Now, I see the Wii working in the opposite way. I think it really has the potential to make things more interactive. Expanding on your HL2 example, have you played the Wii game Elebits? It's basically a game that combines the gravity gun from HL2 with an old game show called "finders keepers". You use the gravity gun to pick up and move(throw around) every object in a series of rooms, looking for objects/creatures hidden throughout. And even better, when you shoot something with your "gravity gun"(I forget what it's called in elebits), it doesn't automatically just get sucked right up to your character, you have to fling the remote back, like you were pulling a fish out of the water on the end of a fishing pole. Now, to be fair, that's really all there is to that game, it doesn't have the whole FPS experience along side the gravity gun part, but it was also a launch title, so I'm not going to be too hard on it.
I don't think that casual gamers are interested in passive games. The wii generally requires you to be very actively involved in what you're playing. I think you can make a good argument that many of the Wii games so far have lacked in replay-ability, but they've hardly felt like I was watching a movie instead of playing a game. I would think that a developer interested in making a game that relied mostly on cut-scenes to try and impress the gamer would be better off sticking with the 360 or PS3, because their graphics capabilities are significantly higher.
I dunno. Maybe the screen is too small for youtube videos to make much sense. Maybe even the web browser doesn't even ship with it. Maybe it's just a phone and an mp3 player (that syncs with itunes), but people will pay to have an iPhone with the Apple logo on the back.
Well, for many companies, you're right. But for companies with high-value IP like Valve and Half-life, there's much less risk involved even in a 'hardcore game'. As long as they don't ship a complete pile of crap, there's very little doubt that HL3 will move plenty of copies. Factor in the reality that most of the resources that valve has built up over the years are geared towards making that sort of game, and they're really unlikely to abandon all of that in favor a quick, smaller projects. Especially because the barriers to entry for casual game development are low enough that if they want to take a stab at that market, they shouldn't need to sell their entire current operations in order try something new.
Some people/companies are really good at serving the hardcore market. They've been doing it for years. That market isn't going away, there's tons of money being made there, and tons more will be made there in the future. Giving up a strong position in that market to chase after a newly developing market is not good business sense. Expanding your company to embrace the new market on top of your current market might be good business sense.
Gaming will cease to be a teenage phenomena, it won't be something that kids do that their parents don't understand, being a "gamer" won't put you in some sort of "elite" hobby, you'll just be a normal person.
Other than that, things won't change, except you'll have more choices. While the casual gamer market is growing and has the potential to be very large, the hardcore gamer market still has plenty of money to spend, the game industry knows that, and they're already set up for and experienced with serving that market. They're not going to completely abandon it to make minigames, the industry is just going to grow to cover the new types of games.
The only thing that will really change for hardcore gamers is that they'll increase the amount of bitching they do about all those ordinary people trying to pretend that they're real gamers. "They don't know what it's like, they've never played for 14 hours straight, they don't have eight obsolete consoles stacked in their basement, why don't you go play on your cellphone"
The market isn't shifting to casual games, it's growing to include them. Things might look a little strange right now because publishers are testing the waters a bit, but it'll balance out soon enough. Valve isn't going to abandon Half-life to make bejeweled clones, there will be plenty of MMO's and RPG's in the future. There's not much to worry about.
"Nano-based" is pretty much the dumbest way you could've put it. It's going to be based on the current iPhone, but it'll just be a cheaper, physically smaller, and more feature limited device; similar to the way an iPod nano compares to a full size iPod.
Ooooh, I see, Apple has filed phone related patents that utilize a scroll wheel, just like the iPod nano. Never mind that every other iPod(minus the shuffle) also has a scroll wheel.
I would think that anyone who's paid attention the electronics/computer world for the past couple of decades would have come to terms with the fact that the "biggest and best" is a quickly moving target, and the fact that something newer comes out doesn't mean that what you bought six months ago suddenly stops working.
You might "feel" like you got ripped off, but you really didn't. It's definitely possible to not worry about such things, and so that's what I'd advise, because worrying about it isn't going to accomplish anything positive anyways.
I design buildings for a living. I have an architecture degree. I took some structures classes while in school, did very well in them, and I have a basic and intuitive sense of structure. I learned all of the stuff that you listed above while in school, but I have not done a single structural calculation since I started working. I can tell you with all certainty, at least 95% of architects out there do not do any serious structural analysis of their buildings themselves. Pretty much any time there is any significant structural component to a project, we hire a structural engineer. You don't need to be a licensed architect to design and build a single family residence in most places, but we generally hire a structural engineer anyways, because it's a liability that we don't want, and an engineer can analyze the building far better and quicker than we can.
Architects generally rely on a few rules of thumb, plus previous experience to help us roughly estimate the sizes and locations of structural elements, then we hand our drawings off to the structural engineer. Most architects wouldn't know where to begin to run the numbers for the structure of a skyscraper. There's enough other stuff that has to get figured out for a building that the architect isn't going to waste time doing structural calculations, he's going to pay someone to do them instead.
But, let me be clear about this: a software architect should know their mathematics, just like a bridge architect should know their physics. If you don't know why you're designing a system a certain way, you can't know it is the right way to design it like that. Running in a slightly different direction with what you said, I feel it's worth noting that there's generally a difference between a bridge "architect" and a bridge "engineer". If an architect is involved in a bridge design, he/she most likely does not understand the physics behind how it works beyond a very basic level. That's generally not what architects spend their time on. Instead, they'll hire engineers to do all the math for them, and through an iterative process they come up with something that hopefully solves the architects' goals for the bridge, as well as something that the engineer says meets all the structural design criteria.
I don't know that much about how the software development works, or if something similar to the normal architect/consultant project setup could be applied to programming. But the general gist of it is that to get really nice stuff done, you try to set up the project so that everyone can focus on their particular strengths, and nobody has to waste much time trying to figure out something that someone else can do better/faster. Granted, it adds an extra layer of management, and it doesn't always work smoothly, but it does enable us to accomplish things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do.
That'd be neat, but in truth, the current alum macbook pros have a built in camera in the frame above the screen, and when the camera is on, a green light comes out of the frame, basically out of nowhere. Literally, you cannot tell that there's something there unless the light is on. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it's very cool.
That's pretty much how it is where I work. Granted, I'm in New Orleans, where we get around 6 months of heat and humidity that would impress even a manhattan resident. Like you said, it keeps the level of professionalism up a little bit higher, the boss can bring clients or prospective employees around the office without worrying too much about anyone looking foolish, and if a meeting gets moved up or you need to go on an unexpected field visit then you don't have to worry about looking un-presentable.
Well, fortunately, there are levels of attire between t-shirt and business suit, and most jobs fall somewhere in that middle ground. I work a creative professional job, but I haven't worn a suit to work a single day. But I do wear pants and a polo shirt/button down shirt.
My field is so desperate for workers in my location that I could get away with wearing a t-shirt if I wanted, but both myself and all of my co-workers generally feel that it's appropriate to dress a little nicer than we would sitting in our living rooms. Part of it is the fact that you never know when the boss might bring a client through the office, and we want to look at least somewhat professional. Part of it is that it's minimal effort to wear a little bit nicer clothes, and at least pretend like you care about your job enough to do so.
I think a system like the article is describing could also create some interesting challenges in regards to cooling as well. If you're basically wrapping hardware in a bag, then you need to create some way of getting the heat out. Perhaps the liquid filled bag itself could act as a sort of heat sink, but it seems like that would be quite a challenge to work out, finding the proper liquid/bag materials that absorb impacts properly and transmit heat well. Plus this system sounds like it involves the liquid moving around, which means that if the liquid plays an important part in dealing with the heat, you have to account for the amount of liquid in a particular place changing.
Don't pretend that geeks are somehow special in a way that no one else ever was. Your average early twenties liberal arts major is no more interested in dressing up in a suit and a tie every day than you are, it's just that by that age, most people have realized that for better or worse the world works in particular ways, and while you can try and fight it, some fights really aren't worth the struggle. That doesn't mean that everyone who's willing to wear a nice pair of pants to work is some roll-over drone happy to give up their humanity for a paycheck, it means they've got other priorities and realize that wearing a shirt with buttons on it is not some callous insult against their soul.
IT nerds found themselves temporarily immune to such things due to the explosive growth of computers/networking/etc. in the business world, and the seemingly magic nature of the internet and all of that. But those days were a fluke, they're mostly over. The good news is that, in general, there seems to be a slow shift towards more casual dress in a lot of places. I work downtown in a decent sized city, and I see way more people without ties than with. But I respect my employer, my coworkers, and our clients enough to dress better than than I would going to see a movie with my friends. It's not a hard thing to do, it's not even expensive.
Yeah, but why would you make a public statement like that unless you're trying to move public opinion one way or another. If he were to call up Apple and say, "hey guys don't forget that any GPL stuff on your nifty new phone needs to have available source," then I'd buy that he's just covering his bases.
Making a public statement like this, it really reads as borderline accusatory. Especially because he started his statement by talking about how the iphone is a crippled device. While that might be an accurate term based on the FSF's definition of the word "crippled", it is certainly not a friendly thing to say, and is not the kind of talk you'd use if you were interested in working with someone to find a solution that satisfies both sides.
I don't know what this guy's intention were, maybe it wasn't to come across so negatively, but it really reads as "We don't like the iPhone and we bet Apple is trying to cheat us." If the FSF feels that that is the only way they can make progress towards their goals, that's their call, but it's not how I'd suggest going about things.
The thousands of geeks who have posted on the various iphone articles on/. over the past few months would seem to disagree with you. You are but one of many, and you don't get to decide what the rest of us are interested in. Many agree with you, many do not. Your opinion is noted, but not really that important.
Microsoft has been making OS's for decades, has insane resources, and spent many years getting vista out the door. They also promised the moon and a half for Vista back in the early longhorn days, and delivered something with a way-trimmed down feature list, and it still didn't work all that great for a lot of people. Sure, many complained, but many are also using Vista and being happy with it.
Apple is making their first mobile phone ever, and while only the foolish expect it to be perfect, there are already tons of people talking about how much better the interface is than any other phone they've ever had. Many of them are also sharing what they see as the flaws in the device. And while I have no doubt that many of those people waiting in line were hardcore Apple fanboys, they're probably closing in on one million phones sold already, and I doubt there are that many Apple fanatics in the US.
To sum it up, MS needed around five years to put out a mediocre new version of their flagship product, after tons of feature cutting and multiple embarassing delays. I don't know how long Apple had been working on the iPhone, but it came out the day they said it would come out, and people seem to be genuinely impressed by it.
Apple has made it to where they are primarily by developing products that its customers think are great. MS has made it to where they are by developing products that are just good enough (and some wise business decisions). The two companies are judged differently, sure, but only because each has earned its reputation.
Fair enough, but I will mention a few more things. First off the different theories about the "death" of the universe vary greatly. The "Big Crunch" idea of the universe eventually collapsing in on itself seems pretty different from how most people view death, as does the "Big Rip". The "Big Freeze" is the one that seems to me to be the most anthropomorphic, because it involves the universe just getting older, but at the same time, the universe never actually ceases to exist there, it just becomes so cold and spread out that it might as well be dead.
I think scientists, in general, would be willing to accept that there's more out there than they can see (The existence of dark energy has just become accepted in the past few years, after all, and it supposedly makes up the large majority of the universe), and would welcome new data and get really excited about it. But in the meantime, they don't have much better to do than to make theories based on what they've seen and then try to test them. Don't forget that there are cosmologists out there working on theories that can involve dozens of dimensions. If those dimensions exist, human beings aren't aware of them beyond these crazy mathematical constructs, so that seems pretty un-anthropomophic study to me.
That's all well and good, and many people have put forth any number of different ideas like some of the stuff you're hinting at. The thing is, we've only got so much ability to study the universe around us, and only so much data that we can use to test our theories.
Might the Hubble Constant not be a factor in some insanely distant part of the universe? Sure, but if it looks to be in effect everywhere we can see, then how can we make any useful assumptions about where it ends?
I don't think that the Big Bang theory was some sort of way of forcing the universe into a pattern more familiar to us. It's just part of an attempt to figure out where all of the stuff that makes up the universe came from. There's a good bit of data that seems to point back to a specific point in the past where all of this started. The Jainism article you linked to sees the universe as a series of cycles, and there's a similar idea that often goes along with the Big Bang, involving the Big Crunch where the universe basically reboots itself and starts over.
You seem to be convinced that the Big Bang can't be right because some people think it's probably what happened, and in the past some people thought the world was flat and they turned out to be wrong. I fail to see how that argument would not be at least as applicable to your theories as well.
The Bible was written by people, not by God himself. It consists of stories that have been translated, rewritten, and modified countless times, probably sometimes by people with good intentions, other times by people with not-so-good intentions. Not to mention the fact that the Bible was originally meant to "speak" to people who lived thousands of years ago, and the world was a much different place then. Any decent writing needs to place itself in some sort of context for the reader, and the context of the world back then is very different from the context of the world now.
The Bible contradicts itself many times, it's often vague, and you can be (and has been) interpreted in a bazillion different ways. If I were to try to live strictly according to the Bible, I think I'd quite often find myself in situations where I'd get no specific guidance, and interpretation would be necessary. Much of what's written about Jesus involves parables that he told, again providing little in the way of specific instructions from God, instead providing us with little hints of how we should value ourselves, each other, and God. That's not to say that the Bible has no value. Certain parts are less useful than others, at least to me. (The old testament almost entirely, well written and fascinating stories, but basically made obsolete by the new testament.) And while I don't believe that humanity basically "doomed" itself when two naked people ate an apple, there are some basic messages in that story that are valuable. (The fact that we have, for whatever reason, a sort of innate knowledge of basic rights and wrongs creates responsibility for us to do what's right, etc.)
As for God just messing with us by making all of this confusing, the usual explanation for all of this is "free will". Basically meaning, that God wants us to be able to choose what's right, to choose to believe in him, to choose our path/destiny/whatever. The way it goes, supposedly if God actually came thundering down from the clouds, and spoke to all people at once to announce his existence, then everyone would be so amazed and enlightened that everyone would do what's right from then on. But by keeping things kind of hazy, God gives us the ability to use our intelligence and reasoning to try to figure things out for ourselves. I don't claim to know all of God's motivations but I do believe that my ability to question anything and everything that I want to, including the very reality of the God that allows me to exist, that's an amazing gift that's been given to humanity.
I think Deists generally have one of the best outlooks towards God/humanity/existence. I believe that God is less interested in the specifics of what we do, and more concerned with our general attitudes towards each other. I don't not kill people because the Bible has a story with stone tablets that say "THOU SHALL NOT KILL". I don't kill people because other people have just as much a right to live as I do, and I wouldn't want them to kill me. If the bible helps you further define your attitudes towards yourself, others, and God, then that's great. But if you're looking for a book that will prescribe every waking hour of your life, or that will answer every question about the universe that you have, then you're asking for quite a bit too much.
Yeah, it sure is upsetting to see people enjoying themselves. The ability to find fun in everyday things, that's the sure sign of a loser. From now on, I'll just reserve all of my excitement until I win the lottery, is that something exciting enough that you'll approve me being happy about it?
I hate to spoil your deeply-researched argument, but the fact that 75% of the US considers themselves christian does not mean that 3/4 of the population is vehemently opposed to science and stuff like evolution. While some of the more extremist christians like to pretend that they speak for all of the rest of us, most of us don't care much for what they're saying. I've read some stuff about a strict creationist believers having a crisis of faith when coming across something like 10,000 year old construction, but for most of us, our belief in God (and/or Jesus/etc.) does not require us to take the Bible as 100% fact, or to assume that science is a tool of the devil to trick us.
As a geek who strongly believes that there is a God, I find that the more I learn about the universe, the earth, biology, etc... the stronger my beliefs become. After all, what's more impressive; A god who just magically wills everything into being, or a God that oversees an incredibly rich, complex, and fascinating universe for its inhabitants to explore?
Sometimes people need something trivial to get excited about. Life isn't all peaches and cream for many people, and sometimes your goals in life seem way out of reach or way far into the future. It's nice to set yourself little manageable goals every now and then, and reward yourself with something nice occasionally. It can be comforting in a way to cheer for something/someone else, even if you have no official connection with them. It's very similar to how some people are hardcore hometown sports fans. It's a very common human thing to do, just now marketing departments are getting good at steering some of that enthusiasm away from stuff like professional sports and celebrities, and instead focusing it on companies and products.
Basically, it can be fun to be passionate about trivial things sometimes. Whether it's a football team, a rock band, a video game console, or a phone company, it lets you revel in some of the emotion and excitement that 8 hours of work and two hours of commuting each day doesn't let you use.
It's hard to say what sort of effect the iphone will have on the phone industry, seeing as it still hasn't quite yet been released. The only "scientific analysis" that anyone can have given the iPhone so far is based on pictures, movies, and bullet point lists, which sort of misses the point as far as Apple's design intentions are concerned. I think people who are interested in this sort of stuff should be excited, Apple has as good a track record as anyone for taking an idea(product) and really making it better. I will certainly agree that there are fanboys going nuts and that that is silly, but that's just part of the internet.
The iPhone won't be an exact repeat of the iPod, simply because the iPod has already happened. Apple sort of came out of nowhere with the iPod as far as most of the world is concerned. mp3 players weren't on everyone's radar yet, and neither was Apple. Phones are already ubiquitous, so I think you're right in that the iPhone won't be a cultural breakthrough in the sense that it's going to really kick-start something as broad based as the digital-music industry. But it looks like it will be a significant breakthrough in phone interfaces. Which is kind of less exciting in one sense, but actually very appealing in another, because it could cause some positive changes in something (mobile phones) that just about everyone uses.
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Now, I see the Wii working in the opposite way. I think it really has the potential to make things more interactive. Expanding on your HL2 example, have you played the Wii game Elebits? It's basically a game that combines the gravity gun from HL2 with an old game show called "finders keepers". You use the gravity gun to pick up and move(throw around) every object in a series of rooms, looking for objects/creatures hidden throughout. And even better, when you shoot something with your "gravity gun"(I forget what it's called in elebits), it doesn't automatically just get sucked right up to your character, you have to fling the remote back, like you were pulling a fish out of the water on the end of a fishing pole. Now, to be fair, that's really all there is to that game, it doesn't have the whole FPS experience along side the gravity gun part, but it was also a launch title, so I'm not going to be too hard on it.
I don't think that casual gamers are interested in passive games. The wii generally requires you to be very actively involved in what you're playing. I think you can make a good argument that many of the Wii games so far have lacked in replay-ability, but they've hardly felt like I was watching a movie instead of playing a game. I would think that a developer interested in making a game that relied mostly on cut-scenes to try and impress the gamer would be better off sticking with the 360 or PS3, because their graphics capabilities are significantly higher.
I dunno. Maybe the screen is too small for youtube videos to make much sense. Maybe even the web browser doesn't even ship with it. Maybe it's just a phone and an mp3 player (that syncs with itunes), but people will pay to have an iPhone with the Apple logo on the back.
Well, for many companies, you're right. But for companies with high-value IP like Valve and Half-life, there's much less risk involved even in a 'hardcore game'. As long as they don't ship a complete pile of crap, there's very little doubt that HL3 will move plenty of copies. Factor in the reality that most of the resources that valve has built up over the years are geared towards making that sort of game, and they're really unlikely to abandon all of that in favor a quick, smaller projects. Especially because the barriers to entry for casual game development are low enough that if they want to take a stab at that market, they shouldn't need to sell their entire current operations in order try something new.
Some people/companies are really good at serving the hardcore market. They've been doing it for years. That market isn't going away, there's tons of money being made there, and tons more will be made there in the future. Giving up a strong position in that market to chase after a newly developing market is not good business sense. Expanding your company to embrace the new market on top of your current market might be good business sense.
Gaming will cease to be a teenage phenomena, it won't be something that kids do that their parents don't understand, being a "gamer" won't put you in some sort of "elite" hobby, you'll just be a normal person.
Other than that, things won't change, except you'll have more choices. While the casual gamer market is growing and has the potential to be very large, the hardcore gamer market still has plenty of money to spend, the game industry knows that, and they're already set up for and experienced with serving that market. They're not going to completely abandon it to make minigames, the industry is just going to grow to cover the new types of games.
The only thing that will really change for hardcore gamers is that they'll increase the amount of bitching they do about all those ordinary people trying to pretend that they're real gamers. "They don't know what it's like, they've never played for 14 hours straight, they don't have eight obsolete consoles stacked in their basement, why don't you go play on your cellphone"
The market isn't shifting to casual games, it's growing to include them. Things might look a little strange right now because publishers are testing the waters a bit, but it'll balance out soon enough. Valve isn't going to abandon Half-life to make bejeweled clones, there will be plenty of MMO's and RPG's in the future. There's not much to worry about.
"Nano-based" is pretty much the dumbest way you could've put it. It's going to be based on the current iPhone, but it'll just be a cheaper, physically smaller, and more feature limited device; similar to the way an iPod nano compares to a full size iPod.
Ooooh, I see, Apple has filed phone related patents that utilize a scroll wheel, just like the iPod nano. Never mind that every other iPod(minus the shuffle) also has a scroll wheel.
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I would think that anyone who's paid attention the electronics/computer world for the past couple of decades would have come to terms with the fact that the "biggest and best" is a quickly moving target, and the fact that something newer comes out doesn't mean that what you bought six months ago suddenly stops working.
You might "feel" like you got ripped off, but you really didn't. It's definitely possible to not worry about such things, and so that's what I'd advise, because worrying about it isn't going to accomplish anything positive anyways.
I design buildings for a living. I have an architecture degree. I took some structures classes while in school, did very well in them, and I have a basic and intuitive sense of structure. I learned all of the stuff that you listed above while in school, but I have not done a single structural calculation since I started working. I can tell you with all certainty, at least 95% of architects out there do not do any serious structural analysis of their buildings themselves. Pretty much any time there is any significant structural component to a project, we hire a structural engineer. You don't need to be a licensed architect to design and build a single family residence in most places, but we generally hire a structural engineer anyways, because it's a liability that we don't want, and an engineer can analyze the building far better and quicker than we can.
Architects generally rely on a few rules of thumb, plus previous experience to help us roughly estimate the sizes and locations of structural elements, then we hand our drawings off to the structural engineer. Most architects wouldn't know where to begin to run the numbers for the structure of a skyscraper. There's enough other stuff that has to get figured out for a building that the architect isn't going to waste time doing structural calculations, he's going to pay someone to do them instead.
I don't know that much about how the software development works, or if something similar to the normal architect/consultant project setup could be applied to programming. But the general gist of it is that to get really nice stuff done, you try to set up the project so that everyone can focus on their particular strengths, and nobody has to waste much time trying to figure out something that someone else can do better/faster. Granted, it adds an extra layer of management, and it doesn't always work smoothly, but it does enable us to accomplish things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do.
That'd be neat, but in truth, the current alum macbook pros have a built in camera in the frame above the screen, and when the camera is on, a green light comes out of the frame, basically out of nowhere. Literally, you cannot tell that there's something there unless the light is on. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it's very cool.
I love the music from SMB2. It doesn't have the same cultural persistence as some of the other mario music, but I've always thought it was excellent.
That's pretty much how it is where I work. Granted, I'm in New Orleans, where we get around 6 months of heat and humidity that would impress even a manhattan resident. Like you said, it keeps the level of professionalism up a little bit higher, the boss can bring clients or prospective employees around the office without worrying too much about anyone looking foolish, and if a meeting gets moved up or you need to go on an unexpected field visit then you don't have to worry about looking un-presentable.
Well, fortunately, there are levels of attire between t-shirt and business suit, and most jobs fall somewhere in that middle ground. I work a creative professional job, but I haven't worn a suit to work a single day. But I do wear pants and a polo shirt/button down shirt.
My field is so desperate for workers in my location that I could get away with wearing a t-shirt if I wanted, but both myself and all of my co-workers generally feel that it's appropriate to dress a little nicer than we would sitting in our living rooms. Part of it is the fact that you never know when the boss might bring a client through the office, and we want to look at least somewhat professional. Part of it is that it's minimal effort to wear a little bit nicer clothes, and at least pretend like you care about your job enough to do so.
I think a system like the article is describing could also create some interesting challenges in regards to cooling as well. If you're basically wrapping hardware in a bag, then you need to create some way of getting the heat out. Perhaps the liquid filled bag itself could act as a sort of heat sink, but it seems like that would be quite a challenge to work out, finding the proper liquid/bag materials that absorb impacts properly and transmit heat well. Plus this system sounds like it involves the liquid moving around, which means that if the liquid plays an important part in dealing with the heat, you have to account for the amount of liquid in a particular place changing.
Don't pretend that geeks are somehow special in a way that no one else ever was. Your average early twenties liberal arts major is no more interested in dressing up in a suit and a tie every day than you are, it's just that by that age, most people have realized that for better or worse the world works in particular ways, and while you can try and fight it, some fights really aren't worth the struggle. That doesn't mean that everyone who's willing to wear a nice pair of pants to work is some roll-over drone happy to give up their humanity for a paycheck, it means they've got other priorities and realize that wearing a shirt with buttons on it is not some callous insult against their soul.
IT nerds found themselves temporarily immune to such things due to the explosive growth of computers/networking/etc. in the business world, and the seemingly magic nature of the internet and all of that. But those days were a fluke, they're mostly over. The good news is that, in general, there seems to be a slow shift towards more casual dress in a lot of places. I work downtown in a decent sized city, and I see way more people without ties than with. But I respect my employer, my coworkers, and our clients enough to dress better than than I would going to see a movie with my friends. It's not a hard thing to do, it's not even expensive.
Yeah, but why would you make a public statement like that unless you're trying to move public opinion one way or another. If he were to call up Apple and say, "hey guys don't forget that any GPL stuff on your nifty new phone needs to have available source," then I'd buy that he's just covering his bases.
Making a public statement like this, it really reads as borderline accusatory. Especially because he started his statement by talking about how the iphone is a crippled device. While that might be an accurate term based on the FSF's definition of the word "crippled", it is certainly not a friendly thing to say, and is not the kind of talk you'd use if you were interested in working with someone to find a solution that satisfies both sides.
I don't know what this guy's intention were, maybe it wasn't to come across so negatively, but it really reads as "We don't like the iPhone and we bet Apple is trying to cheat us." If the FSF feels that that is the only way they can make progress towards their goals, that's their call, but it's not how I'd suggest going about things.
The thousands of geeks who have posted on the various iphone articles on /. over the past few months would seem to disagree with you. You are but one of many, and you don't get to decide what the rest of us are interested in. Many agree with you, many do not. Your opinion is noted, but not really that important.
Microsoft has been making OS's for decades, has insane resources, and spent many years getting vista out the door. They also promised the moon and a half for Vista back in the early longhorn days, and delivered something with a way-trimmed down feature list, and it still didn't work all that great for a lot of people. Sure, many complained, but many are also using Vista and being happy with it.
Apple is making their first mobile phone ever, and while only the foolish expect it to be perfect, there are already tons of people talking about how much better the interface is than any other phone they've ever had. Many of them are also sharing what they see as the flaws in the device. And while I have no doubt that many of those people waiting in line were hardcore Apple fanboys, they're probably closing in on one million phones sold already, and I doubt there are that many Apple fanatics in the US.
To sum it up, MS needed around five years to put out a mediocre new version of their flagship product, after tons of feature cutting and multiple embarassing delays. I don't know how long Apple had been working on the iPhone, but it came out the day they said it would come out, and people seem to be genuinely impressed by it.
Apple has made it to where they are primarily by developing products that its customers think are great. MS has made it to where they are by developing products that are just good enough (and some wise business decisions). The two companies are judged differently, sure, but only because each has earned its reputation.
Fair enough, but I will mention a few more things. First off the different theories about the "death" of the universe vary greatly. The "Big Crunch" idea of the universe eventually collapsing in on itself seems pretty different from how most people view death, as does the "Big Rip". The "Big Freeze" is the one that seems to me to be the most anthropomorphic, because it involves the universe just getting older, but at the same time, the universe never actually ceases to exist there, it just becomes so cold and spread out that it might as well be dead.
I think scientists, in general, would be willing to accept that there's more out there than they can see (The existence of dark energy has just become accepted in the past few years, after all, and it supposedly makes up the large majority of the universe), and would welcome new data and get really excited about it. But in the meantime, they don't have much better to do than to make theories based on what they've seen and then try to test them. Don't forget that there are cosmologists out there working on theories that can involve dozens of dimensions. If those dimensions exist, human beings aren't aware of them beyond these crazy mathematical constructs, so that seems pretty un-anthropomophic study to me.
That's all well and good, and many people have put forth any number of different ideas like some of the stuff you're hinting at. The thing is, we've only got so much ability to study the universe around us, and only so much data that we can use to test our theories.
Might the Hubble Constant not be a factor in some insanely distant part of the universe? Sure, but if it looks to be in effect everywhere we can see, then how can we make any useful assumptions about where it ends?
I don't think that the Big Bang theory was some sort of way of forcing the universe into a pattern more familiar to us. It's just part of an attempt to figure out where all of the stuff that makes up the universe came from. There's a good bit of data that seems to point back to a specific point in the past where all of this started. The Jainism article you linked to sees the universe as a series of cycles, and there's a similar idea that often goes along with the Big Bang, involving the Big Crunch where the universe basically reboots itself and starts over.
You seem to be convinced that the Big Bang can't be right because some people think it's probably what happened, and in the past some people thought the world was flat and they turned out to be wrong. I fail to see how that argument would not be at least as applicable to your theories as well.
The Bible was written by people, not by God himself. It consists of stories that have been translated, rewritten, and modified countless times, probably sometimes by people with good intentions, other times by people with not-so-good intentions. Not to mention the fact that the Bible was originally meant to "speak" to people who lived thousands of years ago, and the world was a much different place then. Any decent writing needs to place itself in some sort of context for the reader, and the context of the world back then is very different from the context of the world now.
The Bible contradicts itself many times, it's often vague, and you can be (and has been) interpreted in a bazillion different ways. If I were to try to live strictly according to the Bible, I think I'd quite often find myself in situations where I'd get no specific guidance, and interpretation would be necessary. Much of what's written about Jesus involves parables that he told, again providing little in the way of specific instructions from God, instead providing us with little hints of how we should value ourselves, each other, and God. That's not to say that the Bible has no value. Certain parts are less useful than others, at least to me. (The old testament almost entirely, well written and fascinating stories, but basically made obsolete by the new testament.) And while I don't believe that humanity basically "doomed" itself when two naked people ate an apple, there are some basic messages in that story that are valuable. (The fact that we have, for whatever reason, a sort of innate knowledge of basic rights and wrongs creates responsibility for us to do what's right, etc.)
As for God just messing with us by making all of this confusing, the usual explanation for all of this is "free will". Basically meaning, that God wants us to be able to choose what's right, to choose to believe in him, to choose our path/destiny/whatever. The way it goes, supposedly if God actually came thundering down from the clouds, and spoke to all people at once to announce his existence, then everyone would be so amazed and enlightened that everyone would do what's right from then on. But by keeping things kind of hazy, God gives us the ability to use our intelligence and reasoning to try to figure things out for ourselves. I don't claim to know all of God's motivations but I do believe that my ability to question anything and everything that I want to, including the very reality of the God that allows me to exist, that's an amazing gift that's been given to humanity.
I think Deists generally have one of the best outlooks towards God/humanity/existence. I believe that God is less interested in the specifics of what we do, and more concerned with our general attitudes towards each other. I don't not kill people because the Bible has a story with stone tablets that say "THOU SHALL NOT KILL". I don't kill people because other people have just as much a right to live as I do, and I wouldn't want them to kill me. If the bible helps you further define your attitudes towards yourself, others, and God, then that's great. But if you're looking for a book that will prescribe every waking hour of your life, or that will answer every question about the universe that you have, then you're asking for quite a bit too much.
Yeah, it sure is upsetting to see people enjoying themselves. The ability to find fun in everyday things, that's the sure sign of a loser. From now on, I'll just reserve all of my excitement until I win the lottery, is that something exciting enough that you'll approve me being happy about it?
I hate to spoil your deeply-researched argument, but the fact that 75% of the US considers themselves christian does not mean that 3/4 of the population is vehemently opposed to science and stuff like evolution. While some of the more extremist christians like to pretend that they speak for all of the rest of us, most of us don't care much for what they're saying. I've read some stuff about a strict creationist believers having a crisis of faith when coming across something like 10,000 year old construction, but for most of us, our belief in God (and/or Jesus/etc.) does not require us to take the Bible as 100% fact, or to assume that science is a tool of the devil to trick us.
As a geek who strongly believes that there is a God, I find that the more I learn about the universe, the earth, biology, etc... the stronger my beliefs become. After all, what's more impressive; A god who just magically wills everything into being, or a God that oversees an incredibly rich, complex, and fascinating universe for its inhabitants to explore?
Sometimes people need something trivial to get excited about. Life isn't all peaches and cream for many people, and sometimes your goals in life seem way out of reach or way far into the future. It's nice to set yourself little manageable goals every now and then, and reward yourself with something nice occasionally. It can be comforting in a way to cheer for something/someone else, even if you have no official connection with them. It's very similar to how some people are hardcore hometown sports fans. It's a very common human thing to do, just now marketing departments are getting good at steering some of that enthusiasm away from stuff like professional sports and celebrities, and instead focusing it on companies and products.
Basically, it can be fun to be passionate about trivial things sometimes. Whether it's a football team, a rock band, a video game console, or a phone company, it lets you revel in some of the emotion and excitement that 8 hours of work and two hours of commuting each day doesn't let you use.
It's hard to say what sort of effect the iphone will have on the phone industry, seeing as it still hasn't quite yet been released. The only "scientific analysis" that anyone can have given the iPhone so far is based on pictures, movies, and bullet point lists, which sort of misses the point as far as Apple's design intentions are concerned. I think people who are interested in this sort of stuff should be excited, Apple has as good a track record as anyone for taking an idea(product) and really making it better. I will certainly agree that there are fanboys going nuts and that that is silly, but that's just part of the internet.
The iPhone won't be an exact repeat of the iPod, simply because the iPod has already happened. Apple sort of came out of nowhere with the iPod as far as most of the world is concerned. mp3 players weren't on everyone's radar yet, and neither was Apple. Phones are already ubiquitous, so I think you're right in that the iPhone won't be a cultural breakthrough in the sense that it's going to really kick-start something as broad based as the digital-music industry. But it looks like it will be a significant breakthrough in phone interfaces. Which is kind of less exciting in one sense, but actually very appealing in another, because it could cause some positive changes in something (mobile phones) that just about everyone uses.
Yeah, and after Nintendo showed what the Wii was all about, the bulk of the publicity went to them. What's your point?
If you're tired of the articles, then stop reading them. Obviously a bunch of people want to talk about the iphone, or else they wouldn't be doing it.