...Atheist != no personal god. If you are an atheist you believe in no god whatsoever. Plus you can't really be a Christian (As in a follower of Christ) if you believe that he can't be known (is impersonal). So what you seem to be after is that he believed in a god who was similar to that of the Jewish and Christian faiths but yet was completely different (as a fundamental part of both Jewish and Christian theology is that God is personal).
A few years back he was one of figures that helped me jetisson religion, and ever since I've had a greater curiousity about science.
...So you've replaced religion with science. Both of which rely on some unproven methods. Effectively what you have just said is that "I've quit Morphine when I started using Heroin". Despite what you think, you are no more "enlightened" because you gave up one form of faith for another. And unless you know 100% what you think is "science" is 100% proven by your own experiments, you are no more "enlightened" then the average person believing in religion.
Faith is simply believing something that can't be proven. Theres a -ton- of scientific fact that requires faith, especially for the beginning scientist. For example, the basis of uniformitarianism which is essential for the study of geology, can not be 100% proven. You can assume it is true based on the lack of evidence for catastrophicism. We rely on the fact that some things are stable and don't change for a ton of scientific measurements. If certain elements speed up or slow down their half life some of which may be thousands of years, entire systems of measurements may be destroyed. There is no way that you can be absolutely sure that every atom always decays at the same rate. You need faith for a good chunk of science in 2009, perhaps there will be a day where everything can be proven, but until that day comes (even though I highly doubt it will) you need some faith to believe science.
Because all banks get evaluated by various governmental agencies as oversight. To them now all loans to home builders are considered "risky" and banks don't really want to be red-flagged and be government-controlled. Mix that with the fact that a few homebuilders in the area (unrelated to my friend) have defaulted on a few loans, makes it hard for them to really lend.
yes, millions. i do not count only "allied" soldiers. several million civilians are known to have died.
...Yet many the counters let people put in whatever number they feel like. Some are even sponsored by anti-war groups. Yes, many civilians have died, but you would be a fool to call the counters accurate.
i always chuckle a little when people like dismiss the idea that the several trillion dollars spent on wars of aggression, surveillance and CIA torture camps could not possible have contributed in any way to the economic meltdown...
...Because we all know that whenever the government spends money on wars it never goes to anyone it just vanishes into thin air right? I mean, we don't pay our soldiers, nor buy military equipment from any contractors. Nope, whenever the government spends money on a war it just ends up getting tossed into a black hole.
And CIA torture camps, how do they have anything to do with an economic meltdown? Yes, they are bad, we get that. Did it have anything to do with the meltdown. No.
...As opposed to people who would have died during Saddam's rule? Yes, the intelligence Bush got was faulty about the WMDs in Iraq, but you have to remember this is a dictator who not only invaded other countries but launched chemical warfare on his own people (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack ). The invasion of Afghanistan really should have happened sooner and with a more powerful attack. But after the 9/11 attacks, you couldn't exactly ignore a huge terrorist group that very successfully attacked the USA.
war over large parts of the planet
...Because two countries consist of a "large part of the planet"? One of which was already at war (Afghanistan).
mass alienation and destabilisation,
Of who? And of what?
worldwide economic collapse...
Which we all know Bush is to blame for everything... Really, it started with Clinton and Clinton's desire to have every American own a home. Sure, its a noble idea but it went way to far. For example, a person who would ordinarily qualify for a $150,000 loan would be bumped up to getting a $1750,000 loan... So then eventually they couldn't pay it back because they borrowed more than they could afford. (see http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2008/02/clintons_drive.html for an article on what I'm talking about).
Obama's plan seems to be lets spend our way out of an economic collapse! Mixed with tons of regulations. For example, I have a good friend who runs a home building business, he has been in business since 1982 and hasn't defaulted on a single loan and hasn't been late on any of his bills in the past 20 years. Today, he can't get a loan to build another house because Obama's administration says that he is "too big of a risk" WTF!?! This person has sold all of their houses, how exactly is he supposed to get any more money to build houses and sell them if he can't get a loan for it? It makes no sense at all.
But if you look at American televised news, you see that it really isn't news but rather a bunch of opinionated people trying to create A) Panic so more people will tune in (look at how they handled Swine Flu) B) A "shocking" story that isn't news or C) Things that paint their company in a positive light. Electronic and print news has bias, but it is less of opinion and more on the selection of stories. While some of it could be justified (people reading TorrentFreak aren't going to really care about how some guy got busted selling bootlegged DVDs in China) a lot of it is to spin the "facts" towards one side.
I find the BBC's world news to be pretty unbiased as for the part of opinions. Though I do think they publish stories with only a few "facts" to sway one side or another.
Bush didn't appoint a ton of "czars" that were accountable to no one. Yes, the Bush administration had a lot of flaws, but Obama'a administration looks to be expanding on them.
Re:You missed the point of your own story
on
Hello World!
·
· Score: 1
The hardest part about coding really isn't the ideas, especially for children ideas flow naturally. Its the coding part that is difficult. How many of us when we were on our C64s had a great idea for a game but couldn't code it? If the person learned Scratch rather than a more "traditional" programming language, their skills other than their ideas end up going nowhere. On the other hand, if you give them Python they can more logically transition into C, C++, etc. And really, ActionScript isn't that much better than Scratch. Sure, you can more easily port it, to other systems (most systems run Flash) but it still won't port to any other language.
How is this news? Yes, we all know traditional HDs are cheap. Yes, we know that you can buy more storage then you could possibly need. So how is this newsworthy? It really is no faster nor more reliable than SSDs. I think this is more or less a non-story.
Re:Start them on a tricycle? Or a GSXR?
on
Hello World!
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It depends, to finish up your analogy, should we give the kids a tricycle when they already have a motorized Segway, or give them a motorcycle. Showing a kid "Hello World" doesn't provoke the same interest it did back in the '80s. Really, back then we had (for the time) state of the art games that you could fully modify with a week or two of learning. Even "advanced" games like Super Mario Bros. for the NES is looked at as something a beginner should be able to do. So unless the kid can make a game equivalent to SMB, they aren't going to be too interested.
Re:You missed the point of your own story
on
Hello World!
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Scratch is great in that it teaches how to "think" like a programmer. However, ends up not really doing you a lot of good in the long run. Python is an easy to use language but it also is very "real" in that knowing Python can get you somewhere. That said, Scratch is very easy to use and you can make decent applications in there, but in the end you have effectively a "toy" language which won't really help you in the long run.
With Symbian and Android now free, what is the reason for even producing a Windows Mobile handset anymore? I mean, why pay extra for a license when you can just customize your own OS for next to nothing?
Well, first, my version of windows came with many non MS products (trust me i wish it didn't) - including McAffee, Norton, AOL, Roxio and more
Perhaps I should have clarified by saying that non-MS things that compete with MS products. None of those really do.
NOt sure about your statement proving that MS makes it unprofitable for a company to sell non-MS OS with their computers. Dell is one of the largest computer retailers and you can get ubuntu with their computers (http://www.dell.com/home/laptops#subcats=&navla=&a=51800~0~1932545).
However, Dell does not advertise them. At one time I believe that they couldn't even sell them without facing the wrath of MS, but I think that changed eventually, however they still can't advertise them. Even on the link you provided you can see that "Dell recommends Windows Vista Home Premium" and on all of Dell's TV and print ads you don't see Linux mentioned.
...But they also have contracts with all the OEMs that make it so they can't bundle non-MS things with their machines or advertise non-MS systems otherwise MS increases the price of Windows to them that it becomes unprofitable to run a business. Add that in with a relatively stupid population that can't or won't install anything other than the defaults due to FUD by the media or by outdated experiences.
And for a post about how many browsers there are, you need to look more in depths at reports. Sure, Firefox seems to be lagging behind, but there are a ton of other browsers rather than IE, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.
or, indeed, for consumers. It's just noise -- a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check
How is it MAD? MS, try as it might, simply can't make a search engine that is going to be used more than Google's. Google will still lose out to Windows on a few things even with Chrome OS, for one being the large amount of specialty applications out there for Windows.
...Because the media by and large thinks that (or at least implies) that every kid age 13-20 has a MySpace, Twitter and Facebook accounts, that they own a PS3, 360 and Wii. Basically what this report is saying is that Twitter is simply a fad. That it doesn't capture the attention of the people who presumably would be the next big adopters. How is this useful to businesses? Well, if they are targeting 13-20 year olds, they might want to invest in different advertising than on Twitter especially for the long term.
The MacPad will arrive in fall '09 or Jan '10, with a 10" diagonal color display, a $599 price point with a Verizon data plan, a stylus, note taking application and handwriting recognition and an e-bookstore for iTunes.
Ok, if this is all true (which I really haven't seen that any of it is) I can't see this being a success for Apple. First, $599 for it? Honestly you can get full laptops cheaper than that with data. Second, a stylus with all the multi-touch from the iPhone? Third Verizon(!)(?) they make AT&T look great in comparison.
It depends though. Most of the time price != performance. For example I bought an Alienware laptop (this was back when they had a simi-decent reputation), it cost me more than a cheap laptop, but I figured that I might as well go with Alienware because at the time I had a lot of cash and figured it was just as easy to buy it pre-built then mess with a cheaper laptop to upgrade its specs. While it worked it worked great, it was a fast machine for its time, came installed with one of the (very few at the time) wireless cards that worked very nicely with Linux and overall was a great machine. Then, about 6 months into using it, the power cord stopped working, so I called up support and got another one, went through two powercords, then the motherboard died and was still under warranty so I got that replaced. Then the power cord died yet again, however they had discontinued the make of my computer and to buy a third-party one, upon buying the cord they said I should buy, it after 2 weeks of usage managed to fry my motherboard. After that I bought a cheap laptop (Compaq) and it works to this very day (although it is obsolete).
I haven't personally had any Sony laptops, but from reading some various forums they were a pain to get to work with anything but the Windows they came with. And the two Toshiba laptops I have had (a really, really, really old Satellite running Windows 3.1 and still working today, and a newer one) were all very low end (as in, the cheapest laptops I could find that ran "real" OSes and weren't a netbook) and they were decent.
And even with a cheap laptop, today I don't have that much cash, if a $400 cheap laptop lasts me a year of productive work, it could very, very, well pay for itself faster than a $1000 MacBook or Sony Vio laptop.
...Because making cheap computers has destroyed all other companies? If Apple can make a huge quantity of computers running OS X they can make a huge profit. You can see effectively the same thing with iPods, they have sold quicker when the prices have decreased. Back when an iPod cost $500, sure, people still had them, but not in the quantity people do today when they cost less then $200. If Apple can reduce a good laptop down cheaply enough, they can do the same thing as with iPods and get people to buy them like crazy.
It almost/did/ destroy Apple as a company, utterly, in the 90's. Thank god they put a stop to that, or things like iPod's wouldn't exist.
The problem wasn't just licensing and selling cheap crap, it was the fact that Classic Mac OS was overly outdated. Windows was actually better in many ways than Mac OS. Today, you have the exact opposite, OS X is built on more solid design principles than Windows is, has a better looking GUI, and in general provides a better user experience. Back with Classic Mac OS when compared to Windows NT, you had Mac OS having an older looking GUI, (I mean, comparing Windows 98 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows98.png and OS 9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mac_OS_9_screenshot_2.png ) to the average person Windows 98 looks more "advanced".
As for licensing OS X out to third party manufacturers, it might be disastrous, or it might be a rampant success. You have to remember, its not the '90s anymore, after Vista the mindshare for MS products went way down and unless Windows 7 can salvage it, people are going to be looking for another OS. Perhaps licensing a OS X "compatibility pack" or GUI pack?
* Apple: OSX keeps getting better and better. Will they make enough improvement that people want to switch away from Microsoft?
I think OS X will only really beat MS if either A) Apple releases -cheap- computers or B) Licenses it out to other OEMs that make cheap computers. I mean, when I can buy a $400 laptop (not a netbook but a laptop) with Windows on it and do just about everything that a $999 Macbook can do, the choice is clear for most people. Yes, there are a few niche things that require OS X, but the vast majority of software works by default on Windows and may have a Mac port. I would imagine that a lot of people would love to have OS X rather than Windows but for a laptop that is $600 more than the competition that does the same thing, I can't see people flocking over to Apple when PC hardware is dirt cheap. Yes, Apple hardware is cheaper when you go by a component to component basis, but really for the average person, 3 gigs of DDR2 is going to be better than 3 gigs of DDR3 when the DDR3 RAM costs way more. If Apple lowers their prices, I can see them dominating, but these days who wants to pay $999 for Apple's cheapest laptop when you can buy a netbook for under $300 and a full laptop for $400 and under.
On one hand, the Chinese government is trying to shape today's youth into something which will contribute to society
...And when has a "good member of society" like that ever really done anything good for society? Lets see, Thomas Edison only had a few months of traditional schooling, yet he became a very successful inventor and businessman. The history books are filled with people who didn't fit society's expectations and changed history for the better. On the other hand, there are comparatively very little people who followed society's instructions and really ended up benefiting society.
Something tells me that the average internet "addicted" kid is going to be a lot better at some parts of computers than the person with many years of college education on computers. And that internet "addicted" kid could very well invent the next great thing in computers, where if they had been following society's instructions they would be making little more than a paycheck.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, because I'm sure we will all end up using Ubuntu a thousand years into the future.
...Atheist != no personal god. If you are an atheist you believe in no god whatsoever. Plus you can't really be a Christian (As in a follower of Christ) if you believe that he can't be known (is impersonal). So what you seem to be after is that he believed in a god who was similar to that of the Jewish and Christian faiths but yet was completely different (as a fundamental part of both Jewish and Christian theology is that God is personal).
A few years back he was one of figures that helped me jetisson religion, and ever since I've had a greater curiousity about science.
Faith is simply believing something that can't be proven. Theres a -ton- of scientific fact that requires faith, especially for the beginning scientist. For example, the basis of uniformitarianism which is essential for the study of geology, can not be 100% proven. You can assume it is true based on the lack of evidence for catastrophicism. We rely on the fact that some things are stable and don't change for a ton of scientific measurements. If certain elements speed up or slow down their half life some of which may be thousands of years, entire systems of measurements may be destroyed. There is no way that you can be absolutely sure that every atom always decays at the same rate. You need faith for a good chunk of science in 2009, perhaps there will be a day where everything can be proven, but until that day comes (even though I highly doubt it will) you need some faith to believe science.
Because all banks get evaluated by various governmental agencies as oversight. To them now all loans to home builders are considered "risky" and banks don't really want to be red-flagged and be government-controlled. Mix that with the fact that a few homebuilders in the area (unrelated to my friend) have defaulted on a few loans, makes it hard for them to really lend.
yes, millions. i do not count only "allied" soldiers. several million civilians are known to have died.
i always chuckle a little when people like dismiss the idea that the several trillion dollars spent on wars of aggression, surveillance and CIA torture camps could not possible have contributed in any way to the economic meltdown...
And CIA torture camps, how do they have anything to do with an economic meltdown? Yes, they are bad, we get that. Did it have anything to do with the meltdown. No.
millions needlessly dead,
war over large parts of the planet
mass alienation and destabilisation,
Of who? And of what?
worldwide economic collapse...
Which we all know Bush is to blame for everything... Really, it started with Clinton and Clinton's desire to have every American own a home. Sure, its a noble idea but it went way to far. For example, a person who would ordinarily qualify for a $150,000 loan would be bumped up to getting a $1750,000 loan... So then eventually they couldn't pay it back because they borrowed more than they could afford. (see http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2008/02/clintons_drive.html for an article on what I'm talking about).
Obama's plan seems to be lets spend our way out of an economic collapse! Mixed with tons of regulations. For example, I have a good friend who runs a home building business, he has been in business since 1982 and hasn't defaulted on a single loan and hasn't been late on any of his bills in the past 20 years. Today, he can't get a loan to build another house because Obama's administration says that he is "too big of a risk" WTF!?! This person has sold all of their houses, how exactly is he supposed to get any more money to build houses and sell them if he can't get a loan for it? It makes no sense at all.
But if you look at American televised news, you see that it really isn't news but rather a bunch of opinionated people trying to create A) Panic so more people will tune in (look at how they handled Swine Flu) B) A "shocking" story that isn't news or C) Things that paint their company in a positive light. Electronic and print news has bias, but it is less of opinion and more on the selection of stories. While some of it could be justified (people reading TorrentFreak aren't going to really care about how some guy got busted selling bootlegged DVDs in China) a lot of it is to spin the "facts" towards one side.
I find the BBC's world news to be pretty unbiased as for the part of opinions. Though I do think they publish stories with only a few "facts" to sway one side or another.
Bush didn't appoint a ton of "czars" that were accountable to no one. Yes, the Bush administration had a lot of flaws, but Obama'a administration looks to be expanding on them.
The hardest part about coding really isn't the ideas, especially for children ideas flow naturally. Its the coding part that is difficult. How many of us when we were on our C64s had a great idea for a game but couldn't code it? If the person learned Scratch rather than a more "traditional" programming language, their skills other than their ideas end up going nowhere. On the other hand, if you give them Python they can more logically transition into C, C++, etc. And really, ActionScript isn't that much better than Scratch. Sure, you can more easily port it, to other systems (most systems run Flash) but it still won't port to any other language.
How is this news? Yes, we all know traditional HDs are cheap. Yes, we know that you can buy more storage then you could possibly need. So how is this newsworthy? It really is no faster nor more reliable than SSDs. I think this is more or less a non-story.
It depends, to finish up your analogy, should we give the kids a tricycle when they already have a motorized Segway, or give them a motorcycle. Showing a kid "Hello World" doesn't provoke the same interest it did back in the '80s. Really, back then we had (for the time) state of the art games that you could fully modify with a week or two of learning. Even "advanced" games like Super Mario Bros. for the NES is looked at as something a beginner should be able to do. So unless the kid can make a game equivalent to SMB, they aren't going to be too interested.
Scratch is great in that it teaches how to "think" like a programmer. However, ends up not really doing you a lot of good in the long run. Python is an easy to use language but it also is very "real" in that knowing Python can get you somewhere. That said, Scratch is very easy to use and you can make decent applications in there, but in the end you have effectively a "toy" language which won't really help you in the long run.
With Symbian and Android now free, what is the reason for even producing a Windows Mobile handset anymore? I mean, why pay extra for a license when you can just customize your own OS for next to nothing?
Well, first, my version of windows came with many non MS products (trust me i wish it didn't) - including McAffee, Norton, AOL, Roxio and more
Perhaps I should have clarified by saying that non-MS things that compete with MS products. None of those really do.
NOt sure about your statement proving that MS makes it unprofitable for a company to sell non-MS OS with their computers. Dell is one of the largest computer retailers and you can get ubuntu with their computers (http://www.dell.com/home/laptops#subcats=&navla=&a=51800~0~1932545).
However, Dell does not advertise them. At one time I believe that they couldn't even sell them without facing the wrath of MS, but I think that changed eventually, however they still can't advertise them. Even on the link you provided you can see that "Dell recommends Windows Vista Home Premium" and on all of Dell's TV and print ads you don't see Linux mentioned.
...But they also have contracts with all the OEMs that make it so they can't bundle non-MS things with their machines or advertise non-MS systems otherwise MS increases the price of Windows to them that it becomes unprofitable to run a business. Add that in with a relatively stupid population that can't or won't install anything other than the defaults due to FUD by the media or by outdated experiences.
And for a post about how many browsers there are, you need to look more in depths at reports. Sure, Firefox seems to be lagging behind, but there are a ton of other browsers rather than IE, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.
or, indeed, for consumers. It's just noise -- a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check
How is it MAD? MS, try as it might, simply can't make a search engine that is going to be used more than Google's. Google will still lose out to Windows on a few things even with Chrome OS, for one being the large amount of specialty applications out there for Windows.
...Because the media by and large thinks that (or at least implies) that every kid age 13-20 has a MySpace, Twitter and Facebook accounts, that they own a PS3, 360 and Wii. Basically what this report is saying is that Twitter is simply a fad. That it doesn't capture the attention of the people who presumably would be the next big adopters. How is this useful to businesses? Well, if they are targeting 13-20 year olds, they might want to invest in different advertising than on Twitter especially for the long term.
The MacPad will arrive in fall '09 or Jan '10, with a 10" diagonal color display, a $599 price point with a Verizon data plan, a stylus, note taking application and handwriting recognition and an e-bookstore for iTunes.
Ok, if this is all true (which I really haven't seen that any of it is) I can't see this being a success for Apple. First, $599 for it? Honestly you can get full laptops cheaper than that with data. Second, a stylus with all the multi-touch from the iPhone? Third Verizon(!)(?) they make AT&T look great in comparison.
It depends though. Most of the time price != performance. For example I bought an Alienware laptop (this was back when they had a simi-decent reputation), it cost me more than a cheap laptop, but I figured that I might as well go with Alienware because at the time I had a lot of cash and figured it was just as easy to buy it pre-built then mess with a cheaper laptop to upgrade its specs. While it worked it worked great, it was a fast machine for its time, came installed with one of the (very few at the time) wireless cards that worked very nicely with Linux and overall was a great machine. Then, about 6 months into using it, the power cord stopped working, so I called up support and got another one, went through two powercords, then the motherboard died and was still under warranty so I got that replaced. Then the power cord died yet again, however they had discontinued the make of my computer and to buy a third-party one, upon buying the cord they said I should buy, it after 2 weeks of usage managed to fry my motherboard. After that I bought a cheap laptop (Compaq) and it works to this very day (although it is obsolete).
I haven't personally had any Sony laptops, but from reading some various forums they were a pain to get to work with anything but the Windows they came with. And the two Toshiba laptops I have had (a really, really, really old Satellite running Windows 3.1 and still working today, and a newer one) were all very low end (as in, the cheapest laptops I could find that ran "real" OSes and weren't a netbook) and they were decent.
And even with a cheap laptop, today I don't have that much cash, if a $400 cheap laptop lasts me a year of productive work, it could very, very, well pay for itself faster than a $1000 MacBook or Sony Vio laptop.
It almost /did/ destroy Apple as a company, utterly, in the 90's. Thank god they put a stop to that, or things like iPod's wouldn't exist.
The problem wasn't just licensing and selling cheap crap, it was the fact that Classic Mac OS was overly outdated. Windows was actually better in many ways than Mac OS. Today, you have the exact opposite, OS X is built on more solid design principles than Windows is, has a better looking GUI, and in general provides a better user experience. Back with Classic Mac OS when compared to Windows NT, you had Mac OS having an older looking GUI, (I mean, comparing Windows 98 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows98.png and OS 9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mac_OS_9_screenshot_2.png ) to the average person Windows 98 looks more "advanced".
As for licensing OS X out to third party manufacturers, it might be disastrous, or it might be a rampant success. You have to remember, its not the '90s anymore, after Vista the mindshare for MS products went way down and unless Windows 7 can salvage it, people are going to be looking for another OS. Perhaps licensing a OS X "compatibility pack" or GUI pack?
* Apple: OSX keeps getting better and better. Will they make enough improvement that people want to switch away from Microsoft?
I think OS X will only really beat MS if either A) Apple releases -cheap- computers or B) Licenses it out to other OEMs that make cheap computers. I mean, when I can buy a $400 laptop (not a netbook but a laptop) with Windows on it and do just about everything that a $999 Macbook can do, the choice is clear for most people. Yes, there are a few niche things that require OS X, but the vast majority of software works by default on Windows and may have a Mac port. I would imagine that a lot of people would love to have OS X rather than Windows but for a laptop that is $600 more than the competition that does the same thing, I can't see people flocking over to Apple when PC hardware is dirt cheap. Yes, Apple hardware is cheaper when you go by a component to component basis, but really for the average person, 3 gigs of DDR2 is going to be better than 3 gigs of DDR3 when the DDR3 RAM costs way more. If Apple lowers their prices, I can see them dominating, but these days who wants to pay $999 for Apple's cheapest laptop when you can buy a netbook for under $300 and a full laptop for $400 and under.
Please tell me how going to boot camp really made you a more productive individual to society.
On one hand, the Chinese government is trying to shape today's youth into something which will contribute to society
Something tells me that the average internet "addicted" kid is going to be a lot better at some parts of computers than the person with many years of college education on computers. And that internet "addicted" kid could very well invent the next great thing in computers, where if they had been following society's instructions they would be making little more than a paycheck.