There is no way that regular people, even the majority of intelligent educated people, are going to be able to use it. It's a ridiculous pipe-dream. Think how hard it is to get people to understand broken-down logical arguments where everything is already layed down for them, and now imagine trying to make them understand how to conceputalise their own data domains and define their own relationships. Maybe 2% of people could do it properly, and then 1% of those would end up in a profession that would use the skills.
When programmers write software for general use we have to think how to make things easy multiple levels below the level we have to think at. The vast majority of people are not able to think technically, and do not have patience - and that's because most people in this world find it uncomfortable to do anything that isn't centred around a social or emotional act.
Developers find users can't do programming, so the programming language becomes a graphical interface. The users can't navigate the graphical interface via a structure based on logic, so the screens get built into an icon based organisaion with a well-defined 'workflow'. The user can't think logically about how to use the graphical interface, so help is written to explain how it works and what it can do. The help is too general so specific examples are given. There are too many examples and the user can't be bothered to read them, so a colleague stands next to them and they learn to mimmick their colleague. This isn't an extreme situation - it is typical of the vast majority of users. Now think about the inherent technical complexities of OWL and RDF, and imagine people actually using it for real problems? There's no way to hide what is a purely logical and structural framework for organising extensive data, behind pretty pictures and simple examples.
This kind of chaos is typical of academia. There's no profit motive, no distinct customer to serve. What we need is to open up the standards market and encourage some commercial competition between standards. Standards that cannot create a profit will go out of business, whilst new, more profitable standards will reign supreme. With 100 standards competing for developers and corporate sponsors, us web developers will get the choice of the semantic swimming pool that serves each of us best. Personally I always thought that the sexual overtones of 'head' and 'body', and especially 'foot' had no place in a standard, so I'll be renaming them to 'first', 'second' and 'third'.
Wow, there's some typical slashdot bias in that inaccurate summary. The summary states how the new proposals are asbos, and may be given out by police without the courts.
However if you read the article you will find that these are NOT actually asbos, but something new. Asbos can NOT be given out outside the courts system, so we're not in a police state yet.
The issue here is with a proposal that is not yet law that would give the police certain powers. It's important to understand these aren't the "sweeping powers" that are a part of Asbos, but specific ones relating to the prevention of future cybercrime by suspects.
I don't agree with the proposal, but the summary smudges things together to make the UK look like a police state.
You have some good points, but I really can't agree with two of your complaints...
"the semantic mapping of the extension to filetype, WTF"
It seems far better to me than mime-types or magic strings. Mime-types fail due to not being actually encoded on-filesystem, and magic strings require users to use a hex editor to try and identify an alien file type.
"the case insensitive nature of file names"
Case sensitivity is a big usability issue for people, so burdening the few (the programmers) so that the majority (the users) don't get confused, is a fair trade of IMHO.
The Opera devs couldn't possibly add everything everyone wants, for time concerns and other reasons. An example is as a webdev I like to be able to right-click on an open page and say "View in FireFox" or "View in IE", but placing information about other browsers into Opera for all users would be an uglification for most of them. Making it optional for that kind of thing would result in option explosion. Therefore it makes most sense if someone like me goes out and finds an extension for what I need, so that the majority aren't disaffected.
The article, which clearly is from an anti-censorship point of view, makes it very clear that this was about discussion that seemed to be 'aiding and abeting', not just 'any discussion whatsoever'. Please don't sensationalise something already biased.
Maybe a website that suggested the best ways to commit incest, or the best places to do it without getting caught, would also be considered illegal.
(btw - I have nothing against online gambling myself)
No one's forcing you to use the service. Taking a less emotive example, some might not want to have directory advertising and mapping technology together - but that's no reason to condemn Google maps, just a reason to go somewhere else to get something more appropriate to your needs.
This filtering service assists people who want to only see results that match a certain set of sensibilities - it would be ludicrous to expect people to have to use multiple filtering services and then correlate the results. Of course it's not perfect for all due to the assumptions it makes, but things rarely are.
I'm no economist, but the way I see it is that there's a perpetual lock-in in the third world due to the citizens in the counties taking the path of least resistance - taking what jobs are available, rather than showing truly home-grown grass-roots enterprise. The jobs available are created by those in power (either directly or through middle-men) - and those in power are those who got to the industrial age first, the industry of the first world.
I have never understood why globalisation of the sweat shop variety serves people in the third-world - in terms of resources, I really can't see why they need us and can't build their own strong economies. Is there a lack of natural resources? I doubt it.
Or maybe they just need more condoms.
I'd love to hear an elaboration of this idea, because I've heard it a few times now, but never with any detail. Do you believe the process of evolution was controlled by laws of nature that were planned to reach the result we are now at, whether it was 'helped along', and/or whether it would never have happened naturally without a 'spark', etc? I'd just like to get an understanding really of how God fits into your beliefs in evolution.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no way that regular people, even the majority of intelligent educated people, are going to be able to use it. It's a ridiculous pipe-dream. Think how hard it is to get people to understand broken-down logical arguments where everything is already layed down for them, and now imagine trying to make them understand how to conceputalise their own data domains and define their own relationships. Maybe 2% of people could do it properly, and then 1% of those would end up in a profession that would use the skills.
When programmers write software for general use we have to think how to make things easy multiple levels below the level we have to think at. The vast majority of people are not able to think technically, and do not have patience - and that's because most people in this world find it uncomfortable to do anything that isn't centred around a social or emotional act.
Developers find users can't do programming, so the programming language becomes a graphical interface. The users can't navigate the graphical interface via a structure based on logic, so the screens get built into an icon based organisaion with a well-defined 'workflow'. The user can't think logically about how to use the graphical interface, so help is written to explain how it works and what it can do. The help is too general so specific examples are given. There are too many examples and the user can't be bothered to read them, so a colleague stands next to them and they learn to mimmick their colleague.
This isn't an extreme situation - it is typical of the vast majority of users. Now think about the inherent technical complexities of OWL and RDF, and imagine people actually using it for real problems? There's no way to hide what is a purely logical and structural framework for organising extensive data, behind pretty pictures and simple examples.
This kind of chaos is typical of academia. There's no profit motive, no distinct customer to serve.
What we need is to open up the standards market and encourage some commercial competition between standards. Standards that cannot create a profit will go out of business, whilst new, more profitable standards will reign supreme. With 100 standards competing for developers and corporate sponsors, us web developers will get the choice of the semantic swimming pool that serves each of us best. Personally I always thought that the sexual overtones of 'head' and 'body', and especially 'foot' had no place in a standard, so I'll be renaming them to 'first', 'second' and 'third'.
Wow, there's some typical slashdot bias in that inaccurate summary.
The summary states how the new proposals are asbos, and may be given out by police without the courts.
However if you read the article you will find that these are NOT actually asbos, but something new. Asbos can NOT be given out outside the courts system, so we're not in a police state yet.
The issue here is with a proposal that is not yet law that would give the police certain powers. It's important to understand these aren't the "sweeping powers" that are a part of Asbos, but specific ones relating to the prevention of future cybercrime by suspects.
I don't agree with the proposal, but the summary smudges things together to make the UK look like a police state.
You have some good points, but I really can't agree with two of your complaints... "the semantic mapping of the extension to filetype, WTF" It seems far better to me than mime-types or magic strings. Mime-types fail due to not being actually encoded on-filesystem, and magic strings require users to use a hex editor to try and identify an alien file type. "the case insensitive nature of file names" Case sensitivity is a big usability issue for people, so burdening the few (the programmers) so that the majority (the users) don't get confused, is a fair trade of IMHO.
The Opera devs couldn't possibly add everything everyone wants, for time concerns and other reasons. An example is as a webdev I like to be able to right-click on an open page and say "View in FireFox" or "View in IE", but placing information about other browsers into Opera for all users would be an uglification for most of them. Making it optional for that kind of thing would result in option explosion. Therefore it makes most sense if someone like me goes out and finds an extension for what I need, so that the majority aren't disaffected.
The article, which clearly is from an anti-censorship point of view, makes it very clear that this was about discussion that seemed to be 'aiding and abeting', not just 'any discussion whatsoever'. Please don't sensationalise something already biased. Maybe a website that suggested the best ways to commit incest, or the best places to do it without getting caught, would also be considered illegal. (btw - I have nothing against online gambling myself)
No one's forcing you to use the service. Taking a less emotive example, some might not want to have directory advertising and mapping technology together - but that's no reason to condemn Google maps, just a reason to go somewhere else to get something more appropriate to your needs. This filtering service assists people who want to only see results that match a certain set of sensibilities - it would be ludicrous to expect people to have to use multiple filtering services and then correlate the results. Of course it's not perfect for all due to the assumptions it makes, but things rarely are.
I'm no economist, but the way I see it is that there's a perpetual lock-in in the third world due to the citizens in the counties taking the path of least resistance - taking what jobs are available, rather than showing truly home-grown grass-roots enterprise. The jobs available are created by those in power (either directly or through middle-men) - and those in power are those who got to the industrial age first, the industry of the first world. I have never understood why globalisation of the sweat shop variety serves people in the third-world - in terms of resources, I really can't see why they need us and can't build their own strong economies. Is there a lack of natural resources? I doubt it. Or maybe they just need more condoms.
I'd love to hear an elaboration of this idea, because I've heard it a few times now, but never with any detail. Do you believe the process of evolution was controlled by laws of nature that were planned to reach the result we are now at, whether it was 'helped along', and/or whether it would never have happened naturally without a 'spark', etc? I'd just like to get an understanding really of how God fits into your beliefs in evolution.