Re:Software Projects vs. Traditional Projects
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Why New Systems Fail
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· Score: 1
That's obviously true, but how many bridges never get finished compared to the number of software projects that never get finished?
You tend to have to make an expensive investment in resources (securing real estate, preparing the site, etc.) to even begin building a bridge, which is less true of software projects, therefore a bridge project that gets cancelled between when the project starts and when it is complete is a lot more likely to be cancelled before any construction is done than a software project that is cancelled is likely to be cancelled before any programming is done. So IT projects are more likely to be visibly abandoned after "construction" has begun than bridges, because there tend to be less front-loaded costs in IT.
You'll note that that's not what I said. You dropped the word "mathematical" from my statement.
I dropped the word mathematical because it doesn't actually add anything to "model". A model (at least, one which has been operationalized so that one can test it scientifically, and thus which is a valid hypothesis) is always "mathematical" insofar as that makes any difference. (To wit, it can be reduced to a rigorous proposition of symbolic logic.)
If you have a hypothesis (e.g. people who exhibit trait "a" will also exhibit trait "b"), then the fact that you don't understand how the brain works has no more bearing on the validity of the hypothesis than the fact that we have no model that explains how gravity and electromagnetism function in the same universe.
"people who exhibit trait 'a' will also exhibit trait 'b'", provided the traits are defined enough so as to make this rigorously testable, is, in addition to being a hypothesis, a consistent model (it may not be as rich a model as some people would like, but that's not the issue.)
a -> b is a mathematical assertion.
Which is entirely true. However, you can play fast-and-loose with controls in physics because you can fall back on math.
No, you can't.
If you are testing a hypothesis in physics, you cannot play fast and loose with the controls, since falling back on math will only tell you what your model predicts, it will not tell you whether your experiment has confirmed it unless you have applied the controls properly.
Well, there's little math that can describe the behavior of human beings because we're an emergent phenomenon from underlying, complex systems that are not yet fully understood.
Actually, there is quite a lot of math that can describe the behavior of human beings, though most of the predictive models that have been tested so far are of limited utility. This is, though, typical of the cutting edge of most fields of science, but social sciences tend to have a lot less well-explored areas, both because it took them longer to be approached as sciences, and because even the most basic areas often require statistical rather than laboratory controls (which required the development of statistical methods before you could even seriously approach them as science), and because of limitations (both practical and ethical) on the ability to due investigations even with such controls.
It's hard to isolate experimental evidence from math when they're tightly entwined in many sciences, but they're not actually the same thing, and bother us though it might, math isn't a science.
Math is not a science, math is simply the fundamental tool of all sciences. Including the social sciences.
Rather, like the related field of logic, math is a tool which science employs.
"Math" and "logic" aren't so much related as two different names for the same thing.
When that tool is rendered less valuable in a given scenario, that doesn't mean that you can't perform good science.
Yeah, actually, it does. Science is the process of refining understandings of the universe by reviewing observations, developing concrete predictive models, and attempting to falsify the concrete predictive models, repeatedly; if you don't have a concrete (which means mathematical) predictive model to test, you aren't doing science, you are doing, most likely, some mixture of observation and unstructured speculation.
But the assumption is that it is in your own self interest to get the proper glasses, so if you 'cheat' on the eye test you are hurting yourself pretty directly.
Its a lot easier to read a letter if you know what it is in advance; the brain is much better at recognizing patterns when it already knows what pattern it is looking for. Its not just deliberate cheating that is an issue.
In fact, in many cases, it's far more rigorous than the "hard" sciences because it lacks a consistent mathematical model for what is being tested, and thus must rely wholly on experimental controls to establish fundamental principles.
If you don't have a consistent model of what is going on to test, you don't have a hypothesis and aren't doing science. Having a consistent model ("mathematical" or otherwise) does not obviate the need for experimental controls, in fact, its the only thing that is going to tell you what kind of experimental controls you are likely to need.
The (broad, and there are exceptions on both sides) difference between psychology (and social sciences in general) and physical sciences is not that the former lacks consistent models and the latter has them, or that the former uses experimental controls and the latter does not, it is that in the latter one can often use laboratory controls by tightly controlling the initial conditions, whereas in the former you are more often forced to resort to statistical controls.
Because the GPL itself explicitly states that it's non-revocable
The GPL is not a law, it is a gratuitous ("bare") license. The law is that gratuitous licenses, whatever their terms, are revocable at will. Ergo, a term in such a license stating that it is non-revocable does not actually make the license non-revocable, since the license does not have the power to change the law.
It is merely a gratuitous promise not to revoke it, which may be enforced as a bar to enforcement of the rights of the copyright holder, to the extent necessary to prevent injustice, where there has been reasonable, detrimental reliance on the promise, by promissory estoppel. But note that there are a whole lot of conditions there, it is not like a contract where enforcement would be far more secure.
First I'm wondering why the faraday cage you propose blocks only GPS and not cellular radio -- while you could certainly construct such a thing it doesn't seem like something that would happen accidentally.
It doesn't take a much to block GPS; I can't get a good GPS signal in my house -- and I get fine cellular reception there.
If you don't dual license your OSS, then you are not interested in making money.
At least, you aren't interested in making money off of software licenses for things you release as OSS. Of course, if you have release software as OSS, you might as well give up on doing that anyway.
But big businesses want accountable support; that may typically come with enterprise software licenses, but if it is separate they'll pay for that even if the license is free. Supporting software costs money if done in house, too, and it usually isn't the businesses core competency, and most large businesses would prefer to outsource to someone for whom it is their core competency.
The physical layer is standard microwave for space (S and K band for station, X band and Ka band for deep space links of the future). It can also be carried over wired media (or heck, avian carriers as well)
Though using wired (or RFC 1149- or 2549-style) connections into space is not advised.
Unless you're James Bond, I don't see how most folks would need any more than this
There are all kinds of legal environments, outside of national security, where you need better certainty of destruction of data than "it looked broken to me" (e.g., HIPAA).
and if they do need more, they already have it.
Maybe, maybe not. Places that are subject to rules that would require additional security sometimes simply don't do particular things that might be useful from an operational convenience perspective since the tools don't exist that let them work under the rules, and others bend (or break) the rules because they aren't willing to sacrifice the operational convenience. Anything that lets them meet requirements in the applicable mandates while promoting operational convenience is a big plus for them.
Additionally, the balance between operational convenience and available protective technology is usually a consideration in adopting new (e.g.) privacy regulations.
I am sure you know that you tried to smear the difference between news sources and companies owning news.
No, I didn't. The companies owning the news outlets are the sources. The individual outlets are just brands the very few sources use to reach an particular audiences. But the number of outlets in the MSM have declined sharply over recent years, and the number of firms owning the outlets has declined even more precipitously as the corporations that own the surviving outlets have merged. Neither outlets nor firms owning the outlets have proliferated; both have consolidated.
There is no reasonable need for so many 24-hour news sources.
There aren't very many 24-hour news outlets (and even fewer sources); there are lots of 24-hour commentary outlets, though.
They are competing for eyeballs.
They aren't competing, for the most part, at all. There are fewer total outlets, and fewer firms that own those outlets, and in many cases, where in the past there were competing daily print outlets with different ownership, there is either only one (or no) daily print outlet, or there are more than one brand but they share the same ownership, and thus have no reason to compete.
Hopefully, they are not done. There is still too many talking heads and not enough information delivered.
You don't understand, do you? The consolidation of news has pushed that trend, it doesn't oppose it. Commentary -- especially by interested parties pushing their own agenda -- is cheap, while reporting is expensive. And it helps keep an outlet focussed on a particular demographic for its audience, and keep those that do tune in attached for longer times, which is what advertisers want outlets to deliver -- a well defined to demographic to saturate with ads. Real news journalism is expensive, and doesn't attract a well-defined consistent demographic and keep them glued. Fox News is one of the shining examples of this field; it often held higher ratings than the other cable "news" channels despite having fewer distinct vieweres, because it attract a well-defined group of people and its veiwers, on average, watched Fox longer and more exclusively than viewers of other networks. Which is why other cable outlets sought to imitate Fox's style.
Times Square used to be lined up with newspaper companies at some point. By the time all the small ones went out of business and the NY Times controlled the whole square, it became a top-quality newspaper. The same thing is happening now with all venues of MSM news research and delivery.
This is, as best I can tell, shear fantasy. None of things you complain about their being "too much" of are being reduced in the present consolidation, and indeed most of them are products of it.
Until it gets cut throat to the point where news investigators see other investigators as enemies (going for their bread), the news will remain an obsequious love fest with their favorite special interests.
There aren't many news investigators left, they've mostly been replaced by advocates for particular special interests in the course of the process of consolidation of outlets.
I make it a habit to get my news from at least two different sources, and there is no question that there is left wing and right wing media. As long the news business can afford to be an advertisement for their perspective interests, they'll keep bleeding.
News media have always reflected the ideology of those whose financial interests they served; this is hardly new in recent decades. The degree of consolidation, and thus the narrowness of the number of interests represented in the mainstream media is something of a reversal, particularly in print media (broadcast, particularly national broadcast media, was always
Regardless of facts being left out, the company is still suing itself, which is arguably stupid.
No, there are many cases in law when to sue certain people, you must sue everyone similarly situated, or at least everyone similarly situated that can be brought before the court. This will naturally lead to certain cases where the plaintiff is required to sue themselves.
What is stupid, OTOH, is contesting the claims you make as plantiff in your own filings as a necessary (but clearly not genuinely opposed) defendant.
I RTFA, and it appears that Florida requires that you sue all lien holders. Since they have 80/20 double mortgage, they have to sue themselves.
Even so, I doubt very much that Florida law requires them to deny their own allegations; you are never required to contest the points made by someone suing you, and it is especially ridiculous to deny claims that you yourself are making.
I'm surprised the Judge hasn't called in both attorneys and chewed them out. They clearly deserve it.
Really, I think the attorneys for the other defendants should be able to make enough of a hash out of Wells for this, since anything Wells files as a defendant that contradicts what Wells files as a plaintiff should be usable as evidence -- and admission from Wells, even -- not only of the falsity of the claims Wells is making as plaintiff but also of Wells' own knowledge that the claims are false and without merit.
Extreme economic problems require extreme solutions, and Wells Fargo Bank has come up with a good one. They have decided to sue themselves. Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium that is going into foreclosure. As holder of the first, they are suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which is Wells Fargo. It gets better. The company has hired a lawyer to defend itself against its own lawsuit. The defense lawyer even filed this answer to the complaint, "Defendant admits that it is the owner and holder of a mortgage encumbering the subject real property. All other allegations of the complaint are denied."
Insofar as Wells Fargo (as defendant) is denying its own (as plaintiff) allegations, shouldn't all the other defendants be able to enter in Wells's own denial of those allegations as an admission, by Wells, that the allegations are false and, further, that Wells knows them to be false, justifying both dismissal of the suit and potentially other sanctions against Wells?
I don't think anyone doubts that Solaris will go on. But I see little advantage in Oracle's case for continuing to dedicate resources to OpenSolaris.
OpenSolaris serves to help promote Solaris, which is why Sun introduced it. There would be little sense in Oracle killing OpenSolaris if they intended to try to continue Solaris as an OS.
Porting ZFS to Linux is complicated by the fact that the GNU General Public License, which governs the Linux kernel, prohibits linking with code under certain licenses, such as CDDL, the license ZFS is released under. [Wikipedia]
Nothing in the GPL prohibits linking with code under any other licenses, per se, however, many other licenses do not give one the rights one would need to relicense the code under the terms in the GPL (either instead of the terms in the other license, which is required under the GPLv2 [under which the Linux kernel is licensed], or in addition to the terms of that license, which is an option in certain cases under the GPLv3).
It would be kinda hard to kill since the code is already "open" and out in the wild.
That makes it hard for them to stop anyone who has the resources and desire from starting their own product based on the OpenSolaris code, but it doesn't make it that hard for them to kill OpenSolaris as an actively developed Sun project.
Not, I should hasten to add, that I think they will do that, just that they can. And if they did, I doubt there'd be a big community keeping OpenSolaris alive after they did. It might survive, but it would become obscure compared to its current status.
If it is all this "programming" done with a controlpad (or joystick), it doesn't look like a real programming tool.
I would agree, but only insofar as "programming" with an IDE with templates, autocompletion, and GUI builders (and, especially, wiring up BPMN or similar diagrams) isn't "real programming".
You forgot to mention going out of business of most main-stream media (aka consolidation). So that only the intelligent news reporters and news sources would stay in business.
That's already happened. There a far fewer companies owning TV stations, or newspapers, or radio stations than there were a decade or two ago. Except its not the "intelligent" reporters or sources that survived, its the ones that spent the least money on legwork and did the best job of cozying up to advertisers and regulators.
The proliferation of MSM has reduced competitiveness of news reporting. Which has reduced quality.
There is no "proliferation", and if there had been, then virtually by definition it would have increased the degree of competition. What has reduced competition has been consolidation, which is the opposite of proliferation. Sure, each of the firms in the media industry now has more different outlets, but the number of firms in the mainstream media is smaller, not larger, than it used to be.
There is simply too much job security in that business.
Actually, the news media has seen wave after wave of mergers, layoffs, closures of outlets, and other aspects of contraction and consolidation. On the print side, its not quite to the point where the entire newspaper industry is a wire service with different local branding, but close enough as makes little difference.
Which brings up the point again...traditional media outlets will need to figure out how to monetize and stay in business, or all those blogs will no longer have a source for their stories.
Or, more likely, if the blogs are better at making money, as the traditional news media fail, the profitable blogs will make the investments necessary to assure that they continue to have sources for their stories. Even if the fact that blogs tend to be slower on stories really means that they are depenndent on the traditional media. In some cases, that may be true, but it could just be that the traditional media are still driven by the desire to be first, while the blogs are driven more by the need to provide something that their readers care about, which often means more depth, context, and analysis and less emphasis on "you heard it hear first" on the bare bones of a story.
Which is OK in a riot or a protest, but otherwise does not come with the depth of research from a good, non-lazy journalist that does his or her homework, uses multiple sources to back up facts, etc. etc.
IMO, the better online outlets are already better at this than anything left in the traditional media (outside of some of the the weekly or monthly print outlets.)
GNU does have its own "Linux" distribution. It's called Debian
Debian is not GNU's distribution. It is distributed by the Debian Project, not the GNU Project; it just happens to include GNU tools, the GNU Hurd as a kernel option (along with FreeBSD and Linux kernels) and, when using the Linux kernel, the project uses the name "GNU/Linux". But it's not GNU's distribution. (Though when it uses the Hurd kernel, one calling it a "GNU OS" would be analogous to calling OS's that use the Linux kernel "Linux OS".)
It's called Debian, and a subset of it + QA is called Ubuntu.
Ubuntu isn't a subset of Debian + QA, since many things are included in Ubuntu (some that originate from Canonical, some that originate elsewhere) that are not included in Debian at the time they are included in Ubuntu.
gNewSense also.
gNewSense is also not a subset of Debian. It is a downstream distro of Ubuntu with a Debian-like strong stance against non-free software, which if Ubuntu was a subset of Debian wouldn't have much of a point.
And I don't think your Hurd reference fits in your argument.
You seem to have missed the entire point of my argument, then.
"Wrong?" Who's an expert in the field who did not get to such a state by employment?
Probably no one, but what you need to have been in the past to have gained the qualifications needed to be considered is different from what you must be to be considered. There's a mile of difference between requiring (as the call for volunteers does) that applicants have expertise and experience in the broadband field and requiring (as was GGP falsely claimed was the case) that applicants be employed in the field.
But "Wrong." takes it to a new level of douchebaggery.
It is not "douchebaggery" to point out that something is wrong when, in fact, it is wrong.
(It may be "pedantic" if the point of error is minor, but here its a pretty big difference in meaning.)
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You tend to have to make an expensive investment in resources (securing real estate, preparing the site, etc.) to even begin building a bridge, which is less true of software projects, therefore a bridge project that gets cancelled between when the project starts and when it is complete is a lot more likely to be cancelled before any construction is done than a software project that is cancelled is likely to be cancelled before any programming is done. So IT projects are more likely to be visibly abandoned after "construction" has begun than bridges, because there tend to be less front-loaded costs in IT.
I dropped the word mathematical because it doesn't actually add anything to "model". A model (at least, one which has been operationalized so that one can test it scientifically, and thus which is a valid hypothesis) is always "mathematical" insofar as that makes any difference. (To wit, it can be reduced to a rigorous proposition of symbolic logic.)
"people who exhibit trait 'a' will also exhibit trait 'b'", provided the traits are defined enough so as to make this rigorously testable, is, in addition to being a hypothesis, a consistent model (it may not be as rich a model as some people would like, but that's not the issue.)
a -> b is a mathematical assertion.
No, you can't.
If you are testing a hypothesis in physics, you cannot play fast and loose with the controls, since falling back on math will only tell you what your model predicts, it will not tell you whether your experiment has confirmed it unless you have applied the controls properly.
Actually, there is quite a lot of math that can describe the behavior of human beings, though most of the predictive models that have been tested so far are of limited utility. This is, though, typical of the cutting edge of most fields of science, but social sciences tend to have a lot less well-explored areas, both because it took them longer to be approached as sciences, and because even the most basic areas often require statistical rather than laboratory controls (which required the development of statistical methods before you could even seriously approach them as science), and because of limitations (both practical and ethical) on the ability to due investigations even with such controls.
Math is not a science, math is simply the fundamental tool of all sciences. Including the social sciences.
"Math" and "logic" aren't so much related as two different names for the same thing.
Yeah, actually, it does. Science is the process of refining understandings of the universe by reviewing observations, developing concrete predictive models, and attempting to falsify the concrete predictive models, repeatedly; if you don't have a concrete (which means mathematical) predictive model to test, you aren't doing science, you are doing, most likely, some mixture of observation and unstructured speculation.
Its a lot easier to read a letter if you know what it is in advance; the brain is much better at recognizing patterns when it already knows what pattern it is looking for. Its not just deliberate cheating that is an issue.
If you don't have a consistent model of what is going on to test, you don't have a hypothesis and aren't doing science. Having a consistent model ("mathematical" or otherwise) does not obviate the need for experimental controls, in fact, its the only thing that is going to tell you what kind of experimental controls you are likely to need.
The (broad, and there are exceptions on both sides) difference between psychology (and social sciences in general) and physical sciences is not that the former lacks consistent models and the latter has them, or that the former uses experimental controls and the latter does not, it is that in the latter one can often use laboratory controls by tightly controlling the initial conditions, whereas in the former you are more often forced to resort to statistical controls.
The GPL is not a law, it is a gratuitous ("bare") license. The law is that gratuitous licenses, whatever their terms, are revocable at will. Ergo, a term in such a license stating that it is non-revocable does not actually make the license non-revocable, since the license does not have the power to change the law.
It is merely a gratuitous promise not to revoke it, which may be enforced as a bar to enforcement of the rights of the copyright holder, to the extent necessary to prevent injustice, where there has been reasonable, detrimental reliance on the promise, by promissory estoppel. But note that there are a whole lot of conditions there, it is not like a contract where enforcement would be far more secure.
It doesn't take a much to block GPS; I can't get a good GPS signal in my house -- and I get fine cellular reception there.
That's just a clever way of saying cats domesticated humans rather than vice versa.
At least, you aren't interested in making money off of software licenses for things you release as OSS. Of course, if you have release software as OSS, you might as well give up on doing that anyway.
But big businesses want accountable support; that may typically come with enterprise software licenses, but if it is separate they'll pay for that even if the license is free. Supporting software costs money if done in house, too, and it usually isn't the businesses core competency, and most large businesses would prefer to outsource to someone for whom it is their core competency.
Though using wired (or RFC 1149- or 2549-style) connections into space is not advised.
There are all kinds of legal environments, outside of national security, where you need better certainty of destruction of data than "it looked broken to me" (e.g., HIPAA).
Maybe, maybe not. Places that are subject to rules that would require additional security sometimes simply don't do particular things that might be useful from an operational convenience perspective since the tools don't exist that let them work under the rules, and others bend (or break) the rules because they aren't willing to sacrifice the operational convenience. Anything that lets them meet requirements in the applicable mandates while promoting operational convenience is a big plus for them.
Additionally, the balance between operational convenience and available protective technology is usually a consideration in adopting new (e.g.) privacy regulations.
No, I didn't. The companies owning the news outlets are the sources. The individual outlets are just brands the very few sources use to reach an particular audiences. But the number of outlets in the MSM have declined sharply over recent years, and the number of firms owning the outlets has declined even more precipitously as the corporations that own the surviving outlets have merged. Neither outlets nor firms owning the outlets have proliferated; both have consolidated.
There aren't very many 24-hour news outlets (and even fewer sources); there are lots of 24-hour commentary outlets, though.
They aren't competing, for the most part, at all. There are fewer total outlets, and fewer firms that own those outlets, and in many cases, where in the past there were competing daily print outlets with different ownership, there is either only one (or no) daily print outlet, or there are more than one brand but they share the same ownership, and thus have no reason to compete.
You don't understand, do you? The consolidation of news has pushed that trend, it doesn't oppose it. Commentary -- especially by interested parties pushing their own agenda -- is cheap, while reporting is expensive. And it helps keep an outlet focussed on a particular demographic for its audience, and keep those that do tune in attached for longer times, which is what advertisers want outlets to deliver -- a well defined to demographic to saturate with ads. Real news journalism is expensive, and doesn't attract a well-defined consistent demographic and keep them glued. Fox News is one of the shining examples of this field; it often held higher ratings than the other cable "news" channels despite having fewer distinct vieweres, because it attract a well-defined group of people and its veiwers, on average, watched Fox longer and more exclusively than viewers of other networks. Which is why other cable outlets sought to imitate Fox's style.
This is, as best I can tell, shear fantasy. None of things you complain about their being "too much" of are being reduced in the present consolidation, and indeed most of them are products of it.
There aren't many news investigators left, they've mostly been replaced by advocates for particular special interests in the course of the process of consolidation of outlets.
News media have always reflected the ideology of those whose financial interests they served; this is hardly new in recent decades. The degree of consolidation, and thus the narrowness of the number of interests represented in the mainstream media is something of a reversal, particularly in print media (broadcast, particularly national broadcast media, was always
No, there are many cases in law when to sue certain people, you must sue everyone similarly situated, or at least everyone similarly situated that can be brought before the court. This will naturally lead to certain cases where the plaintiff is required to sue themselves.
What is stupid, OTOH, is contesting the claims you make as plantiff in your own filings as a necessary (but clearly not genuinely opposed) defendant.
Even so, I doubt very much that Florida law requires them to deny their own allegations; you are never required to contest the points made by someone suing you, and it is especially ridiculous to deny claims that you yourself are making.
Really, I think the attorneys for the other defendants should be able to make enough of a hash out of Wells for this, since anything Wells files as a defendant that contradicts what Wells files as a plaintiff should be usable as evidence -- and admission from Wells, even -- not only of the falsity of the claims Wells is making as plaintiff but also of Wells' own knowledge that the claims are false and without merit.
Which, legally, they are: a single, distinct legal person. That's, in fact, the whole point of a corporation.
Insofar as Wells Fargo (as defendant) is denying its own (as plaintiff) allegations, shouldn't all the other defendants be able to enter in Wells's own denial of those allegations as an admission, by Wells, that the allegations are false and, further, that Wells knows them to be false, justifying both dismissal of the suit and potentially other sanctions against Wells?
OpenSolaris serves to help promote Solaris, which is why Sun introduced it. There would be little sense in Oracle killing OpenSolaris if they intended to try to continue Solaris as an OS.
Nothing in the GPL prohibits linking with code under any other licenses, per se, however, many other licenses do not give one the rights one would need to relicense the code under the terms in the GPL (either instead of the terms in the other license, which is required under the GPLv2 [under which the Linux kernel is licensed], or in addition to the terms of that license, which is an option in certain cases under the GPLv3).
That makes it hard for them to stop anyone who has the resources and desire from starting their own product based on the OpenSolaris code, but it doesn't make it that hard for them to kill OpenSolaris as an actively developed Sun project.
Not, I should hasten to add, that I think they will do that, just that they can. And if they did, I doubt there'd be a big community keeping OpenSolaris alive after they did. It might survive, but it would become obscure compared to its current status.
I would agree, but only insofar as "programming" with an IDE with templates, autocompletion, and GUI builders (and, especially, wiring up BPMN or similar diagrams) isn't "real programming".
That's already happened. There a far fewer companies owning TV stations, or newspapers, or radio stations than there were a decade or two ago. Except its not the "intelligent" reporters or sources that survived, its the ones that spent the least money on legwork and did the best job of cozying up to advertisers and regulators.
There is no "proliferation", and if there had been, then virtually by definition it would have increased the degree of competition. What has reduced competition has been consolidation, which is the opposite of proliferation. Sure, each of the firms in the media industry now has more different outlets, but the number of firms in the mainstream media is smaller, not larger, than it used to be.
Actually, the news media has seen wave after wave of mergers, layoffs, closures of outlets, and other aspects of contraction and consolidation. On the print side, its not quite to the point where the entire newspaper industry is a wire service with different local branding, but close enough as makes little difference.
Or, more likely, if the blogs are better at making money, as the traditional news media fail, the profitable blogs will make the investments necessary to assure that they continue to have sources for their stories. Even if the fact that blogs tend to be slower on stories really means that they are depenndent on the traditional media. In some cases, that may be true, but it could just be that the traditional media are still driven by the desire to be first, while the blogs are driven more by the need to provide something that their readers care about, which often means more depth, context, and analysis and less emphasis on "you heard it hear first" on the bare bones of a story.
IMO, the better online outlets are already better at this than anything left in the traditional media (outside of some of the the weekly or monthly print outlets.)
Debian is not GNU's distribution. It is distributed by the Debian Project, not the GNU Project; it just happens to include GNU tools, the GNU Hurd as a kernel option (along with FreeBSD and Linux kernels) and, when using the Linux kernel, the project uses the name "GNU/Linux". But it's not GNU's distribution. (Though when it uses the Hurd kernel, one calling it a "GNU OS" would be analogous to calling OS's that use the Linux kernel "Linux OS".)
Ubuntu isn't a subset of Debian + QA, since many things are included in Ubuntu (some that originate from Canonical, some that originate elsewhere) that are not included in Debian at the time they are included in Ubuntu.
gNewSense is also not a subset of Debian. It is a downstream distro of Ubuntu with a Debian-like strong stance against non-free software, which if Ubuntu was a subset of Debian wouldn't have much of a point.
You seem to have missed the entire point of my argument, then.
And here, "Registered Coward" reveals he doesn't understand the fallacy of composition.
Probably no one, but what you need to have been in the past to have gained the qualifications needed to be considered is different from what you must be to be considered. There's a mile of difference between requiring (as the call for volunteers does) that applicants have expertise and experience in the broadband field and requiring (as was GGP falsely claimed was the case) that applicants be employed in the field.
It is not "douchebaggery" to point out that something is wrong when, in fact, it is wrong.
(It may be "pedantic" if the point of error is minor, but here its a pretty big difference in meaning.)