There's something about your posts that I find grating. I should try to figure out what it is.
I think maybe... pronounced certainty... that exacerbates the irritation of caustic cynicism... and contempt for non-cynical thinking which you polarize into a hyperbolic strawman to mock, gosh darn it... A kind of exaggerated, hateful, pessimistic misanthropic venting.
You "hold forth" rather than posit or ponder.
You talk about human nature and are quick to point out failings, but I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to acknowledge prosocial inclinations.
Am I reading you wrong? Maybe I'm not remembering the character of your prior posts very well. Are you not cynical? Do you ever qualify any proclamations with "well, I'm not entirely sure...", "I think...", or "it could be..."? Or is it really all "damn straight -- people suck is how it is and I'm the person to tell it to ya, ya foolish dreamers"? Maybe it's more performance than measured analysis.
People always think of the best outcome when a new technology is created, forgetting the cesspool we call humanity that's going to use and pervert it.
But the very thing you were responding to was someone pointing out a negative application of technology? Yet, "people always think of the best..." Maybe this hyperbole isn't warranted? Especially just on the heels of a counterexample?
Experiences change the way people think. Sure, there are tendencies, but evidently a wide variety of outcomes -- have you noticed? -- which suggests thinking is pliable. Technology can enable experiences. Talk therapy is itself a kind of technology. Maybe technology itself doesn't change the way people think (modulo mood drugs... hm... and probably neurofeedback machines... okay, and maybe a number of other technologies), but technology can be leveraged. And that's a critical point which we ought not sweep under the rug mid-rant.
Message boards allow individuals to speak to a public of thousands or hundreds of thousands. That's powerful technology. What would you do with that kind of technology? Self-gratifyingly vent your gall bladder about the inherent and irremediable evil of humankind? But meanwhile thus paint an ugly picture of humanity for others to absorb? Did you know that the more we contemn and so fear others the less helpful we become? Indeed, the more we become the things we're hating? Selfish, ungenerous, unkind? Get my drift? If we call humans ugly we make it so. Technology has amplified your mouth. Watch your mouth.
I'm not suggesting we turn a blind eye to fault. Indeed, this post is all about calling you out on yours. We absolutely should be critical. Meaning we should apply our intellects to make fine distinctions in judgement. Being overly biased towards either gloom or rainbows is harmful. (Albeit, biased towards gloom more so.) Let us judge, and judge accurately, being wary of our emotions. Let's judge, but let's not be hateful or contemptuous. I don't hate you for your curmudgeonly ranting; hate doesn't improve anything. If you're upset about humanity's failings, I might suggest highlighting and promoting its good qualities. For example, you're obviously a clever thinker. Quite sharp. Seemingly a good arguer. I suggest that you take your mental gifts and apply them with a less cynical bias. Your life will be more pleasant, without losing any realism, and so will the lives of those around you. Including me. I make this recommendation for all our sake.
Next time I'm in Minnesota, you wanna grab a coffee?
the introduction of Firefox and its subsequent growth in the market is what made the extra work
This quote is not merely politically incorrect. It comes from a very skewed perspective. Sometimes unpopularity coincides with wrongness. This perspective seems to be sitting pretty squarely in that part of the Venn diagram. (Keep in mind I'm not saying you are bad. It's just the perspective that's really off. You can adjust perspective. Good luck.)
There have always been and will always be multiple browsers. Saying the existence of other browsers is what caused extra work is like saying the presence of pedestrians in the city is a problem as you drive through. The pedestrians are going to be there. The question is whether the pedestrians are politely complying with rules of the road.
Before Firefox there was Netscape. Hey, before Internet Explorer there was Netscape:
the introduction of Internet Explorer and its subsequent growth in the market is what made the extra work
The solution to web development hassle is standards conformance, not browser monopoly.
We're just about at the point where's Microsoft's stranglehold on web protocols has been wrenched off. Standards compliance and all around browser functionality and performance are available from a range of great offerings.
I feel comfortable enough with the progress that I think I'll stop flogging Firefox as the wedge to get us to this point. I encourage you to try out whichever standards compliant browsers you're inclined to, and to use the one(s) you prefer for whatever reasons occur to you.
I might discourage using IE, however. There's no guarantee MS won't be able to regrab a browser monopoly and start corrupting protocols again.
You do what you can in the realm of the knowledge and suspicions you have.
Is there a china teapot in orbit around the sun somewhere between Earth and Mars? Is it arrogant to assume there isn't?
Do potatoes have feelings? Is it arrogant to assume they don't?
As soon as evidence presents itself or our knowledge improves to the point of seeing contradictions to our best guesses at this point, then we adjust.
Ignoring your best guess at things so that you can eat mutton is a selfish embracing of ignorance. Evil, willful ignorance. It is not a humble recognition of imperfect knowledge. Is this really what you propose as an alternative to the "arrogance" of doing the best you can?
As it turns out, people often do something like this in discussions around ethics and diets. "Does valuing sentience in general inhibit my preferred carnivorous lifestyle: -100" ("denial of tastiness: -100") "Does recognizing that other creatures have feelings make me feel guilty for contributing to their suffering through supporting agribusiness: -10" "Does a dirty hippy looking down on me challenge my sense of self-worth: -10" The points amount to a feeling that "veganism/vegetarianism is bad". That sum feeling then motivates making rational-sounding arguments to oppose the idea of being an non-carnivore:
Humans can't survive on a totally non-meat diet: specious.
Animals are inherently meant to be a resource: specious.
Vegetarians are big self-righteous meanies: well, some, sure.
The only logical pro-carnivore argument I can think of is "I don't care about the feelings of the creatures I eat." It's founded on a short-sighted ethical system, but once you've got that it's solid logic to uphold the heedless carnivore stance. All the other arguments are just weaseling in an attempt to feel that one isn't "bad".
I'm not a vegetarian/vegan. Not in the typical sense. I am in spirit, but I don't have a religious-style proscription of meat. I just recognize that buying meat products encourages suffering. My aim is to minimize that suffering, so I tend to minimize the meat I purchase. If stealing meat magically hurt no one (not the victim of the theft somehow) and still discouraged agribusiness, I'd eat a lot more meat. If in time science manages to get this vat meat stuff working well, I'd eat a lot more meat. If you raised a cow kindly and it had a good, full life, and then you killed her mercifully (and if the meat were tasty and of good texture), I'd be fine with eating from the result.
At some point (some) meat will be produced in a cruelty-free way. ("Someday, meat will be vegan.") Until then, if I should give in to the weakness of my desire, I temper such instances with awareness. I try to know which meats are produced with the most negative impact on sentience (i.e., the suffering of the meat animal itself, though as well as environmental impact and thus impact on other sentient creatures). Thus I can hopefully cause less harm.
For a while I thought shrimp were fair game. But I understand there's a lot of bycatch. If you know of any currently cruelty-free meats, please do share. Mussels? Humans born without brains?
Actually, I think you're trying to describe "civilization" (which I agree is a more important thing to measure than sentience).
Actually not.
I'm not trying to describe civilization. I really do mean sentience. And I believe sentience is more important than civilization.
Civilization can come from sentience, but it might not. The fundamental thing to be valued is the experience of the creatures, not the things they build.
And just because sentience is tricky to measure (and civilization is easy) does not mean that one should stop valuing sentience and value something else in its stead.
May I suggest this rather simple but effective ethics:
Value sentience.
To the degree that something is sentient (has feelings) it is valuable and worth treating well (helping to feel good, helping to avoid suffering).
There are weird corner cases that are hard to figure out and certain issues that aren't clear (if you should decide to bring them up please realize that they're not really arguments against the idea), but as a foundation this is a pretty good system. It rises above the intellectual muck of "animal v. human" and provides a way to begin thinking about aliens and even artificial intelligence.
Unresolved issues: What is the relative worth between entities A and B when they have equal sentience but when A will live twice as long as B? What is the value of an entity that is certain to come into being but hasn't yet? What is the value of the process that can certainly cause an entity to come into being, but hasn't yet been undertaken? What is the value of an entity whose sentience has been practically put on pause due to reversible coma or suspended animation? How do you accurately (as opposed to intuitively) measure sentience?
So your boys' mother is your sister. I wasn't hallucinating. It's just not the situation one might guess off the bat.
Well, props to you sir for being a man. And twice a parent. (Or four times? Acting as mother and father x 2 kids?)
The measures of their and your success seem to indicate that they and you have done well. Congratulations. If they are also good people who generally care about others, no more could be asked.
Okay, okay, sorry about the offensive Catholicism comment.
I do in fact think that religion is generally a problem, but I also think that that Jesus guy was onto something with the idea of loving everyone. If you're Catholic, I believe you're probably not as well as you could be, but I still love you.
It continues to develop into your early 20's. The point being that even if you're well raised, you're physically/physiologically handicapped, which you seemed to be contradicting with "rates [of maturation] aren't directly tied to the number of years they've been alive."
I mean, I suppose it's possible that an outlier prefrontal cortex could fully develop by 19... (I'd have expected this to be your responding argument if you were inclined to argue.) But, dunno. I'm guessing that prefrontal cortices pretty well develop at the speed they develop at, and that the semblance of maturity in most of the unusually precocious is the product of factors other than and in struggle against physical development. But, frankly, I don't know. (I like to think I've matured enough to know when to put disclaimers on when I'm talking out my ass. Sometimes I omit them because it feels like I'm repeating myself yet again.)
It isn't like there's some "maturity lobe" that sprouts out of your brain on your 19th birthday.
Actually, there is kind of. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for "executive" thinking (e.g., self-control), doesn't finish developing until the early 20's.
So you're wrong there, but your general idea of maturity progression being dependent on the individual I agree with.
If you really want to reduce the power impact outside the target range, you can splay the laser out into multiple sub-lasers converging onto the target. Kind of like the Death Star. Kind of.
I don't think there's anything magical on an NTFS partition and that if you could copy all the files exactly (including metadata) you should be able to get a good, restorable backup.
My guess, anyway.
I think rsync using xattr and maybe acl copying is required, and then perhaps ntfs-3g's secaudit tool for the rest of the metadata.
Good idea. I have my updates set to ask to download and ask to install. On download I'm reminded I need a backup, so I shut down the system without installing the updates, do the backup, boot to install, reboot, cross fingers.
Is anyone doing rsync backups (ooh, maybe even snapshots) of XP? Can rsync handle all the fs info needed to get a good backup? Right now I am indeed imaging the whole drive.
Standards hijacking (which Netscape also did) is IMHO the far worse influence. If you couple standards pollution with the fact that Microsoft held back advancing web tech (they let IE6 rot for five damned years) and a developer and user population that myopically don't care beyond how their website looks, and you end up with years of dev backflips and pain, lost time and money, and exploited machines.
Developers are the ones who suffer the most, so you'd expect they would have some sense about the matter. Still, you find yourself arguing on Slashdot when they say things like "IE is the standard." These folks feed the zombie. Please do not feed the zombie.
Can I just make a comment here? All of you who failed to recognize the importance of standards are to blame for IE6 lingering. And I'm rather sore at you. And you continued to trust Microsoft and thought that using IE7 and IE8 was a good idea. As if somehow the past 9 years weren't a righteous mess of painful web development and technological retardation. It could be that MS is in a corner finally, with a fifth to a third of browser share going to standards-compliant browsers, and so can't leverage IE to quash competition via protocol pollution, but that's no thanks to you.
It's the confusion caused by units which change depending on context that warrants the advent of distinguishing units. What do you do when the context information isn't entirely clear or isn't available or, worse still, changes?
We've now got megabytes and mebibytes.
Since semantic overloading is generally bad, I recommend saving mega for its original meaning only. Thoughts?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm referring to TFA and its situation in particular. You'll note as you read the article that there are references to protocol issues.
In general, having protocol noncompliance and "extensions" is still worse than having protocol compliance and "extensions".
More to the point: Moving away from a vendor-locked-in infrastructure is hard.
Any time you build on top of quirks and such that deviate from standardized protocols, upgrading will be hard.
There's something about your posts that I find grating. I should try to figure out what it is.
I think maybe... pronounced certainty... that exacerbates the irritation of caustic cynicism... and contempt for non-cynical thinking which you polarize into a hyperbolic strawman to mock, gosh darn it... A kind of exaggerated, hateful, pessimistic misanthropic venting.
You "hold forth" rather than posit or ponder.
You talk about human nature and are quick to point out failings, but I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to acknowledge prosocial inclinations.
Am I reading you wrong? Maybe I'm not remembering the character of your prior posts very well. Are you not cynical? Do you ever qualify any proclamations with "well, I'm not entirely sure...", "I think...", or "it could be..."? Or is it really all "damn straight -- people suck is how it is and I'm the person to tell it to ya, ya foolish dreamers"? Maybe it's more performance than measured analysis.
People always think of the best outcome when a new technology is created, forgetting the cesspool we call humanity that's going to use and pervert it.
But the very thing you were responding to was someone pointing out a negative application of technology? Yet, "people always think of the best..." Maybe this hyperbole isn't warranted? Especially just on the heels of a counterexample?
Experiences change the way people think. Sure, there are tendencies, but evidently a wide variety of outcomes -- have you noticed? -- which suggests thinking is pliable. Technology can enable experiences. Talk therapy is itself a kind of technology. Maybe technology itself doesn't change the way people think (modulo mood drugs... hm... and probably neurofeedback machines... okay, and maybe a number of other technologies), but technology can be leveraged. And that's a critical point which we ought not sweep under the rug mid-rant.
Message boards allow individuals to speak to a public of thousands or hundreds of thousands. That's powerful technology. What would you do with that kind of technology? Self-gratifyingly vent your gall bladder about the inherent and irremediable evil of humankind? But meanwhile thus paint an ugly picture of humanity for others to absorb? Did you know that the more we contemn and so fear others the less helpful we become? Indeed, the more we become the things we're hating? Selfish, ungenerous, unkind? Get my drift? If we call humans ugly we make it so. Technology has amplified your mouth. Watch your mouth.
I'm not suggesting we turn a blind eye to fault. Indeed, this post is all about calling you out on yours. We absolutely should be critical. Meaning we should apply our intellects to make fine distinctions in judgement. Being overly biased towards either gloom or rainbows is harmful. (Albeit, biased towards gloom more so.) Let us judge, and judge accurately, being wary of our emotions. Let's judge, but let's not be hateful or contemptuous. I don't hate you for your curmudgeonly ranting; hate doesn't improve anything. If you're upset about humanity's failings, I might suggest highlighting and promoting its good qualities. For example, you're obviously a clever thinker. Quite sharp. Seemingly a good arguer. I suggest that you take your mental gifts and apply them with a less cynical bias. Your life will be more pleasant, without losing any realism, and so will the lives of those around you. Including me. I make this recommendation for all our sake.
Next time I'm in Minnesota, you wanna grab a coffee?
An envisioning of this scenario is available online:
Manna
the introduction of Firefox and its subsequent growth in the market is what made the extra work
This quote is not merely politically incorrect. It comes from a very skewed perspective. Sometimes unpopularity coincides with wrongness. This perspective seems to be sitting pretty squarely in that part of the Venn diagram. (Keep in mind I'm not saying you are bad. It's just the perspective that's really off. You can adjust perspective. Good luck.)
There have always been and will always be multiple browsers. Saying the existence of other browsers is what caused extra work is like saying the presence of pedestrians in the city is a problem as you drive through. The pedestrians are going to be there. The question is whether the pedestrians are politely complying with rules of the road.
Before Firefox there was Netscape. Hey, before Internet Explorer there was Netscape:
the introduction of Internet Explorer and its subsequent growth in the market is what made the extra work
The solution to web development hassle is standards conformance, not browser monopoly.
So having multiple browsers makes for extra work?
You would prefer there be only one browser?
And are you saying cross-browser development didn't exist before 2006?
We're just about at the point where's Microsoft's stranglehold on web protocols has been wrenched off. Standards compliance and all around browser functionality and performance are available from a range of great offerings.
I feel comfortable enough with the progress that I think I'll stop flogging Firefox as the wedge to get us to this point. I encourage you to try out whichever standards compliant browsers you're inclined to, and to use the one(s) you prefer for whatever reasons occur to you.
I might discourage using IE, however. There's no guarantee MS won't be able to regrab a browser monopoly and start corrupting protocols again.
A paranoid stance has the mistaken belief that cooperation is inherently impossible. You lose out on alliance possibilities.
The alliance builders who admit all sentience are going to overpower the paranoid and lonely "Us v. Them" factions.
The best way to take care of yourself is to care for everyone.
You do what you can in the realm of the knowledge and suspicions you have.
Is there a china teapot in orbit around the sun somewhere between Earth and Mars? Is it arrogant to assume there isn't?
Do potatoes have feelings? Is it arrogant to assume they don't?
As soon as evidence presents itself or our knowledge improves to the point of seeing contradictions to our best guesses at this point, then we adjust.
Ignoring your best guess at things so that you can eat mutton is a selfish embracing of ignorance. Evil, willful ignorance. It is not a humble recognition of imperfect knowledge. Is this really what you propose as an alternative to the "arrogance" of doing the best you can?
Exactly.
As it turns out, people often do something like this in discussions around ethics and diets. "Does valuing sentience in general inhibit my preferred carnivorous lifestyle: -100" ("denial of tastiness: -100") "Does recognizing that other creatures have feelings make me feel guilty for contributing to their suffering through supporting agribusiness: -10" "Does a dirty hippy looking down on me challenge my sense of self-worth: -10" The points amount to a feeling that "veganism/vegetarianism is bad". That sum feeling then motivates making rational-sounding arguments to oppose the idea of being an non-carnivore:
The only logical pro-carnivore argument I can think of is "I don't care about the feelings of the creatures I eat." It's founded on a short-sighted ethical system, but once you've got that it's solid logic to uphold the heedless carnivore stance. All the other arguments are just weaseling in an attempt to feel that one isn't "bad".
I'm not a vegetarian/vegan. Not in the typical sense. I am in spirit, but I don't have a religious-style proscription of meat. I just recognize that buying meat products encourages suffering. My aim is to minimize that suffering, so I tend to minimize the meat I purchase. If stealing meat magically hurt no one (not the victim of the theft somehow) and still discouraged agribusiness, I'd eat a lot more meat. If in time science manages to get this vat meat stuff working well, I'd eat a lot more meat. If you raised a cow kindly and it had a good, full life, and then you killed her mercifully (and if the meat were tasty and of good texture), I'd be fine with eating from the result.
At some point (some) meat will be produced in a cruelty-free way. ("Someday, meat will be vegan.") Until then, if I should give in to the weakness of my desire, I temper such instances with awareness. I try to know which meats are produced with the most negative impact on sentience (i.e., the suffering of the meat animal itself, though as well as environmental impact and thus impact on other sentient creatures). Thus I can hopefully cause less harm.
For a while I thought shrimp were fair game. But I understand there's a lot of bycatch. If you know of any currently cruelty-free meats, please do share. Mussels? Humans born without brains?
Actually, I think you're trying to describe "civilization" (which I agree is a more important thing to measure than sentience).
Actually not.
I'm not trying to describe civilization. I really do mean sentience. And I believe sentience is more important than civilization.
Civilization can come from sentience, but it might not. The fundamental thing to be valued is the experience of the creatures, not the things they build.
And just because sentience is tricky to measure (and civilization is easy) does not mean that one should stop valuing sentience and value something else in its stead.
May I suggest this rather simple but effective ethics:
Value sentience.
To the degree that something is sentient (has feelings) it is valuable and worth treating well (helping to feel good, helping to avoid suffering).
There are weird corner cases that are hard to figure out and certain issues that aren't clear (if you should decide to bring them up please realize that they're not really arguments against the idea), but as a foundation this is a pretty good system. It rises above the intellectual muck of "animal v. human" and provides a way to begin thinking about aliens and even artificial intelligence.
Unresolved issues: What is the relative worth between entities A and B when they have equal sentience but when A will live twice as long as B? What is the value of an entity that is certain to come into being but hasn't yet? What is the value of the process that can certainly cause an entity to come into being, but hasn't yet been undertaken? What is the value of an entity whose sentience has been practically put on pause due to reversible coma or suspended animation? How do you accurately (as opposed to intuitively) measure sentience?
So your boys' mother is your sister. I wasn't hallucinating. It's just not the situation one might guess off the bat.
Well, props to you sir for being a man. And twice a parent. (Or four times? Acting as mother and father x 2 kids?)
The measures of their and your success seem to indicate that they and you have done well. Congratulations. If they are also good people who generally care about others, no more could be asked.
Okay, okay, sorry about the offensive Catholicism comment.
I do in fact think that religion is generally a problem, but I also think that that Jesus guy was onto something with the idea of loving everyone. If you're Catholic, I believe you're probably not as well as you could be, but I still love you.
Wait, your sister is your boys' mother?
Sorry to bring it up. It's just uncommon and taboo. I'm not condemning.
(Did the boys turn out okay? Aside from the Catholicism?)
Via Padlock: SHA, AES, Montgomery Multiplier, RNG
RNG on my Via Esther C7 1GHz produces about 2.3 MB/s. It's come in handy.
It continues to develop into your early 20's. The point being that even if you're well raised, you're physically/physiologically handicapped, which you seemed to be contradicting with "rates [of maturation] aren't directly tied to the number of years they've been alive."
I mean, I suppose it's possible that an outlier prefrontal cortex could fully develop by 19... (I'd have expected this to be your responding argument if you were inclined to argue.) But, dunno. I'm guessing that prefrontal cortices pretty well develop at the speed they develop at, and that the semblance of maturity in most of the unusually precocious is the product of factors other than and in struggle against physical development. But, frankly, I don't know. (I like to think I've matured enough to know when to put disclaimers on when I'm talking out my ass. Sometimes I omit them because it feels like I'm repeating myself yet again.)
It isn't like there's some "maturity lobe" that sprouts out of your brain on your 19th birthday.
Actually, there is kind of. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for "executive" thinking (e.g., self-control), doesn't finish developing until the early 20's.
So you're wrong there, but your general idea of maturity progression being dependent on the individual I agree with.
Here's another idea: Defense in depth. Make CAs just one part of the whole picture. Another big part could be stability of certificate:
Perspectives
The idea might be quickly conveyed by the images on their web demo.
They've even got a Firefox plug-in.
If you really want to reduce the power impact outside the target range, you can splay the laser out into multiple sub-lasers converging onto the target. Kind of like the Death Star. Kind of.
I don't think there's anything magical on an NTFS partition and that if you could copy all the files exactly (including metadata) you should be able to get a good, restorable backup.
My guess, anyway.
I think rsync using xattr and maybe acl copying is required, and then perhaps ntfs-3g's secaudit tool for the rest of the metadata.
Good idea. I have my updates set to ask to download and ask to install. On download I'm reminded I need a backup, so I shut down the system without installing the updates, do the backup, boot to install, reboot, cross fingers.
Is anyone doing rsync backups (ooh, maybe even snapshots) of XP? Can rsync handle all the fs info needed to get a good backup? Right now I am indeed imaging the whole drive.
But let's take a moment to look at the downward swooshing line here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browsers_(Source_Net_Applications).svg
Follow the line and say "Ahhhh......"
It makes sense to be forgiving with bad HTML. At least to the point of rendering well. You could still report errors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
Standards hijacking (which Netscape also did) is IMHO the far worse influence. If you couple standards pollution with the fact that Microsoft held back advancing web tech (they let IE6 rot for five damned years) and a developer and user population that myopically don't care beyond how their website looks, and you end up with years of dev backflips and pain, lost time and money, and exploited machines.
Developers are the ones who suffer the most, so you'd expect they would have some sense about the matter. Still, you find yourself arguing on Slashdot when they say things like "IE is the standard." These folks feed the zombie. Please do not feed the zombie.
Can I just make a comment here? All of you who failed to recognize the importance of standards are to blame for IE6 lingering. And I'm rather sore at you. And you continued to trust Microsoft and thought that using IE7 and IE8 was a good idea. As if somehow the past 9 years weren't a righteous mess of painful web development and technological retardation. It could be that MS is in a corner finally, with a fifth to a third of browser share going to standards-compliant browsers, and so can't leverage IE to quash competition via protocol pollution, but that's no thanks to you.
It's the confusion caused by units which change depending on context that warrants the advent of distinguishing units. What do you do when the context information isn't entirely clear or isn't available or, worse still, changes?
We've now got megabytes and mebibytes.
Since semantic overloading is generally bad, I recommend saving mega for its original meaning only. Thoughts?