I submitted this story over a month ago (2005.06.28 17:50) but got it rejected (by CmdrTaco, I think, "on duty" at around that time) double-quick. I wonder whether I offended him by using Companion Suitable for Slashdotters Almost Ready as the title of the submission.:)
and Bjarne sounds as if he were rehearsing his pitch on the eve of a product launch. As if C++ needed to be re-launched! I wonder whether he does this because he fears people's reaction to the new standard. In any case, it seems he hopes to preempt a good deal of criticism by manipulating our view of the standard's gestation ahead of the release. We've seen this kind of thing before, haven't we?
Technique
Before the launch, persuade clients to believe that the product's development was/is governed by core values they already hold.
Result
After the launch, clients are less likely to look at the product critically and dispassionately because they are already satisfied that it respects their core values.
But maybe that's what a language creator ends up having to do if he wants changes to be widely accepted and (more importantly) adopted so that the language does not become stale. Yes, "the end justifies the means" and all that jazz. That might account for the delay in the delivery of Perl 6 and the endless series of Exegeses and Apocalypses and Ecclesiastes and whatnot.
What I don't fully understand, then, is why Bjarne spoils an otherwise excellent pamphlet by indulging in the pointless denunciation of enumerations as an "odd and isolated feature" born of or comparable to (it's not clear from the phrasing) a "random extension" that was included in the standard due to operational deficiencies in the standards process. Is this flamebait, tossed our way to draw attention to his article and to the standards process? Certainly, he isn't trying to discredit the process by acknowledging the inevitability of incorporating "random extensions" that would later become "odd and isolated" features, is he?
Hey, you just assume that I went to school!;) Anyway, Mr. AC Troll, I will pick up your bait: you are mistaken in claiming that Bangor is not in Wales and that Wales is in England. Let me quote from the Collins English Dictionary:
Bangor [...] NOUN [1] a university town in NW Wales, in Gwynedd, on the Menai Strait. [...] [2] a town in SE Northern Ireland, in North Down district, Co. Down, on Belfast Lough. [...]
Since the original poster (that wasn't you, was it, AC?) had said "England", I was fairly sure he was not talking about the Bangor in Northern Ireland, but rather about the Bangor in the part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain known as "England and Wales", which must never be shortened to just "England" because Wales is indeed a separate nation, if not a sovereign state. Wales even has national sides in soccer and rugby, just as Scottland and Northern Ireland and England do. FWIW, the Welsh won the last Six Nations, defeating England (another nation) in the process. OK, I think that's enough now.
BTW, you didn't have to insult me in order to disagree with me, did you? And, actually, if one were to assume that you went to school, then your claim that Bangor is not in Wales and that Wales is in England... well, never mind -- I don't want to play this game with you.
and Wales is definitely not in England. Wales, FWIW, is where Alan Cox is from. Next time, check your geographical facts and do try not to offend people when you post.
You're right: actual takeover is not necessary because the *threat* of takeover is good enough for their purposes. And, no, they would not be back where they started if Novell took the place of Red Hat, which they could not; in fact, Microsoft can only hope that Novell take over from Red Hat as the largest Linux vendor, in which case, they'd already be "in the Linux biz" because SuSE already sells a bundle that allows you to install Office. Actually, the whole thing is pretty sinister. Hang on to that iron structure for a moment; we may yet need it. 'Cause I think it's just the old Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt manoeuvre again. And it's a really clever one this time. They start by spreading the rumour that Red Hat could be taken over by Microsoft. If they do it well, this may shake people's confidence in the long-term viability of Red Hat as a provider of support for Fedora-based systems. If they do it really well, they may even cast doubt on the viability of Fedora itself by appearing to threaten a key corporate ally of the project. Microsoft chose Red Hat as the target of this rumour because Red Hat are true champions of the Linux cause, enjoying considerable and well-deserved goodwill credit with users, and losing them would deal a severe blow to morale in the free-software user community. And to whom would users whose confidence in Red Hat had been shaken turn? Well, many would turn to Debian, but many more still, I'm afraid, would turn to SuSE. That would be bad for free software and good for Microsoft. Here's why.
Historically, SuSE has been very friendly toward vendors of proprietary solutions. With SuSE's help, many non-free packages end up on the average SuSE Linux user's machine. At the most popular downtown bookstore here, you can even buy a SuSE bundle that allows you to install Microsoft Office on Linux. Recently, SuSE was acquired by Novell (a proprietary software vendor from Utah, whence the SCO Group also hails) and has gone even further in that direction. Now more than ever, SuSE has the mainstream consumer of PC software in mind when assembling its products, and their product development strategy reflects that: pile features up, lump binaries in, stick logos on, push colorful shrink-wrapped boxes out -- quickly, quickly, time's a-wastin'! Does this remind you of anything you've seen before? Maybe Microsoft already has its long, invisible tentacles in SuSE via Novell, who knows? In any case, this much is clear to me: Microsoft hopes to reign-in the long-term success of free software distributions in general by helping vendors like SuSE prevail over vendors like Red Hat; in other words, they want to bring the Linux distribution space, as a whole, to their arena, where they expect to win. Let me support that claim by indulging in a little thought-experiment. What happens when Joe Blow's first experience with a Linux-based free software distribution is almost indistinguishable from his experience with Windows or perhaps actually worse? In the worst case scenario, his misadventure discourages other would-be defectors and he is himself eventually recaptured by Redmond. And how often does this worse-case scenario arise? Too often, I fear.
Consider this: here, in Europe, the only Linux you can buy in your average store here is... SuSE Linux. And don't think for a minute that people are going to look for the nearest well-informed nerd and ask him what Linux distro he should get. No, people just figure SuSE must be the best and most professional, and that's why the big store sells it. And it's German, too, and Germans are known for their quality engineering, you know. Plus, look, it says it supports my brand-spanking-new cards and peripherals! So they buy it. Or they download it. Or borrow it. Whatever. They have decided to try to install SuSE. Then, often enough, comes the big disappointment. For example, the store-bought SuSE Linux my girlfriend installed on her computer after XP comm
I know you think you are exaggerating, but you are not; you bring up a totally legitimate point there with the inspections. For example, here, in Switzerland, utility companies must approve for sale and subsequently inspect your end-user equipment. And, yes, that implies the partial disassembly of the devices in situ.
Last week, an inspector from the natural gas utility company came to our home to take a look at our heaters and our range, and he lectured to us at length on their proper care and maintenance. Now, the appliances are not owned by his company, but his company is charged by the authorities with keeping all parts of the natural gas delivery network safe -- which they do. Interestingly, at around the same time, we saw a news report about a natural gas related explosion in Spain in which many people died; now, I lived in Spain for years and never had the pleasure of even witnessing a tirade by an inspector from the natural gas utility company (perhaps the inspections occur less often there) so the news was tragic but not surprising.
The point I was trying to make is that, when people live so close together that one individual's irresponsible behavior can endanger the very lives of those around him, some monitoring (even of the kind that some here would see as an intolerable invasion of their privacy) seems justifiable. Well, at least where stuff like utilities is concerned. There are things one should fix before they're "broke" because the only alternative is being really sorry afterwards, and sometimes that's not good enough.
And, in case you were wondering, Swiss trains do indeed run on time.;)
To answer directly: I don't think Apple has an anti-DRM strategy, though, even if I wish they'd go for it. I do think Apple has a generally pro-customer stance, which is a heck of a lot better than some other companies out there.
That's very generous of you, Dan -- too generous, I think. Let me tell you a little story of which you are almost certainly unaware. I own a Terapin CD recorder; I bought this because it allows me to make digital clips from an analog source (like my old Blaupunkt Video 8 camera, with which I recorded many important events in my life) right in my living room. When I tried to retrieve the MPEG-1 files from a VideoCD I made from tapes of my aunt's 1993 wedding, my iMac claimed that there was a device failure. I didn't believe it, so I booted Windows 95 (a pre-DRM, pre-CD-burning-craze OS) using Connectix's Virtual PC and tried the same thing -- and succeeded. Now, given that the hardware was the same and that the only difference was the operating system, I have to conclude that MacOS is at fault.
Perhaps the company is looking for some balance in a situation where the sides are turning the issue into a binary question, i.e., total control or total anarchy. Example of balance: Apple doesn't enable iPod users to copy to other disks (not directly), but it hasn't done anything as far as I know to stop the third parties who make it easy to do so.
Let me see: Apple makes it impossible to copy some files from a VideoCD using the pre-installed operating system and it is only by resorting to a hardware emulator that uses only the very lowest-level access facilities of the host operating system that I am able to get around this limitation. Er... yeah, I guess that's technically "not stopping third parties who make it easy to do" but I wouldn't call this sort of crap an example of balance or a pro-customer stance. I say Apple is indeed interested in some sort of DRM (think Pixar) but prefers the solution to be a voluntary, software-based one -- rather than a Microsoft-backed, hardware-based one that Bill and Jack imposed by buying a DRM law.
Euskera, the native language of the Basque people, has a basic structure that is reminiscent of Forth. Whereas English speakers are used to a caseless prepostional system, Euskera speakers are used to a case-based postpositional system that leans mostly toward a "reverse" sequence of sintagms. Here are some examples in my (now rusty) dialect:[1]
Gizona naz - I am a man - Gizon(man)+a(a, the) naz(I am)
Zergaitik etorri zara? - Why have you come? - Zer(what)+gai(cause)+tik(for, via) etorri(come) zara(you are)
Etorri dirala dino - He says that they have come - Etorri(come) dira(they are)+la(that) dino(he says)
Datorren barikuan berriro etorri gara - We will come again next Friday - Dator(it comes)+en(that) bariku(Friday)+an(on) berri(new)+ro(each, for each) etorri(come)+ko(normally local genitive case marker, functioning here as a future tense marker) gara(we are)
Ikusi dozun gizona etorri dala dino - He says that the man whom you saw has come - Ikusi(see) dozu(you have)+n(that) gizon(man)+a(a, the) etorri(come) da(he is)+la(that) dino(he says)
Well, I could go on, but I think you get the point.
You can think of a case postposition (of which there are quite a few and which confer great functional specificity) as a sort of type marker, which makes Euskera a sort of object-oriented, reverse-notation language.[2]
__
[1] Any euskera batua fascists reading this can send their corrections of my grammar and spelling to/dev/null.
[2] Well, reverse for English speakers in any case, ha ha.
I like the sound of what you say, and I generally agree, but I'd like you to consider the following observations in a reply, if you would.
You say:
Fact is, all security is obscurity. Security rests on the notion of a shared secret. Some key that both you and the other guy know.
This isn't exactly true of public-key cryptographic systems, is it? I mean, I suppose you could consider the public key as the "shared secret", but the point of it is that it can be public. On the other hand, the address (whether it be a memory location or i-node number or URL) of a byte range (protected by encryption or not) could be considered privileged information as a matter of policy, and would then constitute the shared secret of which you speak. Unfortunately, I don't know if this argument would be accepted by everyone. Let me try to reason along the same lines as you did and see where that takes us.
Writing memory locations that were not intended for user consumption can be achieved by buffer overflows; although the memory write is (or can be) the result of doing something completely normal (like, for example, writing data to a socket) it is almost certainly illegal resource usage.
Running unauthorized system commands can be achieved by composing an HTML form that will trick the CGI script interpreter; although the execution of the command is the result of a perfectly normal HTTP transaction, it may also be an illegal appropriation of services.
Now, given that some instant messaging client has used buffer overflows as a normal part of its operation (which one? I forget) and that programmable web interfaces (where, depending on how you look at it, you're supposed to do stuff that the service provider didn't anticipate) are all the rage now, does the foregoing still hold?
[You aren't likely to get the full impact of that reference if you aren't Spanish, but you might understand my meaning after you see this -- a movie every Spanish citizen should see.]
Bueno, creo que con mencionar la peli ya queda dicho todo.
Simon and Garfunkel -- that's very keen, man. [toke] And it makes me wonder. Subway walls, tenement halls... which one does Slashdot resemble more? Well, some days, when the grits are a-pouring and the goatse.cx trolls roaring, I think it's more like bathroom stalls. That's probably how it gets the page views that keep it in business, too; I mean, who wouldn't want to read a continually updated bathroom stall door?
I think persuading people that the server room climate control should be set to "cozy" would be an uphill battle. Spend some money on a good KVM switch (rackables can handle a dozen inputs and more) and put the main keyboard, mouse, and monitor in an adjacent room (which would then have to be secured) or make a small terminal room inside the server room (which would be as secure as the server room); that way, the server room can be as cold as your boss wants and you can stay as warm as you like. This will require the allocation of space and budget -- hard battles to fight, too -- but is more likely to succeed.
During Kasparov's match, the machine was tuned extensively between games, which invalidated some of his observations.
I suspect you have misunderstood the meaning of my remark; perhaps you are not aware of the literal content of statements made by Kasparov during and after that match. Kasparov did in fact say (repeatedly) that some moves made (ostensibly) by Deep Blue during actual game play (with clocks a-ticking) were in fact chosen by a human; that is, IMO, he basically claimed that the Deep Blue team had cheated. In particular, after game 6 (the final game) of his match against Deep Blue, in which (in an eerie parallel with Kramnik's game 6) he played black and resigned early, he blamed the loss on the intervention of a "human hand". Perhaps someone else here can dig up a link to a transcript of his statements from the depths of her bookmarks file; thanks in advance, etcetera. In any case, I think that his meaning was quite clear and that my statement is thus scrupulously fair.
I suspect that, for these bastards, anything below a cool billion is a nominal nuisance fee. If I were a record industry executive, which isn't likely ever to happen, I would read this message from the court as "keep it up -- you're doing a great job -- and try not to get caught in the future, 'cause we don't like having to do this".
There were a few times when Linus made it very clear what he wanted changed and ESR simply didn't fix it, it was as if he didn't even hear it; look at the threads in the kernel archive. I don't know what ESR's motivation was but he made it look a little corrupt.
I think I may have found the answer in the following excerpt from his World Domination guest editorial on Linux Journal:
Of course, articles like this are part of that game. We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger--especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects.
I can't help wondering whether, in this case, Linus and Jeff are "the bosses"; indeed, stuff like pretty pictures and theorem provers and various other kitchen sinks associated with CML2 qualify (amply) as those "snazzy special effects" of which he is so fond.
You make some good points, albeit a bit harsh for my taste at times; you certainly don't seem to think altruism in science is pervasive and neither do I!:) Your indictment of "corrupted science" enumerates a lot of accused parties, but I wish to concentrate on my favorite guilty party. I blame the schools. Yep, I do. Let me expound on that and, along the way, comment on some of what you said.
You said:
Right now, we have a generation of scientists who've grown up in the wake of the most rapid scientific expansion in the history of man. That expansion has mostly petered out, but hasn't stopped entirely. Rather than expanding science, current scientists are working a lot more on applying the science we already have. (IMO, we'll probably have another period of rapid expansion once we start harnessing quantum effects for computation and communication.)
WRT the above, I would like to say two things:
It is my considerate opinion that a very important objective of scientists should be precisely what you say it is today: to refine our models (i.e., so-called theories) in order to create or improve devices or processes that allow us to profit tangibly from our intellectual effort. Your view that scientists who work on the design of devices or processes exploiting our theoretical frameworks are failing to "expand science" is ludicrous; a good design (one that eventually results in the production of a good device or process or even a new material) is evidence of the value of the theoretical framework and analytical tools used to create it, and, insofar as better instruments and materials make it easier (or even possible) to discover new things and refine our models of them, the activity that you dismiss as merely applicative is in fact also foundational.
IMHO, the last wave of rapid progress in science came as a result of improved communications (people and ideas moving and coming in contact with each other) and was made possible by the small size of the interest group and its chosen subject; that is, travel and post of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century made it possible for scientists working far away from each other to share their work and integrate much of the information available then into coherent bodies of knowledge. Now, the advent of modern telecommunications has the potential facilitate a great improvement where communication is concerned (as great as steamboats and trains back in the day) but the integration of all of the information that will be more easily shared is going to be much more difficult, and quantum this and quantum that will not, as you seem to think, help us with that. The real challenge lies in education.
I submit for your consideration that traditional educational institutions and approaches are not serving us as well as they could in preparing budding scientists for the herculean task of integrating all of the newly available information; instead, it seems we are cranking out a stream of scientist lookalikes whose primary concern is justifying their activity to their benefactors using the language and values of business. Further, I submit the following, also for your consideration:
We should not continue teaching science chronologically and phenomenologically, giving ourselves the sorry excuse that the good students will make the pertinent connections by themselves;
We cannot continue pretending that the same pedagogical perspective will be valid for every individual and every individual has the same average scientific talent, giving ourselves the sorry excuse that considering a homogeneous collection of spherical entities with average radius R and average density D has worked for us in the past; and
We must look for better ways to teach what we know by focusing on the students' formative experience as the primary concern of educators and insisting that the act of teaching be subordinate to the act of learning.
We must stop giving students the impression that the only legitimate aspiration of every scientist is to make a momentous discovery that will secure one's place in history or, failing that, a steady stream of grant money and a fellowship at a good research institution.
To summarize: Good Science requires Good Scientists, and until we make some much-needed changes to our academic curricula, our pedagogical methods, our conception of the educational experience, and the cardinal values of our profession that we teach to young scientists, we will have to endure the embarrassment caused by low enrolment, a$$hole educators, cheating researchers, and bullshit grants.
So, why don't the schools do something about it all and start turning out Good Scientists?
Well, I suspect that good educators feel trapped in the current situation. It does not seem possible to make a distinction between students of different degree programs because there is now such an overriding emphasis on the double duty of introductory science courses (taught mostly to engineers) as the bread-and-butter of physics and mathematics departments that it would be professional suicide to insist on a separate curriculum for your own department's students. It does not seem possible to make a distinction between students having different aptitudes because there is such an overriding emphasis on the notion of education as a paid generic service, modeled after drive-thru car washes and buffet-style cafeteria food, that it would be professional suicide to speak of this or that student as being somehow deserving of special treatment. How will you explain to a tenure board leveling against you an accusation of favoritism (supported by fresh student evaluation forms, no less) that you felt morally compelled to loosen deadlines for those two students whom the dean had put on probation but who you knew were going to be excellent mathematicians one day? How would your department chair and dean react to a radically different curriculum that would turn out better physicists but render most of the offerings suboptimal for students who did not intend to take a degree in Physics?
[The case of bad educators is not worth dwelling on: a professor who does not wish ever to be surpassed by her students lest she lose her aura of superiority, or who hinders talented students out of resentment, or who rewards students who grease her ego is very unlikely to be concerned with the general problem of how to provide a better formative experience for aspiring scientists, as it is much easier for her to trip them up than to improve her own skills.]
You said:
What glory there is in science is going to be spread more and more thin, even if we do have another period of expansive discovery in the near future.
In reading that remark of yours, I can't help thinking of how the scientific establishment is teeming with people who got into it for the wrong reasons (e.g., "I can play this game, or at least let on that I can, plus I like having other people think I'm smarter than they are") and with the wrong goals (e.g., "I wish to be celebrated and run a little research empire and go to lots of conferences ans junkets"), competing for limited resources with people who got into it for the right reasons (e.g., "I don't suck at this, honestly I don't, and there's nothing else I'd rather be doing and it gives me a warm-fuzzy") and with the right goals (e.g., "I hope the effort I put in today means that, tomorrow, we may all know more about the way things work"). [Please, pardon all of that parenthetical garbage; I was just trying to make my meaning clearer.] I mean, who cares if the glory is spread thin? We should be happy that we manage to work out the answers to important questions and that everybody is going to benefit from the new knowledge; actually, anybody for whom that isn't enough should probably think twice before becoming a scientist in any capacity. I think that there is a difference between recognition ("I know you did this, and I like it") and glory ("I'd like you to sign my copy of your latest book, as well as my very lowest back, if you please"), but it certainly seems some people wouldn't care to have the former without some of the latter.
You said:
How can this be fixed? Scientists have always had huge egos and the damage to the scientific process will take a long time to go away, but I think that a lot of corruption could be eliminated by forcing business out of academia.
I agree sort of. I think it's OK for a company to fund education, but I don't think it's OK for a company to expect that this investment yield directly attributable profits in the form of patentable technology; that is, in science as in other fields, companies should fund education as an investment in the formative experience of the people they may one day hire. Having made my clarification, let me augment your proposition. I propose:
That we first relieve scientists with the huge egos of which you speak of educational responsibilities, because science education is about more than just formulas strung together by complex mathematics and long tables of experimental data;
That we eschew celebrity and profitability as justifications of the study of science, because the study of science is valuable beyond the superficial economic impact of patentable technological breakthroughs; and
That we all (especially deans and department chairs) think harder about our own values and those of the people we hire before weighing in ex-catedra on the latest instance of scientific fraud, because it may just be that we have just as much explaining to do as the perpetrators.
Well, that's what I think, anyway. And I do apologize for the long post, but this (the quality of science education) is a primary concern of mine, and I have a hard time restraining myself.:)
I can't recall any children being maimed or killed over Stroustrup's C++ designs.
I agree: a lot more people are made a lot more miserable by the diamond trade than by C++. The latter is a subtle, merciful killer; it eschews violence. Freshmen simply lose the will to live about four weeks into CS101, when they learn the true meaning of inheritance and friendship: "you aren't going to get a lot of money from your parents, but you will probably get the same self-destructive behavior they had, which will probably be triggered by someone covering his ass after someone you thought was your friend tripped you up by playing with your member".
["Only friends can play with your member(s)" heard from Andy Kinley at RHIT, IIRC. Hi, Andy!]
The article says that the map dates to around 1434AD. That date is entirely probable because the Basques had been trading in Norh America since at least the fourteenth century. Actually, the date is precisely one year after the end of records showing the landing of North American beaver pelts by Basque traders at English ports. The folloqing recycled quote is from Europe's Mystery People: Did the Basques Beat Columbus? by Evan Hadingham, in World Monitor, September 1992, p34-42 (p37):
Recently, historian Robert Delort, of Switzerland's University of Geneva, discovered remarkable evidence implying that the New World fur trade may go back long before the whaling expeditions and, for that matter, Columbus. Delort has unearthed British customs records indicating that Basque traders landed a heavy volume of beaver pelts at English ports from 1380 to
1433. Since north European beaver population were already nearly extinct by that time, Delort speculates the source is more likely to have been the New World (the pelts were delivered in rolls -- the way Quebec Indians stored them). Delort emphasizes, however, that his conclusion is preliminary. Certainly the idea is not far-fetched. An Icelandic chronicle from 1412 mentions the presence of Basque whalers in Iceland, a testimony backed up by two contemporary maps depicting Basque whaling ships there.
Now, the proximity of the map's date (as reported by the linked article) to the unexplained end of the beaver pelt trade, and the connection between the Catholic Church and this allegedly long-lost map (a connection to which the linked article refers only in passing) would go together quite well in the mind of your average conspiracy theory buff. Surely, this suggests that today's governments are not the first in history to protect their citizens from news of an alien civilization.;) In any case, I just thought I'd toss that in FYI.
All that interesting typing and then you left out your conclusion.
That depends on whether you can infer that which I may have been too chicken to say more intelligibly. I realize you might be trolling me, but that's OK. The previous post dealt with two issues: (1) the trouble with referring to the Heisenberg inequality as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and (2) the larger problem of which the foregoing is only a symptom. Since I believe the first point was adequately explained in my previous post, I will only elaborate on the second point.
A great many people who would call themselves scientists are posers, and some of them are outright frauds. A great many professors do not really understand much of what they teach; they cover up their incompetence by assigning buttloads of homework, giving clever problems on tests that are designed to prey on students' lack of experience, and avoiding truly open discussion with their students lest their own ignorance be revealed in the process. A great many researchers do not understand much of the theoretical framework they employ; they cover up their incompetence by doing lots of (often unnecessary) laboratory work (they say "experiments") or writing computer programs (they say "simulations"), writing karmawhorific articles for so-called scholarly journals, and avoiding truly open discussion with their peers lest their own ignorance be revealed and their peers aggravated in the process.
Yep, the scientific establishment is currently overrun by conniving intellectual midgets who pose as Real Scientists and uncritically certify each other. That may be disappointing, but it doesn't have to be a Bad Thing. If the goal is simply to catalog natural phenomena, discover new materials, and characterize known materials in order to exploit all this knowledge in "new technologies", then it may be acceptable for science professionals to be intellectual frauds because their incompetence will not prevent them from making a useful contribution. In fact, as long as there are a few Real Scientists around to straighten things out, the work of so-so scientists can be quite useful even when it does not consist of observation and classification. Consider, for example, the journal article to which the story refers: the article's closing paragraph gives me ample reason to believe that the authors have either (1) not properly understood their own result or (2) chosen to lean on the traditional aesthetic (and perhaps the dogma -- I'd have to talk to them to find out) in order to gain the favor of their peers -- but this does not in itself detract from the value of the result they present, which must be judged independently. [FYI, my previous post addresses conventional discourse on the Uncertainty Principle and gives context to the previous statement.]
So, that was my conclusion: many scientists (including, apparently, the authors of the article in question) are posers of one kind or another -- and that's probably OK. Mediocrity, when effective, is often also efficient, especially when combined with connivance. That may be hard for individuals of unassailable integrity (Real Physicists and Real Programmers included) to accept, but we have every indication that it is true.
[Disclaimer: I am a scientist (what you might call a mathematical physicist) and I hope, someday, before I am too old, to discover whether I, too, am a fraud. The last thing I want is to waste my life publishing bullshit articles in order to legitimize my last bullshit grant and support my next bullshit grant application.]
[To the author of the post to which I am replying: please, don't take this as an attack on you.]
The "Heisenburg [sic] uncertainty prinicple [sic]" is not a misconception arising from inexact experimental tools; it has nothing to do with the quality of experimental means. The inequality that some (most?) physicists like to call the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is not a principle at all but a sort of litmus test for the applicability of classical models to systems exhibiting so-called quantum behavior; that is, the Heisenberg inequality can be used as a way to determine whether a given so-called classical model {still | no-longer} constitutes an accurate description of the behavior of the system in question. I suppose I could agree with someone saying that the Heisenberg inequality was a "feature" of quantum-mechanical models much more readily than I could agree with someone claiming that it was a principle. (You might look up "principle" in the dictionary to see what I mean.)
There's no "growing school of thought" to speak of because Physics is not a belief system, and I don't even think that a significant change in the thinking of the average physicist is currently taking place. There are many practicing physicists who haven't the integrity to admit (to others or to themselves) that they are a fraud and who propagate their misunderstanding to their students and to the public through their lectures and their publications -- and it may well be that attrition and budget cuts are weeding these posers out. Evidently, however, we've still a long way to go: the closing paragraph of the scholarly paper referenced in the story demonstrates how Ye Olde Rhetorick can survive even the strongest refutation. I can think of two reasons why people will continue to "believe in" the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and other such historically justified nonsense:
In order to get ahead, a scientist (like everyone else, I suppose) may choose to say what his peers (especially those who hold power) already believe, even when he knows better.
Very often, those who discover evidence refuting a given proposition are too firmly in its grip to realize the significance (or even the meaning) of their finding, and sometimes even misinterpret it so as to corroborate their erroneous belief.
Fear not for the fate of science, though: it is quite possible to use the knowledge framework developed by Real Scientists (amongst whom I would include Real Mathematicians) to make Real Discoveries and devise Real Technology -- even in the absence of Real Understanding. (I am confident that the reader can provide his own examples.:-> ) And, in a very real way, we depend on these contributions to build the venerable edifice of science.
If the GPL was such an Intellectual Property Destroyer then how is Microsoft able to bundle it in with SFU 3.0 and charge for the result.
I'm sure you meant that as a rhetorical question, but I am going to take advantage of it and elaborate on the implied logical conclusion, which is not (only) "those bastards...". The answer, I think, is that so-called intellectual property doesn't have to remain exclusive in order for it to make money for its creators and distributors. I may be going out on a precarious limb by saying this, but IMHO if Bill & Co. were to make money from Unix interoperability products built around GNU tools, they would be (albeit unwittingly) legitimizing the Free Software approach as a business practice; that is, by selling GPL'd software, Microsoft is validating Stallman's claim that you can sell free (libre) software for profit, and further shows that this is true even when it's no longer a "first sale", which implies that the value (commercial or otherwise) of ideas (so-called intellectual property) is not bound inextricably to their exclusivity.
The question that now suggests itself is whether the creators of those GNU tools are adequately compensated for their effort in such a scheme. The answer to that depends on what kinds of compensation is deemed adequate; I, for one, think that money is in order. Yep, I think Microsoft should cut the FSF a check, with no strings attached, just as many other (re)distributors have. Now, I do realize that some features of the Free Software ecosystem rely on the legal framework while others rely on the Honor System, and that the latter may be legally unenforceable, but I still think that we can and should demand of Microsoft that they make a financial contribution to support the community whose work makes it possible for them to release Yet Another Microsoft Product and enter yet another market.
Can Microsoft really be selling me something I can't use
Well, it depends on your definition of use, doesn't it? According some people, they've never sold something one could use -- just stuff you struggle against.
Seriously, though, it's perfectly legal for them to sell you something "you can't use", especially if it's licensed under the GPL(!) they so despise. Yes, really. Read the GPL again. Now, did you see that bit about "without warranty" of "merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose"? Well, there you have it!:-)
That's pretty funny, Dokta_C; after all, hypocrisy is a form of inconsistency -- in rendering value judgments. I am assuming that Dokta_C's epigram is "new to Slashdot" in the context of Microsoft bashing, BTW; if it is, someone should mod it up.
Slashdot Mirror
I submitted this story over a month ago (2005.06.28 17:50) but got it rejected (by CmdrTaco, I think, "on duty" at around that time) double-quick. I wonder whether I offended him by using Companion Suitable for Slashdotters Almost Ready as the title of the submission. :)
and Bjarne sounds as if he were rehearsing his pitch on the eve of a product launch. As if C++ needed to be re-launched! I wonder whether he does this because he fears people's reaction to the new standard. In any case, it seems he hopes to preempt a good deal of criticism by manipulating our view of the standard's gestation ahead of the release. We've seen this kind of thing before, haven't we?
Technique Before the launch, persuade clients to believe that the product's development was/is governed by core values they already hold. Result After the launch, clients are less likely to look at the product critically and dispassionately because they are already satisfied that it respects their core values.But maybe that's what a language creator ends up having to do if he wants changes to be widely accepted and (more importantly) adopted so that the language does not become stale. Yes, "the end justifies the means" and all that jazz. That might account for the delay in the delivery of Perl 6 and the endless series of Exegeses and Apocalypses and Ecclesiastes and whatnot.
What I don't fully understand, then, is why Bjarne spoils an otherwise excellent pamphlet by indulging in the pointless denunciation of enumerations as an "odd and isolated feature" born of or comparable to (it's not clear from the phrasing) a "random extension" that was included in the standard due to operational deficiencies in the standards process. Is this flamebait, tossed our way to draw attention to his article and to the standards process? Certainly, he isn't trying to discredit the process by acknowledging the inevitability of incorporating "random extensions" that would later become "odd and isolated" features, is he?
Hey, you just assume that I went to school! ;) Anyway, Mr. AC Troll, I will pick up your bait: you are mistaken in claiming that Bangor is not in Wales and that Wales is in England. Let me quote from the Collins English Dictionary:
Since the original poster (that wasn't you, was it, AC?) had said "England", I was fairly sure he was not talking about the Bangor in Northern Ireland, but rather about the Bangor in the part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain known as "England and Wales", which must never be shortened to just "England" because Wales is indeed a separate nation, if not a sovereign state. Wales even has national sides in soccer and rugby, just as Scottland and Northern Ireland and England do. FWIW, the Welsh won the last Six Nations, defeating England (another nation) in the process. OK, I think that's enough now.
BTW, you didn't have to insult me in order to disagree with me, did you? And, actually, if one were to assume that you went to school, then your claim that Bangor is not in Wales and that Wales is in England... well, never mind -- I don't want to play this game with you.
and Wales is definitely not in England. Wales, FWIW, is where Alan Cox is from. Next time, check your geographical facts and do try not to offend people when you post.
You're right: actual takeover is not necessary because the *threat* of takeover is good enough for their purposes. And, no, they would not be back where they started if Novell took the place of Red Hat, which they could not; in fact, Microsoft can only hope that Novell take over from Red Hat as the largest Linux vendor, in which case, they'd already be "in the Linux biz" because SuSE already sells a bundle that allows you to install Office. Actually, the whole thing is pretty sinister. Hang on to that iron structure for a moment; we may yet need it. 'Cause I think it's just the old Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt manoeuvre again. And it's a really clever one this time. They start by spreading the rumour that Red Hat could be taken over by Microsoft. If they do it well, this may shake people's confidence in the long-term viability of Red Hat as a provider of support for Fedora-based systems. If they do it really well, they may even cast doubt on the viability of Fedora itself by appearing to threaten a key corporate ally of the project. Microsoft chose Red Hat as the target of this rumour because Red Hat are true champions of the Linux cause, enjoying considerable and well-deserved goodwill credit with users, and losing them would deal a severe blow to morale in the free-software user community. And to whom would users whose confidence in Red Hat had been shaken turn? Well, many would turn to Debian, but many more still, I'm afraid, would turn to SuSE. That would be bad for free software and good for Microsoft. Here's why.
Historically, SuSE has been very friendly toward vendors of proprietary solutions. With SuSE's help, many non-free packages end up on the average SuSE Linux user's machine. At the most popular downtown bookstore here, you can even buy a SuSE bundle that allows you to install Microsoft Office on Linux. Recently, SuSE was acquired by Novell (a proprietary software vendor from Utah, whence the SCO Group also hails) and has gone even further in that direction. Now more than ever, SuSE has the mainstream consumer of PC software in mind when assembling its products, and their product development strategy reflects that: pile features up, lump binaries in, stick logos on, push colorful shrink-wrapped boxes out -- quickly, quickly, time's a-wastin'! Does this remind you of anything you've seen before? Maybe Microsoft already has its long, invisible tentacles in SuSE via Novell, who knows? In any case, this much is clear to me: Microsoft hopes to reign-in the long-term success of free software distributions in general by helping vendors like SuSE prevail over vendors like Red Hat; in other words, they want to bring the Linux distribution space, as a whole, to their arena, where they expect to win. Let me support that claim by indulging in a little thought-experiment. What happens when Joe Blow's first experience with a Linux-based free software distribution is almost indistinguishable from his experience with Windows or perhaps actually worse? In the worst case scenario, his misadventure discourages other would-be defectors and he is himself eventually recaptured by Redmond. And how often does this worse-case scenario arise? Too often, I fear.
Consider this: here, in Europe, the only Linux you can buy in your average store here is... SuSE Linux. And don't think for a minute that people are going to look for the nearest well-informed nerd and ask him what Linux distro he should get. No, people just figure SuSE must be the best and most professional, and that's why the big store sells it. And it's German, too, and Germans are known for their quality engineering, you know. Plus, look, it says it supports my brand-spanking-new cards and peripherals! So they buy it. Or they download it. Or borrow it. Whatever. They have decided to try to install SuSE. Then, often enough, comes the big disappointment. For example, the store-bought SuSE Linux my girlfriend installed on her computer after XP comm
I know you think you are exaggerating, but you are not; you bring up a totally legitimate point there with the inspections. For example, here, in Switzerland, utility companies must approve for sale and subsequently inspect your end-user equipment. And, yes, that implies the partial disassembly of the devices in situ.
Last week, an inspector from the natural gas utility company came to our home to take a look at our heaters and our range, and he lectured to us at length on their proper care and maintenance. Now, the appliances are not owned by his company, but his company is charged by the authorities with keeping all parts of the natural gas delivery network safe -- which they do. Interestingly, at around the same time, we saw a news report about a natural gas related explosion in Spain in which many people died; now, I lived in Spain for years and never had the pleasure of even witnessing a tirade by an inspector from the natural gas utility company (perhaps the inspections occur less often there) so the news was tragic but not surprising.
The point I was trying to make is that, when people live so close together that one individual's irresponsible behavior can endanger the very lives of those around him, some monitoring (even of the kind that some here would see as an intolerable invasion of their privacy) seems justifiable. Well, at least where stuff like utilities is concerned. There are things one should fix before they're "broke" because the only alternative is being really sorry afterwards, and sometimes that's not good enough.
And, in case you were wondering, Swiss trains do indeed run on time. ;)
If I'm not mistaken, you're Steve McGeady of Intel, who did Set Top Boxes with Gosling at SIGGRAPH '95.[1] Why didn't Intel put up the $40k to cover your expenses as a witness in the government's case, especially in light of what Microsoft did to them?
__
[1] FWIW, mad props for keen vision etcetera; and isn't it interesting how that prospect was also killed off by Microsoft?
That's very generous of you, Dan -- too generous, I think. Let me tell you a little story of which you are almost certainly unaware. I own a Terapin CD recorder; I bought this because it allows me to make digital clips from an analog source (like my old Blaupunkt Video 8 camera, with which I recorded many important events in my life) right in my living room. When I tried to retrieve the MPEG-1 files from a VideoCD I made from tapes of my aunt's 1993 wedding, my iMac claimed that there was a device failure. I didn't believe it, so I booted Windows 95 (a pre-DRM, pre-CD-burning-craze OS) using Connectix's Virtual PC and tried the same thing -- and succeeded. Now, given that the hardware was the same and that the only difference was the operating system, I have to conclude that MacOS is at fault.
Let me see: Apple makes it impossible to copy some files from a VideoCD using the pre-installed operating system and it is only by resorting to a hardware emulator that uses only the very lowest-level access facilities of the host operating system that I am able to get around this limitation. Er... yeah, I guess that's technically "not stopping third parties who make it easy to do" but I wouldn't call this sort of crap an example of balance or a pro-customer stance. I say Apple is indeed interested in some sort of DRM (think Pixar) but prefers the solution to be a voluntary, software-based one -- rather than a Microsoft-backed, hardware-based one that Bill and Jack imposed by buying a DRM law.
Euskera, the native language of the Basque people, has a basic structure that is reminiscent of Forth. Whereas English speakers are used to a caseless prepostional system, Euskera speakers are used to a case-based postpositional system that leans mostly toward a "reverse" sequence of sintagms. Here are some examples in my (now rusty) dialect:[1]
Well, I could go on, but I think you get the point.
You can think of a case postposition (of which there are quite a few and which confer great functional specificity) as a sort of type marker, which makes Euskera a sort of object-oriented, reverse-notation language.[2]
__
[1] Any euskera batua fascists reading this can send their corrections of my grammar and spelling to /dev/null.
[2] Well, reverse for English speakers in any case, ha ha.
I like the sound of what you say, and I generally agree, but I'd like you to consider the following observations in a reply, if you would.
You say:
This isn't exactly true of public-key cryptographic systems, is it? I mean, I suppose you could consider the public key as the "shared secret", but the point of it is that it can be public. On the other hand, the address (whether it be a memory location or i-node number or URL) of a byte range (protected by encryption or not) could be considered privileged information as a matter of policy, and would then constitute the shared secret of which you speak. Unfortunately, I don't know if this argument would be accepted by everyone. Let me try to reason along the same lines as you did and see where that takes us.
Now, given that some instant messaging client has used buffer overflows as a normal part of its operation (which one? I forget) and that programmable web interfaces (where, depending on how you look at it, you're supposed to do stuff that the service provider didn't anticipate) are all the rage now, does the foregoing still hold?
que no es poco.
[You aren't likely to get the full impact of that reference if you aren't Spanish, but you might understand my meaning after you see this -- a movie every Spanish citizen should see.]
Bueno, creo que con mencionar la peli ya queda dicho todo.
since, technically, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Simon and Garfunkel -- that's very keen, man. [toke] And it makes me wonder. Subway walls, tenement halls... which one does Slashdot resemble more? Well, some days, when the grits are a-pouring and the goatse.cx trolls roaring, I think it's more like bathroom stalls. That's probably how it gets the page views that keep it in business, too; I mean, who wouldn't want to read a continually updated bathroom stall door?
I think persuading people that the server room climate control should be set to "cozy" would be an uphill battle. Spend some money on a good KVM switch (rackables can handle a dozen inputs and more) and put the main keyboard, mouse, and monitor in an adjacent room (which would then have to be secured) or make a small terminal room inside the server room (which would be as secure as the server room); that way, the server room can be as cold as your boss wants and you can stay as warm as you like. This will require the allocation of space and budget -- hard battles to fight, too -- but is more likely to succeed.
I suspect you have misunderstood the meaning of my remark; perhaps you are not aware of the literal content of statements made by Kasparov during and after that match. Kasparov did in fact say (repeatedly) that some moves made (ostensibly) by Deep Blue during actual game play (with clocks a-ticking) were in fact chosen by a human; that is, IMO, he basically claimed that the Deep Blue team had cheated. In particular, after game 6 (the final game) of his match against Deep Blue, in which (in an eerie parallel with Kramnik's game 6) he played black and resigned early, he blamed the loss on the intervention of a "human hand". Perhaps someone else here can dig up a link to a transcript of his statements from the depths of her bookmarks file; thanks in advance, etcetera. In any case, I think that his meaning was quite clear and that my statement is thus scrupulously fair.
I suspect that, for these bastards, anything below a cool billion is a nominal nuisance fee. If I were a record industry executive, which isn't likely ever to happen, I would read this message from the court as "keep it up -- you're doing a great job -- and try not to get caught in the future, 'cause we don't like having to do this".
I think I may have found the answer in the following excerpt from his World Domination guest editorial on Linux Journal:
I can't help wondering whether, in this case, Linus and Jeff are "the bosses"; indeed, stuff like pretty pictures and theorem provers and various other kitchen sinks associated with CML2 qualify (amply) as those "snazzy special effects" of which he is so fond.
Now, love him or hate him, Eric is not going anywhere, even after getting booed off a very important stage. And in light of his, um, staying power and in consideration of the CML2 affair, it should be of some comfort to his detractors that at least Eric the Rich Guy hasn't lost his hackitude and keeps producing worthwhile stuff. When Eric first threatened to quit politics, I looked forward to the return of Eric the Hacker and the retirement of Eric the Politician ; alas, half an Eric must, ipso facto, half not be, and I'll take a whole Eric over half an Eric any day, thank you very much.
You make some good points, albeit a bit harsh for my taste at times; you certainly don't seem to think altruism in science is pervasive and neither do I! :) Your indictment of "corrupted science" enumerates a lot of accused parties, but I wish to concentrate on my favorite guilty party. I blame the schools. Yep, I do. Let me expound on that and, along the way, comment on some of what you said.
You said:
WRT the above, I would like to say two things:
I submit for your consideration that traditional educational institutions and approaches are not serving us as well as they could in preparing budding scientists for the herculean task of integrating all of the newly available information; instead, it seems we are cranking out a stream of scientist lookalikes whose primary concern is justifying their activity to their benefactors using the language and values of business. Further, I submit the following, also for your consideration:
To summarize: Good Science requires Good Scientists, and until we make some much-needed changes to our academic curricula, our pedagogical methods, our conception of the educational experience, and the cardinal values of our profession that we teach to young scientists, we will have to endure the embarrassment caused by low enrolment, a$$hole educators, cheating researchers, and bullshit grants.
So, why don't the schools do something about it all and start turning out Good Scientists?
Well, I suspect that good educators feel trapped in the current situation. It does not seem possible to make a distinction between students of different degree programs because there is now such an overriding emphasis on the double duty of introductory science courses (taught mostly to engineers) as the bread-and-butter of physics and mathematics departments that it would be professional suicide to insist on a separate curriculum for your own department's students. It does not seem possible to make a distinction between students having different aptitudes because there is such an overriding emphasis on the notion of education as a paid generic service, modeled after drive-thru car washes and buffet-style cafeteria food, that it would be professional suicide to speak of this or that student as being somehow deserving of special treatment. How will you explain to a tenure board leveling against you an accusation of favoritism (supported by fresh student evaluation forms, no less) that you felt morally compelled to loosen deadlines for those two students whom the dean had put on probation but who you knew were going to be excellent mathematicians one day? How would your department chair and dean react to a radically different curriculum that would turn out better physicists but render most of the offerings suboptimal for students who did not intend to take a degree in Physics?
[The case of bad educators is not worth dwelling on: a professor who does not wish ever to be surpassed by her students lest she lose her aura of superiority, or who hinders talented students out of resentment, or who rewards students who grease her ego is very unlikely to be concerned with the general problem of how to provide a better formative experience for aspiring scientists, as it is much easier for her to trip them up than to improve her own skills.]
You said:
In reading that remark of yours, I can't help thinking of how the scientific establishment is teeming with people who got into it for the wrong reasons (e.g., "I can play this game, or at least let on that I can, plus I like having other people think I'm smarter than they are") and with the wrong goals (e.g., "I wish to be celebrated and run a little research empire and go to lots of conferences ans junkets"), competing for limited resources with people who got into it for the right reasons (e.g., "I don't suck at this, honestly I don't, and there's nothing else I'd rather be doing and it gives me a warm-fuzzy") and with the right goals (e.g., "I hope the effort I put in today means that, tomorrow, we may all know more about the way things work"). [Please, pardon all of that parenthetical garbage; I was just trying to make my meaning clearer.] I mean, who cares if the glory is spread thin? We should be happy that we manage to work out the answers to important questions and that everybody is going to benefit from the new knowledge; actually, anybody for whom that isn't enough should probably think twice before becoming a scientist in any capacity. I think that there is a difference between recognition ("I know you did this, and I like it") and glory ("I'd like you to sign my copy of your latest book, as well as my very lowest back, if you please"), but it certainly seems some people wouldn't care to have the former without some of the latter.
You said:
I agree sort of. I think it's OK for a company to fund education, but I don't think it's OK for a company to expect that this investment yield directly attributable profits in the form of patentable technology; that is, in science as in other fields, companies should fund education as an investment in the formative experience of the people they may one day hire. Having made my clarification, let me augment your proposition. I propose:
Well, that's what I think, anyway. And I do apologize for the long post, but this (the quality of science education) is a primary concern of mine, and I have a hard time restraining myself. :)
I agree: a lot more people are made a lot more miserable by the diamond trade than by C++. The latter is a subtle, merciful killer; it eschews violence. Freshmen simply lose the will to live about four weeks into CS101, when they learn the true meaning of inheritance and friendship: "you aren't going to get a lot of money from your parents, but you will probably get the same self-destructive behavior they had, which will probably be triggered by someone covering his ass after someone you thought was your friend tripped you up by playing with your member".
["Only friends can play with your member(s)" heard from Andy Kinley at RHIT, IIRC. Hi, Andy!]
The article says that the map dates to around 1434AD. That date is entirely probable because the Basques had been trading in Norh America since at least the fourteenth century. Actually, the date is precisely one year after the end of records showing the landing of North American beaver pelts by Basque traders at English ports. The folloqing recycled quote is from Europe's Mystery People: Did the Basques Beat Columbus? by Evan Hadingham, in World Monitor, September 1992, p34-42 (p37):
Now, the proximity of the map's date (as reported by the linked article) to the unexplained end of the beaver pelt trade, and the connection between the Catholic Church and this allegedly long-lost map (a connection to which the linked article refers only in passing) would go together quite well in the mind of your average conspiracy theory buff. Surely, this suggests that today's governments are not the first in history to protect their citizens from news of an alien civilization. ;) In any case, I just thought I'd toss that in FYI.
That depends on whether you can infer that which I may have been too chicken to say more intelligibly. I realize you might be trolling me, but that's OK. The previous post dealt with two issues: (1) the trouble with referring to the Heisenberg inequality as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and (2) the larger problem of which the foregoing is only a symptom. Since I believe the first point was adequately explained in my previous post, I will only elaborate on the second point.
A great many people who would call themselves scientists are posers, and some of them are outright frauds. A great many professors do not really understand much of what they teach; they cover up their incompetence by assigning buttloads of homework, giving clever problems on tests that are designed to prey on students' lack of experience, and avoiding truly open discussion with their students lest their own ignorance be revealed in the process. A great many researchers do not understand much of the theoretical framework they employ; they cover up their incompetence by doing lots of (often unnecessary) laboratory work (they say "experiments") or writing computer programs (they say "simulations"), writing karmawhorific articles for so-called scholarly journals, and avoiding truly open discussion with their peers lest their own ignorance be revealed and their peers aggravated in the process.
Yep, the scientific establishment is currently overrun by conniving intellectual midgets who pose as Real Scientists and uncritically certify each other. That may be disappointing, but it doesn't have to be a Bad Thing. If the goal is simply to catalog natural phenomena, discover new materials, and characterize known materials in order to exploit all this knowledge in "new technologies", then it may be acceptable for science professionals to be intellectual frauds because their incompetence will not prevent them from making a useful contribution. In fact, as long as there are a few Real Scientists around to straighten things out, the work of so-so scientists can be quite useful even when it does not consist of observation and classification. Consider, for example, the journal article to which the story refers: the article's closing paragraph gives me ample reason to believe that the authors have either (1) not properly understood their own result or (2) chosen to lean on the traditional aesthetic (and perhaps the dogma -- I'd have to talk to them to find out) in order to gain the favor of their peers -- but this does not in itself detract from the value of the result they present, which must be judged independently. [FYI, my previous post addresses conventional discourse on the Uncertainty Principle and gives context to the previous statement.]
So, that was my conclusion: many scientists (including, apparently, the authors of the article in question) are posers of one kind or another -- and that's probably OK. Mediocrity, when effective, is often also efficient, especially when combined with connivance. That may be hard for individuals of unassailable integrity (Real Physicists and Real Programmers included) to accept, but we have every indication that it is true.
[Disclaimer: I am a scientist (what you might call a mathematical physicist) and I hope, someday, before I am too old, to discover whether I, too, am a fraud. The last thing I want is to waste my life publishing bullshit articles in order to legitimize my last bullshit grant and support my next bullshit grant application.]
[To the author of the post to which I am replying: please, don't take this as an attack on you.]
The "Heisenburg [sic] uncertainty prinicple [sic]" is not a misconception arising from inexact experimental tools; it has nothing to do with the quality of experimental means. The inequality that some (most?) physicists like to call the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is not a principle at all but a sort of litmus test for the applicability of classical models to systems exhibiting so-called quantum behavior; that is, the Heisenberg inequality can be used as a way to determine whether a given so-called classical model {still | no-longer} constitutes an accurate description of the behavior of the system in question. I suppose I could agree with someone saying that the Heisenberg inequality was a "feature" of quantum-mechanical models much more readily than I could agree with someone claiming that it was a principle. (You might look up "principle" in the dictionary to see what I mean.)
There's no "growing school of thought" to speak of because Physics is not a belief system, and I don't even think that a significant change in the thinking of the average physicist is currently taking place. There are many practicing physicists who haven't the integrity to admit (to others or to themselves) that they are a fraud and who propagate their misunderstanding to their students and to the public through their lectures and their publications -- and it may well be that attrition and budget cuts are weeding these posers out. Evidently, however, we've still a long way to go: the closing paragraph of the scholarly paper referenced in the story demonstrates how Ye Olde Rhetorick can survive even the strongest refutation. I can think of two reasons why people will continue to "believe in" the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and other such historically justified nonsense:
Fear not for the fate of science, though: it is quite possible to use the knowledge framework developed by Real Scientists (amongst whom I would include Real Mathematicians) to make Real Discoveries and devise Real Technology -- even in the absence of Real Understanding. (I am confident that the reader can provide his own examples. :-> ) And, in a very real way, we depend on these contributions to build the venerable edifice of science.
I'm sure you meant that as a rhetorical question, but I am going to take advantage of it and elaborate on the implied logical conclusion, which is not (only) "those bastards...". The answer, I think, is that so-called intellectual property doesn't have to remain exclusive in order for it to make money for its creators and distributors. I may be going out on a precarious limb by saying this, but IMHO if Bill & Co. were to make money from Unix interoperability products built around GNU tools, they would be (albeit unwittingly) legitimizing the Free Software approach as a business practice; that is, by selling GPL'd software, Microsoft is validating Stallman's claim that you can sell free (libre) software for profit, and further shows that this is true even when it's no longer a "first sale", which implies that the value (commercial or otherwise) of ideas (so-called intellectual property) is not bound inextricably to their exclusivity.
The question that now suggests itself is whether the creators of those GNU tools are adequately compensated for their effort in such a scheme. The answer to that depends on what kinds of compensation is deemed adequate; I, for one, think that money is in order. Yep, I think Microsoft should cut the FSF a check, with no strings attached, just as many other (re)distributors have. Now, I do realize that some features of the Free Software ecosystem rely on the legal framework while others rely on the Honor System, and that the latter may be legally unenforceable, but I still think that we can and should demand of Microsoft that they make a financial contribution to support the community whose work makes it possible for them to release Yet Another Microsoft Product and enter yet another market.
Well, it depends on your definition of use, doesn't it? According some people, they've never sold something one could use -- just stuff you struggle against.
Seriously, though, it's perfectly legal for them to sell you something "you can't use", especially if it's licensed under the GPL(!) they so despise. Yes, really. Read the GPL again. Now, did you see that bit about "without warranty" of "merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose"? Well, there you have it! :-)
That's pretty funny, Dokta_C; after all, hypocrisy is a form of inconsistency -- in rendering value judgments. I am assuming that Dokta_C's epigram is "new to Slashdot" in the context of Microsoft bashing, BTW; if it is, someone should mod it up.