Tiered pricing in order to escape differential access to internet services is NOT network neutrality. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. Calling this neutral, is like a mafioso coming into your business, and offering to treat you 'neutrally' by letting you live like any other citizen, as long you pony up. Thank you Godfather, for being so fair!
As I suspected, your objections are based on environmental moralism. I completely agree with those ethics! But ethics don't dictate mathematics. Exponential growth doesn't become impossible, just because we might wish it so. This is a question of mathematics, not your green street cred.
Anyway, I understand all of your points that we *need* physical resources more, but what does that have to how they contribute to growth? I'm afraid you're confusing two entirely separate issues. Economics is about desire, *not* need. The total economic value in a system is the total that people are willing to pay for what they *desire* -- whether they need it or not is irrelevant when the money's changing hands. Therefore, tangible resources are no more *real* economically than intangible ones.
BTW 'difficult to implement without' is not the same as 'ultimately based on'. Resources are also difficult to implement without valuable ideas for how to arrange and configure them. Does this mean that all resource value is 'ultimately based on' intangible value? Hopefully you see what I mean now about how all your arguments work just as well exactly in reverse.
Everything you say about trees being undervalued, and standards of living in other countries, could all be true (in fact I agree with all of it), and still exponential growth could be possible. One has nothing to do with the other. I think this is a case of a moral stance attempting to dictate the nature of reality, kind of like the way feminists don't like to accept that there are real genetic differences between the sexes, etc. Once you make science politically correct it becomes useless.
... some value... is created entirely out the human mind... Name a value that originates entirely in the human mind and I will try and show that it actually originates in resources and the ultimately everything starts with resources. (It might be tomorrow now as it's getting late here in the UK). First of all, this is probably the right time to say that I think your theory is incredibly simplistic and no economist worth his salt would ever subscribe to it. (That isn't a counterargument, it's just an explanation for why I think this debate is not worth putting much more effort into, for my part.) Secondly, you are ignoring my major points, just quoting the one line you see an opportunity in, and therefore just trying to draw me into your game instead, and it's underhanded, so I won't play. (How do you answer the argument that all of your points work in reverse? Even your little game could work in reverse. What makes you the arbiter of what part of a product's value is the *real* value. Why is resource value MORE real than intellectual value? If the two values are combined in a single product, why does the resource value take precedence, even if it is very tiny? etc. These are the central questions here -- but instead of addressing them, you just snip that point out. Should I expect you to just snip out any of my red pegs that actually hit your battleships?
Finally, if you're going to mention things like the paper or medium it takes to write down the idea or the costs of the bandwidth to trsnsport the data, then that would be lame and I'd like to dismiss that in advance, because these things are mere pennies compared to what pure ideas (like software, or books) sell for. I don't need absolute zero resource use to show that sustained exponential growth is possible, I just need extremely minimal use. Compared to shipping an MP3 player, shipping an MP3 itself is so close to zero resource use that it has no impact on the exponentiality of growth. Or rather, its impact is almost all positive.
Economists all agree that our economy is becoming to a major extent a knowledge economy, and that more and more value is being stored in these tangibles. People are willing to pay a lot SPECIFICALLY for the intangible part of product (i.e. WAY over and above the cost of the physical resources involved). Therefore, our potential for exponential growth is increasing all the time.
That all being said, I hope you are not interpreting my argument as a support for ignoring our responsibility to manage our resources in a responsible way to stop things like global warming and other damage to the environment, because to me these are two separate and not-very-related issues. Just because the economy *can* grow exponentially, doesn't mean it *should*. In fact, I think that expecting constant growth is incredibly stupid and it's like a drug to which the capitalist system is addicted. The problem with it is not that it can't be sustained, but that it promotes a greedy ravaging attitude that affects the way we think about our resources. In other words, mathematically I have to disagree with you, but I do suspect that what you might be crusading for (if anything) is something I can definitely get behind.
... What about the people who sell that intangible service? Obviously, they don't fit into your equation, and there are lots of them... It's the money spent on those intangibles that is earned from money that is not intangible. Not if the people who spent that money also sell intangible services.... Plenty of our earnings come from resources but not all of them...
because the people that pay your wages have most of there imcome from resources Nope.
and the people that pay their wages have most of their ioncome from resource etc Again, nope.
Also, all of your arguments work in reverse. If you sell tangible resources, and people who buy your products are themselves sellers of intangibles, then I could just as well (as you do) argue the reverse: that all even tangible sales ultimately stem from intangible value. ALL of your arguments work in reverse.
Of course, neither extreme is true. The truth is that some value originates in resources and some is created entirely out the human mind.
Yes, but the money people pay for that service is earned from their job which is ultimately earned (trough many steps) from some resource somewhere on the planet. What about the people who sell that intangible service? Obviously, they don't fit into your equation, and there are lots of them. Plenty of our earnings come from resources but not all of them, the part that doesn't is the most inflatable -- no matter how you construct it there is a massive hole in the 'Earthly value is finite' argument. It is not enough to prove that some or even most value is indexed to the availability of resources; in order to prove that sustained exponential growth is impossible, you have to show that ALL of it does.
We're getting much closer in our view of the world as I find myself able to agree with most of what you wrote in your latest post.
See, I would take the view that the context affects the meaning of the word. I think that's how new shades of meaning get started. it begins as a purely contextual thing and ends up in the dictionary.
I think Lewis Carrol might have had some sympathy for this viewpoint:
`I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
`When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.' I suppose you could argue it either way based on that exchange, but while Humpty Dumpty's position is a little extreme, I think I still agree with him in principle. I love Lewis Carroll. And I also agree with him in principle. But I see his work as more an examintion of the philosophical underpinnings of language, rather than a prescription for how to deal with it on the surface, everyday. For example, he loved questioning mathematics by turning its constructs on their heads, but I don't think he would have recommended that everyday mathematicians do this.
I take your point, but that can't be the whole story, or else we'd never see shades of meaning evolve for words, and we do. Think about "hard" for instance. Princetown's wordnet [princeton.edu] lists over 20 meanings for that word, many of them quite similar, others quite distinct. Somebody must have once applied "hard" to liquor in a way that made sense in terms of the usage of the time. It didn't start out meaning "high alcoholic content". You're right, it's not the whole story. But in my view definitions must be able to survive context when they are able as well as be modified by that context over time. In other words, I am perfectly open to the evolution of language, but I don't want a word to be considered evolved until it actually evolves. I want a nice fat zone for context to actually be just context, and only that, *without* infecting the definition. To a certain extent, we are getting very 'meta' and hurtling towards arguing over the definition of 'definition'. But I can definitely concede that both of our viewpoints are probably necessary to language. (It's people like me, for example, that make sure that good words are still available for you to use for their original purposes -- if everyone started to accept that the sarcastic use of 'alleged' is the 'new' meaning, then how would I unsarcastically say 'alleged'? There needs to be some resistance to the changes so that they can fly (become new 'definitions') or fail (remain merely contextual cues) based on what turns out to be best for the language. I guess I'm kind of proposing a Darwinian model here. You're the mutative agent, and I'm the selective agent.
I think your argument ignores the fact that the economy is not a zero-sum game, and that new 'value' is constantly generated literally out of thin air. And people can sell this value without even producing or manufacturing anything or using up a single resource besides themselves. And since this human element of intangible value (i.e. new inventions adding more value to the same materials) is a major part of the system, and that part has no resource limit besides the number of available thinkers, AND the population grows exponentially, there would have to be an exponenitally bleeding hole in any resource count.
OK, I suppose the question to ask here is "intended by whom?" Certainly the compilers of the dictionary intend that I should draw the inference as defined in the dictionary. However they are not the ones speaking, and my belligerent bar-room friend may intend me to take a different meaning. If he is 'belligerent' then his argumentative intent is communicated in his belligerence, not in his used of the word 'alleged'. I think you're confusing a brand new meaning for a word (like 'wicked', which is a good example of that, since the standard meaning does not fit the context) with a negative association *externally attached* (by demeanor, or by tone) to a word which still fits the sentence in his original meaning. The belligerence plus the dictionary definition of 'alleged' together complete the whole meaning that you're after. There is no need to allege a new definition for 'alleged'. Just as when somebody says, 'Not bloody likely' in a harsh tone, they are not inventing a new definition for the word 'likely' which equals 'possible', they are merely understating for the sake of sarcasm. This is much more similar to your example for 'alleged' than the 'wicked' thing. Your point that you are after the total meaning the speaker intended to convey rather than the definition of one word is a good one in general, but I don't see how it applies to the situation at hand (i.e. the post that touched off everything).
I do understand how your particular interpretation occurred, if it helps any. I just can't bring myself to agree with it; to me, it's still an unnecessary leap.
Look at it this way: suppose I go into a bar and say "Tony Blair is a pathological liar" and someone down the bar responds with a growled "allegedly". The way he's using the word carries a strong subtext of "I disagree" and if I continue in that vein, I can probably expect a vigorous and spirited defense our quondam Prime Minister. Maybe. But you might just as well receive a vigorous skeptical argument that neither praises Blair nor criticises him, but merely seeks to pin you to your sources. The fact that you can't know for sure which sort of debate you are about to have, shows that the meaning you think is contained in the word 'allegedly', actually isn't. It is dependent on later context.
So in that case, the word is being used as a negation, because negation is the inference that I am intended to draw. No, nonconfirmation is the inference that you are intended to draw. The fact that you draw an unintended inference is besides the point. I can substitute 'not provenly' for that 'allegedly' and it still makes perfect sense without negation. So why should I accept your characterisation of this remark as 'negation' when the dictionary definition captures the spirit of the remark quite adequately without your novel interpretation? Questioning the confirmability of a statement is simply not the same as negating it.
I've come across this usage a few times, and I believe it to be reasonably common. You are of course free to disagree, in which case we'll have to agree to differ. And since you have in fact disagreed with this point over the last few posts, this is what I propose to to do now. Well it is apparent that we do not see the English language in the same way at all, which is not so unusual. I can agree to disagree. You haven't insulted me in your latest post and (I hope) I've done the same. A mutual stand-down is a nice way to end, whenever you are comfortable with your last word.
But without the argument about definitions and usage, all we have left is an opportunity to exchange spiteful put downs. And frankly, I have better things to occupy my time. I'm gonna bite my tongue on that one.
Smartassed, but meaningless, like most of your argument.
I've already conceded that I misread wooloomooloo's post, he's explained what his point actually was, and we moved the discussion on from there. If you're still trying to defend his honour, I suggest your zeal may be misplaced.
So... waitaminute. You've conceded that you misread his post (I seem to have missed that, you certainly didn't concede it in anything you wrote to *me*, despite the fact that this is exactly what I've been arguing and you've been denying ad infinitum). And therefore my defence of him is redundant? It's pretty nervy the way you just tried to turn that concession into a point against me. Do try to lose more gracefully, it will reflect better on you in the end.
Since you seem to believe that the statement 'any slow sales of Vista are due to resource hogging' implicitly concedes that sales are slow
Pardon my pointing it out, but that isn't the wording that was actually used. Since you like looking things up so much, try typing "straw Man" into Wikipeadia.
More conflation. A simple change in wording does not a straw man make. That change has to actually make a difference to the meaning. What I was responding to was this nonsensical statement:
Similarly if you say "the alleged slow sales are due to bloat". You might as well omit the word "allegedly", since the second part negates it entirely.
I had to clean it up a bit in light of the context (and do it without the word 'alleged' as you suggested) but your logic is upside-down throughout that paragraph.
I could cast aspersions on your intelligence the way you so liberally like to do [but]
You haven't held back from such aspersions so far - why start now?
If you think that's what I've been doing, then you are very easily threatened by a destruction of your argument, which explains why you are so quick to punch back with direct personal belittlements. I can forgive you, but you don't get off scot-free. As long as you continue to belittle me, I will continue to reveal your faulty reasoning and to point out how conceited your stance is considering the weakness of your position... or at least until one of us has had enough. If you had just responded to my points in kind I'm sure this would have ended posts ago. (Remember that I conceded one of your points early on directly in a response to you. You did no such thing until your latest post, and even that you did grudgingly with weasel words.)
Look: I don't actually have a quarrel with woomooloomoo, and this little squabble we're conducting seems to hinge around whether or not there exists an informal usage of the word "allegedly". I suppose I could point out that English is a living, evolving language, and that words are frequently used in ways that are not found in the dictionary; and it might be interesting to explore the logical contradictions inherent in seeking out a definitive list of informal usages.
Sure it's living and evolving. But I've never heard 'X is allegedly Y' used to mean 'X is not Y', even informally. It always makes perfect sense as 'X is not *necessarily* Y', which is different. So even by your measure of 'living and evolving' I would have to conclude that your usage has not been born yet -- save for in your posts. Want to prove me wrong? Should be very easy, if such uses are as common as you suggest. Quote me one example from anywhere in which somebody uses to word 'allegedly', formal or informal, to mean 'not', in which the standard meaning of 'not provenly' doesn't work just as well in the context.
We could even try and take the conversation back on topic and talk about Vista's (alleged) flaws and to what extent Jim Louderback's
'Not' is not a possible meaning of 'alleged'. 'Alleged' simply means 'not proven', nothing more Right. It is however frequently used as an informal negation. Umm... no it isn't. Its informal use is the same as its formal use, to point out that something isn't proven -- NOT to claim that it is false. This pointing out of unprovenness is often done in a sarcastic tone. You're confusing sarcasm with negation. BTW there was no indication whatsoever that Wooloomooloo was being sarcastic, and even if he was it doesn't help you any.
Most people demonstrate an intuitive grasp of this concept. Maybe you should consider spending less time coding, and more time communicating with human beings. Since you seem to believe that the statement 'any slow sales of Vista are due to resource hogging' implicitly concedes that sales are slow, it is your own intuitive grasp of the logic behind casual speech that is in question. Therefore, I am not surprised that you keep conflating usages which might appear similar but are different in very important ways. I could cast aspersions on your intelligence the way you so liberally like to do, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are just being defensive and grasping at straws. It's quite clear however that your level of arrogance is unsupported by your reasoning.
And oh yeah, 'allegedly' is not a rebuttal, it's merely a more accurate form of referencing a claim. And stating that a defendant was hungry does NOT implicity concede that he broke into homes. And saying that any slow sales of Vista are due to hogging of resources does NOT implicitly concede that sales are slow. When it comes to logic, pretty much the reverse of everything you state is true.
However, 'parent' in this context is usually meant to refer not to the poster but to the post. You know, like the little link you're seeing everywhere. Odd. I'd have thought that someone who was insisting on a strict interpretation on the word "allegedly" would be precise enough to write "the parent article" if that was what he meant. I suspect you don't read slashdot very much and that you aren't a coder. If you were you would probably realise that 'parent' and 'child' applies to more than just people. It applies to interrelated data constucts as well, including your file system, and any node-based system with inheritance, like say... a threaded message board. So your interpretation is not 'stricter', just alternate. And it is incongruous with the most common usage on slashdot, which is frequented by many -- surprise! -- coders. So your insistence on this is the real oddity here. And in case you don't want to take my word for it (which is likely considered you are apparently never wrong), here are two relevant definitions from Merriam-Webster:
the material or source from which something is derived; a group from which another arises and to which it usually remains subsidiary That was too easy. I love it when people tell me I am using a word incorrectly without actually checking a dictionary first.
So to recap, I was trying to explore all the possible meanings, depending on how Wooloomooloo (the poster in question) had intended to use the word. In response you come back with "two out three of those are wrong". Astounding, Holmes. Truly remarkable. Two out of those three were not possible meanings. Again, see the subject line. 'Not' is not a possible meaning of 'alleged'. 'Alleged' simply means 'not proven', nothing more. So two of your 'explorations' were of irrelevancies: therefore, invalid on their face.
I think the reason for the difference in response time to vandalism has not much to do with the expertise required (after all, most vandalism is not written with expertise and thus is plainly obvious to anyone), but rather with the overall traffic to the article, which influences the likely that it will be vandalised in the first place, which influences the number of editors who have acquired, in reaction, the habit of 'standing by' for reversions.
In other words, highly vandalised articles naturally acquire several guardian angels, who have become habituated to responding in seconds. Rarely vandalised articles have to wait for one of the editors to make a routine check.
Notice that this relationship between vandalism frequency and response time means that there may not much be difference in statistical reliability between a low response time article and a high response time article.
That subject line should be sufficient to invalidate most of parent. Let me have a look: arms, check; legs, check; head, check; torso, check; fingers, check; toes, check..
Nope, most of me seems to be valid. I didn't bother checking internal organs, hope that's ok. Amusing. However, 'parent' in this context is usually meant to refer not to the poster but to the post. You know, like the little link you're seeing everywhere.
Just out of curiosity - did you read past line two in my earlier post, at all? You made three points: one against the idea that adoption is not slow; one against anti-badmouthing; and one longer point against oversimplification. Of those three, two of them require interpreting the word 'allegedly' as a negative: because without that, there is no evidence of the opinions you were countering in the post you were replying to. If you think otherwise, then show me some other evidence in Wooloomooloo's post that he was either claiming adoption is not slow or bashing anyone for badmouthing anything.
The remaining point about the oversimplification is pretty good, but the fact remains that on the substance, when I said that most of your post is invalidated unless you interpret 'allegedly' as 'not', I was correct. (Two out of three = most.)
Monopolies is not the only law that could apply here. If it is legal to pay a service provider not just to offer your product (which is legal unless you're a monopoly) but to actively cripple a competitor's, I would be very surprised, monopoly or not. I'm not a legal expert, but 'it is not a monopoly' is not the final world. Consider what is being alleged here. It's a hell of a lot more than bundling, and it's not analogous at all to your ham samwich. This would be more like a ham samwich maker paying a deli to intentionally spoil a competitor's meat. If that's legal, then that's fucked. Maybe somebody with more legal knowledge could step in.
As to point #1, all else being equal, one would naturally and correctly assume that the pricier plan brings the greater profit, unless you have some evidence that the reverse of the common sense conclusion is true. Do you?
This is obvious nonsense. AT&T has no financial incentive to steer people away from BlackBerries (quite the opposite, in fact, BlackBerry service plans are more expensive than the standard iPhone plans), and if an agreement with Apple is forcing them to do it, then that agreement would likely be illegal and probably doesn't exist.
Thanks, that was interesting. I assume that Jim Louderback is talking about hibernate mode? He doesn't really say, he just says 'sleep'. I personally have owned or worked with many different iterations of OS X machines and have never had one fail to come out of sleep or not wake up correctly, and that includes my MacBook, which according to you, hibernates. I did have significant sleep issues back in the days of OS 9 that caused me never to let a Mac sleep, but the new era has allowed me to unlearn this habit.
But still, he has a point, it's not rocket science.... Dude, some days, being a developer I think is probably worse than working out mathematical calculations at NASA. I can only conclude from this conversation that either the developers at Apple must be rare geniuses (since they basically nailed sleep long ago and never looked back), or the Apple approach of designing the whole widget is fundamentally superior on an engineering level.
Slashdot Mirror
Tiered pricing in order to escape differential access to internet services is NOT network neutrality. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. Calling this neutral, is like a mafioso coming into your business, and offering to treat you 'neutrally' by letting you live like any other citizen, as long you pony up. Thank you Godfather, for being so fair!
As I suspected, your objections are based on environmental moralism. I completely agree with those ethics! But ethics don't dictate mathematics. Exponential growth doesn't become impossible, just because we might wish it so. This is a question of mathematics, not your green street cred. Anyway, I understand all of your points that we *need* physical resources more, but what does that have to how they contribute to growth? I'm afraid you're confusing two entirely separate issues. Economics is about desire, *not* need. The total economic value in a system is the total that people are willing to pay for what they *desire* -- whether they need it or not is irrelevant when the money's changing hands. Therefore, tangible resources are no more *real* economically than intangible ones. BTW 'difficult to implement without' is not the same as 'ultimately based on'. Resources are also difficult to implement without valuable ideas for how to arrange and configure them. Does this mean that all resource value is 'ultimately based on' intangible value? Hopefully you see what I mean now about how all your arguments work just as well exactly in reverse. Everything you say about trees being undervalued, and standards of living in other countries, could all be true (in fact I agree with all of it), and still exponential growth could be possible. One has nothing to do with the other. I think this is a case of a moral stance attempting to dictate the nature of reality, kind of like the way feminists don't like to accept that there are real genetic differences between the sexes, etc. Once you make science politically correct it becomes useless.
... some value
... What about the people who sell that intangible service? Obviously, they don't fit into your equation, and there are lots of themI think your argument ignores the fact that the economy is not a zero-sum game, and that new 'value' is constantly generated literally out of thin air. And people can sell this value without even producing or manufacturing anything or using up a single resource besides themselves. And since this human element of intangible value (i.e. new inventions adding more value to the same materials) is a major part of the system, and that part has no resource limit besides the number of available thinkers, AND the population grows exponentially, there would have to be an exponenitally bleeding hole in any resource count.
Its informal use is the same as its formal use
If so then it wouldn't be informal, would it?
Smartassed, but meaningless, like most of your argument.
I've already conceded that I misread wooloomooloo's post, he's explained what his point actually was, and we moved the discussion on from there. If you're still trying to defend his honour, I suggest your zeal may be misplaced.
So ... waitaminute. You've conceded that you misread his post (I seem to have missed that, you certainly didn't concede it in anything you wrote to *me*, despite the fact that this is exactly what I've been arguing and you've been denying ad infinitum). And therefore my defence of him is redundant? It's pretty nervy the way you just tried to turn that concession into a point against me. Do try to lose more gracefully, it will reflect better on you in the end.
Since you seem to believe that the statement 'any slow sales of Vista are due to resource hogging' implicitly concedes that sales are slow
Pardon my pointing it out, but that isn't the wording that was actually used. Since you like looking things up so much, try typing "straw Man" into Wikipeadia.
More conflation. A simple change in wording does not a straw man make. That change has to actually make a difference to the meaning. What I was responding to was this nonsensical statement:
Similarly if you say "the alleged slow sales are due to bloat". You might as well omit the word "allegedly", since the second part negates it entirely.
I had to clean it up a bit in light of the context (and do it without the word 'alleged' as you suggested) but your logic is upside-down throughout that paragraph.
I could cast aspersions on your intelligence the way you so liberally like to do [but]
You haven't held back from such aspersions so far - why start now?
If you think that's what I've been doing, then you are very easily threatened by a destruction of your argument, which explains why you are so quick to punch back with direct personal belittlements. I can forgive you, but you don't get off scot-free. As long as you continue to belittle me, I will continue to reveal your faulty reasoning and to point out how conceited your stance is considering the weakness of your position ... or at least until one of us has had enough. If you had just responded to my points in kind I'm sure this would have ended posts ago. (Remember that I conceded one of your points early on directly in a response to you. You did no such thing until your latest post, and even that you did grudgingly with weasel words.)
Look: I don't actually have a quarrel with woomooloomoo, and this little squabble we're conducting seems to hinge around whether or not there exists an informal usage of the word "allegedly". I suppose I could point out that English is a living, evolving language, and that words are frequently used in ways that are not found in the dictionary; and it might be interesting to explore the logical contradictions inherent in seeking out a definitive list of informal usages.
Sure it's living and evolving. But I've never heard 'X is allegedly Y' used to mean 'X is not Y', even informally. It always makes perfect sense as 'X is not *necessarily* Y', which is different. So even by your measure of 'living and evolving' I would have to conclude that your usage has not been born yet -- save for in your posts. Want to prove me wrong? Should be very easy, if such uses are as common as you suggest. Quote me one example from anywhere in which somebody uses to word 'allegedly', formal or informal, to mean 'not', in which the standard meaning of 'not provenly' doesn't work just as well in the context.
We could even try and take the conversation back on topic and talk about Vista's (alleged) flaws and to what extent Jim Louderback's
And oh yeah, 'allegedly' is not a rebuttal, it's merely a more accurate form of referencing a claim. And stating that a defendant was hungry does NOT implicity concede that he broke into homes. And saying that any slow sales of Vista are due to hogging of resources does NOT implicitly concede that sales are slow. When it comes to logic, pretty much the reverse of everything you state is true.
I think the reason for the difference in response time to vandalism has not much to do with the expertise required (after all, most vandalism is not written with expertise and thus is plainly obvious to anyone), but rather with the overall traffic to the article, which influences the likely that it will be vandalised in the first place, which influences the number of editors who have acquired, in reaction, the habit of 'standing by' for reversions. In other words, highly vandalised articles naturally acquire several guardian angels, who have become habituated to responding in seconds. Rarely vandalised articles have to wait for one of the editors to make a routine check. Notice that this relationship between vandalism frequency and response time means that there may not much be difference in statistical reliability between a low response time article and a high response time article.
Monopolies is not the only law that could apply here. If it is legal to pay a service provider not just to offer your product (which is legal unless you're a monopoly) but to actively cripple a competitor's, I would be very surprised, monopoly or not. I'm not a legal expert, but 'it is not a monopoly' is not the final world. Consider what is being alleged here. It's a hell of a lot more than bundling, and it's not analogous at all to your ham samwich. This would be more like a ham samwich maker paying a deli to intentionally spoil a competitor's meat. If that's legal, then that's fucked. Maybe somebody with more legal knowledge could step in. As to point #1, all else being equal, one would naturally and correctly assume that the pricier plan brings the greater profit, unless you have some evidence that the reverse of the common sense conclusion is true. Do you?
This is obvious nonsense. AT&T has no financial incentive to steer people away from BlackBerries (quite the opposite, in fact, BlackBerry service plans are more expensive than the standard iPhone plans), and if an agreement with Apple is forcing them to do it, then that agreement would likely be illegal and probably doesn't exist.
Since Louderback admits praising Vista, 'checking' would have only required that you RTFA.
Thanks Tim but I believe I covered that point in my first post (which was not quoted completely).
Does nobody recognise self-deprecating sarcasm when they read it? No, the author was not genuinely arguing that moving to LINUX is 'unthinkable'. Duh!
That subject line should be sufficient to invalidate most of parent.
Thanks, that was interesting. I assume that Jim Louderback is talking about hibernate mode? He doesn't really say, he just says 'sleep'. I personally have owned or worked with many different iterations of OS X machines and have never had one fail to come out of sleep or not wake up correctly, and that includes my MacBook, which according to you, hibernates. I did have significant sleep issues back in the days of OS 9 that caused me never to let a Mac sleep, but the new era has allowed me to unlearn this habit.
This type of anti-consumer trash-think is exactly why Windows must die.