Okay this part of the thread is just going way off track and there is enough animosity that I have been modded down to a 2 now, so why don't we all take a deep breath and go for a walk outside.
The main point of my retort remains however. The original guy I was responding to, sounded really intelligent, but underneath the cleverness he was regurgitating the same old stuff about how Nokia (and other phone companies by association) are more established in the market, more "mature" and therefore have some kind of implied invulnerability. In this scenario, Apple is the "new kid on the block" with some snappy ideas but no history, and no "chops" or something. (Usually what they "lack" is not specified but kudos to this fellow for at least coming up with something in that department)
This is bunk, plain and simple. It's a nice little story, but one that has no basis in fact. That was my point and I don't think anyone has successfully refuted it here.
To the person talking about European Nokia phones vs. North American... Yes, I was mostly basing that on my North American experience but even top end European Nokia phones simply do not compare that favorably to the iPhone on a feature/price comparison, (at least when we are talking about the North American prices for these phones). I am not saying they are crap, what I am saying is they are not "god-phones," and that the iPhone, even in it's very first iteration, right up there with them on a feature for price basis. This is unprecedented and not somethign to be dismissed with a wave of the hand and a reference to them being the "new kids."
The top Nokia phones have a few more features, but at a significantly higher price. Presumably, Nokia will try to drag that top of the line feature-set down into it's crappier phone line, and Apple will try to add the few features they are missing while toeing the line on price. It will be interesting for sure, but to imply that Apple has some kind of "maturity" handicap in this process and will have a hard time coming up to Nokia's level of quality and market savy is a nice comfortable illusion at best.
Interesting analysis but your (rather strong) bias is showing.
There is not a Nokia phone made today that the Apple iPhone doesn't blow out off the water "value-proposition-wise" with it's first iteration. The very bankruptcy of Nokia's idea mill is shown by the very subject of this thread; the announcement that they are going to try to copy the iPhone.
What do you mean by "Nokia's more mature interface"?
Isn't that just spin for "old-fashioned?" Also the iPhone runs OS-X a variant of Unix. I think that Unix has more cred for being "mature" in all the ways that actually count. It's underpinnings are rock solid and mostly open. What we are really talking about here in terms of interface, is the user interaction layer and I think Apple clearly has far more experience in that department than Nokia.
Apple lacks market experience?
Then how did they work that deal where the phone is no longer controlled by the network provider, and get a cut of fees as well? Apple got both the market, and the deal that phone companies like Nokia have been trying for their whole lives. In one stroke. Apple's financial's and market savy are not only rock solid, they are the envy of many tech companies.
You are trying to use that same old argument wherein Apple is supposed to be up against some kind of juggernaut and therefore doomed to fail, but the truth is actually the reverse. Nokia is up against the juggernaut, not Apple.
You also seem to think that just because Nokia is on top at the moment that they have some kind of magic beans or something. As recently as a few years ago, Motorola was the handset of choice. They made similar phones with similar interfaces to Nokia's current offerings. There is no reason to suspect that Nokia's phones, or their new interface will be anything special, especially when the best they can do is (possibly) offer up a luke-warm copy of an OS over a year after it comes out.
Feature for feature, Nokia may make the top feature phones at the moment, but they don't necessarily make what the market wants. You are mistaking Nokia's top of the line, hugely expensive "everything but the kitchen sink" products for products that actually sell well and are desired by the market. The majority of Nokia's sales are bottom of the market crud phones. I know because I have one myself.
Ask yourself what happens when Apple releases it's "low market" iPhone that you can use on any network. What happens when Nokia finally comes out with this phone next year and multiple versions of Apple's iPhones are already out all around the world? I would not bet on Nokia coming out with anything that will interfere with the huge momentum Apple has built here.
PS - what is "cruft"? Is that American for "crud" or "crap" or "stuff"?
That's not going to happen. I don't see why not. In fact, you can see it happening as we speak on this very thread. People are already believing that it's "over" and convincing themselves that the whole point of the exercise was to get rid of guys like Gonzales, so we've "won."
Scan down the thread and you will see one, perhaps two people who are bringing up the fact that Gonzales stepping down is only a prelude to a pardon and a cover-up. Everyone else seems to be harping on some variation of "Good! he's gone. Now let's see if we can get a good replacement."
To believe that is to miss the point entirely.
You have to realise if you think about this for even a second, that the only way through it, is by prosecution, discovery of the facts, and actually changing the things that led to this abuse of power. Same goes for Rove, same goes for Cheeney and Bush. The fact that Gonzales is gone is not good news, it's news that justice has been or soon will be evaded yet again.
This resignation, like most political resignations, just means you will never get to the bottom of what happened and the things that need changing will never be changed. The amount of hutspah/balls/whatever required to actually prosecute or impeach these criminals pales in comparison to the amount needed to do that now that they have left the stage sort of speak. Regardless of whether or not formal pardons are actually issued, this is an opportunity for shredding, for coverup and for everyone pretending that the US "didn't really have a fascist government that time."
This is, as I said, standard stuff and the Democrats are as complicit as the Republicans. The only way they could show themselves to be clean is to vigorously prosecute these folks long after the fact, and long after the public has lost interest. Do you really think that is going to happen?
Karl Rove should be in jail, and Gonzales should be disbarred at a minimum, but such an unprecedented outcome can only come about if the anger of the people is maintained and the Democrats can set themselves up as the righteous wielder of that anger. This resignations are classic public relations stuff in that they take all the momentum out of impeachment proceedings and distract the public away from what matters to "what's happening now."
Did you really think that the powers that be in Washington, are going to make a bad move or a dumb move? This and other future resignations is the smartest thing to do when you are a dictator backed against the wall.
This is territory pioneered by Gerald Ford and Nixon.
Step down and be replaced by someone who is (on the surface of it), a "kinder, gentler" version, but someone deeply indebted to the administration and willing to take orders to cover up, pardon, and otherwise dismiss the wrongdoings of the past. First Rove, now Gonzales, soon Cheeney and the "W" himself. Cheeney will have to go first, as he can't rightly sit in as President when George steps down. Probably some milque-toast republican who always wanted the job but is considered an idiot will be appointed to replace/pardon/coverup Cheeney and then "W" will have a health emergency just before the end of term requiring him to step down as well (with a secret pardon that will only be discovered later.)
By the time the Democrats get elected, everything will be shredded, and all the guilty long-gone and pardoned. A giant commission will will give Fox something to talk about over a multi-year period, but it will come back with recommendations only half-way through Hillary's first term. A moving speech from her will assure the nation that the "horrible things" that happened will never happen again, and that checks and balances are now in place but it will be mostly untrue. The shrewd will notice that only a couple of assistants and an aging general or two will have been held accountable and nothing will really have been changed that could stop this kind of fascism from either continuing, or happening again.
This is standard stuff, I remember reading all this in the papers in 1975.
* (1)
A person who--
o (a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service, and
o (b)does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service,
is guilty of an offence. I saw this also, (after I posted my original comment), but it's almost the same wording as that used in the article and has all of the same problems in logic.
The illegality is defined in part "a" by merely putting the word "dishonest" in front which is unsupportable without further (or more likely *previous*), definition of what exactly is meant by "dishonest." The same argument applies as in my original post. You can't just put "dishonest" in front, you have to actually state what the law actually is and what constitutes breaking it. It should really say, "dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service by.. (x, y, and z).
The definition (sortof) of what they mean by "dishonest" is contained in part "b" but instead of listing part "b" as descriptive of "a" they put the word "and" in between. So "a" is not even illegal without also "b" but it's still unclear what "a" actually means. Worse, it seems to imply that "b" is not illegal without also "a," and with "a" being undefined, you are kind of stuck again as to how to know what is actually illegal here. The wording also implies that "a" is a superset of "b" and not the reverse. So there are things in "a" that are not "b," that define what "dishonest" refers to, but those are not listed. We must live in fear of what they are it seems, or wait for the prosecutor to tell you at trial.:-)
This has to be one of the worst written laws I have seen for a long time and I am surprised that anyone has ever been convicted by it. The fellow must have just knuckled under and paid his fine in true Brit fashion without seriously questioning it.
Your argument here amounts to a blending of the "the law is the law" argument (specious and irrelevant), and the "water in the tap" metaphor used extensively above.
I won't even bother with the "law is the law" argument for obvious reasons, but the tap metaphor I guess is drawing a lot of people in despite it's own paucity of reason. While the internet is a sort of "pipe" and bandwidth issues are real, on the level of broadband access to a house, (especially ASDL instead of cable, but both if properly installed and routed), there will not be a real drop in bandwidth corresponding to the use of the guy on the wall.
Test it for yourself, it's probably a good test of what it is you are paying for each month.
In my house for instance, I can be using my laptop wirelessly to play Second Life lets say (a bandwidth hog that downloads gigabytes of stuff to give you essentially a commodore 64 type of performance in the game). At the same time I can start a download of a movie on another computer connected to Ethernet and usually I might have my regular compute open browsing the web. My wife often will play Second Life as well at the same time as me, also wirelessly in the living room. Even though I don't run any metres to find out the actual usage, there is simply *never* a slow-down of any of our connections when doing this. It just doesn't work that way. If the system bandwidth is properly deployed and the router in your house has minimal switching capabilities all users should be getting essentially the same speeds.
The "water in a tap" analogy is just not applicable in the way that people think it is. It's not like I am using ten gallons a second and the guy outside is "stealing" four of those gallons thus giving me a slowdown. This is nonsense.
The only way it works like that is if you are on a cable modem and the internet supplier has so crappily or incorrectly configured the network as to have you and all your neighbors sharing bandwidth. You should immediately complain and/or get with a different ISP if you have slow-down issues like these. It's generally considered a fault, not a feature of high-speed internet for it to behave that way.
Your being a bit ridiculous here. On anything approaching modern equipment the extra user on the line is not going to cause any drop in bandwidth as we are assuming (like any modern router), that some kind of effective switching is going on.
However, other things seem either wrong or have a bias towards hand editing of the files, e.g. "International, but US English first and foremost". He complains that it uses U.S. English settings. He may not like the U.S., but it's called picking a canonicalized format. This is offensive bull.
I don't think you intended it that way, but you should be aware of the vast number of people you just insulted. US English and US dates are only "canonical" in the minds of US citizens. If not for Microsoft purposely and determinedly screwing up the implementation of anything but US standards in their software the usage would have no traction at all.
The majority of the "English speaking" world still uses the English language and English formats and standards, not US variant ones. The fact that the USA has seen fit to re-invent English, still refer to that as English, and then foist it on the rest of the world doesn't make it "canonical."
As the author of this article so aptly describes, date formats and language implementations are a multi-stage nightmare in Office. To the point that the majority of users even in English speaking countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK itself, often end up using American English and American dates simply because Office is the only game in town and you cna only bash your head against the wall on these things for so long. That doesn't make it right, and that doesn't mean that those users wouldn't be happier and more productive if they were not forced to use a US standard when they may have not even traveled to the US.
Any kind of English except the US variant, is severely broken in Office and always has been. Your answer sounds to me a lot like: "So what, they should all be using our standards and language anyway." Not helpful at all, and illogical as well.
Given the circumstances of the arrest and the description of the law, there is no way this is (or should be considered) an illegal act.
If the fellow was wealthy enough to this to a high court, or possibly the European court, they would win hands down and the law would be struck off the books. As an English person myself I can tell you that the UK has a strong propensity for these kinds of knee-jerk fascist laws that often stay on the books for years both because of the tendency of the average Brit to knuckle under to the cops and because rich people are rarely charged with such offences.
The law (as described in the article), says that "Dishonestly obtaining free internet access..." was the crime. Yet it's a long established legal principle that merely adding the word "dishonest" in front of something does not actually make it a crime. You can't just say that driving a car is alright but "dishonestly driving a car" is a crime. This is patent nonsense.
The crime should be correctly defined as "stealing broadband access," and stealing requires both knowledge of wrong-doing and an intent to deprive the victim at a bare minimum.
There is no deprivation here, and nothing has been lost. The man in question seemed to have no way of knowing that the owner of the broadband connection did not want people to access it. Some people have wireless and leave it open on purpose. I know at least four of my neighbors do this.
To top it all off, when the police saw him sitting on the wall and asked him what he was doing, he freely admitted it and apparently didn't see anything wrong with the practice. A good argument could be made that he was "Honestly obtaining free internet access" and not being dishonest at all.
Unless there are facts not in evidence in this story, like the broadband being secured with a password, there simply is no crime here at all. Unfortunately the way the justice system is both in the UK and in North America, this unjust, ridiculous law will hang around bothering people for ages before someone with enough political power or money decides they are tired of it.
This is silly. Everything you've said here just amounts to saying "the law is the law." This might be your opinion, but it is neither an argument, nor terribly "insightful."
I think from your comments that we are sort of on the same page in a way, but I would characterise your position as having a more optimistic spin. While I usually try to stay positive myself and avoid all the "MS is shit!" stuff, you must admit it's hard to do when it comes to this particular company.
You are right in that the negative comments and suspicion are counter-productive to moving forward, they always are. But while forgiveness is eventually the only solution, there are certain realities that make such "kiss and makeup" scenarios unlikely for now. I guess I was just pointing that out.
Sitting down and shaking hands with Al Qaida and the Islamic extremists is really the only "solution" to terrorism as well. But you will get a bullet in the head or serious jail time from your own community for suggesting it in today's world, and it's naive to think it's going to happen anytime soon.
Actually, most of the comments on this topic are mis-informed. The only difference between crackpots like Ron Hubard and the Cristian Church founders is time.
Christianity, just like more modern cults like Mormonism, Flying Saucer Cults, and Scientology are all remarkably similar in the way that they formed. There is ample evidence in each case that the founders of these groups either had serious doubts about what they were preaching or were indeed running a "scam" of sorts.
Typically there is the visionary founder who is usually suffering from some kind of medical problem or has a history of delusion/hallucination. This would be St. Peter, John Smith, George Adamski and Ron Hubard respectively. These guys are usually genuine crackpots, but often even they have their lucid moments where it's understood that there are very practical rewards involved in being the head of the cult. These are originally "cults of personality" after all. At that level it's all about self-aggrandisement.
The early adopters, (who later become the church fathers), are frequently not believers but opportunists. These guys usually live with the cult leader or are his best friends so they have no illusions about how crackers the great leader is and often write things to that effect years later. At the time however, there are of course those great practical reasons for being part of the inner circle (power, women, drugs, money etc.) and they play the part of believers to get these rewards.
In the end, it's only the faithful, the sycophants who throw their life savings at these guys, that are the believers because they have lost everything "for the church." Thus their entire self-worth, and sometimes even their life hinges on the nonsense being true.
It's those people (notice they are not all men at this level), that really form the Church proper. They, and their children, who are brought up in the cult after the original crackpot is dead and beatified, are usually the "True Believers."
You might have a (weak) point, but doesn't most of what you are saying boil down to "there are some open source advocates in the belly of the beast that should be encouraged."? That's not really saying much IMO.
Microsoft has such a long history of deception and other bad practices it should make any intelligent person suspicious of their intentions here. It was only a few months ago that they were threatening to sue the open source community. I know it's been said to death, but the bottom line is that if Microsoft as a company really wanted to embrace open source, and work with the open source community, the very first step is open file formats and cross-platform compatibility.
How can anyone trust Microsoft's open source efforts when at the same time they are fighting tooth and nail to eliminate any hope of open file formats and tying all of their open source projects to Windows? I know you are trying to be positive here, but isn't this just a tad naive of you as well? There simply is no reason to believe that this isn't just the same old divide and conquer marketing game from Microsoft. At least not yet.
Windows might have to go open source eventually just to remain relevant, but Microsoft will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to this conclusion, and it will likely take years. At a bare minimum, my expectation is that major structural and managerial changes will have to occur at Microsoft before any of that comes to pass, if it ever does.
I read the article also and I find it confusing at best.
They talk about a possible chain reaction but then they kind of imply at the end that the only danger was possible poisioning of "only one worker." Earlier they describe the leak as only occurring into a "sealed glove box" but then they say they discovered it because "yellow liquid was coming out from under a door."
I mean which is it? If it spilled into a glovebox, then how did it jump up and run across the floor? If the entire room was a glovebox, then it's kind of a mistake to have a door to that room with a gap underneath it isn't it? None of this makes much sense to me and makes me highly suspicious of the whole story, especially when you add the fact of the coverup.
Probably this is just yet another example of how the Police State in the US is adversely affecting science, but it could be something more than that given the utter confusion of this report. I am finding it hard to believe a word these people are saying.
As for your community division fears, what is stopping them from doing that now? In fact, if we consider the Novell deal, they already are dividing the Linux community. Well this was my point. I am maintaining that what this is really about is dividing the market, conquering (marginalising), the FSF, and cozying up to the more "business-minded" part of the OS community. It is indeed already underway IMO.
Finally, I don't think the OSI can do anything about public perception outside of the technical community anyway (I don't even think FLOSS sympathetic managers would care). And MS would probably get a free pass in any press that mattered, so why would they bother with all this work? Again, this is pretty much what I was trying to point out. Microsoft is very concerned with public perception and most their successes are because of that focus. They have the ability to carry off these kinds of perception changes with great ease. The fact that certain groups of the open source community don't care to manage the publics perception of open source software and don't see this as relevant, is really their Achilles heel.
Richard Stallman (and I am just using him as an example of these types of thinkers), is out there actually telling the truth(!) to people and assuming that technical merit and "being right" (morally speaking) is going to win the day for the FSF. Nothing could be further from the truth. People generally will believe what they are conditioned and told to believe. What I am saying is that like a lot of these kinds of situations, the truth is somewhat irrelevant here, and perception rules.
While I believe that technical merit will always *eventually* win out, that might take longer than any of our lifetimes. In the short term, and in the current market, Microsoft will most definitely "win" this if they can continue to control perception and divide the community along lines that they determine.
I think MS is really trying to get involved with open source programmers with this license (as opposed to feigning). I generally agree with this stance, but I also believe that those who point to the poisonous relationship MS has had with open source (or anyone else), over the years are quite correct to sound the warning.
Historically, Microsoft has often had alternative (often dishonest), motives for initiatives they put forward. Usually these revolve around dividing and conquering markets. The most likely ulterior motive here is to divide the OS community by carving off the GPL and FSF people (the only license the MS-PL would not play well with), and to maginalise individuals like Richard Stallman in particular.
I predict that if the MS-PL license is accepted and MS becomes part of the OS community, from that day forward the general understanding in the press/media will be that there are two different camps of open source. "Serious" (business-related) open source, and "Flaky" (left-wing FSF open source). The very fact that the second group is open about the ideological basis of their movement will work against them as it does in the political realm as well. Both camps are actually just as ideologically based as each other, but only the FSF is up front about it.
While this over-simplification of the field into two camps may be spurious, Microsoft is driving public perception here as they always do. All those folks that have never really thought seriously about open source at all will suddenly "discover" it because MS is into it, and their perception of the playing field will be defined by Microsoft's participation and seen through the Microsoft "lens" on open source.
I would expect all the major tech media outlets, especially the mainstream/popular ones, to jump right on this interpretation, in the same way as they jump on all Microsoft pronouncements. I also can't think of a single reason why any of MS's Enterprise customers or any large corporation for that matter would not also be happy in that camp. Even great open source supporters like IBM would probably much rather prefer it if the FSF were "just a bunch of kooky hippies" that no one had to worry about anymore. This kind of perception could be hugely popular, and not just with Microsofties.
As a long time left-wing kookie hippy I am not in favour of this, but I can certainly see how wildly popular this could be to large chunks of the open source community. This is classic Microsoft divide and conquer stuff and I can't see any reason why it won't work like a charm.
I am in the same boat as you but we are a very very small minority of TV viewers today. I have a 46" HD-TV with an old set of rabbit ears on top and once the roof is fixed I will be getting an old-style roof mounted one.:-)
Sadly TV broadcast through the air *is* being discontinued though and while it will probably take a long while before *all* the stations are gone, this is happening soon all over North America.
Bottom line here though is that the advertisers brought ad-blocker on themselves by presenting the intrusive ads in the first place.
Would you buy a paperback that had an advertisement in between every twentieth word on the page? That's your average website.
The argument that we need to "pay" for these sites to stay in business is similarly bogus. We are all paying for out bandwidth from the ISP's and paying quite a lot in most cases.
This is similar situation to television. The reason for advertisements in the first place was to pay for the broadcasting of the programs which at the time were freely available through the air. Now we have to pay sometimes hundreds of bucks a month to access the programming on cable and the "free" broadcast TV is being shut down. Logically, the advertisements should then either disappear or at least be somewhat reduced, but that isn't the case at all.
In general we are now paying far more than we ever have, for telecommunications services and entertainment that has more advertising on it than ever before.
In the old days, the web was 100% free of advertising and the argument was that once added, the necessary capitalist miracle would occur where everything would be cheaper and better. We would have more access to more information of higher quality and it would be generally free (because of the ads). This hasn't happened at all. The internet is far bigger than it was in those days, but the majority of what has been added is commercial junk. You still can't do *any* of the great things that people assumed were in the future in those days like connect to the local library and read electronic books, etc. We now *buy* digital information with our hard earned cash, but do not own them. We also have to navigate malware and advertisements just to have the privilege of doing so.
The Internet is currently all links and no sausage IMO. The digital revolution that we were promised has been significantly delayed by these commercial interests.
While I basically agree with the thrust of your argument that armchair quarterbacks are talking out of the wrong orifice on this one, I think the same applies to those defending the decision doesn't it?
I am prepared to go along with the experts, but it still seems to me that the "downside" of repairing the hole has been wildly exaggerated. IMO it seems unlikely in the extreme, (based on previous mission reported experiences), that an astronaut would damage the underbelly of the shuttle by fixing it. It's possible of course, but these kinds of manouvres have been carried out for many years, mostly without incident. And even if they did damage it, thats a commercial loss, not a loss of human life, right?
Why gamble with human lives because you are worried about scratching the expensive "space SUV?"
It's possible that a blob on the bottom of the orbiter could cause some kind of flow abnormality also, but again, this seems like another bit of hyperbole to me. We are talking about a repair system specifically designed for this purpose. One that could possibly end up with a bit of ceramic paste sticking out a few milimetres from the bottom surface. Unless they already know that the much vaunted "repair kit" doesn't work and is more of a media item than a useful tool, why would they not take this opportunity to show us how fabulously it works?
As I said, they are most likely making the correct decision here and most of us probably don't know what we are talking about, but when the only downside to fixing it is likely a commercial loss and the downside to not fixing it is another ship full of dead astronauts, you'd think they would give their brand new space-caulking-gun a whirl.
What he is saying makes sense though. The real issue is the document format issue.
There can be as many Office competitors as there are software vendors and MS Office will always win as long as the standard document format is *.doc (or the new equivalent).
If the document standard can be changed to an open one, then whether it's the next day or the next year, MS Office is history because the product itself is just not that good technically.
PS - IMO Adobe makes horrible crap, the only thing that's even half good is PhotoShop which, like everyone else, I use because there are simply no alternatives.
While I generally agree with the majority here and that entertainment need not be accurate in regards the physics, there is another example that proves the essential point the poster is trying to make.
In the 1970's there was a lot of concern about advertisements for automobiles in that they would show cars racing around doing highly dangerous and mostly impossible things. In those days there was something called "truth in advertising." The fear was that if kids watched too many of these fantasy ads that glorified the dangerous and mostly impossible feats of driving prowess, that what would happen is we would get a whole generation of extremely bad drivers whose only concern was doing that perfect high-speed drift around a corner, or seeing if they could push it to 150K on that short trip to the corner store. Committees were formed, communities rallied and large parts of the population lobbied for restrictions on these irresponsible advertisements.
Of course the power of the corporation won out and the "truth in advertising" people are now just a marketing arm of the same corporations with no bite and no say in anything. Amazingly, a generation later, the streets are filled with speeders bad drivers and accident rates are "through the roof" (no pun intended), even when adjusted by the increase in population. Violations that were rare or unheard of in the 70's like running red lights and speeding, are now so common that the police forces can't even attempt to stop anyone from doing it, they have become the norm.
Of course I am generalising here and being really "breezy" with my argument as I have to get back to work and don't have the time to reference all this stuff, but a good argument can be made for this sort of effect IMO.
Peoples attitudes, ideas and understanding of their world is quite obviously affected by the media they consume, especially when in this day and age more people will see things like Die Hard than ever crack a book, let alone a science text. Go down to Alabama, stop at the first trailer park and show them Die Hard. Then ask them if they think it is possible to stand on the wing of a moving jet airplane.
While you say some smart things here, your also showing a huge bias. Mac OS-X, (like all the Unixes), is closer to being a "real" OS than Linux or Windows and the statement "available for general use" is purposely inflammatory so what did you expect would happen to a comment like that?
OS-X server hardware is not the very best, but it's obviously much more than serviceable. I work at a major University where entire faculties encompassing thousands of users (including my own) run exclusively on Mac hardware, (and it's not just the arts in case that's what you're thinking). I notice you completely avoid the mention of Apple X-Serves and RAIDs etc.
Also, your argument about licensing out the Mac OS has been shot down so many times I won't even bother to get into it. Suffice to say you should just Google the topic and read a few of the many pages that explode that theory in detail.
So while you make a few good points, you seem woefully uninformed for the most part and biased in general. OS-X is certainly not the best server operating system out there yet, but it's arguably the best desktop operating system, and one with a very strong, if not dominant server presence as well. Dissing it as "not a real OS" or "not available for general use" is an exaggeration at best, or really just a troll.
If I wasn't already commenting on this thread I would moderate the parent as such.
Hi, this is a late reply as I was away on a business trip.
The statement that "genres are descriptive not prescriptive" is somewhere between a truism and total bunk.
It's something that is taught in literature 101 in Universities so as to get the students head around the idea that the ultimate source of a genre is indeed the material itself, but it's nonsensical to take the statement literally.
The way it really works is that genres emerge spontaneously in the shape of new literature/movies that do not fall into previously established genres. Thus initially, the genre is indeed descriptive (of those forms). Once established however, of *course* the genre functions prescriptively. How could it not be so, unless you are arguing that the whole thing is subjective and indefinable?
The whole point of a genre is the drawing of a line around a group of similar material. When things no longer fit within the genre, then a new genre is born of the exceptions or descriptions that no longer fit. In reality it's a lot more complicated than that and genres ebb/flow and morph into other genres, sub-genres split off from larger ones etc. You could make an argument that the science fiction genre has evolved and changed, but you can't just say a genre is whatever it is at the moment and that previously established ideas of what is, and is not science fiction are irrelevant simply because it changed in the interim. It's not a subjective process.
You are also kind of missing the point in that literary genres are typically based on content not on "trappings," which was the essence of my argument about science fiction in the first place. A story that is thematically a romantic drama is correctly categorised as such regardless of whether it takes place in outer space with ray guns and spaceships. It's about the story, not the costumes or the locations.
My point about a lot of today's science fiction not being "real" sci-fi is based on those stories being closer to other genres like romantic comedy, war pictures, cowboy pictures, etc. despite the presence of spaceships and aliens etc. It is indisputable that these commonalities exist and clear that these newer type stories do not fit into the (original) definition of the science fiction genre.
It's hard to argue even that the science fiction genre has merely "changed" as you seem to imply it has (and thus the more recent stuff is still sci-fi), without having a clear idea of what this new science fiction genre could be, exclusive of the other genres or genres already established. What is needed, and IMO not present, is that the "new" science-fiction genre have a definition that somehow allows it to have all these elements absorbed into itself but yet be more than that. I just don't see that.
1) The control of transportation terminus's in the way described is often one of the first steps in a typical coup. Among other things it ensures that no large groups/militias can mobilise against the government, but there are many other benefits if you stop and think about it for a second. The monitoring of the movements of a country's citizens is also a well-known hallmark of a fascist or totalitarian governments as I noted.
2) I'm not sure what the stuff you say in the middle has to do with the topic or my post (public transit?)
3) I wasn't talking about a single day. If that stoppage had gone on longer than a day, more force/control would likely have been needed.
4) Perhaps I was a tad emotional myself in my original post, but please don't bother to respond to me again, as you read like a "difficult" person and I have no wish to get into a heated argument.
I continue to maintain that having a secret organisation that is effectively outside of the reach of the law, and answerable to no one but the executive office, that is in effective control of all transportation and communication within the United States, and that spends the majority of it's time monitoring the movements and communications of it's own citizens is not just *close* to the famous Gestapo, it is virtually indistinguishable from that organisation.
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Okay this part of the thread is just going way off track and there is enough animosity that I have been modded down to a 2 now, so why don't we all take a deep breath and go for a walk outside.
The main point of my retort remains however. The original guy I was responding to, sounded really intelligent, but underneath the cleverness he was regurgitating the same old stuff about how Nokia (and other phone companies by association) are more established in the market, more "mature" and therefore have some kind of implied invulnerability. In this scenario, Apple is the "new kid on the block" with some snappy ideas but no history, and no "chops" or something. (Usually what they "lack" is not specified but kudos to this fellow for at least coming up with something in that department)
This is bunk, plain and simple. It's a nice little story, but one that has no basis in fact. That was my point and I don't think anyone has successfully refuted it here.
To the person talking about European Nokia phones vs. North American... Yes, I was mostly basing that on my North American experience but even top end European Nokia phones simply do not compare that favorably to the iPhone on a feature/price comparison, (at least when we are talking about the North American prices for these phones). I am not saying they are crap, what I am saying is they are not "god-phones," and that the iPhone, even in it's very first iteration, right up there with them on a feature for price basis. This is unprecedented and not somethign to be dismissed with a wave of the hand and a reference to them being the "new kids."
The top Nokia phones have a few more features, but at a significantly higher price. Presumably, Nokia will try to drag that top of the line feature-set down into it's crappier phone line, and Apple will try to add the few features they are missing while toeing the line on price. It will be interesting for sure, but to imply that Apple has some kind of "maturity" handicap in this process and will have a hard time coming up to Nokia's level of quality and market savy is a nice comfortable illusion at best.
You are thinking of the old IBM Thinkpads, the new Lenovo ones are not anything close.
Interesting analysis but your (rather strong) bias is showing.
There is not a Nokia phone made today that the Apple iPhone doesn't blow out off the water "value-proposition-wise" with it's first iteration. The very bankruptcy of Nokia's idea mill is shown by the very subject of this thread; the announcement that they are going to try to copy the iPhone.
What do you mean by "Nokia's more mature interface"?
Isn't that just spin for "old-fashioned?" Also the iPhone runs OS-X a variant of Unix. I think that Unix has more cred for being "mature" in all the ways that actually count. It's underpinnings are rock solid and mostly open. What we are really talking about here in terms of interface, is the user interaction layer and I think Apple clearly has far more experience in that department than Nokia.
Apple lacks market experience?
Then how did they work that deal where the phone is no longer controlled by the network provider, and get a cut of fees as well? Apple got both the market, and the deal that phone companies like Nokia have been trying for their whole lives. In one stroke. Apple's financial's and market savy are not only rock solid, they are the envy of many tech companies.
You are trying to use that same old argument wherein Apple is supposed to be up against some kind of juggernaut and therefore doomed to fail, but the truth is actually the reverse. Nokia is up against the juggernaut, not Apple.
You also seem to think that just because Nokia is on top at the moment that they have some kind of magic beans or something. As recently as a few years ago, Motorola was the handset of choice. They made similar phones with similar interfaces to Nokia's current offerings. There is no reason to suspect that Nokia's phones, or their new interface will be anything special, especially when the best they can do is (possibly) offer up a luke-warm copy of an OS over a year after it comes out.
Feature for feature, Nokia may make the top feature phones at the moment, but they don't necessarily make what the market wants. You are mistaking Nokia's top of the line, hugely expensive "everything but the kitchen sink" products for products that actually sell well and are desired by the market. The majority of Nokia's sales are bottom of the market crud phones. I know because I have one myself.
Ask yourself what happens when Apple releases it's "low market" iPhone that you can use on any network. What happens when Nokia finally comes out with this phone next year and multiple versions of Apple's iPhones are already out all around the world? I would not bet on Nokia coming out with anything that will interfere with the huge momentum Apple has built here.
PS - what is "cruft"? Is that American for "crud" or "crap" or "stuff"?
Scan down the thread and you will see one, perhaps two people who are bringing up the fact that Gonzales stepping down is only a prelude to a pardon and a cover-up. Everyone else seems to be harping on some variation of "Good! he's gone. Now let's see if we can get a good replacement."
To believe that is to miss the point entirely.
You have to realise if you think about this for even a second, that the only way through it, is by prosecution, discovery of the facts, and actually changing the things that led to this abuse of power. Same goes for Rove, same goes for Cheeney and Bush. The fact that Gonzales is gone is not good news, it's news that justice has been or soon will be evaded yet again.
This resignation, like most political resignations, just means you will never get to the bottom of what happened and the things that need changing will never be changed. The amount of hutspah/balls/whatever required to actually prosecute or impeach these criminals pales in comparison to the amount needed to do that now that they have left the stage sort of speak. Regardless of whether or not formal pardons are actually issued, this is an opportunity for shredding, for coverup and for everyone pretending that the US "didn't really have a fascist government that time."
This is, as I said, standard stuff and the Democrats are as complicit as the Republicans. The only way they could show themselves to be clean is to vigorously prosecute these folks long after the fact, and long after the public has lost interest. Do you really think that is going to happen?
Karl Rove should be in jail, and Gonzales should be disbarred at a minimum, but such an unprecedented outcome can only come about if the anger of the people is maintained and the Democrats can set themselves up as the righteous wielder of that anger. This resignations are classic public relations stuff in that they take all the momentum out of impeachment proceedings and distract the public away from what matters to "what's happening now."
Did you really think that the powers that be in Washington, are going to make a bad move or a dumb move? This and other future resignations is the smartest thing to do when you are a dictator backed against the wall.
This is territory pioneered by Gerald Ford and Nixon.
Step down and be replaced by someone who is (on the surface of it), a "kinder, gentler" version, but someone deeply indebted to the administration and willing to take orders to cover up, pardon, and otherwise dismiss the wrongdoings of the past. First Rove, now Gonzales, soon Cheeney and the "W" himself. Cheeney will have to go first, as he can't rightly sit in as President when George steps down. Probably some milque-toast republican who always wanted the job but is considered an idiot will be appointed to replace/pardon/coverup Cheeney and then "W" will have a health emergency just before the end of term requiring him to step down as well (with a secret pardon that will only be discovered later.)
By the time the Democrats get elected, everything will be shredded, and all the guilty long-gone and pardoned. A giant commission will will give Fox something to talk about over a multi-year period, but it will come back with recommendations only half-way through Hillary's first term. A moving speech from her will assure the nation that the "horrible things" that happened will never happen again, and that checks and balances are now in place but it will be mostly untrue. The shrewd will notice that only a couple of assistants and an aging general or two will have been held accountable and nothing will really have been changed that could stop this kind of fascism from either continuing, or happening again.
This is standard stuff, I remember reading all this in the papers in 1975.
* (1)
A person who--
o (a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service, and
o (b)does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service,
is guilty of an offence. I saw this also, (after I posted my original comment), but it's almost the same wording as that used in the article and has all of the same problems in logic.
The illegality is defined in part "a" by merely putting the word "dishonest" in front which is unsupportable without further (or more likely *previous*), definition of what exactly is meant by "dishonest." The same argument applies as in my original post. You can't just put "dishonest" in front, you have to actually state what the law actually is and what constitutes breaking it. It should really say, "dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service by.. (x, y, and z).
The definition (sortof) of what they mean by "dishonest" is contained in part "b" but instead of listing part "b" as descriptive of "a" they put the word "and" in between. So "a" is not even illegal without also "b" but it's still unclear what "a" actually means. Worse, it seems to imply that "b" is not illegal without also "a," and with "a" being undefined, you are kind of stuck again as to how to know what is actually illegal here. The wording also implies that "a" is a superset of "b" and not the reverse. So there are things in "a" that are not "b," that define what "dishonest" refers to, but those are not listed. We must live in fear of what they are it seems, or wait for the prosecutor to tell you at trial.
This has to be one of the worst written laws I have seen for a long time and I am surprised that anyone has ever been convicted by it. The fellow must have just knuckled under and paid his fine in true Brit fashion without seriously questioning it.
I'm sorry but this is all wrong.
Your argument here amounts to a blending of the "the law is the law" argument (specious and irrelevant), and the "water in the tap" metaphor used extensively above.
I won't even bother with the "law is the law" argument for obvious reasons, but the tap metaphor I guess is drawing a lot of people in despite it's own paucity of reason. While the internet is a sort of "pipe" and bandwidth issues are real, on the level of broadband access to a house, (especially ASDL instead of cable, but both if properly installed and routed), there will not be a real drop in bandwidth corresponding to the use of the guy on the wall.
Test it for yourself, it's probably a good test of what it is you are paying for each month.
In my house for instance, I can be using my laptop wirelessly to play Second Life lets say (a bandwidth hog that downloads gigabytes of stuff to give you essentially a commodore 64 type of performance in the game). At the same time I can start a download of a movie on another computer connected to Ethernet and usually I might have my regular compute open browsing the web. My wife often will play Second Life as well at the same time as me, also wirelessly in the living room. Even though I don't run any metres to find out the actual usage, there is simply *never* a slow-down of any of our connections when doing this. It just doesn't work that way. If the system bandwidth is properly deployed and the router in your house has minimal switching capabilities all users should be getting essentially the same speeds.
The "water in a tap" analogy is just not applicable in the way that people think it is. It's not like I am using ten gallons a second and the guy outside is "stealing" four of those gallons thus giving me a slowdown. This is nonsense.
The only way it works like that is if you are on a cable modem and the internet supplier has so crappily or incorrectly configured the network as to have you and all your neighbors sharing bandwidth. You should immediately complain and/or get with a different ISP if you have slow-down issues like these. It's generally considered a fault, not a feature of high-speed internet for it to behave that way.
Your being a bit ridiculous here. On anything approaching modern equipment the extra user on the line is not going to cause any drop in bandwidth as we are assuming (like any modern router), that some kind of effective switching is going on.
I don't think you intended it that way, but you should be aware of the vast number of people you just insulted. US English and US dates are only "canonical" in the minds of US citizens. If not for Microsoft purposely and determinedly screwing up the implementation of anything but US standards in their software the usage would have no traction at all.
The majority of the "English speaking" world still uses the English language and English formats and standards, not US variant ones. The fact that the USA has seen fit to re-invent English, still refer to that as English, and then foist it on the rest of the world doesn't make it "canonical."
As the author of this article so aptly describes, date formats and language implementations are a multi-stage nightmare in Office. To the point that the majority of users even in English speaking countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK itself, often end up using American English and American dates simply because Office is the only game in town and you cna only bash your head against the wall on these things for so long. That doesn't make it right, and that doesn't mean that those users wouldn't be happier and more productive if they were not forced to use a US standard when they may have not even traveled to the US.
Any kind of English except the US variant, is severely broken in Office and always has been. Your answer sounds to me a lot like: "So what, they should all be using our standards and language anyway." Not helpful at all, and illogical as well.
Given the circumstances of the arrest and the description of the law, there is no way this is (or should be considered) an illegal act.
If the fellow was wealthy enough to this to a high court, or possibly the European court, they would win hands down and the law would be struck off the books. As an English person myself I can tell you that the UK has a strong propensity for these kinds of knee-jerk fascist laws that often stay on the books for years both because of the tendency of the average Brit to knuckle under to the cops and because rich people are rarely charged with such offences.
The law (as described in the article), says that "Dishonestly obtaining free internet access..." was the crime. Yet it's a long established legal principle that merely adding the word "dishonest" in front of something does not actually make it a crime. You can't just say that driving a car is alright but "dishonestly driving a car" is a crime. This is patent nonsense.
The crime should be correctly defined as "stealing broadband access," and stealing requires both knowledge of wrong-doing and an intent to deprive the victim at a bare minimum.
There is no deprivation here, and nothing has been lost. The man in question seemed to have no way of knowing that the owner of the broadband connection did not want people to access it. Some people have wireless and leave it open on purpose. I know at least four of my neighbors do this.
To top it all off, when the police saw him sitting on the wall and asked him what he was doing, he freely admitted it and apparently didn't see anything wrong with the practice. A good argument could be made that he was "Honestly obtaining free internet access" and not being dishonest at all.
Unless there are facts not in evidence in this story, like the broadband being secured with a password, there simply is no crime here at all. Unfortunately the way the justice system is both in the UK and in North America, this unjust, ridiculous law will hang around bothering people for ages before someone with enough political power or money decides they are tired of it.
This is silly.
Everything you've said here just amounts to saying "the law is the law."
This might be your opinion, but it is neither an argument, nor terribly "insightful."
I think from your comments that we are sort of on the same page in a way, but I would characterise your position as having a more optimistic spin. While I usually try to stay positive myself and avoid all the "MS is shit!" stuff, you must admit it's hard to do when it comes to this particular company.
You are right in that the negative comments and suspicion are counter-productive to moving forward, they always are. But while forgiveness is eventually the only solution, there are certain realities that make such "kiss and makeup" scenarios unlikely for now. I guess I was just pointing that out.
Sitting down and shaking hands with Al Qaida and the Islamic extremists is really the only "solution" to terrorism as well. But you will get a bullet in the head or serious jail time from your own community for suggesting it in today's world, and it's naive to think it's going to happen anytime soon.
Actually, most of the comments on this topic are mis-informed. The only difference between crackpots like Ron Hubard and the Cristian Church founders is time.
Christianity, just like more modern cults like Mormonism, Flying Saucer Cults, and Scientology are all remarkably similar in the way that they formed. There is ample evidence in each case that the founders of these groups either had serious doubts about what they were preaching or were indeed running a "scam" of sorts.
Typically there is the visionary founder who is usually suffering from some kind of medical problem or has a history of delusion/hallucination. This would be St. Peter, John Smith, George Adamski and Ron Hubard respectively. These guys are usually genuine crackpots, but often even they have their lucid moments where it's understood that there are very practical rewards involved in being the head of the cult. These are originally "cults of personality" after all. At that level it's all about self-aggrandisement.
The early adopters, (who later become the church fathers), are frequently not believers but opportunists. These guys usually live with the cult leader or are his best friends so they have no illusions about how crackers the great leader is and often write things to that effect years later. At the time however, there are of course those great practical reasons for being part of the inner circle (power, women, drugs, money etc.) and they play the part of believers to get these rewards.
In the end, it's only the faithful, the sycophants who throw their life savings at these guys, that are the believers because they have lost everything "for the church." Thus their entire self-worth, and sometimes even their life hinges on the nonsense being true.
It's those people (notice they are not all men at this level), that really form the Church proper. They, and their children, who are brought up in the cult after the original crackpot is dead and beatified, are usually the "True Believers."
You might have a (weak) point, but doesn't most of what you are saying boil down to "there are some open source advocates in the belly of the beast that should be encouraged."? That's not really saying much IMO.
Microsoft has such a long history of deception and other bad practices it should make any intelligent person suspicious of their intentions here. It was only a few months ago that they were threatening to sue the open source community. I know it's been said to death, but the bottom line is that if Microsoft as a company really wanted to embrace open source, and work with the open source community, the very first step is open file formats and cross-platform compatibility.
How can anyone trust Microsoft's open source efforts when at the same time they are fighting tooth and nail to eliminate any hope of open file formats and tying all of their open source projects to Windows? I know you are trying to be positive here, but isn't this just a tad naive of you as well? There simply is no reason to believe that this isn't just the same old divide and conquer marketing game from Microsoft. At least not yet.
Windows might have to go open source eventually just to remain relevant, but Microsoft will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to this conclusion, and it will likely take years. At a bare minimum, my expectation is that major structural and managerial changes will have to occur at Microsoft before any of that comes to pass, if it ever does.
Balmer would have to be fired for starters.
I read the article also and I find it confusing at best.
They talk about a possible chain reaction but then they kind of imply at the end that the only danger was possible poisioning of "only one worker." Earlier they describe the leak as only occurring into a "sealed glove box" but then they say they discovered it because "yellow liquid was coming out from under a door."
I mean which is it? If it spilled into a glovebox, then how did it jump up and run across the floor? If the entire room was a glovebox, then it's kind of a mistake to have a door to that room with a gap underneath it isn't it? None of this makes much sense to me and makes me highly suspicious of the whole story, especially when you add the fact of the coverup.
Probably this is just yet another example of how the Police State in the US is adversely affecting science, but it could be something more than that given the utter confusion of this report. I am finding it hard to believe a word these people are saying.
Richard Stallman (and I am just using him as an example of these types of thinkers), is out there actually telling the truth(!) to people and assuming that technical merit and "being right" (morally speaking) is going to win the day for the FSF. Nothing could be further from the truth. People generally will believe what they are conditioned and told to believe. What I am saying is that like a lot of these kinds of situations, the truth is somewhat irrelevant here, and perception rules.
While I believe that technical merit will always *eventually* win out, that might take longer than any of our lifetimes. In the short term, and in the current market, Microsoft will most definitely "win" this if they can continue to control perception and divide the community along lines that they determine.
Historically, Microsoft has often had alternative (often dishonest), motives for initiatives they put forward. Usually these revolve around dividing and conquering markets. The most likely ulterior motive here is to divide the OS community by carving off the GPL and FSF people (the only license the MS-PL would not play well with), and to maginalise individuals like Richard Stallman in particular.
I predict that if the MS-PL license is accepted and MS becomes part of the OS community, from that day forward the general understanding in the press/media will be that there are two different camps of open source. "Serious" (business-related) open source, and "Flaky" (left-wing FSF open source). The very fact that the second group is open about the ideological basis of their movement will work against them as it does in the political realm as well. Both camps are actually just as ideologically based as each other, but only the FSF is up front about it.
While this over-simplification of the field into two camps may be spurious, Microsoft is driving public perception here as they always do. All those folks that have never really thought seriously about open source at all will suddenly "discover" it because MS is into it, and their perception of the playing field will be defined by Microsoft's participation and seen through the Microsoft "lens" on open source.
I would expect all the major tech media outlets, especially the mainstream/popular ones, to jump right on this interpretation, in the same way as they jump on all Microsoft pronouncements. I also can't think of a single reason why any of MS's Enterprise customers or any large corporation for that matter would not also be happy in that camp. Even great open source supporters like IBM would probably much rather prefer it if the FSF were "just a bunch of kooky hippies" that no one had to worry about anymore. This kind of perception could be hugely popular, and not just with Microsofties.
As a long time left-wing kookie hippy I am not in favour of this, but I can certainly see how wildly popular this could be to large chunks of the open source community. This is classic Microsoft divide and conquer stuff and I can't see any reason why it won't work like a charm.
I am in the same boat as you but we are a very very small minority of TV viewers today. :-)
I have a 46" HD-TV with an old set of rabbit ears on top and once the roof is fixed I will be getting an old-style roof mounted one.
Sadly TV broadcast through the air *is* being discontinued though and while it will probably take a long while before *all* the stations are gone, this is happening soon all over North America.
Bottom line here though is that the advertisers brought ad-blocker on themselves by presenting the intrusive ads in the first place.
Would you buy a paperback that had an advertisement in between every twentieth word on the page?
That's your average website.
The argument that we need to "pay" for these sites to stay in business is similarly bogus. We are all paying for out bandwidth from the ISP's and paying quite a lot in most cases.
This is similar situation to television. The reason for advertisements in the first place was to pay for the broadcasting of the programs which at the time were freely available through the air. Now we have to pay sometimes hundreds of bucks a month to access the programming on cable and the "free" broadcast TV is being shut down. Logically, the advertisements should then either disappear or at least be somewhat reduced, but that isn't the case at all.
In general we are now paying far more than we ever have, for telecommunications services and entertainment that has more advertising on it than ever before.
In the old days, the web was 100% free of advertising and the argument was that once added, the necessary capitalist miracle would occur where everything would be cheaper and better. We would have more access to more information of higher quality and it would be generally free (because of the ads). This hasn't happened at all. The internet is far bigger than it was in those days, but the majority of what has been added is commercial junk. You still can't do *any* of the great things that people assumed were in the future in those days like connect to the local library and read electronic books, etc. We now *buy* digital information with our hard earned cash, but do not own them. We also have to navigate malware and advertisements just to have the privilege of doing so.
The Internet is currently all links and no sausage IMO.
The digital revolution that we were promised has been significantly delayed by these commercial interests.
While I basically agree with the thrust of your argument that armchair quarterbacks are talking out of the wrong orifice on this one, I think the same applies to those defending the decision doesn't it?
I am prepared to go along with the experts, but it still seems to me that the "downside" of repairing the hole has been wildly exaggerated. IMO it seems unlikely in the extreme, (based on previous mission reported experiences), that an astronaut would damage the underbelly of the shuttle by fixing it. It's possible of course, but these kinds of manouvres have been carried out for many years, mostly without incident. And even if they did damage it, thats a commercial loss, not a loss of human life, right?
Why gamble with human lives because you are worried about scratching the expensive "space SUV?"
It's possible that a blob on the bottom of the orbiter could cause some kind of flow abnormality also, but again, this seems like another bit of hyperbole to me. We are talking about a repair system specifically designed for this purpose. One that could possibly end up with a bit of ceramic paste sticking out a few milimetres from the bottom surface. Unless they already know that the much vaunted "repair kit" doesn't work and is more of a media item than a useful tool, why would they not take this opportunity to show us how fabulously it works?
As I said, they are most likely making the correct decision here and most of us probably don't know what we are talking about, but when the only downside to fixing it is likely a commercial loss and the downside to not fixing it is another ship full of dead astronauts, you'd think they would give their brand new space-caulking-gun a whirl.
What he is saying makes sense though. The real issue is the document format issue.
There can be as many Office competitors as there are software vendors and MS Office will always win as long as the standard document format is *.doc (or the new equivalent).
If the document standard can be changed to an open one, then whether it's the next day or the next year, MS Office is history because the product itself is just not that good technically.
PS - IMO Adobe makes horrible crap, the only thing that's even half good is PhotoShop which, like everyone else, I use because there are simply no alternatives.
While I generally agree with the majority here and that entertainment need not be accurate in regards the physics, there is another example that proves the essential point the poster is trying to make.
In the 1970's there was a lot of concern about advertisements for automobiles in that they would show cars racing around doing highly dangerous and mostly impossible things. In those days there was something called "truth in advertising." The fear was that if kids watched too many of these fantasy ads that glorified the dangerous and mostly impossible feats of driving prowess, that what would happen is we would get a whole generation of extremely bad drivers whose only concern was doing that perfect high-speed drift around a corner, or seeing if they could push it to 150K on that short trip to the corner store. Committees were formed, communities rallied and large parts of the population lobbied for restrictions on these irresponsible advertisements.
Of course the power of the corporation won out and the "truth in advertising" people are now just a marketing arm of the same corporations with no bite and no say in anything. Amazingly, a generation later, the streets are filled with speeders bad drivers and accident rates are "through the roof" (no pun intended), even when adjusted by the increase in population. Violations that were rare or unheard of in the 70's like running red lights and speeding, are now so common that the police forces can't even attempt to stop anyone from doing it, they have become the norm.
Of course I am generalising here and being really "breezy" with my argument as I have to get back to work and don't have the time to reference all this stuff, but a good argument can be made for this sort of effect IMO.
Peoples attitudes, ideas and understanding of their world is quite obviously affected by the media they consume, especially when in this day and age more people will see things like Die Hard than ever crack a book, let alone a science text. Go down to Alabama, stop at the first trailer park and show them Die Hard. Then ask them if they think it is possible to stand on the wing of a moving jet airplane.
While you say some smart things here, your also showing a huge bias. Mac OS-X, (like all the Unixes), is closer to being a "real" OS than Linux or Windows and the statement "available for general use" is purposely inflammatory so what did you expect would happen to a comment like that?
OS-X server hardware is not the very best, but it's obviously much more than serviceable. I work at a major University where entire faculties encompassing thousands of users (including my own) run exclusively on Mac hardware, (and it's not just the arts in case that's what you're thinking). I notice you completely avoid the mention of Apple X-Serves and RAIDs etc.
Also, your argument about licensing out the Mac OS has been shot down so many times I won't even bother to get into it. Suffice to say you should just Google the topic and read a few of the many pages that explode that theory in detail.
So while you make a few good points, you seem woefully uninformed for the most part and biased in general. OS-X is certainly not the best server operating system out there yet, but it's arguably the best desktop operating system, and one with a very strong, if not dominant server presence as well. Dissing it as "not a real OS" or "not available for general use" is an exaggeration at best, or really just a troll.
If I wasn't already commenting on this thread I would moderate the parent as such.
Hi, this is a late reply as I was away on a business trip.
The statement that "genres are descriptive not prescriptive" is somewhere between a truism and total bunk.
It's something that is taught in literature 101 in Universities so as to get the students head around the idea that the ultimate source of a genre is indeed the material itself, but it's nonsensical to take the statement literally.
The way it really works is that genres emerge spontaneously in the shape of new literature/movies that do not fall into previously established genres. Thus initially, the genre is indeed descriptive (of those forms). Once established however, of *course* the genre functions prescriptively. How could it not be so, unless you are arguing that the whole thing is subjective and indefinable?
The whole point of a genre is the drawing of a line around a group of similar material. When things no longer fit within the genre, then a new genre is born of the exceptions or descriptions that no longer fit. In reality it's a lot more complicated than that and genres ebb/flow and morph into other genres, sub-genres split off from larger ones etc. You could make an argument that the science fiction genre has evolved and changed, but you can't just say a genre is whatever it is at the moment and that previously established ideas of what is, and is not science fiction are irrelevant simply because it changed in the interim. It's not a subjective process.
You are also kind of missing the point in that literary genres are typically based on content not on "trappings," which was the essence of my argument about science fiction in the first place. A story that is thematically a romantic drama is correctly categorised as such regardless of whether it takes place in outer space with ray guns and spaceships. It's about the story, not the costumes or the locations.
My point about a lot of today's science fiction not being "real" sci-fi is based on those stories being closer to other genres like romantic comedy, war pictures, cowboy pictures, etc. despite the presence of spaceships and aliens etc. It is indisputable that these commonalities exist and clear that these newer type stories do not fit into the (original) definition of the science fiction genre.
It's hard to argue even that the science fiction genre has merely "changed" as you seem to imply it has (and thus the more recent stuff is still sci-fi), without having a clear idea of what this new science fiction genre could be, exclusive of the other genres or genres already established. What is needed, and IMO not present, is that the "new" science-fiction genre have a definition that somehow allows it to have all these elements absorbed into itself but yet be more than that. I just don't see that.
1) The control of transportation terminus's in the way described is often one of the first steps in a typical coup. Among other things it ensures that no large groups/militias can mobilise against the government, but there are many other benefits if you stop and think about it for a second. The monitoring of the movements of a country's citizens is also a well-known hallmark of a fascist or totalitarian governments as I noted.
2) I'm not sure what the stuff you say in the middle has to do with the topic or my post (public transit?)
3) I wasn't talking about a single day. If that stoppage had gone on longer than a day, more force/control would likely have been needed.
4) Perhaps I was a tad emotional myself in my original post, but please don't bother to respond to me again, as you read like a "difficult" person and I have no wish to get into a heated argument.
I continue to maintain that having a secret organisation that is effectively outside of the reach of the law, and answerable to no one but the executive office, that is in effective control of all transportation and communication within the United States, and that spends the majority of it's time monitoring the movements and communications of it's own citizens is not just *close* to the famous Gestapo, it is virtually indistinguishable from that organisation.