Linux-Advocacy Digest #480, Volume #34 Sun, 13 May 01 14:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Re: IE (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Article: Want Media Player 8? Buy Windows XP (T. Max Devlin)
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From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.linux,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: IE
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 17:47:16 GMT
Said Michael Pye in alt.destroy.microsoft on Sat, 12 May 2001 11:01:26
[...]
>> Touche. But they are not inflexible at all, they are made of sand. But
>> sand in the right mixture, left undisturbed, becomes concrete. Feel
>> free to bring your jack hammer and take a shot. ;-)
>
>And one day all statues become outdated. After all, here stands Ozimandious,
>all powerful ruler of all to the horizon and who's hand created the wonders
>all around and it still lies in the middle of the barren desert on a plaque
>with one foot. (or words to that effect. it is a long time since I read it)
>
>Who is to say how long sand should lie before setting. Who is to say whether
>your ideas have rested undisturbed for a long enough time to be said to be
>firm and confirmed in the face of the insignificance of any of our lives and
>the infinity of time?
Fuck. You're downright *astute*, kid! I'm not merely politely
impressed here.
It turns out, in fact, that I've happened got a very concrete yet
meaningful way to answer just that question. Since you're one of the
very few people who seem to understand the question in a comprehensible
way, I'd expect you wouldn't have too much trouble understanding it. It
is the universe which is insignificant; the infinity of time which lacks
confirmation in our lives. Science transcends them both, but explains
neither. Meaning is words, not metaphysics.
[...]
>And I am a confirmed cynic. There are times where convenience MUST give way.
>Couch potatoes use the most convenient method of everything. Does that make
>them better than the more active population?
Yes.
>Fitter?
Fitter for what? They seem to replicate. That makes them "fit", as far
as the physical world is concerned.
>More intelligent?
What precisely is the difference between being smart and being lazy?
They are both ways to avoid labor, and any attempt to extract any
difference is an abstraction, which melts away under Socratic
examination.
>Longer lived?
To place meaning on long life beyond reproduction is metaphysics.
>Convenience must give way when sometimes it just has to be REAL.
Real convenient, maybe. Convenience is the ultimate commodity, the only
real value-add. The only trade-off for convenience is price, not
functionality.
>Now that
>may not translate perfectly into the web or the internet, but surely a web
>full of plain black text in Times New Roman would become tedious no matter
>what wonders of understanding or bargains it promised.
Perhaps, if tedious != convenient. But only then. The premise
translates perfectly to the web, but not to the Internet. The web is
free, but it costs money to access the Internet. So to some extent your
point is true; if the sum total of all such drab tedious text were not
worth the price of Internet access, the web would go away.
But pretending that a web site must be worth the cost of Internet access
is to deny the obvious. Web sites are free of charge to access (save
those that go beyond that, obviously, and it is certainly part of my
theory to get these of the "real" web onto the 'remote console commerce
site' "web") and therefore only have to be convenient to be successful.
Successful in being web sites, of course. To be successful in being
anything else, I guess, is why web pages, even information pages, are
not endless drab standard font text. But I could as easily simply say
that such a presentation would not be in any way convenient.
>> The 'commercial world' doesn't have to, and cannot 'see' anything;
>> that's a backwards teleology. Potential customers see it, and
>> everything follows from there.
>
>But there must be something on offer for the customers to make use of.
Information. The most useful thing you could possibly give a customer.
Everything else, you want to charge him for. ESPECIALLY the
convenience; this is the problem. Convenience, as I said, is the true
commodity; it is the one thing which can demand any price which the
market will bear without being profiteering, and so is the only ethical
way to extract exorbitant profits. Of course, convenience alone does
not enable one to extract truly exorbitant profits, but that is, in the
end, the point. Making profit on convenience is free enterprise;
anything else is potentially profiteering. Free market capitalism is
the dialectic between the two.
>Even if it is just an e-mail address to send orders to, it is the beginning
>of
>e-commerce (dirty word) and was initiated by the firm, not the customer.
There's nothing dirty about e-commerce; not at all. I just don't want
to destroy the web (in terms of providing value, convenience, and
information in its own right) to make e-commerce more profitable.
An email address is *information*, Michael, and the customer, not the
vendor, is going to be the one initiating an email.
>After all, the firm won't invest in providing the means unless the benefits
>are clear.
Nor will the customer; why should the firm thus be able to screw their
customers because no one of them has sufficient power to stop them?
>> People get heated about the distinction between the internet and the web
>> for a reason, son. Learn this lesson well.
>
>Sorry about that. I arrived after the definitions had been blurred in the
>public eye, so I am guilty of using the terms interchangeably...
Thus, the roots of many of your problems understanding my reason.
You've gotten the idea that I'm somehow against commercial exploitation
of the internet (as if e-commerce is a dirty word), or even commercial
use of the web. In fact, I'm only against one thing; commercial
exploitation of the web to the exclusion of *consumer* exploitation of
the web. If you make your sites convenient, and convenient alone, you
will more than satisfy the customer; you will delight him unendlessly.
But convenience is harder to make profit on honestly, as I've mentioned.
The people who actually pay you to build web sites will not find a
convenient site acceptable. THEY are the ones who want it flashy, not
the customer. Because once they get a customer in, the less convenient
it becomes to get out again without buying something, the better.
They're making profit on the wrong convenience. The obvious extreme of
'spam trap' sites that endlessly lead you to a "buy" button are only
balanced by the use of "someone else's bandwidth" to show them a bunch
of other products when they're only looking for one; obviously it may
also be convenient to force them to spend time retrieving each
individually.
The question of which to do should have nothing to do with the
preferences of the vendor; they will be either coincidentally wrong, or
just plain wrong, at least some of the time. The choices of the
customer, on the other hand, will always be right, by definition.
Your job, as a site designer, is to try to figure out how to keep them
both happy, because, of course, the vendor is your customer. You can't
second-guess what their customers want, you can only double-check what
your customer wants. But whenever you get the chance, make it
convenient for the end user, and you'll be the best site designer. Who
knows; maybe some day your customers may even trust your judgement.
>> The internet's commercial popularity, as well, predates the web.
>> Without any doubt whatsoever, it made a tremendous difference. But that
>> was mostly in marketing; to this day, most people learn about the web,
>> then the internet, and so they continue (part of the problem that got us
>> into this discussion) to think of everything on the internet as 'the
>> web'. This perception is encouraged heartily by both the producers and
>> the professional clueless observers, the press, and do the enormous
>> detriment of both the web and any other use of the Internet.
>
>Agreed, it is something I fell foul to. Most people don't understand that
>there are any other uses for the internet besides the web and e-mail.
For most people, there is no reason to understand that because it is
true. The point is that the Internet is always, be definition, more
than just a sum of its uses. The Internet has only one use: to be an
Internet. Building a network like the internet email system or the web
or usenet (you'll notice these all follow precisely the same patter;
thousands of entirely independent servers) is not easy. People are
correct in understanding (if they could or did) that this 'commercial
web' is not a separate interface (different software on their computer)
and they are unaware only that it should be.
It makes perfect sense for consumers to confuse the web and the
internet, and there's nothing really wrong with it. It is only that
this ignorance masks the need for a different protocol (and thus a
different client) to be "the real web", and then a different one to be
"the commercial sites" and then another to be "the front end" for the
whole mess. Its a matter of software on their side, more than anything
else, but it is predicated on the lack of distinction between http and
some other protocol that does what the people who've messed up html so
badly would like, instead.
Obviously, as long as the infinite progression of "bolting" things
together in software continues, the situation won't change. There are
no reason as for as vendors are concerned to come up with new protocols.
They prefer single interfaces and inefficient use of existing protocols.
It is lower cost for them, AND it is less convenient for their
customers. That just gives them greater room for profit.
>> But email and discussion groups (which should be Usenet, of course, but
>> both of these are often handled with vastly less convenient and
>> efficient 'web sites') as well as file transfers and all are NOT related
>> at all to the web. And it does NOT increase convenience (except to the
>> producers!) to use a web page as an 'interface' to them. It might seem
>> a natural idea to use a web browser as a front end to EVERYTHING, but
>> that's only because it is natural (it is possible). Not because it is
>> any *more* natural than any other approach, and it is IN FACT vastly
>> less efficient
>
>Not in all ways... It is quite hard to find what you want using FTP alone
>for instance. You need an index, and they are provided via the web. Yes, you
>get site indexes at each FTP site, but they aren't particularly convenient
>and you have to log into the correct server first...
Well, believe it or not, they thought of that when they first starting
using FTP. Which is why they came up with this thing called "ARCHIE"
(from 'archive indexing", I thing). Imagine if there were a
distributed, constantly up-to-date 'index' of every file available via
FTP throughout the entire internet. It is automatic, provides three
different sizes of descriptions, and is about as lightning fast as you
could get a virtual database of such scope.
Then there was GOPHER, the precursor to the web of today. Text only
(but it could link to a downloadable graphic, so its not ONLY text only,
necessarily) and information-oriented. This spawned VERONICA, in
analogy to Archie, providing a single, complete, all-purpose,
high-performance, automatic, and information-rich index to every piece
of data available through Gopher.
Both Archie and Veronica used a single emerging standard for virtual
databases, high-value and cutting edge, called WAIS. No WAIS didn't die
and go away; much of the super-high-performance information base stuff
used today is derived from WAIS development.
But in comparison to what these technologies COULD have evolved into,
the web of today is a pathetic pile of garbage, I think you would agree.
I do not blame the failure to differentiate between the internet and the
web, or the web as it was designed and the web as it is used today, or
any other single dichotomy for this difference between the internet as
it is and the internet as it should be. I don't work like that. But by
that same token, I blame all of these reasons, equally, as any of them
COULD have been avoided and resulted in an internet closer to what it
could have been.
>> No, you didn't seem to understand what I said. Usenet doesn't 'rely' on
>> the internet for transmission. It does generally use it, these days.
>> But Usenet predates the commercial internet by quite a few years, in
>> fact, and was 'fully formed' just as it is today (not quite as large, of
>> course; the balance of the typical 50,000 groups are very recent
>> additions, but then, they're mostly porn or empty) before it ever used
>> the Internet at all.
>
>Then, out of interest and to further my own understanding, how were usenet
>messages transmitted. Was it using dial up servers to store the messages
>instead of the ones ISPs supply nowadays?
As an aside, your use of the term 'store' is frankly discombobulated.
As for how Usenet transferred messages before Internet transport, it
varied. The several globe-spanning systems of replication-based
discussion bases, bulletin boards, forums, and what all eventually
became, by their interoperability, usenet newsgroups. I'm not sure
precisely where "Usenet" was derived, but fidonet and clarinet and a
bunch of other nets all merged into one base, because of the commonality
of the servers, not the commonality of the transport. The NNTP protocol
commonized the transfer, but even after TCP/IP was developed (and NNTP
must be after that) Usenet ran on something called 'UUCP'.
UUCP is the Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol. It typically uses direct
dial-up lines; one unix box calls another through modems, they negotiate
and transfer all the email and discussion groups (or file transfers or
batch programs, or anything else you wanted) and then disconnect. Each
then calls another box. UUCP was also frequently used on dedicated
lines, providing a sort of transport just as TCP/IP today allows. The
servers which were interconnected with UUCP would still usually batch
transfer things, replication style, and Usenet still uses this method
today, even though email and every other use of the Internet has
abandoned it. For them, it is inefficient. For Usenet, it is
necessary. Without this inherent method, Usenet would just be every
person on the Internet trying to email every other person, almost. NNTP
is the same protocol used the same way whether you are a news client or
news server, in fact. The only thing that separates the two is the
servers batch-connect to other servers, and replicate (download) every
message in every group (or all the ones that server wants).
In terms of defining what the internet Should be in comparison to what
it is; Usenet should be a global discussion forum. It is, and it is
only convention which prevents it from becoming, in a way, the backbone
of all society. But of the 50,000+ groups which a typical server
supports, out of potentially hundreds of thousands that exist (are
supported by any two servers, or maybe 3) Usenet is mostly crap.
Probably 99.N% of the data transferred through Usenet is porn or other
binaries.
If the protocol could bifurcate, we could have the 'global anonymous
bulk data' system that is so much a part of Usenet (I don't claim it is
inappropriate because it is porn, and I kind of like an infinite supply
of the crappiest stuff circulating for free to keep the price of the pro
porn at competitive levels; expensive porn becomes exploitation too
easily.) All that would be necessary, really, is to put it on a
separate 'channel', but to be honest, since most of Usenet is that, it
would make more sense to move the discussion part. That's happened
already to a large extent, onto web pages (AUGHH!). But that's like
email lists, which have been around as long as Usenet (and are only
really different because of the protocol, and whether 'subscribing' is a
client or server function.) And email lists are decreasing in usage, in
proportion to Usenet, I think.
But the binaries should be the ones to move, because NNTP and
newsclients were designed for discussion groups. The interface for
replicated binaries can and should be optimized for different tasks.
Equally, the protocol can be modified to allow splitting of messages to
be a server-side, rather than a client-side, mechanism. The binary NNTP
should be client-server. The problem is, this takes development, and
right now, it's hands-off of such a thing, because only society, not any
company, could benefit, and government development of protocols is both
a thing of the past, and inappropriate for developing such a thing as
universally accessible anonymous replication storage.
I can only hope some young kid who seems to have a grip on how
technology does work and should work can understand what I'm saying in
describing how it can work, and make it so.
I love metaphysics.
>> I'm not sure how I could have remembered that, having never heard it
>> before. What's more, I don't believe a bit of it, and would even go so
>> far as to say the opposite is precisely the case.
>>
>> But I must confess I'm a special case, having managed to figure out how
>> to explain both science and the humanities and the brain under one roof.
>> One way you could look at it is rhetorically. Consider the following
>> paragraph:
>>
>> Also, science doesn't explain anything. And it can't, no matter how
>> much further we learn about everything. Therefore we have to use
>> science only to create math and physics, instead. Remember, if the
>> human brain weren't complex enough to be able to understand itself
>> completely and scientifically, it wouldn't work.
>
>Science in the sense we are now talking about is merely a method of
>modelling real life for analysis using a logic system such as maths.
>Probably it doesn't explain anything, but it does allow predictions to be
>made based on the appropriate model.
The problem is in the word "explain". You are right; math cannot
explain anything. It cannot provide teleologies, reasons. No "in order
to", no "so that", no "because" at all, an only some forms of
"therefore". Math does not have "is", it has "equals".
Language is not math. But that doesn't mean language, natural language,
cannot be mathematically analyzed. Language is what provides meaning,
because 'meaning' is explanation. Language invents teleologies. But
since natural language *could* be mathematically analyzed, it can be
'explained' mathematically, just as gravity is 'explained' by the law of
gravity, which we both understand is reduces to a mathematical
calculation, and that's why we call it law. So gravity is the reason
why masses attract, but it is not the reason gravity exists.
If you're with me so far, I'll just say that you should buy my book,
when it comes out. It'll blow your mind. I hope.
Anyway, so 'meaning' is the ability to apply language to 'explain'
something, instead of "just" math. But language itself is a kind of
math, because it can be mathematically analyzed. The trouble is the
trouble we've had understanding the universal macrocosm, the unitary
world of strings, and the complexity of biology. The math involved is
so complex, fractal, and chaotic that we cannot use the easy math of
numbers; we need the complex math of language to describe the
relationships. And so we do, and we explain the world around us,
thereby providing Meaning.
It all might seem like a reduction of mankind to physical processes, odd
ant-like monkeys, robotic von Neumann machines. And it does, because we
are, but it provides our lives, nevertheless, regardless of how big the
universe is or how long it lasts, with meaning. And in that, it can and
does provide purpose, and in that, we can and do find happiness.
Ask me how and I'll tell you, because I'm being quite serious in
claiming that I know the secret to happiness. Unfortunately, the only
way I can prove it (by definition) is to provide words to describe it,
and claim that I'm happy. The first can be false, because word's
metaphysical nature allow them to be wrong, and lacking in meaning or
communication of data. It is currently unfalsifiable, because I've only
fully explained it to a handful of people, and none of them claim what I
claim, which is the second point. I claim that since I have discovered
this secret, I have enjoyed a transcendental state of happiness. That
will, unfortunately, forever remain an unfalsifiable claim, and that
makes it pretty much just a personal delusion.
>Nice example might be light. It can be proved fairly conclusively that it is
>both a wave and a particle. Therefore it must be neither. Science will never
>explain what it is, but it can tell us what will happen under a set of
>circumstances...
Actually, you'll notice that your "therefore" is precisely the use of
the term which I previously disallowed. It is deductively true, but
this is what I call "Socrates' error", the idea that deduction is a
superior form of knowledge than induction. This is false, because it
denies that our universe (not coincidentally to your example) is both
uncertain and relative. What it means, quite indisputably, is that it
is both: light is both wave and particle. "Wave" and "particle" are two
different *words* (even if they reduce to two different mathematical
'descriptions'); light is a single thing in the real world.
Imagine that there are two ways that a cloud can "move" across the sky.
The first is the object of the cloud remaining static, and its position
moving; it starts at one end and is carried by the wind to the other.
But a cloud can also move a different way; the object of the cloud might
simply be an area of low temperature. As the temperature drops, the
water particles mixed with the air particles condense into large drops
which deflect light and cause the 'cloud' to become visible. The air
particles, and the water particles, remain mostly stationary over-all,
but the area of low temperature (let's say it is an imaginary
super-mega-refrigerator object, traveling along the ground, a
'cloud-making machine') moves through space. The cloud will appear to
move across the sky, because we're not looking at the REALLY tiny
things, but because we see something against a background. If the thing
is the background, then its an area of low temperature made visible as
ten zone moves; the 'cloud' is still stationary, as a visible object
against the sky. If the thing is not the background, it is the cloud
that we see, traveling.
Our description of which it "is" depends on what we know about the
situation, what we're looking at, not the facts of the matter. Clouds
do indeed both 'travel' and, more often, remain motionless, in the both
ways. The difference between them, in fact, is uncertain and relative.
Soon, theorists tell us (hot on the math of the extremes of our
universe, the small and the large, which demonstrate the fact that the
"real world" isn't really the one described by our language) they will
have a Theory of Everything, probably based on 'super-strings';
infinitesimally small things vibrating in patterns, which make up all
matter and energy. Turns out, according to them, our world has eleven
dimensions, not four, but seven of them are curled up too tight to see
(although, surprisingly, some theorize they may be up to half an inch
"across", and are currently looking for them! The mind bends, ain't?)
When they get The Equation, it won't be the Meaning of everything, of
course, or the Meaning of anything. So it seems like the human
existence, our divine nature intuited by EVERY individual, in themselves
at least if not in other's (except maybe we can safely exclude, but yet
thereby prove inappropriate to exclude, those who commit suicide) lives.
The progression of science in "whittling away" the dignity of human
beings scares everyone, not least of all those who understand science.
The problem is, it seems that we are doomed if we can 'explain
everything' with math, and not need some teleology, some language, some
reason "why" strings vibrating "causes" my mother-in-law to hate me.
But, yes, it makes me a flake, and what's more a Usenet kook to explain
myself here, but it seems to me that the TOE does not rob anyone of
dignity, because every human being has an infinite amount of dignity,
because they have something that is both of but apart from the physical
world; the only metaphysics that can truly be said to "exist". That is
language.
So The Equation isn't a god or a goal or a definition or an explanation
or anything else but math. But the beauty of it is that it will
explain, eventually, or illuminate or determine or any method of
discovering "why", the most complex and fractal math of all. Quantum
physics and relativistic cosmology are child's play in comparison to the
math that we all do every day in our heads, that special capability of
the human language known (but not referred to as) as "ethical calculus".
>So maybe you are right. It explains nothing. But I disagree with the
>statement about the brain (for now). Consider animals. Choose any animal
>with a consciousness (bar humans for this example). Now think of the limit
>of it's understanding of its world. Humans are animals. The human brain
>didn't design itself, therefore why must it be able to understand itself.
>Understanding is only required for creation.
Language is a gift from beyond, if you want to get metaphysical, but the
metaphysical can't give you the secret to happiness. I can.
>Let us consider a microwave oven. Almost everyone has one in their kitchen
>and there are very few who cannot get it to work. But how many really
>understand, completely and without limitation. But it still works for them.
Arthur C. Clarke, anyone?
Don't confuse science with technology. Just because science can explain
a microwave doesn't mean it can't explain the death of a loved one, to
your satisfaction. Are we to say that "really understanding, completely
and without limitation", is the point to finding meaning in our lives?
>> Science doesn't explain all, because what is "science" (as opposed to
>> 'humanities') but only the parts of philosophy which can be reduced to
>> empirical experiment and math. The day has already arrived, I'm afraid,
>> where that includes the study of human consciousness, so it appears your
>> philosophy is on a collision course with the Truth about human beings.
>> Don't worry, though. There's always Hope.
>
>Personally, I think that if we do master understanding of the human brain
>completely the value of human life will be completely lost.
I knew that by your words, before you ever said it. And coincidentally
we find ourselves here, where I'm trying to get you to ask me for the
secret to happiness. Would you believe me, would I believe me, if I
said I hadn't planned it that way, even though we started talking about
use of HTML in "the real world"?
>Think about the
>power it would give.
No amount of power in the world can make a single string travel faster
than the speed of light, and no amount of explanation in the world can
describe what "strings are made of". No amount of knowledge of the math
of sentience gives power over sentience. The freedom of the human mind
which we share in our culture is not merely coincidental with the
understanding we have of the math of our existence.
There is no need for fear. But simple lack of fear won't give you
happiness.
> We wouldn't even have emotions any more because we
>would know exactly what they were and how they worked and why. Such feelings
>would have no hold on us.
Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
I don't know why; it just seemed appropriate. Anyway, as to the "no
hold on us", haven't you noticed that the optimum mix of emotions is the
ones we *want* to have a hold on us? Some of them, every human knows,
we might well be better without. The degree to which we can reduce our
emotions, through 'ethical calculus', to words, language, is entirely
under our control, if anything is. Would you want love to disappear
from the world? I can't imagine a 17 year old thinking that.
Unless of course, you're just being perverse. Nothing wrong with that
(you ever read Doestoyevsky?). It doesn't even stop you from finding
happiness. Or from having a purpose in life, and for that purpose to
have universal significance and meaning. It's just one of the many ways
to find your dignity.
Anyone interested in finding their infinite amount of dignity, learning
the secret to happiness, and their purpose in life, is free to email me.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: Article: Want Media Player 8? Buy Windows XP
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 17:47:17 GMT
Said Tom Wilson in alt.destroy.microsoft on Sat, 12 May 2001 07:14:39
>"Donal K. Fellows" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
><snip>
>
>> People who GPL libraries should have their toenails slowly peeled off
>> with red-hot tongs by a cackling black-hooded torturer in a medaeval
>> dungeon. Or be forced to use the latest version of VB... (Bwahahahaha!)
>
>I'll have the toenails option, please... <g>
Take it to alt.torture, please.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
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