I certainly wouldn't feel the need to run AV if I were using a Linux workstation. That said, the comment I responded to made it seem as if a Linux user has so little use for AV that he can't even remember what the acronym stands for. Given malware is still a threat to Windows environments and given Linux machines can be used to propagate these attacks, it's not the case that a Linux admin is free to ignore AV entirely. For instance, if you're in charge of a Linux-based mail server that's going to be used by Windows-based clients, you should really have some sort of AV solution in place, even if it's only going to be looking for (and finding) malware that targets Windows.
This is another point against anyone who claims NASA, and going to space in general, is a complete waste of money.
Nobody is arguing it's a "complete waste of money"; they merely suggest it may not represent the best "bang for our buck". Perhaps not even the best bang for our "scientific research buck". Its budget could be used instead to massively increase the number of research grants given to researchers at U.S. universities. It could be used to establish a bunch of "X Prize" type bounties for various scientific and/or engineering problems. It could be used to establish a sort of "National Research Academy" akin to NASA but without the specific focus on space exploration. Etc.
If he weren't interested in gaming he could likely make do with a much less powerful GPU and/or possibly a more power-efficient CPU. The combination of those two would reduce his power consumption even further during non-gaming-related computer usage (or idling).
Actually, reason there are not more woman owned businesses is because women don't want to be in IT because it's truth is, IT is horrible for family people and women tend to be more family oriented then men.
May depend on what you mean by "IT". I work 40 hour weeks, rarely work at home and am never on call. I'm able to take days off with little notice and my schedule is flexible enough that I can blow out early (or come in late) if I have a Dr's appt. or something. Maybe once a quarter I stay late for a release. Contrast this with the life of a female physician or attorney (trying to make partner). And both of those fields have a higher percentage of women. Also, one might reasonably argue that male doctors and attorneys are even more obnoxious to their female coworkers (on the aggregate- not every doctor or lawyer is a putz) than male IT workers.
It bears noting your suggestion is not so much "delivering a solution" as it is "gaming the system". Though, I guess "ability to understand how to game the system" probably correlates somewhat with "ability to actually deliver a solution".
The case I'm making is that, in the absence of an alternative that is either demonstrably superior or reasonably likely to prove superior, we can't assume they should try something different simply because piracy is increasing. That view is premised on another one: that there's something they could be doing that would actually decrease the piracy rate. They could make it go up or they could make it go down; it's going up, so they're doing something wrong. I don't necessarily buy the premise that there's anything they could do to make it go down.
But there is evidence to support the theory that they are sub-optimal, which is that during their tenure the rate at which piracy has spread has increased.
That's not evidence that they're sub-optimal since we don't know what "optimal" is. Nor do we have any examples of anyone doing it better under comparable circumstances. It could be that the rate of increase is the very best they could have hoped for. Unless you can eliminate that possibility, i.e. give an example of tactics that would have produced demonstrably better results, then you can't say definitively that their tactics are sub-optimal.
So the way it works is that if you think i'm wrong you're welcome to try and disprove it with some facts, but of course you can't
That's my whole point. I can't "prove" that the BSA's current tactics are optimal just as you can't "prove" they're suboptimal. What you've asserted, though, is that the increasing rate of piracy is prima facie evidence that the BSA's tactics are suboptimal. That doesn't follow.
if you apply that idiotic theory to everything then you can never prove anything.
Here's a hypothetical scenario I'd find more convincing. Let's say there's no BSA in the U.S. and no equivalent organization in Canada. This goes on for a longish period of time. Say ten years. Over that period, piracy rates are virtually identical between the two. At approximately the same time, the BSA comes into existence in the U.S. and some similar organization in Canada. The BSA starts doing what it's doing now. The Canadian organization takes some radically different approach. This goes on for another longish period of about ten years. Over that period, a wide delta emerges between U.S. and Canadian piracy rates, with U.S. rates trending much higher (relative to those in Canada). That scenario would lead me to believe in the likelihood that the BSA's tactics are suboptimal. Because there would exist a point of reference against which to compare them..
Nope. That's the definition of a specific type of democracy: direct democracy. It's not the definition of democracy in general. In addition to being a democracy, the United States is also a federal, constitutional Republic. That is not mutually exclusive with it also being a representative democracy.
It seems you're missing the point: They haven't achieved their goal of mitigating piracy. Has piracy lessened? No, in fact it hasn't even stayed flat, it's increased! So what they are doing now obviously isn't right, it may be better than nothing but it's quite categorically not achieving their goal.
Yes, the BSA would like to see piracy become less prevalent in an absolute sense. But I still don't think it's obvious they're doing a poor job. Maybe they're actually doing the best job possible and there are forces at work that are going to increase the rate of piracy regardless of what the BSA does. Who's to say that isn't the case?
In your original post you said that an increase in the rate of piracy implies the BSA should change its tactics (assuming it wants to improve over the status quo). I'm sorry, but the former just doesn't imply the latter. Consider a hypothetical:
The weather is 100F outside and my air conditioner goes out. My current indoor temperature is 75F. Wanting to stay cool, I rig up some fans to create an air flow throughout the house. The temperature gradually rises to about 90F, which is lower than what it would have been sans fans. Is the temperature increase clear evidence that my solution was the wrong one and I should try something different? No it's not. Now, maybe there really was something I could have done that would have been more effective. But the mere fact that the temperature increased doesn't require that some superior solution exist.
That make any sense? Certainly the BSA should be open to alternate tactics that might prove more effective than what it's doing now. I just don't think we can conclude from this result that their current methods are obviously inferior.
I think that's a misstatement of their goal. Their goal is to mitigate piracy. That is to say the level of piracy in the presence of the BSA should be less than the level of piracy in its absence. If all we know is that the level of piracy went up then we can't know what the BSA's effect was. Maybe it had no effect. Or, maybe, the level of increase in piracy would have been even steeper in the BSA's absence. We just can't say for sure.
XP and Office for me. I much prefer them to the FOSS alternatives. When I eventually migrate off XP I'll either shell out for the current version of Windows or just get a Mac. Though I'll probably keep using my volume-licensed copy of Office 2003 if I go the non-Mac route.
The headline for me here is that Facebook's success has the unintended consequence of leading to the demise of Silicon Valley as a place where investors take big risks on advanced science and tech that helps the world.
Emphasis mine. i.e. Facebook doesn't help the world.
You are tempted to put blind faith in the judgment of a small number of people in an illiquid market with incomplete information. You would be wise to resist that temptation.
I'm tempted to put my money where it'll generate the biggest return on investment subject to certain ethical parameters. If that means investing in a social media startup instead of a biomedical research startup with a questionably credible plan for curing cancer then I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
The reason facebook attracts more investment is that cancer research might not find a cure, while facebook is trivial to implement.
Risk vs. reward. Perhaps if the profitability of finding a cure for cancer were more closely aligned with its "value to society" then you'd see more investors willing to take a chance on maybe-cancer-curing biomedical startups. Look to intellectual property law if you want to juice the profitability of finding a cure for cancer.
Yep. Sometimes you get lucky and figure something out purely by chance. That doesn't mean venture capitalists should invest money companies that plan on "trying random stuff just to see if something happens".
Investors have very little interest in research like that, which is why it's traditionally done by governments.
Exactly. Which is why I said a few posts back: "...if your cancer research doesn't appear to have any more potential than the next cockamamie up-and-coming social media company then maybe your cancer research doesn't deserve investors".
I think I can produce a cure for cancer by mixing together some household cleaners and injecting them directly into the veins of cancer patients. Will you invest in my company? I don't know whether it will work, but that's the point of research isn't it? I'm not sure how much it will cost either; I might need to try lots of different types of chemicals before I get the right combination. So I think I'll need a couple million dollars.
All ridiculousness aside, the point of the above is that research can look "more" or "less" promising. You never know with certainty that it will pan out, but certain propositions present as "more likely" or "less likely" to produce a working product. The "more likely" propositions are the ones that attract investors. You really don't want capital being squandered on research ventures (such as the one I described above) that are so unlikely to produce results that they're basically a waste of time. That's misuse of capital.
Facebook must be offering something to the world or it wouldn't have hundreds of millions of active users. It isn't a cure for cancer but it isn't nothing either. The crux of the Blank's argument seems to be that venture capitalists like to invest in things that will make them money and that social media is now more likely (or perceived to be more likely at least) to turn a profit than advanced science. I'm tempted to say that if your cancer research doesn't appear to have any more potential than the next cockamamie up-and-coming social media company then maybe your cancer research doesn't deserve investors.
Kinda misses his point. It seems to be, "It's bad policy to just exempt certain industries from the patent system. If the system is broken then fix it; exempting industries is a band-aid at best." If that's true, then the only consistent solutions are "no patents at all" or "no industry exemptions, but reform the system so that it's functional again."
Alternately, you might give some reasoning for why software patents are "special" and deserve exemption where other industries don't.
Will be interesting to monitor print ads in Israel going forward. Most models are 5'9" or 5'10". I order to meet the 18.5 BMI requirement a 5'10" model would need to weigh 129 lb. This guy has some stats on how much various female celebrities (some of whom are models; no idea whether his data is accurate) weigh. He lists 5'10" Adriana Lima at 112 lb.
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For the most part, yes. On the other hand...
I certainly wouldn't feel the need to run AV if I were using a Linux workstation. That said, the comment I responded to made it seem as if a Linux user has so little use for AV that he can't even remember what the acronym stands for. Given malware is still a threat to Windows environments and given Linux machines can be used to propagate these attacks, it's not the case that a Linux admin is free to ignore AV entirely. For instance, if you're in charge of a Linux-based mail server that's going to be used by Windows-based clients, you should really have some sort of AV solution in place, even if it's only going to be looking for (and finding) malware that targets Windows.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/free-linux-antivirus-programs/
Teach at a private school? Surely there's one in which the administrators don't suck.
Nobody is arguing it's a "complete waste of money"; they merely suggest it may not represent the best "bang for our buck". Perhaps not even the best bang for our "scientific research buck". Its budget could be used instead to massively increase the number of research grants given to researchers at U.S. universities. It could be used to establish a bunch of "X Prize" type bounties for various scientific and/or engineering problems. It could be used to establish a sort of "National Research Academy" akin to NASA but without the specific focus on space exploration. Etc.
If he weren't interested in gaming he could likely make do with a much less powerful GPU and/or possibly a more power-efficient CPU. The combination of those two would reduce his power consumption even further during non-gaming-related computer usage (or idling).
Isn't IE support fairly easy if you use an off-the-shelf UI library (e.g. jQuery, etc.)?
May depend on what you mean by "IT". I work 40 hour weeks, rarely work at home and am never on call. I'm able to take days off with little notice and my schedule is flexible enough that I can blow out early (or come in late) if I have a Dr's appt. or something. Maybe once a quarter I stay late for a release. Contrast this with the life of a female physician or attorney (trying to make partner). And both of those fields have a higher percentage of women. Also, one might reasonably argue that male doctors and attorneys are even more obnoxious to their female coworkers (on the aggregate- not every doctor or lawyer is a putz) than male IT workers.
It bears noting your suggestion is not so much "delivering a solution" as it is "gaming the system". Though, I guess "ability to understand how to game the system" probably correlates somewhat with "ability to actually deliver a solution".
The case I'm making is that, in the absence of an alternative that is either demonstrably superior or reasonably likely to prove superior, we can't assume they should try something different simply because piracy is increasing. That view is premised on another one: that there's something they could be doing that would actually decrease the piracy rate. They could make it go up or they could make it go down; it's going up, so they're doing something wrong. I don't necessarily buy the premise that there's anything they could do to make it go down.
That's not evidence that they're sub-optimal since we don't know what "optimal" is. Nor do we have any examples of anyone doing it better under comparable circumstances. It could be that the rate of increase is the very best they could have hoped for. Unless you can eliminate that possibility, i.e. give an example of tactics that would have produced demonstrably better results, then you can't say definitively that their tactics are sub-optimal.
That's my whole point. I can't "prove" that the BSA's current tactics are optimal just as you can't "prove" they're suboptimal. What you've asserted, though, is that the increasing rate of piracy is prima facie evidence that the BSA's tactics are suboptimal. That doesn't follow.
Here's a hypothetical scenario I'd find more convincing. Let's say there's no BSA in the U.S. and no equivalent organization in Canada. This goes on for a longish period of time. Say ten years. Over that period, piracy rates are virtually identical between the two. At approximately the same time, the BSA comes into existence in the U.S. and some similar organization in Canada. The BSA starts doing what it's doing now. The Canadian organization takes some radically different approach. This goes on for another longish period of about ten years. Over that period, a wide delta emerges between U.S. and Canadian piracy rates, with U.S. rates trending much higher (relative to those in Canada). That scenario would lead me to believe in the likelihood that the BSA's tactics are suboptimal. Because there would exist a point of reference against which to compare them..
Nope. That's the definition of a specific type of democracy: direct democracy. It's not the definition of democracy in general. In addition to being a democracy, the United States is also a federal, constitutional Republic. That is not mutually exclusive with it also being a representative democracy.
Yes, the BSA would like to see piracy become less prevalent in an absolute sense. But I still don't think it's obvious they're doing a poor job. Maybe they're actually doing the best job possible and there are forces at work that are going to increase the rate of piracy regardless of what the BSA does. Who's to say that isn't the case?
In your original post you said that an increase in the rate of piracy implies the BSA should change its tactics (assuming it wants to improve over the status quo). I'm sorry, but the former just doesn't imply the latter. Consider a hypothetical:
The weather is 100F outside and my air conditioner goes out. My current indoor temperature is 75F. Wanting to stay cool, I rig up some fans to create an air flow throughout the house. The temperature gradually rises to about 90F, which is lower than what it would have been sans fans. Is the temperature increase clear evidence that my solution was the wrong one and I should try something different? No it's not. Now, maybe there really was something I could have done that would have been more effective. But the mere fact that the temperature increased doesn't require that some superior solution exist.
That make any sense? Certainly the BSA should be open to alternate tactics that might prove more effective than what it's doing now. I just don't think we can conclude from this result that their current methods are obviously inferior.
I think that's a misstatement of their goal. Their goal is to mitigate piracy. That is to say the level of piracy in the presence of the BSA should be less than the level of piracy in its absence. If all we know is that the level of piracy went up then we can't know what the BSA's effect was. Maybe it had no effect. Or, maybe, the level of increase in piracy would have been even steeper in the BSA's absence. We just can't say for sure.
XP and Office for me. I much prefer them to the FOSS alternatives. When I eventually migrate off XP I'll either shell out for the current version of Windows or just get a Mac. Though I'll probably keep using my volume-licensed copy of Office 2003 if I go the non-Mac route.
I'm so sick of this little factoid. See the wikipedia page or dictionary definition of "democracy". The United States fits the bill.
I'm not sure this result demonstrates that their tactics "aren't working". Who can say what the number would be if there were no BSA?
He said this:
Emphasis mine. i.e. Facebook doesn't help the world.
I'm tempted to put my money where it'll generate the biggest return on investment subject to certain ethical parameters. If that means investing in a social media startup instead of a biomedical research startup with a questionably credible plan for curing cancer then I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
Risk vs. reward. Perhaps if the profitability of finding a cure for cancer were more closely aligned with its "value to society" then you'd see more investors willing to take a chance on maybe-cancer-curing biomedical startups. Look to intellectual property law if you want to juice the profitability of finding a cure for cancer.
Yep. Sometimes you get lucky and figure something out purely by chance. That doesn't mean venture capitalists should invest money companies that plan on "trying random stuff just to see if something happens".
Exactly. Which is why I said a few posts back: "...if your cancer research doesn't appear to have any more potential than the next cockamamie up-and-coming social media company then maybe your cancer research doesn't deserve investors".
I think I can produce a cure for cancer by mixing together some household cleaners and injecting them directly into the veins of cancer patients. Will you invest in my company? I don't know whether it will work, but that's the point of research isn't it? I'm not sure how much it will cost either; I might need to try lots of different types of chemicals before I get the right combination. So I think I'll need a couple million dollars.
All ridiculousness aside, the point of the above is that research can look "more" or "less" promising. You never know with certainty that it will pan out, but certain propositions present as "more likely" or "less likely" to produce a working product. The "more likely" propositions are the ones that attract investors. You really don't want capital being squandered on research ventures (such as the one I described above) that are so unlikely to produce results that they're basically a waste of time. That's misuse of capital.
Facebook must be offering something to the world or it wouldn't have hundreds of millions of active users. It isn't a cure for cancer but it isn't nothing either. The crux of the Blank's argument seems to be that venture capitalists like to invest in things that will make them money and that social media is now more likely (or perceived to be more likely at least) to turn a profit than advanced science. I'm tempted to say that if your cancer research doesn't appear to have any more potential than the next cockamamie up-and-coming social media company then maybe your cancer research doesn't deserve investors.
Kinda misses his point. It seems to be, "It's bad policy to just exempt certain industries from the patent system. If the system is broken then fix it; exempting industries is a band-aid at best." If that's true, then the only consistent solutions are "no patents at all" or "no industry exemptions, but reform the system so that it's functional again."
Alternately, you might give some reasoning for why software patents are "special" and deserve exemption where other industries don't.
Not optimistic this will work, but I'll chuckle if it does. Oh the angst!
Will be interesting to monitor print ads in Israel going forward. Most models are 5'9" or 5'10". I order to meet the 18.5 BMI requirement a 5'10" model would need to weigh 129 lb. This guy has some stats on how much various female celebrities (some of whom are models; no idea whether his data is accurate) weigh. He lists 5'10" Adriana Lima at 112 lb.