He stated, rightly so, that the US REVOLUTION was primarily faith based. You know, freedom from religious persecution.
The problem with you Americans is that you believe your own propaganda. The primary cause of the US REVOLUTION was excessive taxation by the British. Only afterwards do you push this morally superior cause by claiming that the revolution was for Truth, Justice, and the Faith-Based American Way.
He also stated that the french civil war was secular. Which it was.
The French Revolution had a significant number of causes, but the primary causes were excessive taxation, widespread famine among the proletariat, and resentment towards the well fed nobility. You might notice those are similar causes that led to the US Civil War.
Nothing brings people together like faith, just look at the US (230 years of democracy),
Once again, pushing this idea that faith is necessary for stability of democracy. Of course, it is easily argued that the US hasn't had a representative democracy in the past 100 years. Rather you have an economically driven nobility with allusions to fascism. Take consideration of the fact that two Bush's have held presidential office. What are the odds of that happening with 300 million people if the democracy is truly representative? Not bloody likely. No, your "democracy" is founded on wealth and bloodlines Virtually indistinguishable from the traditional concept of monarchy.
I would assume that "leftist platonic" would go to his view of the french civil war having a marxist lean.
A nonsensical string of buzzwords. You are as incoherent as the OP.
I see very much secular (definition meaning non-faith) ideals in liberal politics.
Americans don't even have a significant liberal political party, nor any party that pushes truly liberal politics, so I can't imagine how you'd know.
Seriously. If you're trying to make any kind of credible argument outside of the slashdot/kuro5hin parallel universes, you need some references more legit than the wiki.
If you have an issue with the quoted definition then state the problem. Ignoring the definition because it came from "the wiki" isn't logical. You need a better argument than that.
one, I hardly consider wikipedia to be an authority on a subject.
I hardly consider you to be an authority on this subject. Take a look at what you write:
there is a Liberal party in canada, and other places, though not in the US. and would you call those who promote speech codes on campuses "liberals"? the constitution is more than abortion and gay marriage. what about property rights. what about gun control. what that really is is not liberalism, but libertarianism. an idea i find somewhat attarctive.
All I got out of that paragraph was rambling incoherency.
i don't "preceive" liberalism as change. if you'd bother to read what i wrote, you;d understand that the liberal view, historically, has been one of change. for instance, liberalism meant more democratic governments, whereas conservativism meant monarchies. however, compare the US revolution with the french civil war (no, it wasn't a revolution). the big difference was the french experieince was wholly secular and more about retribution (modern day marxists, which oddly enough look alot like the french revo civil war), ours was far more faith based, or traditional. thus ours survived 230+ years, their became a terrorist state then dictatorship in a decade. we had a far more rightist outlook on people, more aristotelian, not the leftist platonic view.
That is entirely the oddest thing I have ever had the misfortune to read. You purposefully confuse the French Revolution with the US Civil War. You claim that "faith" is somehow necessary for the stability of democracy. You claim that secularism leads to terrorism and dictatorships. You write bizarre turns of phrase like "leftist platonic view" and "rightist outlook... more aristotelian". You continue to confuse liberal politics with secularism; you apparently still don't know what "liberal" means. I'm not even going to attempt to understand how a teacher in political science can write such goddamn awful English.
It frightens me that you attempt to teach this stuff to children. Your thoughts are addled beyond belief. I strongly suspect you are simply lying about your teaching role.
taken in the classical sense, a liberal seeks change, while a conservative seeks the status quo.
Uhhh, from Wikipedia...
Liberal: a political party associated with ideals of individual freedom, greater intellectual liberty, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives, such as the U.S. Constitution.
That the general public (ie, you) now perceives that "liberal = change" is very disturbing. Individual freedom and intellectual liberty should be your status quo, and change should not be necessary to achieve either. If change is actually required then your country is fubar.
yes, i do teach this stuff. this is a brief summary, but it's more accurate to define left vs. right, which is a substantive debate.
I would be very concerned if I was in a class where the teacher felt the need to simplify all politics into "left vs right".
At approximately 112000 BTU/gallon of gasoline [epa.gov] that's about 33kWh/gal. In California where the prices are about $0.12/kWh electric, it costs you about $4.00/gallon saved. With gas prices at about $2.40 in CA that's about $1.60 extra per gallon saved.
Your car's internal combustion engine can only use between 25-40% of the energy in the gasoline. The electric car will turn 90% of the energy from the grid's electricity into motion.
Fixing your figures, electricity costs about $1.50 for the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline.
For those of you who say "fuel savings at any cost" consider that most of the california electricity is generated by burning natural gas, and that there are considerable losses involved in generating and transmitting the electricity.
You don't know which method produces lower emissions over the entire cycle.
It's like saying - "I'm a Texan." The affiliation of being born in Texas is purely incedental, but it doesn't necessarily subscribe one to the ideals of Texas. Of course, no one is there to say you're not a Texas if you don't believe in those ideals.
You can't redefine Catholic as "people who don't kill" and then conclude that the regime of the Third Reich wasn't religious. The members of the Nazi party attended mass, held prayer sessions, were blessed by priests before battle, and spoke glowingly of doing the Lord's work during their speeches. Claiming they were not religious is simply revisionist bullcrap. Trying to use a poor version of the "not a true Scot" fallacy to justify your revisionism is really pathetic.
I believe the Catholic Church was doing what little it could at the time without getting itself burned at the stake.
As I said in my previous post, the Catholic church was persecuted by the Nazi party for daring to oppose them. That does not change the fact that the Third Reich was predominantly Catholic.
Many, many Catholics died in the Holocaust - so I don't think that Hitler was acting to free the faithful or anything like that. I think Hitler used a widely held fault of many Catholics at the time to foister his master plan, that of disdain for the Jews.
I agree with that. I also believe similar things happen today as political leaders publicly profess their own faith to win more votes. Be very suspicious of any person who uses religion as a political tool; either they're a devious scumbag, which is scary, or they actually believe what they're doing, which is even scarier.
You're such a troll.. I'd dare say that regimes such as the Third Reich, or Stalin did more "harm" in terms of dead - and neither of those guys were religious.
The Third Reich wasn't a guy. If you're referring to the guys of the Third Reich, most of them would have been Catholic. Hitler was a Catholic. He was baptised and as a child he was an altar boy. In Mein Kampf he wrote...
"I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." -- Hitler, Mein Kampf
In 1938 he said at the Reichstag speech.
"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." -- Hitler, 1938
Of course, the relationship is never quite that simple. The Catholic church opposed the violence and intolerance of the Nazis but the Nazi party enacted swift and severe retribution against the church. Priests were threatened and harmed. The church printing presses were shut down. It would not be accurate to say that the Catholic church condoned the Third Reich. The church was under considerable pressure from the German public for their opposition to the actions of the Nazis. It is true that Catholicism flourished under the Third Reich, but I'd daresay this had more to do with people's basic need for religious comfort during war, rather than any wrongdoing of the church.
I think it's fairer to say that humans have caused considerable harm over the past 1000s of years, and that religion or lack of religion had very little to do with it. Religion is a scapegoat for war.
I've noticed something recently that contradicts (somewhat) your point*. There are a few F/OSS fans that are anti-Apple because Apple is proprietary, and there are a few Linux fans that feel threatened by Mac OS X gaining popularity, possible at the expense of Linux. There seems to be some overlap between these groups.
I'm an F/OSS fan who is pro-Apple. I'm on my fourth (fifth?) Apple computer in a decade. I recommend Macs (Apple computers running MacOS) to all my friends and coworkers. Most of them ignore me, buy Windows laptops, complain when the whole thing doesn't work, so I just tell them "told you so". The Apple build quality has always been decent (with a few really awful exceptions in the 90s) and the prices have recently been rather good. I really like the "no legacy" philosophy. The software is decent enough that the average user can truck along without any assistance.
However I strongly dislike MacOS X. Not only is it proprietary but I also think it's lousy. The user interface is significantly worse than MacOS 7 and 8 (with 8 being my preference, despite 7 often being seen as the pinnacle of MacOS interfaces). I think the MacOS X interface is one of the best on the market, I just think it's a step backwards from what we had in the late 90s. The kernel is decent, but nothing spectacular. It's a UNIX from the 80s and it shows. The driver support is OK, once again nothing spectacular. In terms of operating system I'm far more impressed by Solaris or Linux these days. I am really impressed by the windowing system, but that's not enough to sway me. I know that sort of functionality is soon to be available for Linux.
I'm certainly not concerned about MacOS X gaining ground at the expense of Linux. The free software community went from nothing to something with far fewer developers than we have today.
Cough. I'm glad I'm not the only one. Makes it slightly less embarrassing.
But, when I went to a friend's house and played it with my friend's 12 year old son in the room (we were just racing around vice city) and the kid yells "pick up the hooker! Give her money and run her over and get it back!" it made me immediately question video games, violence, GTA, and the future of America.
Needless to say, we shut off the game. Asked him where he heard about that (at school) and dad sent him to his room.
What's particularly strange is that although this "kill the hooker in GTA" meme is now well known, it is only ever mentioned by people who don't actually play the game. Nobody who plays the game would ever do it because there's no point. You don't make any money, you don't complete a mission, so it's an entirely pointless thing to do.
I'm convinced that the feature is there purely to cause controversy and get free advertising for the game, based on the premise that even bad publicity is worth having. The fact that your friend's 12-year old was discussing it in the playground is proof of that. It's a taboo thing to do, so it's immediately worthy of gossip.
I want a decent file browser, useable (system-wide) drag and drop, homogenized toolkits (none of this "three apps, three different looks" bullshit), a friendlier clipboard (I got a powerbook here, this whole THREE BUTTON MOUSE!!!!! thing is killin' me!), a non-shitty default aesthetic that doesn't compell me to change everything out of its sheer ugliness, a useful offline help system, CAREFULLY THOUGHT OUT CONSISTANT AND TESTED CONFIGURATION MENUS and.... (pause for breath) everything else MacOS had in 1994.
In 1994 I wanted MacOS to not crash every 10 minutes. Hey, but if you were so impressed by the aesthetic that could overlook the useless OS, more power to you.
Err... I thought evolution was a theory, rather than a fact.
No, evolution is a fact. The effect has been observed in bacteria and in some insects. The reason it has been observed in those living creatures is because they have extremely short reproductive cycles. That means in the past 100 years we have observed new species that are significantly different from their ancestors and better suited to their environment. A very simple example is certain bacteria that have evolved to become more resistant to antibiotics.
Evolution is also a theory. How can evolution be both fact and theory? It is a matter of context. Although evolution itself is a fact, there are many explanations that try to explain the mechanisms of evolution. Those explanations are collectively the theories of evolution. The best known theory of evolution is called Natural Selection. Another theory of evolution is that humans, apes and chimpanzees have evolved from a common ancestor. That's often the theory that gets the fundamentalists upset.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote a rather good essay he called Evolution as Fact and Theory. He describes all this far more eloquently and precisely than I have here. It should be mandatory reading for anybody who says evolution is not a fact, even educated people like yourself who do understand that evolution is a valid theory.
That's just energy. It doesn't put things together in an organizational way.
Energy entering a closed system can and does reverse entropy. It depends on the enthalpy and the temperature. Google for "energy entropy enthalpy" and read the first few hits. In particular, learn
Gibb's Free Energy equation; it neatly describes the relationship between energy, entropy and enthalpy.
when you signed up for the iTMS. You agreed to it. And since you have to agree to it BEFORE you can buy anything, it's not in any sort of grey area like EULAs.
A contract that breaks the law is null and void. If, and this is purely hypothetical, the iTMS license requires you to sign away certain rights that cannot be legally signed away, then you are not bound by those terms.
For example, a contract that states you will become a slave is null and void, even if you willingly signed. Slave ownership is illegal and no amount of legal mumbo jumbo can enforce a contract like that.
The cynical amongst us might snort derisively at the idea that we aren't already slaves to the companies that own us.
1. Apple doesn't have an illegitimately obtained monopoly.
What does that have to do with it? Illegal tying doesn't require a monopoly. The guidance is "sufficient economic power to appreciably restrain trade". Google that phrase. Apple doesn't need to have a monopoly to run afoul of the law.
2. The use of iTunes is intrinsic to the iTunes Music Store.
Jon's program proves otherwise.
Also, you made one mistake: iTunes is *free*; ergo, there is no "purchase".
Irrelevant. Internet Explorer was a free download as well.
Common sense and the right of vendors to do what they wish with their own products.
The important phrase here is "balance between the interests of the creators and the benefit to society". The product is only "their own" so long as society chooses to grant them those rights. Their "ownership" is not perpetual and they do not have unlimited rights during their temporary period of control.
You could argue that it requires you to purchase an iPod. It does no such thing.
I could easily argue that you are attempting another logical fallacy; attributing nonsensical claims to the other person so you have something to casually dismiss. Lame.
But seriously, nice try, though.
You are the sucks at teh Interweb. Here's a nickel; buy yourself a better argument.
I used to hate Macs; pre-OSX I was convinced they were complete garbage.
That's because pre-OSX they *were* complete garbage. The GUI and the hardware has always been good but the OS was universally bad, at least up until MacOS 8 where I finally gave up trying. There were a few exceptions to the "hardware is good" rule, btw. The hardware also had a well deserved reputation for being expensive.
The latest hardware is cheap but still good. The OS is finally good. The GUI has gone backwards IMHO. MacOS 8 was the pinnacle of Mac GUI.
I'm on my fifth Mac now in... wow, less than a decade. I've run Linux exclusively on the last two though.
The iTunes Music Store license prohibits the use of anything but iTunes to make the purchase.
Sounds like Apple is trying to tie iTMS to iTunes. That rings a bell...
Illegal tying is one of the most common antitrust claims. Although the Supreme Court and the lower courts have regularly addressed the merits of tying claims and much has been written about the basic requirements needed to establish a tying claim, tying claims still remain somewhat unpredictable in nature. Most of the confusion stems from the nomenclature. Tying is often referred to as per se, or automatically, illegal. Nevertheless, tying arrangements may sometimes be justified or subject to rule of reason analysis.
Simply put, a tying arrangement is an agreement by a party to sell one product but only on the condition that the buyer also purchases a different product (often known as a positive tie), or at least agrees that he will not purchase that product from any other supplier (often known as a negative tie). The product that the buyer is required to purchase in order to get the product the buyer actually wants is called the tied product. The product that the buyer wants to purchase is called the tying product. In the most basic sense, the seller has tied two products together, as if in a knot. The only way the buyer can get the one product is to also purchase another product that he or she may or may not want.
On Slashdot? Are you joking?! In this place of "open-minded" geeks, you'll get modded to the sky for bashing anything religious.
You're kidding, right? Slashdot is swarming with Christian fundamentalists. It's the only blog I read where creationists seem to get the lion's share up positively moderated posts. It's quite disturbing.
I once read an article about some researchers who had found a correlation between religious fundamentalism and computing aptitude. I was skeptical at first but Slashdot convinced me otherwise.
Moderated flamebait? Some nitwit fundie says he believes in Noah's Ark and gets moderated up, and I giggle at his belief that he's still "intelligent" and get moderated down. I can't say it surprises me. Slashdot has a high proportion of fundies compared to any other blog I frequent. Keep moderating each other up; you can make the Bible come true with mod points!
Since when is evolution a fact? Last I heard, it was still just a theory.
A theory in science means an explanation. You can't "upgrade" from explanation to fact. A theory explains the facts. Apparently you think a theory is a potential fact that might someday become a real fact. That's not a correct understanding. A theory cannot become a fact. It's a nonsensical thing to even suggest.
Evolution is a fact. We've seen it happen. We have several explanations (aka theories) as to how it happens. Natural selection is a rather good theory that explains all the existing facts and is our best understanding of evolution. You can dispute the theory, but it's silly to dispute the facts.
[BTW: These discussions are starting to bother me. Everytime there is a iPod or Apple newspost the Apple fundamentalists start closing the ranks and attack any perceived enemy. Pathetic, really]
Uhh, was that comment directed at me? I don't have an iPod. I have an iRiver H340.
Maybe I'm not typical either, but I'll bet the typical user is closer to 550 than 10,000. And how did I get my 550?
I really don't think 550 is typical. My own collection, all ripped from my original compact discs, is 4090 songs. Even my friends who aren't "into" music have at least 100 discs in their collection; that's about 1000 songs. My "normal" friends have larger collections than my own. I guess about 6000-7000 songs per person.
550 songs is like 50 compact discs. I don't know anybody with a collection that small.
Sure, I agree that 10000 is atypical as well. That's a large collection by any measure.
A master notices his young apprentice in a state of obvious distress. "What troubles you, my apprentice" asks the master. The apprentice replies "I am fed up with the mess that is/etc. There are dozens of file formats, all of them incompatible, and most of them are difficult to apply changes to automatically".
The master calmly asks the apprentice, "How would you solve this problem?" The apprentice thinks for a moment and then excitedly blurts "I know, I shall invent a new configuration file format that will be in all ways superior to the existing formats. Every application will use my format and there will no longer be any problem".
The master quickly strikes the apprentice on the head with his bamboo discipline rod. "You fool, then I would have to support yet another incompatible file format".
There are so much real open alternatives like subversion, arch and (my personal favourite) darcs - just to name a few. Why bother with bitkeeper?
Subversion has a centralised repository design. It's totally inappropriate for Linux kernel development.
Arch is distributed but is difficult to work with. Not a very friendly interface, to say the least.
Also I think at the time Linus was migrating away from the "patch and diff" system, Bitkeeper was the only distributed tool that was sane and worked. The open-source distributed tools didn't exist until fairly recently.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with you Americans is that you believe your own propaganda. The primary cause of the US REVOLUTION was excessive taxation by the British. Only afterwards do you push this morally superior cause by claiming that the revolution was for Truth, Justice, and the Faith-Based American Way.
The French Revolution had a significant number of causes, but the primary causes were excessive taxation, widespread famine among the proletariat, and resentment towards the well fed nobility. You might notice those are similar causes that led to the US Civil War.
Once again, pushing this idea that faith is necessary for stability of democracy. Of course, it is easily argued that the US hasn't had a representative democracy in the past 100 years. Rather you have an economically driven nobility with allusions to fascism. Take consideration of the fact that two Bush's have held presidential office. What are the odds of that happening with 300 million people if the democracy is truly representative? Not bloody likely. No, your "democracy" is founded on wealth and bloodlines Virtually indistinguishable from the traditional concept of monarchy.
A nonsensical string of buzzwords. You are as incoherent as the OP.
Americans don't even have a significant liberal political party, nor any party that pushes truly liberal politics, so I can't imagine how you'd know.
If you have an issue with the quoted definition then state the problem. Ignoring the definition because it came from "the wiki" isn't logical. You need a better argument than that.
I hardly consider you to be an authority on this subject. Take a look at what you write:
All I got out of that paragraph was rambling incoherency.
That is entirely the oddest thing I have ever had the misfortune to read. You purposefully confuse the French Revolution with the US Civil War. You claim that "faith" is somehow necessary for the stability of democracy. You claim that secularism leads to terrorism and dictatorships. You write bizarre turns of phrase like "leftist platonic view" and "rightist outlook... more aristotelian". You continue to confuse liberal politics with secularism; you apparently still don't know what "liberal" means. I'm not even going to attempt to understand how a teacher in political science can write such goddamn awful English.
It frightens me that you attempt to teach this stuff to children. Your thoughts are addled beyond belief. I strongly suspect you are simply lying about your teaching role.
Uhhh, from Wikipedia...
That the general public (ie, you) now perceives that "liberal = change" is very disturbing. Individual freedom and intellectual liberty should be your status quo, and change should not be necessary to achieve either. If change is actually required then your country is fubar.
I would be very concerned if I was in a class where the teacher felt the need to simplify all politics into "left vs right".
Your car's internal combustion engine can only use between 25-40% of the energy in the gasoline. The electric car will turn 90% of the energy from the grid's electricity into motion.
Fixing your figures, electricity costs about $1.50 for the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline.
You don't know which method produces lower emissions over the entire cycle.
You can't redefine Catholic as "people who don't kill" and then conclude that the regime of the Third Reich wasn't religious. The members of the Nazi party attended mass, held prayer sessions, were blessed by priests before battle, and spoke glowingly of doing the Lord's work during their speeches. Claiming they were not religious is simply revisionist bullcrap. Trying to use a poor version of the "not a true Scot" fallacy to justify your revisionism is really pathetic.
As I said in my previous post, the Catholic church was persecuted by the Nazi party for daring to oppose them. That does not change the fact that the Third Reich was predominantly Catholic.
I agree with that. I also believe similar things happen today as political leaders publicly profess their own faith to win more votes. Be very suspicious of any person who uses religion as a political tool; either they're a devious scumbag, which is scary, or they actually believe what they're doing, which is even scarier.
The Third Reich wasn't a guy. If you're referring to the guys of the Third Reich, most of them would have been Catholic. Hitler was a Catholic. He was baptised and as a child he was an altar boy. In Mein Kampf he wrote...
In 1938 he said at the Reichstag speech.
Of course, the relationship is never quite that simple. The Catholic church opposed the violence and intolerance of the Nazis but the Nazi party enacted swift and severe retribution against the church. Priests were threatened and harmed. The church printing presses were shut down. It would not be accurate to say that the Catholic church condoned the Third Reich. The church was under considerable pressure from the German public for their opposition to the actions of the Nazis. It is true that Catholicism flourished under the Third Reich, but I'd daresay this had more to do with people's basic need for religious comfort during war, rather than any wrongdoing of the church.
I think it's fairer to say that humans have caused considerable harm over the past 1000s of years, and that religion or lack of religion had very little to do with it. Religion is a scapegoat for war.
I'm an F/OSS fan who is pro-Apple. I'm on my fourth (fifth?) Apple computer in a decade. I recommend Macs (Apple computers running MacOS) to all my friends and coworkers. Most of them ignore me, buy Windows laptops, complain when the whole thing doesn't work, so I just tell them "told you so". The Apple build quality has always been decent (with a few really awful exceptions in the 90s) and the prices have recently been rather good. I really like the "no legacy" philosophy. The software is decent enough that the average user can truck along without any assistance.
However I strongly dislike MacOS X. Not only is it proprietary but I also think it's lousy. The user interface is significantly worse than MacOS 7 and 8 (with 8 being my preference, despite 7 often being seen as the pinnacle of MacOS interfaces). I think the MacOS X interface is one of the best on the market, I just think it's a step backwards from what we had in the late 90s. The kernel is decent, but nothing spectacular. It's a UNIX from the 80s and it shows. The driver support is OK, once again nothing spectacular. In terms of operating system I'm far more impressed by Solaris or Linux these days. I am really impressed by the windowing system, but that's not enough to sway me. I know that sort of functionality is soon to be available for Linux.
I'm certainly not concerned about MacOS X gaining ground at the expense of Linux. The free software community went from nothing to something with far fewer developers than we have today.
Cough. I'm glad I'm not the only one. Makes it slightly less embarrassing.
What's particularly strange is that although this "kill the hooker in GTA" meme is now well known, it is only ever mentioned by people who don't actually play the game. Nobody who plays the game would ever do it because there's no point. You don't make any money, you don't complete a mission, so it's an entirely pointless thing to do.
I'm convinced that the feature is there purely to cause controversy and get free advertising for the game, based on the premise that even bad publicity is worth having. The fact that your friend's 12-year old was discussing it in the playground is proof of that. It's a taboo thing to do, so it's immediately worthy of gossip.
In 1994 I wanted MacOS to not crash every 10 minutes. Hey, but if you were so impressed by the aesthetic that could overlook the useless OS, more power to you.
No, evolution is a fact. The effect has been observed in bacteria and in some insects. The reason it has been observed in those living creatures is because they have extremely short reproductive cycles. That means in the past 100 years we have observed new species that are significantly different from their ancestors and better suited to their environment. A very simple example is certain bacteria that have evolved to become more resistant to antibiotics.
Evolution is also a theory. How can evolution be both fact and theory? It is a matter of context. Although evolution itself is a fact, there are many explanations that try to explain the mechanisms of evolution. Those explanations are collectively the theories of evolution. The best known theory of evolution is called Natural Selection. Another theory of evolution is that humans, apes and chimpanzees have evolved from a common ancestor. That's often the theory that gets the fundamentalists upset.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote a rather good essay he called Evolution as Fact and Theory. He describes all this far more eloquently and precisely than I have here. It should be mandatory reading for anybody who says evolution is not a fact, even educated people like yourself who do understand that evolution is a valid theory.
Energy entering a closed system can and does reverse entropy. It depends on the enthalpy and the temperature. Google for "energy entropy enthalpy" and read the first few hits. In particular, learn Gibb's Free Energy equation; it neatly describes the relationship between energy, entropy and enthalpy.
A contract that breaks the law is null and void. If, and this is purely hypothetical, the iTMS license requires you to sign away certain rights that cannot be legally signed away, then you are not bound by those terms.
For example, a contract that states you will become a slave is null and void, even if you willingly signed. Slave ownership is illegal and no amount of legal mumbo jumbo can enforce a contract like that.
The cynical amongst us might snort derisively at the idea that we aren't already slaves to the companies that own us.
What does that have to do with it? Illegal tying doesn't require a monopoly. The guidance is "sufficient economic power to appreciably restrain trade". Google that phrase. Apple doesn't need to have a monopoly to run afoul of the law.
Jon's program proves otherwise.
Irrelevant. Internet Explorer was a free download as well.
The important phrase here is "balance between the interests of the creators and the benefit to society". The product is only "their own" so long as society chooses to grant them those rights. Their "ownership" is not perpetual and they do not have unlimited rights during their temporary period of control.
I could easily argue that you are attempting another logical fallacy; attributing nonsensical claims to the other person so you have something to casually dismiss. Lame.
You are the sucks at teh Interweb. Here's a nickel; buy yourself a better argument.
That's because pre-OSX they *were* complete garbage. The GUI and the hardware has always been good but the OS was universally bad, at least up until MacOS 8 where I finally gave up trying. There were a few exceptions to the "hardware is good" rule, btw. The hardware also had a well deserved reputation for being expensive.
The latest hardware is cheap but still good. The OS is finally good. The GUI has gone backwards IMHO. MacOS 8 was the pinnacle of Mac GUI.
I'm on my fifth Mac now in... wow, less than a decade. I've run Linux exclusively on the last two though.
Sounds like Apple is trying to tie iTMS to iTunes. That rings a bell...
Antitrust law. Learn it. Live it. Love it.
If you like kicking puppies then this statement contains a logical fallacy.
Jon doesn't stop Apple from selling music with DRM.
That's right. And once Jon has paid for the download they're Jon's files.
You're kidding, right? Slashdot is swarming with Christian fundamentalists. It's the only blog I read where creationists seem to get the lion's share up positively moderated posts. It's quite disturbing.
I once read an article about some researchers who had found a correlation between religious fundamentalism and computing aptitude. I was skeptical at first but Slashdot convinced me otherwise.
Moderated flamebait? Some nitwit fundie says he believes in Noah's Ark and gets moderated up, and I giggle at his belief that he's still "intelligent" and get moderated down. I can't say it surprises me. Slashdot has a high proportion of fundies compared to any other blog I frequent. Keep moderating each other up; you can make the Bible come true with mod points!
A theory in science means an explanation. You can't "upgrade" from explanation to fact. A theory explains the facts. Apparently you think a theory is a potential fact that might someday become a real fact. That's not a correct understanding. A theory cannot become a fact. It's a nonsensical thing to even suggest.
Evolution is a fact. We've seen it happen. We have several explanations (aka theories) as to how it happens. Natural selection is a rather good theory that explains all the existing facts and is our best understanding of evolution. You can dispute the theory, but it's silly to dispute the facts.
Uhh, was that comment directed at me? I don't have an iPod. I have an iRiver H340.
I'd make a snide comment but I'm laughing too hard.
I really don't think 550 is typical. My own collection, all ripped from my original compact discs, is 4090 songs. Even my friends who aren't "into" music have at least 100 discs in their collection; that's about 1000 songs. My "normal" friends have larger collections than my own. I guess about 6000-7000 songs per person.
550 songs is like 50 compact discs. I don't know anybody with a collection that small.
Sure, I agree that 10000 is atypical as well. That's a large collection by any measure.
A master notices his young apprentice in a state of obvious distress. "What troubles you, my apprentice" asks the master. The apprentice replies "I am fed up with the mess that is /etc. There are dozens of file formats, all of them incompatible, and most of them are difficult to apply changes to automatically".
The master calmly asks the apprentice, "How would you solve this problem?" The apprentice thinks for a moment and then excitedly blurts "I know, I shall invent a new configuration file format that will be in all ways superior to the existing formats. Every application will use my format and there will no longer be any problem".
The master quickly strikes the apprentice on the head with his bamboo discipline rod. "You fool, then I would have to support yet another incompatible file format".
And the apprentice was enlightened.
Subversion has a centralised repository design. It's totally inappropriate for Linux kernel development.
Arch is distributed but is difficult to work with. Not a very friendly interface, to say the least.
Also I think at the time Linus was migrating away from the "patch and diff" system, Bitkeeper was the only distributed tool that was sane and worked. The open-source distributed tools didn't exist until fairly recently.