Re: Steal RAM -- Question

["mdj" <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

Michael J. Mahon wrote:

> It's nice to see an optimist.  ;-)

Said the pessimist posing as a pragmatist ;-)

> It is clear that the "sufficiently large timeline" for such
> convergence is considerably longer than my lifetime, so perhaps
> my desire for faster convergence can be excused.

I agree with you, but also point out that faster convergence can be
achieved by greater participation. Of course this problem exists with
all democratic processes.

> Put another way, belief can prevent a fact from being appreciated
> for many lifetimes--such is the power of memes.

They who discover the ability to dispell false beliefs amongst an
appreciable proportion of a populace will have truly achieved
something.

> I presume you are aware of the numerous cases of biographical
> distortions and outright plagiarism in Wikipedia?  And of the
> editorial resistance to correction of these errors?

Absolutely. There are also numerous counterpoints of corruption where
biographical information was censored by those who would seek to
misrepresent their own public images. At times perhaps these are the
same articles :-) Since these cases tend to come to the fore, I would
argue that this is a benefit of the system rather than a fault.

> Idealism must always be tempered by pragmatism, and the Wiki
> ideal is no different.  The truth is that some people have better
> knowledge than others, and some have better intentions than others.

Indeed, but surely the pragmatic approach is to weigh the benefits of
something against its disadvantages?

> Only when right knowledge and right intention combine does right
> action ensue.

I won't argue with that!

> > This discussion is actually an interesting case in point - 30 years on
> > we have a good clarification of the behaviour of the Apple II speaker
> > for those who are interested. Interpretations of supposedly
> > "authoritive" sources have been, well, mixed :-)
>
> I hope you note my *correction* to my earlier explanation of the cause
> of asymmetry in the speaker output.  ;-)  Going back to the actual
> circuit and analyzing its behavior led to a more accurate result.  I had
> done that over a year ago, but misremembered the details in my first
> explanation.  ;-)

Oh! I was merely referrering to the contention at large, not your own
self correction :-) Sorry if that was interpreted as a dig, I was
referring to the supposedly authoritive documentation that
misrepresents the actual machine behavior.

> This analysis was always available to anyone who looked at the circuit,
> having noticed the "strange" response to slow toggles.  Apparently,
> those who did so just didn't publish the result of their analysis.

This is the beauty of open discussion though! Contention arises,
discussion ensues. Eventually, somebody goes to the effort of actually
examining the issue empirically and determines the actual facts. If
only this worked as well for sociopolitical issues as it does for the
scientific ;-)

In all but the most deterministic of cases, an explanation/description
is at worst outright wrong, at best an approximation. The most damaging
meme of all is that there is such as thing as an authoritive source of
truth. There is of course, no substitute for critical thinking, and the
informed believing that they can protect the naive from disinformation
through regulation is (IMHO) a dangerous form of idealism.

Matt