Tablets were never going to sell like they were forever. We're approaching the point where most people who want them, already have them. That doesn't mean they were a fad or a bubble. Without looking at sales figures, I would guess that all major inventions, from the Model T to the microwave oven to the MP3 player have gone through a similar cycle. They will continue to sell as people upgrade or replace aging units, but not at the rate they once did. It's a huge win for Apple that they got in at the ground floor. All the "me too!" companies now have an uphill fight on their hands. The Acer CEO likely knows this, and so is declaring the grapes to be sour.
When has there ever been a liberal supermajority? You mean those few months, where you needed to count people like Lieberman as "Democrats" in order to reach the magic number of 60?
The point is that people kill for the basest reasons, and come up with an excuse to rationalize it. Sometimes, the excuse is religion. Sometimes it's spreading democracy. Should we destroy democracy as well, for the harm done in its name? Or should we perhaps realize that people aren't always honest about their motives?
But hey forget it. We now return you to your regularly scheduled five minutes hate.
No, the Vatican's official policy is that condoms are okay to use in the interest of preventing disease. It took way too long for them to reach that conclusion, so criticize them for that. But don't spread misinformation.
Call me callous, but yes, to an extent. If we can help some rebels overthrow a dictator with minimal loss of life and a relatively low cost, with substantial support from our allies, then that's fine. I'd prefer we be more open about our intentions, but I understand the need for realpolitik.
If the war is going to cost a trillion dollars, kill thousands of our kids and hundreds of thousands of civilians, and be led by a joke of a "Coalition of the Willing" that consists of us, Great Britain, and five guys from East Bumblefuck, then we ought to be a bit more cautious. The fact that our allies aren't willing to get on board should be a warning sign, not a cause to deride them as cowards and rename potato products.
If Bush had handled Iraq the way Obama handled Libya, I would have been fine with it.
Al Qaeda is bad, ergo all rebel forces are bad forever!
Great logic you got going there. Nevermind the fact that in any large movement of people whose only membership criteria is a pulse, you'll find a whole bunch of bad ones. The Republican party probably contains at least a thousand neo-Nazis. That doesn't mean that the GOP is a Nazi organization.
So why should it matter if there are some self-proclaimed Al Qaeda members among the Libyan rebels? Should we insist that they be ruled by oppressive dictators forever, lest the unsavory elements among them try to hurt us? And if so, is there any country on Earth that shouldn't be so oppressed?
What's to stop you from silencing the phone? There are a bunch of apps out there for math alarm clocks, where (for example) you need to multiply a pair of three digit numbers to turn it off. That's what I use now, and it works great.
China only owns about 15% of the US national debt. Most of it is owned by Americans. If China stopped buying our debt, it would hurt a bit, but we'd survive it. If America stopped buying Chinese goods, their economy would collapse.
The talk of China owning America is overblown. It started with jokes on late night talk shows, and somehow grew into common "knowledge".
It's still called The GIMP. And the Linux fanboys can't figure out why their adoption rates are poor. Can you imagine getting up in front of a board and being asked what tool you used? Or trying to start a company initiative to switch people over to The GIMP?
In the grown up world, people don't giggle about ass-rape. All the name does is cause people to doubt the GIMP team's professionalism. It's a distraction. Can't we at least get a fork that just changes the branding?
You're looking at it backwards. If, for some reason, God really wants you dead, then there's nothing you can do to stop it. If God is out to get you, neither medicine nor surgery is gonna save you. Therefore, we should use all the medicine and surgery we can to try to save lives, instead of worrying that we might be defying God's will. If it really was God's will, we wouldn't be able to defy it.
I always point this out when anti-abortion religious extremists try to argue "What if Jesus was aborted!?". Even if you assume God wouldn't force someone to carry a child against their free will, wouldn't he know ahead of time that that woman would choose an abortion, and simply pick a different mother?
So cavity searches and rendition are powers "taken away from the schools"? I have some bad news for you. When your 4th grade gym teacher "disappeared" you to his house and cavity searched you, that wasn't a school sanctioned punishment. You might want to get in touch with a lawyer.
What powers have been taking from schools? They can still issue detentions, can't they? They can take away recess, for younger kids. Kids can be kept out of extra-curricular activities, kicked off sports teams, etc.... Are you just talking about corporal punishment? That wouldn't make sense, because the cops can't (legally) use corporal punishment either.
It wasn't incomprehensible, nor was it designed to be. The different layers all had distinct visual styles and events happening in them, making it abundantly clear which was which. From memory, there was the 1st layer (the van running from the paramilitary forces), the 2nd layer (the hotel), the 3rd layer (the arctic fortress), and limbo. You really have trouble keeping track of four concurrent plots for an hour? The Lord of the Rings had more than that. Watchmen had more than that. The Foundation Trilogy had more than that. A Song of Ice and Fire had a lot more than that. Are those all incomprehensible? Is anything more complex than a 20 minute sitcom too much for you? I doubt it.
More likely, you're just engaging in some good old fashion snobbery. Something is popular? Find a way to attack it, so that you can show off how enlightened you are!
Oh, I'm sorry, did you think I give a fuck that you don't give a fuck? Why don't you just grow a thick skin and ignore comments you don't like.
While you might think the world evolves around you, it doesn't. In fact, most of us don't even care what you think.
Sorry, did that hurt?
Seriously though, i don't give a fuck that you don't care about him not caring. This isn't on Slashdot because it's science (there's a lot more that goes unreported). It's here because hurr, I could get high by scratching my nose! Of course there's no science supporting that lead-in statement, but hey, pot!
Oh, and oddly enough, a lot of people disagree with you and don't see your point of view. I know that hurts ya, but deal with it.
PS: the difference between me and you is that instead of getting all sanctimonious and pretending to actually wound someone with my words, I'm just engaging in outright mockery. One is a sign that you actually do care, the other is a good way to show someone you don't.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
99 cents for a song isn't extortion. At worst, it's a price somewhat higher than you'd like it to be. The fact that you have the ability to take something without paying doesn't mean that someone is extorting you by asking that you give them a dollar as a reward for their hard work.
If the D+ and D- lines are shorted in the cable itself, then it will draw as much current as the host can source, all the time. Your phone has no control over whether that number is 100 mA or 1.7 A. Furthermore, shorting the D+ and D- lines together is highly unlikely to damage the host. It's not like hackers are fabbing their own substandard chips. If you really want to make a cable that will kill the host, without being as obvious as sticking a USB connector on to the other end of a 120 VAC cord, your best bet would be shorting VBUS to one of the data lines.
I apologize then. There are a lot of people who enjoy posting things very much like your earlier posts (talking about throwing away $300 on every trip to the shoe store), as a way of bragging. I try to cut them down to size whenever I see it, because society's deification of wealth is tremendously harmful.
But I do have to correct you on one point. There is such a thing as "normal people". The distribution of wealth in this country is not a normal distribution in which most people are near the mean income. The average income may be $40k, but the median is only around $25k. That means that half of all Americans live on less than $480 a week, and that's before taking out taxes. That is normal. The typical American is at or below the poverty line. It's an ugly truth that we tend to ignore, and one that people need to be reminded of, often and loudly.
If you really think that "anyone who has been married" views a hundred bucks as disposable, then I suggest you broaden your horizons a bit. The sort of people you have apparently met in your life are all spoiled fat cats, and it would do your perspective a world of good to be exposed to some normal people.
Having plenty of money is fine. Not realizing that the overwhelming majority of people aren't so lucky is a serious character flaw.
It's still a hundred dollars we're talking about, so it's far from "disposable" for the vast majority of people. Really, I can't think of many reasons to buy it, even at clearance prices. Maybe if it were $20, I'd buy it just to take it apart.
According to the article, his counter argument to the Cosmological Argument was that, "Hey, maybe the universe has always been here!"
That school of thought has been debunked time and time again. He wasn't trying to teach his students the truth, he was trying teach against religion. The right thing to do would be to teach about the Big Bang, and all the evidence that we have that time began with the Big Bang, and that the universe has been around for so many billions of years, and all this evidence in the fossil record of evolution, and then ask students why a kind and loving God would create all those mountains of evidence just to trick us into believing a lie.
The wrong thing to do is to teach them another lie (the steady state theory) and hope your lie is stronger than the other guy's.
Slashdot Mirror
Tablets were never going to sell like they were forever. We're approaching the point where most people who want them, already have them. That doesn't mean they were a fad or a bubble. Without looking at sales figures, I would guess that all major inventions, from the Model T to the microwave oven to the MP3 player have gone through a similar cycle. They will continue to sell as people upgrade or replace aging units, but not at the rate they once did. It's a huge win for Apple that they got in at the ground floor. All the "me too!" companies now have an uphill fight on their hands. The Acer CEO likely knows this, and so is declaring the grapes to be sour.
When has there ever been a liberal supermajority? You mean those few months, where you needed to count people like Lieberman as "Democrats" in order to reach the magic number of 60?
The point is that people kill for the basest reasons, and come up with an excuse to rationalize it. Sometimes, the excuse is religion. Sometimes it's spreading democracy. Should we destroy democracy as well, for the harm done in its name? Or should we perhaps realize that people aren't always honest about their motives?
But hey forget it. We now return you to your regularly scheduled five minutes hate.
As if that's unique to religion. Singularity, anyone?
No, the Vatican's official policy is that condoms are okay to use in the interest of preventing disease. It took way too long for them to reach that conclusion, so criticize them for that. But don't spread misinformation.
If you root your phone at all, you can remove the crap without needing to switch to Cyanogen mod.
So as long as it is cheap it is okay?
Call me callous, but yes, to an extent. If we can help some rebels overthrow a dictator with minimal loss of life and a relatively low cost, with substantial support from our allies, then that's fine. I'd prefer we be more open about our intentions, but I understand the need for realpolitik.
If the war is going to cost a trillion dollars, kill thousands of our kids and hundreds of thousands of civilians, and be led by a joke of a "Coalition of the Willing" that consists of us, Great Britain, and five guys from East Bumblefuck, then we ought to be a bit more cautious. The fact that our allies aren't willing to get on board should be a warning sign, not a cause to deride them as cowards and rename potato products.
If Bush had handled Iraq the way Obama handled Libya, I would have been fine with it.
Al Qaeda is bad, ergo all rebel forces are bad forever!
Great logic you got going there. Nevermind the fact that in any large movement of people whose only membership criteria is a pulse, you'll find a whole bunch of bad ones. The Republican party probably contains at least a thousand neo-Nazis. That doesn't mean that the GOP is a Nazi organization.
So why should it matter if there are some self-proclaimed Al Qaeda members among the Libyan rebels? Should we insist that they be ruled by oppressive dictators forever, lest the unsavory elements among them try to hurt us? And if so, is there any country on Earth that shouldn't be so oppressed?
What's to stop you from silencing the phone? There are a bunch of apps out there for math alarm clocks, where (for example) you need to multiply a pair of three digit numbers to turn it off. That's what I use now, and it works great.
China only owns about 15% of the US national debt. Most of it is owned by Americans. If China stopped buying our debt, it would hurt a bit, but we'd survive it. If America stopped buying Chinese goods, their economy would collapse.
The talk of China owning America is overblown. It started with jokes on late night talk shows, and somehow grew into common "knowledge".
It's still called The GIMP. And the Linux fanboys can't figure out why their adoption rates are poor. Can you imagine getting up in front of a board and being asked what tool you used? Or trying to start a company initiative to switch people over to The GIMP?
In the grown up world, people don't giggle about ass-rape. All the name does is cause people to doubt the GIMP team's professionalism. It's a distraction. Can't we at least get a fork that just changes the branding?
Stem cells are people.
Corporations are people.
Homosexuals are not people.
The poor are not people.
Illegal immigrants are not people.
--The Republican party platform, in five lines or less.
You're looking at it backwards. If, for some reason, God really wants you dead, then there's nothing you can do to stop it. If God is out to get you, neither medicine nor surgery is gonna save you. Therefore, we should use all the medicine and surgery we can to try to save lives, instead of worrying that we might be defying God's will. If it really was God's will, we wouldn't be able to defy it.
I always point this out when anti-abortion religious extremists try to argue "What if Jesus was aborted!?". Even if you assume God wouldn't force someone to carry a child against their free will, wouldn't he know ahead of time that that woman would choose an abortion, and simply pick a different mother?
So cavity searches and rendition are powers "taken away from the schools"? I have some bad news for you. When your 4th grade gym teacher "disappeared" you to his house and cavity searched you, that wasn't a school sanctioned punishment. You might want to get in touch with a lawyer.
What powers have been taking from schools? They can still issue detentions, can't they? They can take away recess, for younger kids. Kids can be kept out of extra-curricular activities, kicked off sports teams, etc.... Are you just talking about corporal punishment? That wouldn't make sense, because the cops can't (legally) use corporal punishment either.
It wasn't incomprehensible, nor was it designed to be. The different layers all had distinct visual styles and events happening in them, making it abundantly clear which was which. From memory, there was the 1st layer (the van running from the paramilitary forces), the 2nd layer (the hotel), the 3rd layer (the arctic fortress), and limbo. You really have trouble keeping track of four concurrent plots for an hour? The Lord of the Rings had more than that. Watchmen had more than that. The Foundation Trilogy had more than that. A Song of Ice and Fire had a lot more than that. Are those all incomprehensible? Is anything more complex than a 20 minute sitcom too much for you? I doubt it.
More likely, you're just engaging in some good old fashion snobbery. Something is popular? Find a way to attack it, so that you can show off how enlightened you are!
Because albums always have a few crap songs on them as filler.
Oh, I'm sorry, did you think I give a fuck that you don't give a fuck? Why don't you just grow a thick skin and ignore comments you don't like.
While you might think the world evolves around you, it doesn't. In fact, most of us don't even care what you think.
Sorry, did that hurt?
Seriously though, i don't give a fuck that you don't care about him not caring. This isn't on Slashdot because it's science (there's a lot more that goes unreported). It's here because hurr, I could get high by scratching my nose! Of course there's no science supporting that lead-in statement, but hey, pot!
Oh, and oddly enough, a lot of people disagree with you and don't see your point of view. I know that hurts ya, but deal with it.
PS: the difference between me and you is that instead of getting all sanctimonious and pretending to actually wound someone with my words, I'm just engaging in outright mockery. One is a sign that you actually do care, the other is a good way to show someone you don't.
Wow, after I do the Princess Bride line, you're going to set me up so perfectly with that blatant misuse of the word "simile"? It's too easy...
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
99 cents for a song isn't extortion. At worst, it's a price somewhat higher than you'd like it to be. The fact that you have the ability to take something without paying doesn't mean that someone is extorting you by asking that you give them a dollar as a reward for their hard work.
If the D+ and D- lines are shorted in the cable itself, then it will draw as much current as the host can source, all the time. Your phone has no control over whether that number is 100 mA or 1.7 A. Furthermore, shorting the D+ and D- lines together is highly unlikely to damage the host. It's not like hackers are fabbing their own substandard chips. If you really want to make a cable that will kill the host, without being as obvious as sticking a USB connector on to the other end of a 120 VAC cord, your best bet would be shorting VBUS to one of the data lines.
I apologize then. There are a lot of people who enjoy posting things very much like your earlier posts (talking about throwing away $300 on every trip to the shoe store), as a way of bragging. I try to cut them down to size whenever I see it, because society's deification of wealth is tremendously harmful.
But I do have to correct you on one point. There is such a thing as "normal people". The distribution of wealth in this country is not a normal distribution in which most people are near the mean income. The average income may be $40k, but the median is only around $25k. That means that half of all Americans live on less than $480 a week, and that's before taking out taxes. That is normal. The typical American is at or below the poverty line. It's an ugly truth that we tend to ignore, and one that people need to be reminded of, often and loudly.
If you really think that "anyone who has been married" views a hundred bucks as disposable, then I suggest you broaden your horizons a bit. The sort of people you have apparently met in your life are all spoiled fat cats, and it would do your perspective a world of good to be exposed to some normal people.
Having plenty of money is fine. Not realizing that the overwhelming majority of people aren't so lucky is a serious character flaw.
It's still a hundred dollars we're talking about, so it's far from "disposable" for the vast majority of people. Really, I can't think of many reasons to buy it, even at clearance prices. Maybe if it were $20, I'd buy it just to take it apart.
According to the article, his counter argument to the Cosmological Argument was that, "Hey, maybe the universe has always been here!"
That school of thought has been debunked time and time again. He wasn't trying to teach his students the truth, he was trying teach against religion. The right thing to do would be to teach about the Big Bang, and all the evidence that we have that time began with the Big Bang, and that the universe has been around for so many billions of years, and all this evidence in the fossil record of evolution, and then ask students why a kind and loving God would create all those mountains of evidence just to trick us into believing a lie.
The wrong thing to do is to teach them another lie (the steady state theory) and hope your lie is stronger than the other guy's.