Dear Microsoft

Hello, Microsoft.  I hope you’re well.  I want to tell you about something really, really cool.  Back in about 1978, I was working on a DEC PDP-11/35, and (check this out) it had software that could detect when I typed something.  Is that cool, or what?

Oh, wait.  I just realized something. You have that too. And you have screensavers that don’t kick in unless there is no activity for some period of time. And, ohmygod, you can even select how much time that is!

Well, I guess my news isn’t all that exciting to you after all.  But, if you don’t mind, could you explain why, if you have that technology, YOU ARE STILL REBOOTING MY COMPUTER WITHOUT WARNING WHEN I’M IN THE MIDDLE OF TYPING SOMETHING?

Just curious.

Sincerely Yours,

Guy Who Does All His Serious Work On Linux

P.S.: To all of you Mac users who are about to make you-should-be-using-a-Mac comments: Blow me.

 

Another Entry in the This Really Happens Department

There’s this billboard in Minneapolis; at least two of them, in fact. They are advertising an insurance company–a place were you pay money so you can be a little less worried if you get sick, or have a car accident, or a burglary, or you die or something.  The billboard shows a sandwich of some kind, with cheese oozing out.  And it says, “Oozing with Discounts.”

So, yeah, there you have it. You are driving along, and you go, “Ah! Yeah, I want to be protected by the company that oozes!”

But here’s what I can’t get out of my head.

Somewhere, probably in New York, some guy in a cubicle went, “Ah HA! Ooozing! That’s what I’ll go with!  The client will like that!”

Then he went to his manager, who said, “Oh, good one, Whitcomb! Yes, the client will really like associating his company with the idea of oozing!”

Then they went to the client representative, who said, “Oh, smashing work, fellows! Yes, I can see it now, all over America.  We will be the oozing insurance company!”

Then it went to the art department, where they created an oozing visual to go with the oozing words.

And then the company approved it all.  They said, “Ah HA! This will get us our market share! We will be locked in with everyone who wants car insurance that makes one think of oozing fluids!  Go us!”

And that’s how it happened.  It boggles the mind.

 

So, What IS Science, Anyway?

I know science–both the discoveries and method of–are important to me.  I know that I believe we ought to deduce natural laws from the facts, as opposed to imposing them on the facts.  I know that when we are dealing with social issues, it is vital to get away from subjective impressions and strive for objective truth.

Some believe science is limited to the falsifiable (more or less created by Karl Popper).  Others (Brickmont, Sokel, Kuhn, Feyeraband, Lakatos, Hawkins, &c) dispute this in various ways for various reasons.  One can, in fact, argue that, by the standard of falsifiable, most of what Einstein was famous for was not science, as it was not able to be falsified at the time. This can be disputed, and if you’re in the falsifiable-only camp, then you had better dispute it–if Einstein wasn’t a scientist, there are no scientists.

My point is, there is more than one definition of what science is, or what scientific method means.  I want to know what you think.

 

Apropos to OSC, a Quick Story

This brief excerpt is from The Mayor of MacDougal Street, the memoirs of Dave Van Ronk (one of my heroes) page 75:

Years later, I was talking with him [Oscar Brand] and expressed my disgust that that he, or maybe someone else, had put on a show with Burl Ives, who had outraged us all by naming a string of names in front of HUAC. Oscar just quietly said, “Dave, we on the left do not blacklist.” Put me right in my place.