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A journal of sorts to record Jonathan Sturm's (and others') thoughts and observations on things worth thinking About. Feedback welcome, but be aware that unless you prominently say you want your communication kept private, I may publish it. |
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Sunday, 20 November 2005
The Git has finally managed to acquire his first Macintosh computer -- a Mac Mini. As is usual where The Git's involved, the process has not been completely smooth. The out-of-the-box experience was initially very favourable. In no time at all it seemed, Safari was displaying web pages, the screen resolution was set to suit the 19" Sony G400 display. While the Mac found the network's DHCP server on the Linux firewall box and allowed The Git to access shared folders and the Internet, it sternly refused to believe that there's a printer on the network.
Allan (Down with DOS) Moult, who's a more than a bit of a Mac Guru suggested:
You might be interested in this ebook:
Take Control of Switching to the Mac
good luck
and from Jack Gallemore who also owns a menagerie of Macs:
Setting up to print to a printer shared by a Windows computer via SMB
Mac OS X makes it possible to print to many Windows (SMB) printers on your network.
1 Open System Preferences and click Print & Fax.
2 Click Printing, and then click the Set Up Printers button. If the printer already appears in the Printer List, select the In Menu checkbox to add it to your list of available printers. You'll see it in the Printer pop-up menu the next time you print.
3 Choose Printers > Add Printer.
4 Choose Windows Printing from the top pop-up menu, choose a network workgroup from the pop-up menu that appears directly below it, select a workgroup from the list, and click Choose. Any Windows printers in the network you've chosen appear in the Printer List.
5 Select the printer in the Printer List.
6 To use printer-specific features, choose the item appropriate for your printer from the Printer Model pop-up menu, then select your printer in the Model Name list.
IMPORTANT: Be sure to choose the correct printer model for the printer you're using. For more information, see the documentation that came with the printer. If you have an HP PCL compatible printer that is not listed in the Printer Model pop-up menu, choose the printer model that most closely matches your printer. For a list of compatible printer models you can choose if your printer isn't listed, go to http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/p_Supported_Printers.php3.
7 Click Choose.
The printer appears in the Printer List as the default printer (in bold type). It also appears in the Printer pop-up menu when you print a document.
I'm sure you already done this, but just in case. <G>
The Git had indeed done all of this... except manage to find a printer listed. There's a long fol-de-rol here about installing a PostScript emulator and such to enable printing to The Git's printer, but since The Git's printer is PostScript and on the list of compatible printers, this shouldn't be necessary. More on this below.
During the initial foray, The Git ran the Mac's System Profiler and discovered that instead of the gigabyte of RAM he paid for, there's only 512 MB installed. There will be stern words spoken at the Apple Monopoly Shop on Monday! The Mac Mini The Git purchased was a runout of the previous model that came with 256MB for $AU700 while the new model (same CPU) comes standard with 512MB for $AU795. The $AU200 The Git was charged for extra RAM brought the total to $AU900, exactly $AU105 more than the current model with the same amount of RAM. What's the difference between the newer model and the previous? The Git asked, but apart from price, the "geniuses" behind the Genius Bar were clueless.
The topic of price was mentioned frequently during The Git's research on the day of the purchase. Pro Mac sources derided the Pro PC sources' price comparisons, claiming that they weren't comparing like with like; that is, your typical Dell doesn't come with software like the Mac does and anyway, Intel Celerons are inferior to G4s. Well, Dells do come with software; not just WinXP, but Microsoft Works. Here's The Git's comparison between the entry level Mac and an entry level Dell:
Dimension 3000
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.80GHz with 1MB L2 Cache
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
MS Works
512MB DDR SDRAM
17" LCD HD Flat Panel
80GB Hard Drive
Fax/modem
Keyboard
Mouse
Total: $AU1,022
Note that on this day, the 17" LCD was the better of the two 17" LCD displays Dell sells.
Mac Mini
80 GB hdd
Apple Keyboard/mouse
17" LCD display (Acer)
Sound input adapter
4 port USB hub
Total: $AU1,395
CPU differences aside, and note that the comparison was with a proper P4, not a Celeron, the main hardware difference is in the Mac's superior graphics. The Dell Dimension 3000 doesn't have an AGP slot, so upgrading the graphics is not an option. There are Dell models for not very much more money that do allow better graphics. From experience, if you're not playing games, the Dell's inbuilt Intel graphics are more than good enough for most purposes. The Mac Mini is affordable, but it's certainly more expensive when compared to a Dell. It looks to The Git like it costs around 40% more. Is Appleworks better than MS Works. From experience with earlier versions of both products, that's highly likely.
Nevertheless, there are many reasons for wanting to purchase a Mac Mini rather than a Dell: size and OS among them. One of the advantages, size, could have been a factor when taking the machine to the living area in order to play a DVD movie. Unfortunately, the Mac's rendition of DVD movies sucks -- big-time! Despite the superior graphics chipset, it doesn't render movies at all well. This is a mystery. The PC The Git purchased this time last year when there were no iBooks for sale uses the same ATI video chipset and renders DVD movies very well indeed.
What the Mac Mini has going for it (for The Git):
- It takes up very little desk space
- It runs Mac OS X
- It runs Microsoft Office
- It's affordable
- Email becomes effectively virus-free
- It's very, very quiet
What the Mac Mini has against it (for The Git):
- Can't record music (yet)
Forgot to mention that bit about recording. Presumably because it's a very cut down machine, Apple decided to leave what is a standard feature on PCs off its bottom-of-the-line machines. Instead, you purchase an expensive add-on from the Apple Monopoly Shop. The Git intends to do some of his sound recording on the Mac while the PC can simultaneously record from another source, be used for processing the sound files (declicking vinyl recordings for example) and burning DVDs.
The Mac Mini sits quietly atop the full tower PC and is mostly doing its stuff now. The Logitech keyboard and mouse feed the two machines via an Aten KVM switch that also acts as a USB hub with two ports. Until you've used a Mac, and The Git has been using the University of Tasmania's Macs for almost three years now, you have no idea what a treat it can be. Of late, The Git has been intensively multitasking and continually annoyed that on a Win XP machine, windows can seize focus without any by your leave and accept the keystrokes intended for the word processor, or whatever as commands to do the unwanted/unspeakable [delete whichever is inapplicable]. This has never happened to him on OS X. If a window without focus needs attention, its icon bounces up and down; distracting perhaps, but never dangerous.
For a PC user like The Git, looking for a machine for basic word-processing, email and Internet browsing, the Mac Mini is well worth a look. You might want to download Allan Moult's suggested transition booklet:
It was of marginal use to The Git with so much Mac time under his belt, but for a neophyte user coming from the PC, it contains a reasonable assessment of what differences you need to come to grips with and the up and down sides of both platforms. There's a companion book about which Mac to buy at a discount for purchasing both, though it was not worth my while since the purchase was already a long-planned fait accompli.
Anandtech has a number of Mac pieces worth reading, including this review of the Mac Mini that's far more painstaking than those in the Mac press. Go figure...
Fixing the Printing Problem require The Git to perform the following tasks:
First, on the XP box:
Then on the Mac:
Lastly on the XP box:
"Both" printers now are listed as attached to the same port and the Mac can print.
Note that this procedure worked with a listed Postscript printer (HP LaserJet 5MP). It may not work with other printers and you might need to follow the procedure at SourceForge above. It's amusing to note that Apple's instructions can be as wildly inaccurate as Microsoft's. :-)
Following on from the last Diatribe, it needs to be pointed out that the philosophy of science has moved on from the observations made there.
First, attempts have been made to present a case that an induction can be made more reliable simply by making more observations. To see that this is not so, we can use the light bulb example. Remember that our hypothesis was that the reason it failed to light up when we flipped the switch was because the filament was broken. Let's say we put 10,000 light bulbs, with broken filaments, one at a time into the light socket and flip the switch. On each and every occasion, the bulb fails to light up and so we might conclude from this that our hypothesis has been much better confirmed by our 10,000 observations. Not so! The reason the light bulb doesn't light up might be that we have failed to pay the electricity bill, leading the electricity supplier to cut off the electricity supply. There are many, many possible explanations for the observations and no amount of observations can improve our confidence when affirming the consequent.
Somewhat contrarily, many inductions seem secure without repetitions. For example, it would be a hardy researcher indeed who insisted on placing his/her hand in the fire many times in order to be certain that doing so caused irreparable damage to the skin/pain/uttering of obscenities. Similarly, we didn't need many repetitions of the nuclear bombing of Japan sixty years ago in order to ascertain the lethal effect on people of nuclear explosions.
As far as the probability of an induction being correct is concerned, one can only make a finite number of observations out of possibly an infinite number. Any finite number divided by infinity is zero, thus making the probability zero. This does not mean that a hypothesis is necessarily wrong; just that we can never know if it is correct. All we can hope to do is falsify a hypothesis and demonstrate that it's incorrect.
Given the strength and certainty attendant on falsification, you might well be led to ask: Since it's so powerful, why don't we cast all our scientific hypotheses in the deductive Modus Tollens form?
Many of our most cherished hypotheses cannot be cast in the form of Modus Tollens. The theory of Natural Selection is apparently unfalsifiable. From the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:
But what is fitness and how can one tell when a trait enhances fitness, or more to the point, when one organism is fitter than another? Opponents of the theory of natural selection have long claimed that the theory is so treated by its proponents as to define fitness in terms of rates of reproduction, thus condemning the principle of the survival of the fittest to triviality: the claim that those organisms with higher rates of reproduction leave more offspring is an empty, unfalsifiable tautology bereft of explanatory power. In the century and a half since the publication of On the Origin of Species biologists have all too often reinforced this objection by actually so defining fitness. For example, C.H. Waddington writes, in Towards a Theoretical Biology, the fittest individuals are those that are "most effective in leaving gametes to the next generation." It appears therefore that evolutionary theory requires a definition of fitness that will protect it from the charges of tautology, triviality, unfalsifiabilty, and consequent explanatory infirmity. If no such definition is in fact forthcoming, then what is required by the theory's adherents is an alternative account of its structure and content or its role in the research program of biology.
...
'Fitness' is most intuitively defined in terms that follow its lexical entry in a dictionary. In this sense we all know what the word means, and what property it names. Following biological usage, call this concept 'ecological fitness'. (It has recently been called 'vernacular fitness' as well, cf.. Matthen and Ariew, 2002). The 'vernacular' definition is fraught with difficulties. Suppose, following Dennett (1995) we characterize the relation 'x is fitter than y', as follows:
x is fitter than y if and only if x's traits enable it to solve the 'design-problems' set by the environment more fully than y's traits do.
One may ask what are these design-problems? How many of them are there? Is there any way of measuring the degree to which x exceeds y in their solution? Answers to these questions simply reinforce the threat of tautology [that] faces the theory. To begin with the notion of "design problems" is vague and metaphorical; or, if treated literally, design problems will be all be ones relative to the overarching objective of leaving more descendants. Thus the definition may simply hide the original problem of distinguishing fitness from reproductive rates, instead of solving it.
Second, the number of design problems is equal to the number of distinct environmental features that effect survival, and of course reproduction, and this number is probably uncountable. Accordingly, the definition provides no hope of cardinal or even ordinal measurement that would enable us to predict or explain quantitatively differences in rates of reproduction, and the evolutionary processes that depend on these rates. It is no wonder that biologists, sensible of the importance of predictive precision and explanatory testability, have had little truck with ecological fitness and have defined 'x is fitter than y' in terms of quantitatively measurable reproductive rates. This tendency of course simply adds force to the original argument. If the only way to make fitness-differences scientifically tractable is to trivialize the theory, so much the worse for the theory.
While a tautology is true, it doesn't convey anything much in the way of useful information: All bachelors are men, for example. In a similar fashion, survival of the fittest conveys no particularly useful information.
Where we cannot cast an hypothesis in a falsifiable form, it must be to a certain extent irrational. This is the very aspersion cast against people who believe in God by biologists like Richard Dawkins. To the extent that believers in God are irrational, it follows from the above it must also be true of biologists. Especially since a favourite slogan of biologists is: "Nothing makes sense except in the light of evolution" (Theodosius Dobzhansky). For a contrary view, see this piece.
Thomas Kuhn's explanation in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is as follows:
A scientific community can only practice its profession if it has a set of received beliefs. These received beliefs make up the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice". The "rigorous and rigid" preparation ensures that the received beliefs exert a "deep hold" on the student's mind.
Normal science "is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like". Scientists defend that assumption with considerable vigour. "Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments".Research is "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education". Professional commitments to shared assumptions shift when an anomaly "subverts the existing tradition of scientific practice". These paradigm shifts are what Kuhn describes as scientific revolutions -- "the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science".
New assumptions/paradigms/theories/laws/hypotheses [delete whichever is inapplicable] require the reconstruction of prior assumptions and the reassessment of prior facts. This is a difficult and time consuming process, strongly resisted by the scientific establishment. When a paradigm shift takes place, "a scientist's world is qualitatively transformed [and] quantitatively enriched by fundamental novelties of either fact or theory".
Thomas Kuhn, who is far from lacking followers, appears to have concluded that science is essentially an irrational enterprise. While many scientists may be irrational, The Git believes it's far from certain that science itself is necessarily irrational. But we will follow this up next time.
What is This Thing Called Science?, Alan Chalmers, University of Queensland Press, 3rd ed. 2004. Chalmers canvasses the various major trends in the philosophy of science over the last century. This book is the best introduction by far that The Git has read.
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Thoughts for the week:
UNIVERSITY: A place in which a civilization's knowledge is divided up into exclusive territories. The principal occupation of the academic community is to invent dialects sufficiently Hermetic to prevent knowledge from passing between territories. By maintaining a constant flow of written material among the specialists of each group they are able to assert the acceptable technique of communication intended to prevent communications. This in turn establishes a standard which allows them to dismiss those who seek to communicate through generally accessible language as dilettantes, deformers or popularizers. -- John Ralston Saul
-oOo-
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. -- Bertrand Russell
-oOo-
What are all of us but self-reproducing robots?" he asked. "We have been put together by our genes and what we do is roam the world looking for a way to sustain ourselves and ultimately produce another robot - a child. -- Richard Dawkins
Current Listening:
The Band -- The Band
Syd Barrett -- The Madcap Laughs
Blind Faith -- Blind Faith
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