"Just because you can write an equation that describes something... doesn't mean that such an equation describes the real physics that are going on."
As an experimentalist, it's refreshing to see someone making such a comment.
Well quite. A lot of people seem to forget (or were never taught most likely) that physics is just a model of the real world. Maths is an entirely man-made construction which is why we can achieve lofty things like proofs in maths and maths derived subjects (computing etc). Physics and physical sciences just use maths to model the real world. Models tend to go wrong in certain corner cases. Newtonian physics was the "correct" model until Einstein's General Relativity. That doesn't marry on the small scale with quantum physics so that's not "correct" in all cases either...
It's madness to think that because we define a model in a man-made formulism that the real world must obey that model. The real world has other ideas.
I'm all for insuring Microsoft plays fair but come on, it seems like the EU is more interested in making an extra 30 or 40 million than making sure the consumer is protected.
Indeed. The EC doesn't actually care too much about its own law either - if you remember what they did last year during the debate on patents then you may remember that they actually acted illegally which really annoyed the EU parliament and a rare large turn-out in a vote destroyed the EC's aims, for the time being.
The EC is a big unelected civil service which works for its own ends and I really have issues with it - it's just a civil service, but as far as law making goes, it's too powerful and pulls too many shots. However, as such it wants to be the only bully in the playground, as does Microsoft, hence the little spat currently going on.
Microsoft, however, contends it has gone above and beyond industry requirements for documentation.
I never knew there was such a thing as industry requirements for documentation.
There is the possibility that the EC will take this opportunity to define a legal definition of what constitutes accurate and useful documentation. That would be worth something.
Hopefully it will decide that documentation equals readable code, adherance to design patterns and comprehensive unit, integration and function test suites. Oh, and no C. Once Microsoft have implemented that a) Windows will be usable and stable and b) time will have ended...
Slashdot Mirror
"Just because you can write an equation that describes something ... doesn't mean that such an equation describes the real physics that are going on."
As an experimentalist, it's refreshing to see someone making such a comment.
Well quite. A lot of people seem to forget (or were never taught most likely) that physics is just a model of the real world. Maths is an entirely man-made construction which is why we can achieve lofty things like proofs in maths and maths derived subjects (computing etc). Physics and physical sciences just use maths to model the real world. Models tend to go wrong in certain corner cases. Newtonian physics was the "correct" model until Einstein's General Relativity. That doesn't marry on the small scale with quantum physics so that's not "correct" in all cases either...
It's madness to think that because we define a model in a man-made formulism that the real world must obey that model. The real world has other ideas.
I'm all for insuring Microsoft plays fair but come on, it seems like the EU is more interested in making an extra 30 or 40 million than making sure the consumer is protected.
Indeed. The EC doesn't actually care too much about its own law either - if you remember what they did last year during the debate on patents then you may remember that they actually acted illegally which really annoyed the EU parliament and a rare large turn-out in a vote destroyed the EC's aims, for the time being.
The EC is a big unelected civil service which works for its own ends and I really have issues with it - it's just a civil service, but as far as law making goes, it's too powerful and pulls too many shots. However, as such it wants to be the only bully in the playground, as does Microsoft, hence the little spat currently going on.
Microsoft, however, contends it has gone above and beyond industry requirements for documentation.
I never knew there was such a thing as industry requirements for documentation.
There is the possibility that the EC will take this opportunity to define a legal definition of what constitutes accurate and useful documentation. That would be worth something.
Hopefully it will decide that documentation equals readable code, adherance to design patterns and comprehensive unit, integration and function test suites. Oh, and no C. Once Microsoft have implemented that a) Windows will be usable and stable and b) time will have ended...