If you arn't going to bother even giving me one reason/explanation, then why bother replying? Did you understand what I said? What evidence do you give that you understand? Saying I'm 'blowing smoke' says nothing. Go do some research if you don't understand. Or are you one of those people who just dismisses things out of ignorance?
Anyway, to save you the hassle of replying, I'll take it that if you don't then that doesn't mean you are wrong.
EEG machines show that a thought begins some 0.5 seconds before it enters our awareness. So although it feels like "I am thinking and choosing my thoughts/opinions", rather, the thought ocurrs independently of our free will.
So when ebbv attacked redbird, for "doing it because everyone else doesn't", I tried to point out that ebbv was no more 'free from reactionary effects' than redbird could be. Indeed, ebbv's own attack was an "unconsciouly generated reactionary effect".
It feels like 'i am thinking', but the EEG measurement shows that the thinking comes prior to the thinker.
It was silly of me to try and make such an esoteric point on/. and I got moderated down.
are you some alternate personality of mine? no i didn't think so. then you cannot know if i don't do as i said.
The reason I can is because you are a person, like me. So when I get information about the sorts of ways people lie, and I begin to see myself lying in just those ways, and notice that I previously didn't think I was lying, but now see it plainly, then I also begin to notice it in other people. Point it out to them, and they "get sick". Because they don't like the sound of it... they don't want to acknowledge it.
Notice how you subtally changed "I never lie" to "I never lie much"...
i/do/ always think about things before i say or type them. the question is just how much?
Do you see how you subtly changed what you were saying? And furthermore you retaliate by calling me
your phrasing is a stupid person's attempt at sounding intelligent
It's really simple. Doesn't take a genius to see it when you know what you're looking for. Anyway, seeing as my challenge is being refuted thus:
you challenging my thought processes is like a butterfly trying to stop a 777 from taking off
I promise to leave you alone... being the huge intellectual 777 that you are... I might get squished in your jet engine air intake:-P
Lie. You always think ? That is not 100% true for anyone. And as for my posts giving you nausea, that may be a sign that your normal 'automatic thinking process' is being challenged --- eg. "I always think before I say" --> "but if I'd thought before saying that, I would not have said it, because I'd realise that I don't always think before I say" ---- and the 'cracks' in your wall are showing up as 'nausea' and feeling "annoyed".
That aside, I agree with your "popular/LCD" vs. "popular/best" distinction.
was that supposed to be an attempt at satirizing me?
No, I was being serious.
Some people (like the poster you attacked), may have an interest in exploring alternatives, even just for the sake of it. This preference for alternatives may be more a personality trait, something that the person does without really knowing why. That's just the way they are. In your attack on the person you are making clear that you don't share this personality trait. From your point of view, it is stupid. But think, is there any situation where exploring alternatives is perhaps desirable, even useful? Of course there are, but your personality went on the defensive. And before you knew it, you were calling him a moron. Hence my asking, do you even know why you are thinking 'moron'? Your personal preference got ahead of your impartiality. You 'reacted' to him, just like he reacts to his environment. Humans are surpisingly automatic phenomena.:-P
Learning a little linux has shown me that an OS is really a whole bunch of stuff, ranging from the "surface" gui theme, to the sub-surface APIs, to the core OS systems of memory management etc... down to drivers and so on. This everybody here knows.
MacOS (pre X) is just one big 'lump' as far as average users are concerned. And comparing linux to preX-macOS is a 'lump' comparison, and not a very useful one. MacOS X is layered, like Linux -- the kernel, GNU utils, X, Gnome or KDE desktop etc. Heck, MacOS X even adds a microkernel layer (whatever advantage that may have), and so is aquiring the evolutionary diversity and strength that *nix has --- If one part is not working, or failing, it can be replaced with something better.
If developers flock to Gnome or KDE over Carbon, then MacOS X may (ok, a BIG 'may') adopt those desktops. If Apple is about to die because there are no developers, then why not adopt the new leading 'standard'). Even as it is, Carbon is supposed to be the second choice API. New stuff should be done in Cocoa. So when comparing Apple and Linux we can make the comparison more complex and fluid.
In the immortal words of Thunderbirds (which I never saw as a kid... but it's coming back) "Anything could happen..." (that was Thunderbirds...right? Or was it Stingray? )
About the only huge blunder on Microsoft's part was not recognizing the impact of the Internet, and we all saw how quickly they turned that around.
Yes, and just exactly how did they do that? Well, by giving away free software of course.
Like it or not, this may be the one thing that plants the seed in general consumer's minds that 'good software can be free'. Tell them they should pay for a browser now, and they may laugh. How long before they start expecting their whole OS, or their office suite, to be free as well? At least hardware manufacturers still have something manufactured to sell.
MS may get undone by their own favorite tactics. Assimilation of competition's features, and giving stuff away to set 'standards'.
Perhaps, but I feel (yes, that's 'feel', not 'think') that a 'movement' gets going not because of sound rational reasoning, but rather is a phenomenon that manifests seemingly out of the background, until it becomes the new background. It is always easy to make up plausible reasons and explanations afterwards, but all these depend on points of view. So what I'm saying is, when the common automatically aquired belief system comes to include 'software is free', 'educated' people will sit around in bars having rational discussions about how 'free is the proper way', and making up all sorts of reasons for this to be so. They won't have a clue why it's really happened, or whether it really is 'better', but once this movement is going, people will just unconsciously accept it.
Impressionist art is today considered popular, and liked by a lot of people. But originally it did not "fit" what people thought art should be, and they would 'rightly' criticise it. They could find reasons for damming it. But today, people find reasons for admiring it. The movement succeeded, and became the new norm.
As my point is "touchy feely misty", it says nothing concretely useful, like 'exactly when will 51% of desktops will be linux...' I'm just saying that Linux may come to dominate regardless of all the rational and sane reasoning.
The situation has become totally ridiculous. There's an old quote about how "private property" was invented the day an ape stuck a fence around a field, called it "his", and all the other apes believed him.
While we do live on a "small planet", with limited land resources, intellectual "property" is no such "thing". You can't try to apply the laws of the material world to the mental world. They two are different domains. They have different properties. They cannot be treated the same way.
Unlike a material object, an idea has no physical location. It transcends space and time. Ideas are a wonderful opportunity for people to give to the world in a manner that does not detract from themselves. If I give you my dinner, I may go hungry, but if I share my idea, we _both_ benefit (if it's a good one).
We are at a point where the powers that be would have us take "memory eraser" pills when we have finished watching a concert, so that we are not "stealing" memories of their IP --- (I submit this silly analogy as a homage to all the other silly analogies being spouted by highly paid, so called, "intelligent" individuals).
Unfortunately DVD is making it's way into the consumer mainstream.... seductively playing on the new entertainment tech appeal to the masses. But thanks to the discussions on/. I for one will at least be avoiding the stuff. Heck, I don't read enough fiction. Maybe I'll just read more books instead.
Re. the statement about companies protecting their "revenue stream": your services are no longer needed. Thanks, it's been great doing business with you, the music distributors (you know who you are), but I am not able to obtain music quite easily without your help. So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Cripes, that is ugly! I'll bet the architect was quite pleased with himself until he realised he had to put a door on it. But lest we condemn glass pyramids; at least there's I.M. Pei's Louvre.
The only fact is that I don't have a Java Jini powered toilet despite Sun's claims.
It could save many a marriage. Imagine Bob gets to the office, and suddely realises he's forgotten to put the lid down! He swiftly logs in across the net and sends the "lower lid" command, just in time before his wife goes in for a pee. "Phew, that Jini Powered Toilet was the best investment I ever made!".
Architects can really only offer advice from experience with past projects.
Yes, it's easy to blame architects, but in their defence we can say that, unlike other design disciplines, architects don't get to test prototypes. The actual finished building, with all its new and untested stuff, is the one and only "prototype".
Oops, I was being ignorant of pyramid types! It seems the Borobudur Temple is part Zigurat, and being one of the seven wonders of the world, I'd better take back my comment about steps being "ugly".
The Stockport pyramid, however, is not so pretty, as you can see.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to create a CAD drawing with inaccurate dimensions?
Easy! Just use a cad system that allows multiple layers with the _same_ names, and who's namespace for layers is only 7 chars.... like MicroGDS!!!! Oh, and did I mention that it wouldn't allow layers to be deleted? Or that the "display layers list" dialog could only show 1023 layers, and then give up? Or that we had composed all our drawings using a windowing feature, that one day we discovered were exported to.dxf as blank boxes???? Did I mention we were trying to draw a £50M hospital on this thing? Oh joyous happy memories..... }-(
...are literally impossible to stake, at least in a Euclidean universe
Hey, now there's an idea! Don't bother Deconstructing the building, just draw it normally, and deconstruct Space! I can see architects really going for this one.... Lets see, we can call it "anti phallocentric ecofeminist gaia post-modern relativistic geometry" !!
But. ..how? I'm just me, inside this body, composed of my thoughts.
Oops, I didn't see the replies, so this is probably a little late...
If "you" are composed of thoughts, how can "you" be aware of the thought? To illustrate this, bring to mind a "picture" of the the room you are sitting in. See yourself sitting in the room. See that the you in the room is currently seeing a picture of the room, which contains another you that is seeing a picture of the room that contains another you... forever till absurdity.
Similarly, if you feel like "you" are "inside" your head, like there's a little person inside your head, then who is the little person inside the head of the little person? How many "you's" are there?
To get out of this problem, it could simply be that anything that is in your awareness is not you. If it was you, or a part of you, then you'd have to include you in you in you in you etc. Just like the eye cannot see itself, so anything that is in awareness, being experienced, cannot be you. This includes the table, "your" body, "your" feelings, "your" thoughts... they are all phenomena passing before you like clouds passing across the sky.
Everything is "in" awareness. There's no real inside/outside split. If there is no split, then that would mean that to harm another would be like harming "yourself". Sound familiar? --- There is a famous Albert Einstein quote, that illustrates this beautifully,
A Human Being is part of the Whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in Time and Space. He experiences himself, his Thoughts and Feelings, as something separate from the rest- a kind of Optical Delusion of His Consciousness. This Delusion is a kind of Prison for us, restricting us to our personal Desires and to affection for a few Persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this Prison by widening our circle of Compassion to embrace all living Creatures and the Whole of Nature in its Beauty.
But rather than have my second hand version, check out a professionally written piece, So Who Are You?
Cubicles are barely acceptable, "open environments" are totally inappropriate. I used to work in one, and everytime someone had questions for me or whatever, 5 other people basically stopped working.
And to think that the Open Plan layout was originally sold to corporations on the basis of all the extra productivity they would gain through saving everybody the time it takes to knock/reply/turn handle/enter/close door, hundreds of times a day. --- yes, they actually timed this!
The Great Pyramid of Stockport, a few miles out of Manchester (in England), is a -huge- glass pyramid with offices inside.
One day a guy passes the place, riding in the back of a cab/taxi. He says to the driver, "god, that's an awful building". The taxi driver replies, "Actually, I designed it."
Apparently this is true. And apparently the original plan called for 12 identical "pyramids" across the whole site.
The worst thing is, they're not even "proper" pyramids, being "stepped" into an ugly "broken pyramid" shape.
On behalf of architects everywhere, I would like to extend you all a formal apology for our profession's: lack of understanding; our unwillingness to listen; our obsession with personal agendas; our disregard for basic human comfort; our arrogance against (l)users; our prioritizing ideas over substance; our facination with 'creativity' for the sake of it, and ignorance of proven solutions; our elitism in being 'producers of Culture', and obnoxious pretentiousness; and for when we forget to look at the engineer's drawings, until two months later, somebody asks, "Hey, is there any cross bracing in this building...?" --- "Hey, I just found this drawing... and its got bracing going through... er.. where we've drawn all the windows... "
But seriously, I can't apologise for these people. Just know that the sorts of problems you're talking about, as "users" of buildings (that's what architects call you), is a direct result of how they are taught.
Perhaps someone could start a "programmer's/IT office user organisation", to collect information and promote the better education of architects in this respect. They (architects) would be chuffed to know they're being noticed, (although they'll still think they know better.)
Why the hell does Radio Shack need my phone number when I'm buying batteries?
So they can dial the mobile that you've got your batteries installed in, and send the batteries a "shutdown" command (ie. leak acid) if they report that you are using them in a phone/brand not permitted by the Battery Shrinkwrap User Licence...
Slashdot Mirror
you mean you don't like me? oh well. :-)
If you arn't going to bother even giving me one reason/explanation, then why bother replying? Did you understand what I said? What evidence do you give that you understand? Saying I'm 'blowing smoke' says nothing. Go do some research if you don't understand. Or are you one of those people who just dismisses things out of ignorance?
Anyway, to save you the hassle of replying, I'll take it that if you don't then that doesn't mean you are wrong.
You might find this interesting...
EEG machines show that a thought begins some 0.5 seconds before it enters our awareness. So although it feels like "I am thinking and choosing my thoughts/opinions", rather, the thought ocurrs independently of our free will.
So when ebbv attacked redbird, for "doing it because everyone else doesn't", I tried to point out that ebbv was no more 'free from reactionary effects' than redbird could be. Indeed, ebbv's own attack was an "unconsciouly generated reactionary effect".
It feels like 'i am thinking', but the EEG measurement shows that the thinking comes prior to the thinker.
It was silly of me to try and make such an esoteric point on /. and I got moderated down.
Notice how you subtally changed "I never lie" to "I never lie much".
Oops, my small intellect made a mistake! I wrote the above, when what I meant was:
Notice how you subtally changed "I always think" to "I always think to some degree".
Ok, I'm starting to enjoy this now...grin.
are you some alternate personality of mine? no i didn't think so. then you cannot know if i don't do as i said.
The reason I can is because you are a person, like me. So when I get information about the sorts of ways people lie, and I begin to see myself lying in just those ways, and notice that I previously didn't think I was lying, but now see it plainly, then I also begin to notice it in other people. Point it out to them, and they "get sick". Because they don't like the sound of it... they don't want to acknowledge it.
Notice how you subtally changed "I never lie" to "I never lie much"...
i /do/ always think about things before i say or type them. the question is just how much?
Do you see how you subtly changed what you were saying? And furthermore you retaliate by calling me
your phrasing is a stupid person's attempt at sounding intelligent
It's really simple. Doesn't take a genius to see it when you know what you're looking for. Anyway, seeing as my challenge is being refuted thus:
you challenging my thought processes is like a butterfly trying to stop a 777 from taking off
I promise to leave you alone... being the huge intellectual 777 that you are... I might get squished in your jet engine air intake :-P
but i always think about things before i say them
Lie. You always think ? That is not 100% true for anyone. And as for my posts giving you nausea, that may be a sign that your normal 'automatic thinking process' is being challenged --- eg. "I always think before I say" --> "but if I'd thought before saying that, I would not have said it, because I'd realise that I don't always think before I say" ---- and the 'cracks' in your wall are showing up as 'nausea' and feeling "annoyed".
That aside, I agree with your "popular/LCD" vs. "popular/best" distinction.
was that supposed to be an attempt at satirizing me?
No, I was being serious.
Some people (like the poster you attacked), may have an interest in exploring alternatives, even just for the sake of it. This preference for alternatives may be more a personality trait, something that the person does without really knowing why. That's just the way they are. In your attack on the person you are making clear that you don't share this personality trait. From your point of view, it is stupid. But think, is there any situation where exploring alternatives is perhaps desirable, even useful? Of course there are, but your personality went on the defensive. And before you knew it, you were calling him a moron. Hence my asking, do you even know why you are thinking 'moron'? Your personal preference got ahead of your impartiality. You 'reacted' to him, just like he reacts to his environment. Humans are surpisingly automatic phenomena. :-P
They have to have the cheesiest theme song of all the cartoons that have ever existed.
Appetiser cheese and Dessert cheese.
Fireball XL-5???
Learning a little linux has shown me that an OS is really a whole bunch of stuff, ranging from the "surface" gui theme, to the sub-surface APIs, to the core OS systems of memory management etc... down to drivers and so on. This everybody here knows.
MacOS (pre X) is just one big 'lump' as far as average users are concerned. And comparing linux to preX-macOS is a 'lump' comparison, and not a very useful one. MacOS X is layered, like Linux -- the kernel, GNU utils, X, Gnome or KDE desktop etc. Heck, MacOS X even adds a microkernel layer (whatever advantage that may have), and so is aquiring the evolutionary diversity and strength that *nix has --- If one part is not working, or failing, it can be replaced with something better.
If developers flock to Gnome or KDE over Carbon, then MacOS X may (ok, a BIG 'may') adopt those desktops. If Apple is about to die because there are no developers, then why not adopt the new leading 'standard'). Even as it is, Carbon is supposed to be the second choice API. New stuff should be done in Cocoa. So when comparing Apple and Linux we can make the comparison more complex and fluid.
In the immortal words of Thunderbirds (which I never saw as a kid... but it's coming back) "Anything could happen..." (that was Thunderbirds...right? Or was it Stingray? )
About the only huge blunder on Microsoft's part was not recognizing the impact of the Internet, and we all saw how quickly they turned that around.
Yes, and just exactly how did they do that? Well, by giving away free software of course.
Like it or not, this may be the one thing that plants the seed in general consumer's minds that 'good software can be free'. Tell them they should pay for a browser now, and they may laugh. How long before they start expecting their whole OS, or their office suite, to be free as well? At least hardware manufacturers still have something manufactured to sell.
MS may get undone by their own favorite tactics. Assimilation of competition's features, and giving stuff away to set 'standards'.
Perhaps, but I feel (yes, that's 'feel', not 'think') that a 'movement' gets going not because of sound rational reasoning, but rather is a phenomenon that manifests seemingly out of the background, until it becomes the new background. It is always easy to make up plausible reasons and explanations afterwards, but all these depend on points of view. So what I'm saying is, when the common automatically aquired belief system comes to include 'software is free', 'educated' people will sit around in bars having rational discussions about how 'free is the proper way', and making up all sorts of reasons for this to be so. They won't have a clue why it's really happened, or whether it really is 'better', but once this movement is going, people will just unconsciously accept it.
Impressionist art is today considered popular, and liked by a lot of people. But originally it did not "fit" what people thought art should be, and they would 'rightly' criticise it. They could find reasons for damming it. But today, people find reasons for admiring it. The movement succeeded, and became the new norm.
As my point is "touchy feely misty", it says nothing concretely useful, like 'exactly when will 51% of desktops will be linux...' I'm just saying that Linux may come to dominate regardless of all the rational and sane reasoning.
but I am not able to obtain music quite easily without your help
but I am now able to obtain music quite easily without your help
Arghhh, f*****g typo, my fingers have their own sence of humour....
The situation has become totally ridiculous. There's an old quote about how "private property" was invented the day an ape stuck a fence around a field, called it "his", and all the other apes believed him.
While we do live on a "small planet", with limited land resources, intellectual "property" is no such "thing". You can't try to apply the laws of the material world to the mental world. They two are different domains. They have different properties. They cannot be treated the same way.
Unlike a material object, an idea has no physical location. It transcends space and time. Ideas are a wonderful opportunity for people to give to the world in a manner that does not detract from themselves. If I give you my dinner, I may go hungry, but if I share my idea, we _both_ benefit (if it's a good one).
We are at a point where the powers that be would have us take "memory eraser" pills when we have finished watching a concert, so that we are not "stealing" memories of their IP --- (I submit this silly analogy as a homage to all the other silly analogies being spouted by highly paid, so called, "intelligent" individuals).
Unfortunately DVD is making it's way into the consumer mainstream.... seductively playing on the new entertainment tech appeal to the masses. But thanks to the discussions on /. I for one will at least be avoiding the stuff. Heck, I don't read enough fiction. Maybe I'll just read more books instead.
Re. the statement about companies protecting their "revenue stream": your services are no longer needed. Thanks, it's been great doing business with you, the music distributors (you know who you are), but I am not able to obtain music quite easily without your help. So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Mixing USB 1.X and 2.0 devices will not work well.
Instead of "Plug 'n Play", novice users are just going to get stuck at the "plug" part.
Calls to tech support because the video camera they just bought seems "slow",
It could have been so simple, but now it's a mess for clueless users. Just wait til USB3.0.
Cripes, that is ugly! I'll bet the architect was quite pleased with himself until he realised he had to put a door on it. But lest we condemn glass pyramids; at least there's I.M. Pei's Louvre.
The only fact is that I don't have a Java Jini powered toilet despite Sun's claims.
It could save many a marriage. Imagine Bob gets to the office, and suddely realises he's forgotten to put the lid down! He swiftly logs in across the net and sends the "lower lid" command, just in time before his wife goes in for a pee. "Phew, that Jini Powered Toilet was the best investment I ever made!".
Architects can really only offer advice from experience with past projects.
Yes, it's easy to blame architects, but in their defence we can say that, unlike other design disciplines, architects don't get to test prototypes. The actual finished building, with all its new and untested stuff, is the one and only "prototype".
Zigurat?
Oops, I was being ignorant of pyramid types! It seems the Borobudur Temple is part Zigurat, and being one of the seven wonders of the world, I'd better take back my comment about steps being "ugly".
The Stockport pyramid, however, is not so pretty, as you can see.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to create a CAD drawing with inaccurate dimensions?
Easy! Just use a cad system that allows multiple layers with the _same_ names, and who's namespace for layers is only 7 chars.... like MicroGDS!!!! Oh, and did I mention that it wouldn't allow layers to be deleted? Or that the "display layers list" dialog could only show 1023 layers, and then give up? Or that we had composed all our drawings using a windowing feature, that one day we discovered were exported to .dxf as blank boxes???? Did I mention we were trying to draw a £50M hospital on this thing? Oh joyous happy memories.....
}-(
Hey, now there's an idea! Don't bother Deconstructing the building, just draw it normally, and deconstruct Space! I can see architects really going for this one.... Lets see, we can call it "anti phallocentric ecofeminist gaia post-modern relativistic geometry" !!
But. . .how? I'm just me, inside this body, composed of my thoughts.
Oops, I didn't see the replies, so this is probably a little late...
If "you" are composed of thoughts, how can "you" be aware of the thought? To illustrate this, bring to mind a "picture" of the the room you are sitting in. See yourself sitting in the room. See that the you in the room is currently seeing a picture of the room, which contains another you that is seeing a picture of the room that contains another you... forever till absurdity.
Similarly, if you feel like "you" are "inside" your head, like there's a little person inside your head, then who is the little person inside the head of the little person? How many "you's" are there?
To get out of this problem, it could simply be that anything that is in your awareness is not you. If it was you, or a part of you, then you'd have to include you in you in you in you etc. Just like the eye cannot see itself, so anything that is in awareness, being experienced, cannot be you. This includes the table, "your" body, "your" feelings, "your" thoughts... they are all phenomena passing before you like clouds passing across the sky.
Everything is "in" awareness. There's no real inside/outside split. If there is no split, then that would mean that to harm another would be like harming "yourself". Sound familiar? --- There is a famous Albert Einstein quote, that illustrates this beautifully,
But rather than have my second hand version, check out a professionally written piece, So Who Are You?
Cubicles are barely acceptable, "open environments" are totally inappropriate. I used to work in one, and everytime someone had questions for me or whatever, 5 other people basically stopped working.
And to think that the Open Plan layout was originally sold to corporations on the basis of all the extra productivity they would gain through saving everybody the time it takes to knock/reply/turn handle/enter/close door, hundreds of times a day. --- yes, they actually timed this!
The Great Pyramid of Stockport, a few miles out of Manchester (in England), is a -huge- glass pyramid with offices inside.
One day a guy passes the place, riding in the back of a cab/taxi. He says to the driver, "god, that's an awful building". The taxi driver replies, "Actually, I designed it."
Apparently this is true. And apparently the original plan called for 12 identical "pyramids" across the whole site.
The worst thing is, they're not even "proper" pyramids, being "stepped" into an ugly "broken pyramid" shape.
On behalf of architects everywhere, I would like to extend you all a formal apology for our profession's: lack of understanding; our unwillingness to listen; our obsession with personal agendas; our disregard for basic human comfort; our arrogance against (l)users; our prioritizing ideas over substance; our facination with 'creativity' for the sake of it, and ignorance of proven solutions; our elitism in being 'producers of Culture', and obnoxious pretentiousness; and for when we forget to look at the engineer's drawings, until two months later, somebody asks, "Hey, is there any cross bracing in this building...?" --- "Hey, I just found this drawing... and its got bracing going through... er.. where we've drawn all the windows ... "
But seriously, I can't apologise for these people. Just know that the sorts of problems you're talking about, as "users" of buildings (that's what architects call you), is a direct result of how they are taught.
Perhaps someone could start a "programmer's/IT office user organisation", to collect information and promote the better education of architects in this respect. They (architects) would be chuffed to know they're being noticed, (although they'll still think they know better.)
Why the hell does Radio Shack need my phone number when I'm buying batteries?
So they can dial the mobile that you've got your batteries installed in, and send the batteries a "shutdown" command (ie. leak acid) if they report that you are using them in a phone/brand not permitted by the Battery Shrinkwrap User Licence...