They did improve the battery usage in their own software - they don't allow multitasking. Agree or disagree with the choice, but it certainly means that the battery life is improved.
And I have to agree with the parent - the iPad is an appliance. It's not a computer. Sure, it may have computer insides, but it's more like a router, or a digital guitar amplifier - something that's turned on and expected to do its job with little to no configuration necessary.
More to Mark Pilgrim's point, though, I think the difference is that when he learned computers, they were still new inventions. Now, kids are graduating high school that didn't know the world before the internet. Most of them are not fascinated by the inner workings.
I think this post hits the nail on the head:
http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/359224392/i-need-to-talk-to-you-about-computers-ive-been
It is illegal for a resident of Canada covered by Canadian health care (say, a citizen, or landed immigrant) to pay for health care, and illegal for a health care provider to charge if they are in the "voluntary" system (which covers 99%+ of the population who can not legally pay anyway) which effectively forces almost all providers to be "in" the system. (There are specialty private clinics catering to non-citizen athletes, etc.)
[citation needed]
Nice try, but no. Canadians have private health care (Blue Cross, etc.) usually through a work plan. I'm a student, and we have a group plan through our student society. Yes, it is "illegal" for a health care provider to charge for access to healthcare; in the same way that it's "illegal" to set up a toll booth outside of my home and start charging people to use the government-built road.
Your argument that it's "unfair" for some to have what others do not is exactly correct. It is unfair that, if you can pay, you will be treated better than if you can't. It's not "All men are created equal, and those who can pay are more equal than those who can't." There are some "perks" that you can pay extra for - a private room, for example - but when it comes down to medical procedures I'll be given the same opportunities as you will.
Your anecdote about your son is interesting, but speculative unless you can back it up. You claim it's because you flashed his passport. Were you told this directly? Or is it because he was triaged ahead of everyone else? Just because there are people in the waiting room doesn't mean that you're "jumping the queue."
A 9-5 job with weekends, vacations and holidays still leaves a lot of time for creation. Music finds a way; it doesn't need to be spoon-fed. If someone makes music that others want to listen to, and if they're passionate about it, it will survive.
I don't get this mentality that everyone who hangs out their shingle as "an artist" is somehow entitled to surviving just by virtue of their existence. An artist is a hard, tiresome job that, in the past, drove you crazy (or you already were crazy), made you destitute and often a loner. Even if you managed to survive on your art, many times it wasn't even appreciated until after your death.
Some governments do this too... it's not just churches. Although I'm sure they're there somewhere on the causal chain.
I also think you're painting with too wide a brush. *Some* churches have a policy of not supporting condoms and other forms of family planning. I can't imagine that the hundreds of various church supported clinics, including some of the more liberal sects, would have that as a policy 'on the ground.'
If you ran a private business in the manner that the US Government (or my state government for that matter) is run it would be bankrupt in short order and cease operating.
Tell that to AT&T.
The parent is correct. At least with a government it's fundamentally unstable. If we don't like the people in charge, we have a very direct and focused way of taking them out of office: the ballot box.
Private industry has no checks and balances. The corporations as they are today can create global food shortages, medicine shortages, influence public policy, and all we can do is stop supporting them. If we're really angry we can actively protest against them, but you would need a large amount of people to get behind you - a difficult and challenging problem. Just look how long the child labour problems have been going on in the manufacturing sector. We all agree that this is an evil practice, but at the end of the day we don't have the time or energy to research every stitch of clothing we wear.
Taxing and spending on "social" programs are exactly how our modern society has been built. At least in Canada, our "evil" taxes pay for the development of speculative ideas (public universities), fund a healthy workforce (public healthcare), allow unpopular and uncomfortable artistic expression (artists' grants), and provide a motivation for reporting the truth regardless of who's footing the bill (public broadcasting). Even in the states, some of your most significant developments, including building the Internet (DARPA), going to the moon (NASA) and harnessing atomic energy (Manhattan Project) have been publicly funded.
The problem with the "every person for themselves" attitude is that every person is never for themselves. Sure it starts out with everyone on a more or less equal footing. But eventually, over generations, you get a series of feedback loops. Everyone starts equal, and then a few enterprising individuals create their own wealth. This leads to them passing it on from generation to generation, giving their children more opportunities, better education and better health care. Soon you end up back where you started with an obscenely rich, but relatively small, group that controls most of the power and wealth.
The fundamental mistake most Libertarians make, in my opinion, is that they don't realize that unless there are social equalizers (like public health care, or public research) then their ideal society quickly becomes an aristocracy when in the context of normal human behaviour - that is, investing the most amount of resources into the survival of your families, instead of the society as a whole. This is a good short-term, survival-based reaction, but in a long-term stable society it is actually detrimental. The irony is that for Libertarianism to survive it requires a strong middle class, while it promotes a society where the middle class is eroded as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Yeah! If only there were links in the story where you could go and see that it is actually a blatant and shameful copy-and-paste job, instead of just complaining about the editors and not bothering to actually RTFA for yourself.... If only....
You need to brush up on your civics. The Queen is the Queen of Canada. She is the same physical person as the Queen of England, but legally she is two completely separate entities. She can only be advised by Canadians on Canadian matters, and legally has no ties to the UK.
The GG, especially of late, is appointed out of the people who have contributed to Canadian society. While some disagree with the value of the appointees contributions, they are largely done outside of partisan lines. This gives our head of state an important role in the system of checks and balances, and means that his or her appointment isn't subject to the same dirty tricks that typically comes with elections. The theory is that even if a party can manage to push a bad law through Parliament (especially in a majority Gov't situation), and through the Senate (a longer-term and more "sober" house, but political nonetheless), it can be stopped by the head of state if it isn't seen to benefit Canadian society. This avoids the situation we're seeing now in the US where a whole country can swing one way or another depending on which party has the president in the White House. Canada's is fundamentally a more stable setup.
The well-functioning of Canadian society depends on all three parts of government acting together, which they do most of the time with little issue. Yes, it is true that the GG can stomp on a bill, but if it's passed both the House and the Senate and hasn't raised any serious questions, then it's mostly a formality. Likewise, she can't "abolish" a law without the approval of the other parts of government either.
Right - spending it on the American people for projects of domestic interest, unlike his predecessor who spent it all overseas.
If the population is benefitting from the spending, then what's the problem? Would you have had GM, Chrysler and the banking industry shuttering their doors? And, being from a "socialist" country, I'm not sure why Americans have such a problems with nationalized healthcare. Most western countries have it, and have a better overall quality of life because of it.
I mean, you could have entire institutions, with professionals in charge of selecting, cataloguing and organizing all sorts of books and journals, making them available for a community of people. There would be a nominal fee, or they could be funded by local governments or as a part of a university. The could operate on some sort of borrowing system: You go, get a book, read it and then bring it back! Or they could even work with electronic journals, paying subscription fees for their clients so that you can have access to all the information you need.
If only there were some sort of organization like that on every university campus and in most cities and towns in the western world. It would be amazing!
It's called "multisite" with Drupal. You can run several independent websites (or dependent, with a little hacking) with separate databases but off the same Drupal core. It's quite handy.
"I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
I've always wondered how that would stand up when what is being said is half-truths, willful deception and twisting of facts. Do we still have to defend their right to say it?
In rational discourse, where each party acts in good faith to uncover the truth and facts, I completely agree with you. But what I've seen isn't particularly rational discourse.
Whoa, whoa. Hold on there. Nobody's saying he did it. Just... just... isn't it *interesting* that he isn't denying it? I mean, nobody thinks he really did it, but imagine a world where everyone rapes and murders young girls. I mean, is that the kind of future we want for our children? By not denying it, Glenn Beck is opening up rape and murders of young girls to be a socially acceptable practice. Friends, I don't know about you, but I find that completely unacceptable. Glenn Beck just needs to come right out and say that he didn't do that, then he'll be free and clear.
1. Please cite your references as to why you say Maslow's theory is false. I'm not an expert in it, but I can't find any valid opinions to the contrary.
2. Canadians pay only marginally more than Americans in taxes, but yet their health care system works. It has it's flaws, yes, but it's not as bad as the Americans seem to think it is. It's not of poor quality, it's universal, and waiting a month or two for a non life-threatening operation is much better, in the long run, than paying it off over several years.
3. The military certainly has changed over the last 100 years. Libraries have as well (the first public library wasn't until the late 1800s). Complexity of the task is not an argument against this.
There are many things in health care that have changed, but in the vast majority of cases that need a health care professional, it's issues that humans have been dealing with for thousands of years: broken bones, births, flu, injuries, etc. These need very little research, and what research does come out of a health care system is usually limited to a few institutions - not the majority of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care workers.
What I find more troubling than the copyright situation is that the city is paying a company ("General Code") to index and make the records available, but that any disk that ships with this has to have a copy of General Code's software in order to read it! Which means, of course, that GC has a pretty sweet revenue stream in perpetuity - even the city counsellors themselves couldn't access it without the consent and continued existence of GC.
Except in this case, measurements of consumption and production are very obscure.
People will 'consume' healthcare when they go to the hospital or see a doctor. Yes, there is a small hypochondriac percentage of the population that will abuse this privilege, but for the most part, people will only go to the hospital when they are sick. I can't imagine wanting to disrupt my schedule to go sit in a waiting room just because I don't have to pay for it. That's absurd.
The population becomes more productive as a whole when they don't have to worry about the day-to-day problems of food and shelter. It's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
If the default state of people was "sick," then yes: they can certainly consume more healthcare than they produce. For an example of this, consider the disabled and the elderly. However, the default state of most of the population is "healthy." This means that when you do get sick, treatment can be had and you can return to your default, healthy (productive) state quicker. If you're sick, and your insurance doesn't cover your condition, you can't return to work until you've had it treated. If you can't afford treatment, then you're an unproductive member of society, no matter how badly you want to get back to work.
This is why nationalized healthcare works. Everyone pays taxes to support the health care system, but not everyone is sick all the time. When you are sick (on occasion), the taxes you have paid and that others have paid cover your costs. When you are healthy (most of the time), you're providing the same safety net that you enjoy to everyone else. And before everyone screams "socialism," note that socialism is not all bad. Military, fire, police, community centres, libraries: all of these are iconic images of American life, and all of them are funded by the idea that collective payment benefits everyone eventually, if not immediately.
The Campaign commercial starts with a whole list of things that each begin with "iDon't....". So, yeah, even Verizon is billing this as the iPhone killer.
...and food has always been flown all over the world at unsustainable levels, plastic has lived in the ocean for centuries, fossil fuels have always been burned like they're water, and farmland has always been paved over for cities.[/sarcasm]
I love it when people say "Look, this is only a passing fad. The earth has been much hotter before! Life adapts!" without realizing that the game has changed. Yes, carbon dioxide levels have been higher before, but that's about where the comparisons stop. The *reasons* why they're higher are fundamentally different; so much so that I don't think it's helpful to simply dismiss this as just a natural occurrence. We're not talking about the inability for life to adapt, we're talking about creating an hostile environment so quickly that life can't adapt. This hasn't happened over thousands of years, it's happened in less than 200.
The good thing about this is that we have the numbers and source material. If the government tries to draft up another corporation-friendly law, despite the numbers that make it absolutely clear that this is not what the people want, we can call them on it. Again.
.... and historically, men beat women, whites beat blacks, everybody beat the Jews, and on and on.
Just because it happened historically doesn't mean that it's still happening, or that it was the main thrust of the functioning of that religion in the past. Everybody looks at events like the Spanish Inquisition* and condemns the church, without mentioning the otherwise good acts it has done, past and present.
I think you need to refine your stance. "The Market" has not spoken loudly and clearly; "A Market" at a specific place and time has spoken. Supersonic trans-atlantic flight has been shown, in hindsight, not to work in a very specific place and time in history. That's all. It has not proven that it can never be done.
Analyzing failures are helpful for gaining insight into processes, but the failure of one instance shouldn't be taken as a broad indication that the idea itself is a failure. It may simply be the execution.
Slashdot Mirror
They did improve the battery usage in their own software - they don't allow multitasking. Agree or disagree with the choice, but it certainly means that the battery life is improved. And I have to agree with the parent - the iPad is an appliance. It's not a computer. Sure, it may have computer insides, but it's more like a router, or a digital guitar amplifier - something that's turned on and expected to do its job with little to no configuration necessary. More to Mark Pilgrim's point, though, I think the difference is that when he learned computers, they were still new inventions. Now, kids are graduating high school that didn't know the world before the internet. Most of them are not fascinated by the inner workings. I think this post hits the nail on the head: http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/359224392/i-need-to-talk-to-you-about-computers-ive-been
... and if next year is the Year of the Linux Desktop, then free software will win the internet!
Tell that to these people:
Douglas Adams Gary Snyder Bjork
and a few others...
Hardly a list of the most 'conformist' people on the planet...
[citation needed]
Nice try, but no. Canadians have private health care (Blue Cross, etc.) usually through a work plan. I'm a student, and we have a group plan through our student society. Yes, it is "illegal" for a health care provider to charge for access to healthcare; in the same way that it's "illegal" to set up a toll booth outside of my home and start charging people to use the government-built road.
Your argument that it's "unfair" for some to have what others do not is exactly correct. It is unfair that, if you can pay, you will be treated better than if you can't. It's not "All men are created equal, and those who can pay are more equal than those who can't." There are some "perks" that you can pay extra for - a private room, for example - but when it comes down to medical procedures I'll be given the same opportunities as you will.
Your anecdote about your son is interesting, but speculative unless you can back it up. You claim it's because you flashed his passport. Were you told this directly? Or is it because he was triaged ahead of everyone else? Just because there are people in the waiting room doesn't mean that you're "jumping the queue."
A 9-5 job with weekends, vacations and holidays still leaves a lot of time for creation. Music finds a way; it doesn't need to be spoon-fed. If someone makes music that others want to listen to, and if they're passionate about it, it will survive.
I don't get this mentality that everyone who hangs out their shingle as "an artist" is somehow entitled to surviving just by virtue of their existence. An artist is a hard, tiresome job that, in the past, drove you crazy (or you already were crazy), made you destitute and often a loner. Even if you managed to survive on your art, many times it wasn't even appreciated until after your death.
Some governments do this too... it's not just churches. Although I'm sure they're there somewhere on the causal chain.
I also think you're painting with too wide a brush. *Some* churches have a policy of not supporting condoms and other forms of family planning. I can't imagine that the hundreds of various church supported clinics, including some of the more liberal sects, would have that as a policy 'on the ground.'
Tell that to AT&T.
The parent is correct. At least with a government it's fundamentally unstable. If we don't like the people in charge, we have a very direct and focused way of taking them out of office: the ballot box.
Private industry has no checks and balances. The corporations as they are today can create global food shortages, medicine shortages, influence public policy, and all we can do is stop supporting them. If we're really angry we can actively protest against them, but you would need a large amount of people to get behind you - a difficult and challenging problem. Just look how long the child labour problems have been going on in the manufacturing sector. We all agree that this is an evil practice, but at the end of the day we don't have the time or energy to research every stitch of clothing we wear.
Taxing and spending on "social" programs are exactly how our modern society has been built. At least in Canada, our "evil" taxes pay for the development of speculative ideas (public universities), fund a healthy workforce (public healthcare), allow unpopular and uncomfortable artistic expression (artists' grants), and provide a motivation for reporting the truth regardless of who's footing the bill (public broadcasting). Even in the states, some of your most significant developments, including building the Internet (DARPA), going to the moon (NASA) and harnessing atomic energy (Manhattan Project) have been publicly funded.
The problem with the "every person for themselves" attitude is that every person is never for themselves. Sure it starts out with everyone on a more or less equal footing. But eventually, over generations, you get a series of feedback loops. Everyone starts equal, and then a few enterprising individuals create their own wealth. This leads to them passing it on from generation to generation, giving their children more opportunities, better education and better health care. Soon you end up back where you started with an obscenely rich, but relatively small, group that controls most of the power and wealth.
The fundamental mistake most Libertarians make, in my opinion, is that they don't realize that unless there are social equalizers (like public health care, or public research) then their ideal society quickly becomes an aristocracy when in the context of normal human behaviour - that is, investing the most amount of resources into the survival of your families, instead of the society as a whole. This is a good short-term, survival-based reaction, but in a long-term stable society it is actually detrimental. The irony is that for Libertarianism to survive it requires a strong middle class, while it promotes a society where the middle class is eroded as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Yeah! If only there were links in the story where you could go and see that it is actually a blatant and shameful copy-and-paste job, instead of just complaining about the editors and not bothering to actually RTFA for yourself.... If only....
You need to brush up on your civics. The Queen is the Queen of Canada. She is the same physical person as the Queen of England, but legally she is two completely separate entities. She can only be advised by Canadians on Canadian matters, and legally has no ties to the UK.
The GG, especially of late, is appointed out of the people who have contributed to Canadian society. While some disagree with the value of the appointees contributions, they are largely done outside of partisan lines. This gives our head of state an important role in the system of checks and balances, and means that his or her appointment isn't subject to the same dirty tricks that typically comes with elections. The theory is that even if a party can manage to push a bad law through Parliament (especially in a majority Gov't situation), and through the Senate (a longer-term and more "sober" house, but political nonetheless), it can be stopped by the head of state if it isn't seen to benefit Canadian society. This avoids the situation we're seeing now in the US where a whole country can swing one way or another depending on which party has the president in the White House. Canada's is fundamentally a more stable setup.
The well-functioning of Canadian society depends on all three parts of government acting together, which they do most of the time with little issue. Yes, it is true that the GG can stomp on a bill, but if it's passed both the House and the Senate and hasn't raised any serious questions, then it's mostly a formality. Likewise, she can't "abolish" a law without the approval of the other parts of government either.
Right - spending it on the American people for projects of domestic interest, unlike his predecessor who spent it all overseas.
If the population is benefitting from the spending, then what's the problem? Would you have had GM, Chrysler and the banking industry shuttering their doors? And, being from a "socialist" country, I'm not sure why Americans have such a problems with nationalized healthcare. Most western countries have it, and have a better overall quality of life because of it.
I mean, you could have entire institutions, with professionals in charge of selecting, cataloguing and organizing all sorts of books and journals, making them available for a community of people. There would be a nominal fee, or they could be funded by local governments or as a part of a university. The could operate on some sort of borrowing system: You go, get a book, read it and then bring it back! Or they could even work with electronic journals, paying subscription fees for their clients so that you can have access to all the information you need.
If only there were some sort of organization like that on every university campus and in most cities and towns in the western world. It would be amazing!
It's called "multisite" with Drupal. You can run several independent websites (or dependent, with a little hacking) with separate databases but off the same Drupal core. It's quite handy.
I've always wondered how that would stand up when what is being said is half-truths, willful deception and twisting of facts. Do we still have to defend their right to say it?
In rational discourse, where each party acts in good faith to uncover the truth and facts, I completely agree with you. But what I've seen isn't particularly rational discourse.
Whoa, whoa. Hold on there. Nobody's saying he did it. Just... just... isn't it *interesting* that he isn't denying it? I mean, nobody thinks he really did it, but imagine a world where everyone rapes and murders young girls. I mean, is that the kind of future we want for our children? By not denying it, Glenn Beck is opening up rape and murders of young girls to be a socially acceptable practice. Friends, I don't know about you, but I find that completely unacceptable. Glenn Beck just needs to come right out and say that he didn't do that, then he'll be free and clear.
1. Please cite your references as to why you say Maslow's theory is false. I'm not an expert in it, but I can't find any valid opinions to the contrary.
2. Canadians pay only marginally more than Americans in taxes, but yet their health care system works. It has it's flaws, yes, but it's not as bad as the Americans seem to think it is. It's not of poor quality, it's universal, and waiting a month or two for a non life-threatening operation is much better, in the long run, than paying it off over several years.
3. The military certainly has changed over the last 100 years. Libraries have as well (the first public library wasn't until the late 1800s). Complexity of the task is not an argument against this.
There are many things in health care that have changed, but in the vast majority of cases that need a health care professional, it's issues that humans have been dealing with for thousands of years: broken bones, births, flu, injuries, etc. These need very little research, and what research does come out of a health care system is usually limited to a few institutions - not the majority of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care workers.
What I find more troubling than the copyright situation is that the city is paying a company ("General Code") to index and make the records available, but that any disk that ships with this has to have a copy of General Code's software in order to read it! Which means, of course, that GC has a pretty sweet revenue stream in perpetuity - even the city counsellors themselves couldn't access it without the consent and continued existence of GC.
Except in this case, measurements of consumption and production are very obscure.
People will 'consume' healthcare when they go to the hospital or see a doctor. Yes, there is a small hypochondriac percentage of the population that will abuse this privilege, but for the most part, people will only go to the hospital when they are sick. I can't imagine wanting to disrupt my schedule to go sit in a waiting room just because I don't have to pay for it. That's absurd.
The population becomes more productive as a whole when they don't have to worry about the day-to-day problems of food and shelter. It's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
If the default state of people was "sick," then yes: they can certainly consume more healthcare than they produce. For an example of this, consider the disabled and the elderly. However, the default state of most of the population is "healthy." This means that when you do get sick, treatment can be had and you can return to your default, healthy (productive) state quicker. If you're sick, and your insurance doesn't cover your condition, you can't return to work until you've had it treated. If you can't afford treatment, then you're an unproductive member of society, no matter how badly you want to get back to work.
This is why nationalized healthcare works. Everyone pays taxes to support the health care system, but not everyone is sick all the time. When you are sick (on occasion), the taxes you have paid and that others have paid cover your costs. When you are healthy (most of the time), you're providing the same safety net that you enjoy to everyone else. And before everyone screams "socialism," note that socialism is not all bad. Military, fire, police, community centres, libraries: all of these are iconic images of American life, and all of them are funded by the idea that collective payment benefits everyone eventually, if not immediately.
So *you're* the guy who did that! :)
The Campaign commercial starts with a whole list of things that each begin with "iDon't....". So, yeah, even Verizon is billing this as the iPhone killer.
...and food has always been flown all over the world at unsustainable levels, plastic has lived in the ocean for centuries, fossil fuels have always been burned like they're water, and farmland has always been paved over for cities.[/sarcasm]
I love it when people say "Look, this is only a passing fad. The earth has been much hotter before! Life adapts!" without realizing that the game has changed. Yes, carbon dioxide levels have been higher before, but that's about where the comparisons stop. The *reasons* why they're higher are fundamentally different; so much so that I don't think it's helpful to simply dismiss this as just a natural occurrence. We're not talking about the inability for life to adapt, we're talking about creating an hostile environment so quickly that life can't adapt. This hasn't happened over thousands of years, it's happened in less than 200.
The good thing about this is that we have the numbers and source material. If the government tries to draft up another corporation-friendly law, despite the numbers that make it absolutely clear that this is not what the people want, we can call them on it. Again.
That may be true, but even your European superiority wouldn't make a train travel from Houston to Paris.
.... and historically, men beat women, whites beat blacks, everybody beat the Jews, and on and on.
Just because it happened historically doesn't mean that it's still happening, or that it was the main thrust of the functioning of that religion in the past. Everybody looks at events like the Spanish Inquisition* and condemns the church, without mentioning the otherwise good acts it has done, past and present.
* "NOOOOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
I think you need to refine your stance. "The Market" has not spoken loudly and clearly; "A Market" at a specific place and time has spoken. Supersonic trans-atlantic flight has been shown, in hindsight, not to work in a very specific place and time in history. That's all. It has not proven that it can never be done.
Analyzing failures are helpful for gaining insight into processes, but the failure of one instance shouldn't be taken as a broad indication that the idea itself is a failure. It may simply be the execution.