getting tenured.
Furthermore, devoting time to Wikipedia may even be 'job-related'. If a professor spends time writing and editing articles related to his field, that is in fact pretty much what the whole idea of universities is - to spread knowledge. Personally, I would much appreciate it if a few professors spent some-odd hours a week improving Wikipedia. (However, general community interaction is a little more distant, that is true.)
All of that said, I do agree with your other comments about being skeptical of the credentials of Wikipedia people. After this scandal (I use the word purposefully), I am highly skeptical myself. I will personally consider all credentials false until proven otherwise.
Furthermore, the fake credentials were used specifically for the purpose of bolstering Wikipedia's integrity. Therefore when they turned out to be fake, they slight Wikipedia's credibility all the more.
This is terrible publicity, and I am surprised that Wales isn't pissed off. I know I am ashamed for Wikipedia, which I hold in very high regard. This guy makes it look like Wikipedia 'community leaders' are a bunch of amateurs that have no qualms about lying or deceiving.
>> So, basically, their web tool is scanning for things that don't yet exist. Bully!
Thank god we live in this time!
Exactly, the end-user cannot know such things. To prevent these issues, generally the vendors promise to indemnify their customers. This is exactly why Microsoft is in the lawsuit with Alcatel-Lucent (hardware vendors were targeted first; Microsoft stepped in). Likewise, in recent years we have seen more Linux vendors offering indemnification. Sadly, under the current patent system, this is necessary.
It's also worth mentioning that many of the Catholic church's oft-mentioned errors are in the past, not the present. For example, they accept evolution. Creationism is a Protestant thing, not a Catholic one, for the most part (although there are also Jewish, etc., creationists, perhaps under other names).
Yes, the Inquisition was wrong, and persecuting scientists was wrong. But, interestingly, Catholicism has moved past that. (Perhaps Americans are not aware enough of that fact given the strength of Protestantism in their country, hence Protestantism is often considered simply 'Christianity'? No idea, I don't like in the US.)
Perhaps I don't understand your point (please explain again if so), but why sue Fraunhofer? Fraunhofer do have patents to part of MP3 functionality, and they are fully capably of licensing them. Fraunhofer can license their patents, and Alcatel-Lucent can license theirs; apparently, both are needed for a complete system (both encoding and decoding, etc. etc.). So Alcatel-Lucent has no beef with Fraunhofer; in fact, the set of patents derives from work done in cooperation with them.
Now, if Fraunhofer claimed they were selling complete licenses to MP3 functionality, then Microsoft could, theoretically, sue Fraunhofer (for fraud). Yet Fraunhofer's defense might be, in such a case, that they acted in good faith and were not aware of the implications of the Alcatel-Lucent patents - which might be the complete truth; only fairly recently have Alcatel-Lucent themselves claimed their patents were of relevance.
Well, this is part of the problem with the patent system. SCO can sue people that use systems, and not just those making them. Since, in fact, the people using the patented systems are committing actual infringement (i.e. using a system that is under patent, without a license).
As I see it, there are only 2 fishy things about this entire case: (1) Alcatel-Lucent waiting so long to demand their patents be licensed, and (2) that the entire patent system is fishy. Aside from these two things, the case is cut-and-dry: patents were infringed upon, a company refused to pay up, and got sued. The enormous amount of money involved also makes perfect sense, considering that it is for every single Windows user.
What Microsoft had (according to the ruling) was a license from one body that covers some aspects of MP3. Other aspects of MP3 were covered by other patents, which Microsoft did not have a license for, and for which they refused to pay. The best defense they had seems to be to look pitiful and say 'but we paid!' But finding some kid on your block to license MP3 to you for cheap isn't worth squat if that kid doesn't actually own all the relevant patents. Yes, Fraunhofer was the 'industry-recognized licenser of MP3'. But the fact that most people agree paying Fraunhofer is the thing to do doesn't make it so. The patents are what count, not community opinion.
At least that is how things work with the patent system in the US. Being a strong supporter of that system, Microsoft have nothing to complain about, I would say, they got what they deserved. So, I would say that there is nothing 'chilling' about this at all - Microsoft did not have licenses, and they got sued, and lost. End of story (for now).