In a message dated 6/6/2001 12:28:18 PM EST, lynn_allen@angelfire.com writes:
> I have to defer to Ed's comment that Incompetence is more likely than
Malice--
> I can't quote Ed's exact text because an International Conspiracy ate my
> email-files! ;-)
I happen to live near Ockham, and have always liked Occam's Razor.
However, everytime I try to remove something from VueScan, people
scream (cf Long exposure pass) <smile>. I keep trying to figure out
ways of making VueScan simpler and easier to use, and I'm always
open to suggestions.
Occam's Razor is a useful principle in software design and is
a basic principle in science, with similar sayings from Leibnitz,
Newton, Einstein and Aristotle.
Information from:
Occam's (or Ockham's) razor is a principle attributed to the 14th century
logician and Franciscan friar; William of Occam. Ockham was the village in
the English county of Surrey where he was born.
The principle states that "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily."
Sometimes it is quoted in one of its original Latin forms to give it an air
of authenticity.
"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate"
>From the hacker's dictionary:
Hanlon's Razor:
A corollary of Finagle's Law, similar to Occam's Razor, that reads "Never
attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." The
derivation of the Hanlon eponym is not definitely known, but a very similar
remark ("You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from
stupidity.") appears in "Logic of Empire", a classic 1941 SF story by Robert
A. Heinlein, who calls it the `devil theory' of sociology. Heinlein's
popularity in the hacker culture makes plausible the supposition that
`Hanlon' is derived from `Heinlein' by phonetic corruption.
Regards,
Ed Hamrick
