I can be completely predictable and still be acting freely.
No, you can't. If I can know right now every action you are going to take, from now until you die (ignoring the edge case where you die instantly), then you are not exercising free will. Why? Because your actions in the future are being completely determined by the state of things right now.
That's what distinguishes determinism from free will.
Conversely, if my actions are random, how can I be said to have any control over them?
Not "random", but "unpredictable". There's a *huge* difference.
No, you simply just don't understand. The Constitution is a document perfect in crafting. There is no fault with the Constitution. Any fault here is your lack of faith in the rightness of the Constitution.
If the Constitution doesn't explicitly address things like fire departments, libraries, schools, space programs, health care, nuclear weaponry or electromagnetic communications, those things clearly have absolutely no need for governmental attention. All problems related to any such issue can be completely, and solely, traced back to the fact that the government, in clear contravention of the US Constitution, has in some way addressed those issues.
The US Constitution isn't an imperfect document written by men, it is an infallible document which must never be questioned by imperfect men. To determine whether the doubter of the Constitution is an imperfect man (or women), one need only find the answer to one of two questions to be true:
1. Is that person part of the government (and not a libertarian)? 2. Is that person doubting the strict, literal and absolute reading of the Constitution?
And, if you think perhaps there are legitimate questions of interpretations of vague, ambiguous, or otherwise open-ended parts of the Constitution, you are wrong. The only valid interpretations must empower corporations, remove social responsibilities of individuals, and may, under no circumstances whatsoever, allow the government any powers beyond the enforcement of the amendments, using procedures outlined in the articles.
If a word (such as "privacy") does not exist within the Constitution, it does not exist for the government at all. The words "FCC" or "Federal Communications Commission" do not exist in the Constitution.
Right. Because there's no way an open source product is going to have an awkward or otherwise clunky interface. This must be editorial bias, no other explanation is possible.
Make no mistake, MS is not, and will not, become a good open source citizen. The only reason they will do something like this is to defend themselves from open source.
Do you wonder why they are doing this in the Philippines? It seems likely that Open Source/Free software is taking a hold there and Microsoft is looking to build a market. Who is going to buy MS software if it's incompatible with what they are currently using (or are in the process of moving to)? This puts Microsoft out of the game. But if they can get free software developers to do the work for them and make their projects compatible with MS software, they are suddenly an option, at which point, MS can do what they do best, which is compete and destroy.
Embrace, extend, extinguish. This is no different.
Embrace: Hey, we'll join your open source club. Extend: Now that we're compatible, why don't you run some of our software too? Extinguish: That software of ours that you are now reliant upon? Well, here's the new version, and it doesn't work with your open source software anymore, so pay up, junkie.
"it just works" mean things just work (and this is generally true). It does *not* mean "I don't have to learn how to use it".
Control the language and you control the debate, eh? I see you are still drinking the Koolaid.
What kool aid? I said "it just works" means that things "just work". You seem to think it means you don't have to know how to operate them. Which, of those two, seems like word games?
I see that you don't use any windows boxes yourself. That in itself should disqualify you from judging the merits of Vista.
That doesn't make any sense. Did you ever consider the reason he doesn't use Windows is due, in no small part, to the merits of Windows?
how do you think people would react if they had been given a shiny, new OS that, for instance, does not support Itunes? What about driver support? Can I use any scanner I want in linux? Or this no-name wireless card that works just fine in Vista? But, hey, we're talking Linux here, so it must be the manufacturer's/MS/Apple's fault if all these things don't work.
Interesting. As a Windows user, are you sure you're qualified to judge Linux or OS X?
It's far more likely that a Linux or Mac user has considerably more experience with Windows than a Windows user has with Mac and Linux *combined*.
As someone who has extensive experience with all consumer (and many workstation/server) variations of Windows since 3.0, I can state in no uncertain terms that Vista is inferior, by far, to XP, in terms of overall user experience. The only Windows follow-up that was worse than XP -> Vista was 98 Second Edition -> Me, and that's *solely* due to Me's penchant for hosing itself. Remove that aspect of Me, and Vista becomes, hands down, the worst Windows "upgrade" ever.
Perhaps there is a significant group (who I do not travel with) who are unable to stay up for 28 hours on the odd occasion when it's necessary to resync with the local time zone? Yes, the group of people you do not travel with is significant.
Many factors go into jet lag, including age, health, and sleep deficit. If you're unhealthy, or are already running up a sleep deficit, you're going to find it harder to adjust.
The purpose of the trip also comes into play. If you're traveling for business, jet lag is like working on 2 hours sleep. If you're traveling for fun, jet lag isn't nearly as bad.
This is for the relatively short time-differences between the two American coasts. Take a trip to Asia or Europe, with a sleep deficit, for business, with poor (but not horrible) health, and see if you still think jet lag is "just annoying".
Well, studies have repeatedly shown that a single developer only adds about 20 correct lines of code per day. Absolute nonsense.
First, let's assume there is such a study, and your recital of the findings are accurate. There's no way you can say something like, "a single developer only adds about 20 correct lines of code per day". It just doesn't make any sense.
Even if you reword it to say, "the average developer..." you still have a fairly meaningless statement. That's like saying "the average basketball player cannot slam-dunk", which is true, but doesn't tell you *anything* about any particular basketball player. After all, the vast majority of basketball players are children and at-or-below average height people playing street ball. Even a reasonably tall person (say, 6'5"), is going to have a hard time dunking a ball without a lot of effort.
Back to the "studies" (studies? really?), they really only measure an average of whatever specific development teams they measured. For example, at the start of a project, you probably write hundreds of lines of code, and as the project approaches completion, you write less and less code, perhaps only a handful of lines per day. It also doesn't take into account some developers who have very little to contribute to a specific project (i.e., do they count the UI guy's code across the whole lifetime of the project? Will that developer bring the average down from the developers who add potentially hundreds of lines per day?).
After all, American's average 1.5 children per couple, or something silly like that, as well, but it's exceeding rare to find a couple that actually has 1.5 children.
Isn't that like justifying totalitarian secret government with the argument that people are too stupid understand what they want and vote? Yes, but only if you equate your computer, which has no (or, very, very limited) power to force its will upon you, with a government, which can take your wealth, liberty, and even your life.
is the term ROM now commonly used for all embedded chips? Erasable, programmable, read-only memory chips, aka EPROMs, are a type of read-only memory chip, aka ROMs.
As are EEPROMs, which is the specific type of ROM we are talking about here (electronically erasable, programmable, read-only memory), since they don't require a UV light to erase the chips.
To further confuse things, flash memory (such as SD cards, USB flash drives, internal memory for iPods, cameras, phones, as well as SSD drives) are actually a type of EEPROM, even though they aren't strictly read-only in the sense most people would think. ROM actually refers to the memory being non-volatile and not to it being non-writable.
really not trying to be a pedantic jerk, but ROM cannot be flashed (Read Only Memory), did you mean EPROM? Not to be a pedantic jerk, but EPROM is a type of ROM.
So? Where you reside is not generally considered private information. There's nothing particularly sensitive about this case which would suggest a need for privacy.
In fact, many people's addresses are easily found in the phone book.
As for the info being unnecessay, it's called telling a story. A simple parsimonious statement of fact wouldn't be very interesting.
I'll leave out my own prejudices and let readers decide for themselves. Do you really think that's what you've done? Because I got the notion from your post that you don't like the fact that the government pays for it, and that you've trivialized any perceived wrong as "slighted" and "said nasty words".
If a debtor tells you someone else is bad because of their debt, or a thief complains about being robbed, a homosexual republican promotes discrimination against gays, etc., their own flaws deserve to be addressed.
As an American myself, I'd *much* rather bring to light flaws from my own country than flaws from other countries. *Not* because I hate my country, or that I want to knock it down a peg, but because I want my *own* country's flaws fixed, and that's not going to happen if we're spending all our time criticizing others, just like a debtor complaining about *others* debts is wasting his efforts on others instead of putting it to good use on himself.
Of course not, but bashing the US is a great way to get a cheap karma bump around here. As is, apparently, defending the US.
Perhaps it's not simply a case of irrational or nationalistic bias as you seem to think it is, and more a case of sometimes criticism of America deserves +5 and sometimes defense of America does. Contrary to popular belief, we're neither a wholly moral and righteous nation, nor a wholly evil and manipulative one.
When you label any criticism of America as "oh, they're just bashing the US again", you make it so that valid criticism is ignored as though it were invalid, which thwarts any efforts to improve America, and encourages actions which worsens us.
Shareholders don't care. Shareholders cash out. Not likely. Do you think MSFT would do well if all the YHOO shareholders decided to "cash out"? And if they *did* "cash out", a significant number of YHOO-now-MSFT shareholders would be stuck at a loss, not being at the front-edge of the sell-off.
Worse, man current MSFT shareholders would also be likely to sell were MSFT to plummet. Then there are brokerage fees and taxes to take into consideration.
This sort of thing wouldn't happen in a situation like this, so no, they wouldn't just "cash out". Additionally, the offer price doesn't take into account what will happen to MSFT in the near-term.
I'm not sure that would be a bad thing. It would certainly reduce the number of civil trials brought to court. Better to have a system which allows frivolous lawsuits than one that discourages legitimate lawsuits for fear of going to jail if one loses.
Personally I don't think it should be called Linux at all, you can have a free software OS without Linux, or without GNU, or both. What do you call it then? BSD
I disagree with the premise that all time spent watching TV is not productive. Only in a very useless loosening of that term. Even if you're in a coma, you could claim that the person is productive, after all, they are still producing carbon dioxide, and employing nurses, etc.
Let's put "productivity" into a scale from 0-10. You can't be alive and be at zero. Ten is a theoretical maximum which, due to mere inefficiency, can never be reached. Where would you put watching TV, on average? Sure, very rarely, watching TV could be pretty high, perhaps a 5-6, if you were learning or doing research, or playing through moral implications, etc., but most TV watching, even at it's best, would rarely reach a 2. Hell, 25% of TV is commercials, which is just about as close to zero as it gets.
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I can be completely predictable and still be acting freely.
No, you can't. If I can know right now every action you are going to take, from now until you die (ignoring the edge case where you die instantly), then you are not exercising free will. Why? Because your actions in the future are being completely determined by the state of things right now.
That's what distinguishes determinism from free will.
Conversely, if my actions are random, how can I be said to have any control over them?
Not "random", but "unpredictable". There's a *huge* difference.
No, you simply just don't understand. The Constitution is a document perfect in crafting. There is no fault with the Constitution. Any fault here is your lack of faith in the rightness of the Constitution.
If the Constitution doesn't explicitly address things like fire departments, libraries, schools, space programs, health care, nuclear weaponry or electromagnetic communications, those things clearly have absolutely no need for governmental attention. All problems related to any such issue can be completely, and solely, traced back to the fact that the government, in clear contravention of the US Constitution, has in some way addressed those issues.
The US Constitution isn't an imperfect document written by men, it is an infallible document which must never be questioned by imperfect men. To determine whether the doubter of the Constitution is an imperfect man (or women), one need only find the answer to one of two questions to be true:
1. Is that person part of the government (and not a libertarian)?
2. Is that person doubting the strict, literal and absolute reading of the Constitution?
And, if you think perhaps there are legitimate questions of interpretations of vague, ambiguous, or otherwise open-ended parts of the Constitution, you are wrong. The only valid interpretations must empower corporations, remove social responsibilities of individuals, and may, under no circumstances whatsoever, allow the government any powers beyond the enforcement of the amendments, using procedures outlined in the articles.
If a word (such as "privacy") does not exist within the Constitution, it does not exist for the government at all. The words "FCC" or "Federal Communications Commission" do not exist in the Constitution.
Right. Because there's no way an open source product is going to have an awkward or otherwise clunky interface. This must be editorial bias, no other explanation is possible.
I've yet to see a post calling someone smug that, itself, hasn't come across as smug.
evolution requires natural selection
No, it doesn't. All it requires is some form of selection.
which we stopped doing when we invented civilization
Untrue as well.
If you think about it, it shouldn't be surprising that the people who prefer Kirk see themselves as the center of the universe.
Make no mistake, MS is not, and will not, become a good open source citizen. The only reason they will do something like this is to defend themselves from open source.
Do you wonder why they are doing this in the Philippines? It seems likely that Open Source/Free software is taking a hold there and Microsoft is looking to build a market. Who is going to buy MS software if it's incompatible with what they are currently using (or are in the process of moving to)? This puts Microsoft out of the game. But if they can get free software developers to do the work for them and make their projects compatible with MS software, they are suddenly an option, at which point, MS can do what they do best, which is compete and destroy.
Embrace, extend, extinguish. This is no different.
Embrace: Hey, we'll join your open source club.
Extend: Now that we're compatible, why don't you run some of our software too?
Extinguish: That software of ours that you are now reliant upon? Well, here's the new version, and it doesn't work with your open source software anymore, so pay up, junkie.
"it just works" mean things just work (and this is generally true). It does *not* mean "I don't have to learn how to use it".
Control the language and you control the debate, eh? I see you are still drinking the Koolaid.
What kool aid? I said "it just works" means that things "just work". You seem to think it means you don't have to know how to operate them. Which, of those two, seems like word games?
What? So it didn't "just work"? Huh?
Hey, jackass. "it just works" mean things just work (and this is generally true). It does *not* mean "I don't have to learn how to use it".
How you got the second notion from that phrase is beyond me.
I see that you don't use any windows boxes yourself. That in itself should disqualify you from judging the merits of Vista.
That doesn't make any sense. Did you ever consider the reason he doesn't use Windows is due, in no small part, to the merits of Windows?
how do you think people would react if they had been given a shiny, new OS that, for instance, does not support Itunes? What about driver support? Can I use any scanner I want in linux? Or this no-name wireless card that works just fine in Vista? But, hey, we're talking Linux here, so it must be the manufacturer's/MS/Apple's fault if all these things don't work.
Interesting. As a Windows user, are you sure you're qualified to judge Linux or OS X?
It's far more likely that a Linux or Mac user has considerably more experience with Windows than a Windows user has with Mac and Linux *combined*.
As someone who has extensive experience with all consumer (and many workstation/server) variations of Windows since 3.0, I can state in no uncertain terms that Vista is inferior, by far, to XP, in terms of overall user experience. The only Windows follow-up that was worse than XP -> Vista was 98 Second Edition -> Me, and that's *solely* due to Me's penchant for hosing itself. Remove that aspect of Me, and Vista becomes, hands down, the worst Windows "upgrade" ever.
Many factors go into jet lag, including age, health, and sleep deficit. If you're unhealthy, or are already running up a sleep deficit, you're going to find it harder to adjust.
The purpose of the trip also comes into play. If you're traveling for business, jet lag is like working on 2 hours sleep. If you're traveling for fun, jet lag isn't nearly as bad.
This is for the relatively short time-differences between the two American coasts. Take a trip to Asia or Europe, with a sleep deficit, for business, with poor (but not horrible) health, and see if you still think jet lag is "just annoying".
Are you talking about the food or the customers?
Probably the management.Lighten up.
First, let's assume there is such a study, and your recital of the findings are accurate. There's no way you can say something like, "a single developer only adds about 20 correct lines of code per day". It just doesn't make any sense.
Even if you reword it to say, "the average developer..." you still have a fairly meaningless statement. That's like saying "the average basketball player cannot slam-dunk", which is true, but doesn't tell you *anything* about any particular basketball player. After all, the vast majority of basketball players are children and at-or-below average height people playing street ball. Even a reasonably tall person (say, 6'5"), is going to have a hard time dunking a ball without a lot of effort.
Back to the "studies" (studies? really?), they really only measure an average of whatever specific development teams they measured. For example, at the start of a project, you probably write hundreds of lines of code, and as the project approaches completion, you write less and less code, perhaps only a handful of lines per day. It also doesn't take into account some developers who have very little to contribute to a specific project (i.e., do they count the UI guy's code across the whole lifetime of the project? Will that developer bring the average down from the developers who add potentially hundreds of lines per day?).
After all, American's average 1.5 children per couple, or something silly like that, as well, but it's exceeding rare to find a couple that actually has 1.5 children.
As are EEPROMs, which is the specific type of ROM we are talking about here (electronically erasable, programmable, read-only memory), since they don't require a UV light to erase the chips.
To further confuse things, flash memory (such as SD cards, USB flash drives, internal memory for iPods, cameras, phones, as well as SSD drives) are actually a type of EEPROM, even though they aren't strictly read-only in the sense most people would think. ROM actually refers to the memory being non-volatile and not to it being non-writable.
So? Where you reside is not generally considered private information. There's nothing particularly sensitive about this case which would suggest a need for privacy.
In fact, many people's addresses are easily found in the phone book.
As for the info being unnecessay, it's called telling a story. A simple parsimonious statement of fact wouldn't be very interesting.
Because hypocrisy is ugly.
If a debtor tells you someone else is bad because of their debt, or a thief complains about being robbed, a homosexual republican promotes discrimination against gays, etc., their own flaws deserve to be addressed.
As an American myself, I'd *much* rather bring to light flaws from my own country than flaws from other countries. *Not* because I hate my country, or that I want to knock it down a peg, but because I want my *own* country's flaws fixed, and that's not going to happen if we're spending all our time criticizing others, just like a debtor complaining about *others* debts is wasting his efforts on others instead of putting it to good use on himself.
Perhaps it's not simply a case of irrational or nationalistic bias as you seem to think it is, and more a case of sometimes criticism of America deserves +5 and sometimes defense of America does. Contrary to popular belief, we're neither a wholly moral and righteous nation, nor a wholly evil and manipulative one.
When you label any criticism of America as "oh, they're just bashing the US again", you make it so that valid criticism is ignored as though it were invalid, which thwarts any efforts to improve America, and encourages actions which worsens us.
Worse, man current MSFT shareholders would also be likely to sell were MSFT to plummet. Then there are brokerage fees and taxes to take into consideration.
This sort of thing wouldn't happen in a situation like this, so no, they wouldn't just "cash out". Additionally, the offer price doesn't take into account what will happen to MSFT in the near-term.
Let's put "productivity" into a scale from 0-10. You can't be alive and be at zero. Ten is a theoretical maximum which, due to mere inefficiency, can never be reached. Where would you put watching TV, on average? Sure, very rarely, watching TV could be pretty high, perhaps a 5-6, if you were learning or doing research, or playing through moral implications, etc., but most TV watching, even at it's best, would rarely reach a 2. Hell, 25% of TV is commercials, which is just about as close to zero as it gets.