up and running again ;)

well, brian marick quotes first this other guy saying: 'scientific wins are not just a matter of avoiding experimental refutation' to go on with a sort of answer to the question:

To grab mindshare, methodologists should use a surprising method to achieve unexpected success with a long-intractable problem.

;) any help, i don't know, want to rethink his txt.

is hardly a matter of ideas even in the scientific world.

i could recommend reading a litte bit in bill bryson's short history of nearly everything (as i do right now) and you might find a lot of historical proof of how outlandish (or, if you prefer the term, funny) scientific people cope with new discoveries in their field. in a broader (or more technical) sense i could remind you of the dvorak keyboard story and its sibling anecdotes.

and since software developers are kind of technical-, kind of scientific-oriented people (imho), i guess they have to cope with exactly the same problem: the ineradicable misbeliefs and superstitions as well as the nonsenseness of many social and political ecologies. (but then again, they do not even bring to us grand unification equations or the answer to life, the universe and everything.)

so let's make shitty software and join in for a larf!

about the dvorak keyboard i am not so sure. i also couldn't find this paper (btw. written by señor dvorak himself), that always gets quoted as a proof of superiority. i think marick's example tells more: maxwell vs rutherford's model of the atom. and mathematicians anyhow like to tell everyone who stands near by that they know the truth and have an answer to life and for sure the right equation for everything by hand. proofed truth so to say. until the next chap shows up ...
¿let's have a larf? and shitty? nah, you wouldn't be able to.