Cults need centralized leadership to tell its adherents what to do and what to believe...
Pope, anyone? Christianity is a cult, albeit one that combines the most popular Christian (meaning, Christ-believing) and pagan ideas in the early centuries after the supposed death of christ. Rome simply realized that it was going to be too hard to exterminate the Christians, so they folded them in with some Pagan stuff, got Paul (a Roman Citizen and a Jew!) to make it a little more marketable (just like they recently did away with limbo to make Catholicism more popular in Asia and Africa), and canonized the bible themselves with their own selection of Bishops in 313 AD.
Also, Christianity is not diverse, it's divisive. Until l500 you wouldn't let commoners in on even reading the bible, and were corrupt all the way to the top until someone got sick of it, changed the bible, and started their own and new version of Christianity. Just like the Calvinists, Mormons, Evangelicals, Lutherans, Anglicans... nothing more than bunch of cults who choose to believe different parts of their own dogma derived from most of the same book.
I'm sure glad we live in country that is fiscally responsible. We've got our debt down to nine trillion, so it really was time to start a few wars and spend half a trillion dollars a year on our military. Who needs an education or the stabilization of developing countries through economic development when we can have maglev engines and VTOL projects that literally waste billions of dollars?
President's Day really got me thinking of how lucky I am to live in America. I mean, only communists forcibly take money away from their citizens in order to increase their own power, domestically and abroad. And, if we lived in a communist country, just doing something like reading a book or saying we should overthrow the government would warrant an interview from the police! They can even spy on their own citizens in secret! And, in communist countries, they can throw you in jail for no reason, and you don't get a lawyer or anything! Lincoln would be so, so proud.
Since he seems to be a contributing editor right now, can we just turn off stories submitted by Roland "LOOK WHAT SOMEONE ELSE CREATED THROUGH MY WEBSITE BECAUSE I CAN SUMMARIZE WITH GREAT DEXTERITY AND ADD NO VALUABLE COMMENTARY" Piquepaille? It's like posting links to slashdot on slashdot!
Anyone who wants to legally have a test machine for 99% of the market wants an intel mac. Developers and QA guys want to boot OS X / Windows / Linux / FreeBeerSD.
But, yet again, Steve's megalomania keeps a good product from being a great one. Leaving out the BIOS compatibility layer (or even an option to easily turn it on) is just petty.
Christianity is a mixing of early pagan religion (Mithras, Osiris, Zoroastrianism, Dionysus, etc) and hebrew theology. Therefore, any Christian cannot claim any absolute truth over any other religion, as all religions are by definition a non-falsifiable guess at the meaning and nature of the universe.
When I say non-relativism, I mean that you cannot claim the bible is 100% true, or false, or anything, because it's simply what the Roman authority in 313 believed should be a part of the bible. That is a very simple and straightforward fact, one of many you can find in the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia (which is the most honest work that organization has ever produced). The fact the literature contains hyperbole is quite beside the point. All literature is subject to interpretation, so anyone claims that they have divined the absolute truth from any written document is a liar.
My argument was probably far too lowbrow for your "Googling skills," so please forgive my obvious ignorance. I guess a more learned person would just consider the bible as fact before considering the source of it. Or would that just better suit your argument?
The Bible is first and foremost a guide on how to have a relationship with God and those parts are pretty clear IMHO. That's where the absolutes lie.
Those are where YOU believe the absolutes are. I'm just saying that the entire bible is subject to interpretation, so it is impossible for anyone to claim that the bible is 100% anything.
Same answer for both, they were Pagan traditions originally and used by the Catholic church. I've never really understood why in this day and time it even matters.
People who claim to be Christian like to pretend that they have "the truth" and everyone else has nothing, but it's easy for anyone outside of their psychosis to see that Christianity is just a guess, just as all other cults and religions are. This is perfectly illustrated by the wholesale plagiarism of pagan religions by Roman Christians to keep things a little more orderly.
You sound reasonable. Some of the others who "follow Christ" are far far worse than any terrorist, because they act like animals despite their good education and luxurious living conditions. The kill'em all, let God sort'em out mentality is the most ridiculous and horrifying thought since fascism.
Can a man live inside of a fish for three days? Was Eve fashioned out of Adam's rib?
If you say something to yourself similar to, "Obviously that part was allegory," then you have no leg to stand on. Either every single thing in it is literal (and the earth has four corners) or everything must be interpreted. Once everything must be interpreted, you cannot claim any sort of non-relativism.
Now, ask yourself these questions: Which bible do you read, and why? Do you think the Romans (who cannonized the Bible with their selected bishops in 313) were answering the call of God or politics? Why do you go to church on Sunday instead of the Sabbath, or Saturday? Why do most of the Christian holidays coincide exactly with pagan holidays that are centuries older?
If you're a Trinitarian, are non-trinitarians going to hell? What if you aren't baptised? Why do you think there are so many sects of Christianity if the bible is so crystal clear?
A majority of Christian beliefs are pagan, and the early church even had a theory to explain the similarities called "diabolical mimicry." They claim that the devil knew what the life of Christ would be like, so he "pre-created" mythical ideals that would be extraordinarily similar, such as the son of god dying for man's sins and the immaculate conception. More recently, that same church did away with the theory of limbo in order to make Catholicism more palatable to Asians and Africans, where infant mortality rates remain high.
I have mentioned all this to explain why spending time pouring over documents in ancient languages which have nearly no value to modern life is not something at the top of my list. While you squabble about who won't learn entire languages to better understand the obvious truth, people are being killed. The lie of divine justice placates the majority of Americans about our role in the slaughter of tens of thousands of "others," and I find it morally reprehensible. If there is a God, he stopped interfering with our world a long time ago. Amazingly, every single supernatural event ever reported has been little more than hearsay. I think I'm not the only one who, in a world chock full of devices that seem to accurately record our reality, sees the obvious reason for that.
Please provide specific scriptural references from the New Testament of everything you just claimed. (Yes, I know the Ten Commandments are Old Testament.) Also, include the version of the bible you're reading, and information on the non-Christian Hebrew scholar's paper on the context and obvious meaning, which God conveniently let his "true" followers leave out of the bible.
Don't worry. I'll wait. And respond with lots of Hebrew scholars who believe, among other things, that Mary wasn't a virgin after all.
We can go round and round, but while we're doing that, someone is claiming that THEIR interpretation is correct, and killing people with any moral qualms. I find it hard to believe that a cult with well over 1600 sects has any bead on "one" truth.
Obviously God does not want us to mess with genes or embryos. Even though I have no religous documentation to back this up, it's what I think, so let's just go with it, okay?
PS: That whole "THOU SHALT NOT KILL" thing doesn't apply to fighting for natural resources or the march of freedom. Uh, because that's also what I think. Ain't it amazing how often God agrees with me?
If I could have a dual core machine with a really nice graphics card, and the machine was also cool, quiet, and attractive for $1300, and I could boot any OS I wanted on it (OS X, Linux, XP), I think I don't qualify as perverse. The iMac is a compact and powerful machine, and there's nothing available like it at the moment. Furthermore, give me the choice between carrying around two laptops or one (especially for developers or on-site technicians), can you possibly guess which one would be less expensive?
So, please, just drop this joke. It's been told a million times. If you don't have anything useful to say, just save your breath.
|x| No Steve Jobs! |x| It has a benchmark showing G5s sucking Athlon wind (DEPRECATED) |x| It has a benchmark showing Duo sucking Athlon wind (NEW) |x| It's not a dupe about a Mac rumour. |x| It is an advertisement for a new product that is NOT from Apple. |x| DRM is bad on Macs? WHAT WHAT WHAT?
Seriously, fuckers! I've seen more relevant and non-Apple related news this past week on hardmac!
(reposted from the Apple story that preceded this one.)
|x| No Steve Jobs! |x| It has a benchmark showing G5s sucking Athlon wind (DEPRECATED) |x| It has a benchmark showing Duo sucking Athlon wind (NEW) |x| It's not a dupe about a Mac rumour. |x| It is an advertisement for a new product that is NOT from Apple. |x| DRM is bad on Macs? WHAT WHAT WHAT?
Seriously, fuckers! I've seen more relevant and non-Apple related news this past week on hardmac!
But really, once Windows XP and Linux are booting on a Mac, I doubt many developers in the world will ever buy anything else. This might be the unseen shift everyone has been waiting for - now you can get a decently performing dual processor machine that runs nearly every OS for less than $1300. With a 500GB internal drive on an iMac, Linux/Windows/Tiger can live comfortably.
Remember, once Mac applications are running natively on Intel, it won't be too hard to port them to windows, and vice versa. If Apple ever releases an XCode that will wrap Windows widgets around Objective-C... kinda close to game over.
The reason they don't get along is not because of this theory.
When it is illegal for me to do whatever I want with my own body or a consenting, adult partner, because someone else can't let go of the nice feelings they get when they imagine an invincible chaperone in the sky -- THAT is when disagreements happen.
They hate science because it is displacing religion. Rainbows aren't God's sweet little promise not to kill us all again. They're just the result of the way light refracts off of water droplets, and if the physics of that magically changed 4,000 years ago, maybe that would explain how you fit millions of animals into a wooden boat.
See, they don't want a competing theory in classrooms. They want prayer before and after meals in school. They want Christ presented as a historical character, and Shiva presented as a myth. They want far more than their painfully pathetic attempt at challenging evolution.
The good Christians I've met are the ones who actually have enough faith in the bible to share it with others intead of trying to get it passed as law. The people trying to shove it down others' throats are the ones to be feared, because they haven't understood the most basic premise that Christ taught: love, no matter what! Love, because NO ONE is without sin. Love because only GOD can pass judgement upon others. I got that out of the book by reading it. I'm afraid most Christians have not.
I don't know... that would make current Powerbooks worth less than $1200 to most people. Who's going to buy an undeniably slower, hotter, and older-looking Powerbook for $2000-2500?
The problem I see is that Mac isn't going to have a way to differentiate their products if everything is intel. The "home" whitebox line will have to be single core, and the "pro" blackbox line will be dual. I guess an argument could be made for dual dual-cores, but I don't see that except for the Powermacs of this summer.
Perhaps if the people in power were punished when they were caught, we'd all feel bad. But, um, they aren't even punished when they are caught. And they don't feel bad.
So, start locking up the CEOs. Lock up every single white collar criminal who's stolen money from their investors or the government. Let them serve ten minutes for every dollar they've stolen, and apply the rule to petty thieves.
A kid steals an iPod, he gets 50 hours in the tin. Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay gets life. Seems fair to me.
You're argument against my point is, apparently, that I'm 12 years old and you've used a Commodore 64. Gee, where have I heard that before? But first, let me address the tepid meat that muscled itself out of your asshole, and into your best try at an argument.
So, IT people just use VI? They all go from turning a computer on into hacking bash scripts and using BitchX? Most programmers I know started out doing their homework on PCs, and said, hey, what do I use to type this shit up? And lo, someone handed them an Office 97 CD, and they typed. Hey, what do I use to paint this shit up? And lo, they were handed Photoshop, and they edited. Hey, how can I make my own web page? Sprang forth Dreamweaver. Now we are possibly younger than you, and still enjoying our youth. If that makes you cranky, well, I'm sort of glad.
The bottom line is, when the barrier of entry to everything is basically $0, why do you settle for anything less than the best? People rarely do. So, while pirating remains trivial, people are going to use the best piece of pirated software they can get their hands on. If pirating becomes exponentially more difficult, people will start considering other options, and if Linux and other OSS are still at $0, they're going to fare very well.
If troll bait, I've bitten hard, and at least earnestly. And if you actually believe people do not pirate software, please keep jumping up and down. Your balls will drop eventually.
Most software companies specify in the click wrap that they do not even guarantee their product to work! And do you know what Microsoft's support policy is? If the the program starts, it works properly - the rest is tutorial, and therefore costs extra money.
Also, how much support do you think you're going to get from your hardware vendor when your Linux box stops working and they can't troubleshoot it because the hardware wasn't designed for it? Sure, Dell will sell you a Linux workstation, but you'll pay more money for it. Business is about making more money than you spend.
What? How are you going to install Linux on hardware that isn't supported? If it's some software controlled modem or wifi card, sure, but that's only while Windows has so much marketshare. And if you have someone who's installed an OS once before, they'll probably notice the lack of network connectivity.
Your entire argument hinges on the fact that people are stupid, which is usually a good argument. However, in the long run, the better solution will always win, especially where software and IT is concerned.
PS: Good business people do not care about promises, they care about results. Having an 800 number that costs you $120 an hour will only feel good until you talk to the guy across the street who had someone set up a linux-based workgroup that hasn't been rebooted in 9 months. If you're thinking "That's impossible!" then you either haven't used Linux, or you don't know how.
At home, between the ages of 13 and 15. And do you think they can afford $800 for Photoshop, or $200-400 for Office? When their Dell is DRMed, and the download doesn't work but one time out of a hundred, they're going to pick up OpenOffice or GIMP.
So, the tide might take time to change, but the tipping point will happen immediately.
Linux: $ 0 Operating System $ 0 Open Office 2.0 $ 0 Evolution Messaging System $ 0 Virus Protection $ 0 Required Future Software Upgrades $??? Downtime ---- $ 0 Total
Microsoft: $150 XP Pro/Vista Small Business Deluxe Platinum Edition SP0 $200 Office 2003/Asta La Vista Small Business Deluxe Platinum Edition SP0 $ 0 Outlook (included in Office Suite) $ 50 Virus Protection $??? Future Required Software Upgrades (to maintain support againt "sunset" policies) $??? Downtime $??? Sanity when an instant messaging virus compromises 10,000 computers. ---- $400 Total
I dunno. If OS X stays DRMed to Macs, and DRM arrives for Windows Machines (no more free copies of Photoshop/Office), Linux is going to clean up overnight
Anyone remember the anti-Soviet propaganda? "Do you want to wear all the same clothes, and eat at the same restaurants, and stand in line just to go to the same store?" Well, there'll be about 50,000 kids tomorrow wearing the same "retro" t-shirts, waiting outside IKEA, venti pumpkin-spice latte in hand.
Emo kids, goths, urban kids, etc., are always looking for someone "cool" to imitate. How many people will you see tomorrow with the same uniform on - trucker cap, faux-vintage t-shirt, belt out of dad's closet, and corduroy or khaki pants with adidas-style sneakers. Being cool is so important, people drink Pabst Blue Ribbon when they could actually have beer.
The mainstream is the mainstream because it's easier to allow a marketing douche to think for you than to have to think for yourself. If you're a geek, than the latest drama on what was Music Television is still a fucking waste of time.
As far as Britney outpacing Concerto sales, far more people hear classical music (on a ratio basis) in the modern world than they did in the 1700s or even 1800s. They simply choose other things because they like them better because of their friends, who like it because of the radio play, who play it because record companies pay them to, because they have a lot "invested" in crap artists like Britney.
The problem isn't commercialism, it's the value placed on wealth above all other things. This is a cultural problem, exacerbated by the fact that fools and their money are soon parted, and the more fools we make as a society the richer the.5% at the top get at the expense of killing their own culture.
America needs leadership, but most of that seemed to disappear in the 60s. JFK, RFK, MLK, where art thou? I've got hopes for Mbarak Obama and John McCain, but they're both writhing in the bureaucracy of their own political parties.
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Cults need centralized leadership to tell its adherents what to do and what to believe...
Pope, anyone? Christianity is a cult, albeit one that combines the most popular Christian (meaning, Christ-believing) and pagan ideas in the early centuries after the supposed death of christ. Rome simply realized that it was going to be too hard to exterminate the Christians, so they folded them in with some Pagan stuff, got Paul (a Roman Citizen and a Jew!) to make it a little more marketable (just like they recently did away with limbo to make Catholicism more popular in Asia and Africa), and canonized the bible themselves with their own selection of Bishops in 313 AD.
Also, Christianity is not diverse, it's divisive. Until l500 you wouldn't let commoners in on even reading the bible, and were corrupt all the way to the top until someone got sick of it, changed the bible, and started their own and new version of Christianity. Just like the Calvinists, Mormons, Evangelicals, Lutherans, Anglicans... nothing more than bunch of cults who choose to believe different parts of their own dogma derived from most of the same book.
I'm sure glad we live in country that is fiscally responsible. We've got our debt down to nine trillion, so it really was time to start a few wars and spend half a trillion dollars a year on our military. Who needs an education or the stabilization of developing countries through economic development when we can have maglev engines and VTOL projects that literally waste billions of dollars?
President's Day really got me thinking of how lucky I am to live in America. I mean, only communists forcibly take money away from their citizens in order to increase their own power, domestically and abroad. And, if we lived in a communist country, just doing something like reading a book or saying we should overthrow the government would warrant an interview from the police! They can even spy on their own citizens in secret! And, in communist countries, they can throw you in jail for no reason, and you don't get a lawyer or anything! Lincoln would be so, so proud.
Since he seems to be a contributing editor right now, can we just turn off stories submitted by Roland "LOOK WHAT SOMEONE ELSE CREATED THROUGH MY WEBSITE BECAUSE I CAN SUMMARIZE WITH GREAT DEXTERITY AND ADD NO VALUABLE COMMENTARY" Piquepaille? It's like posting links to slashdot on slashdot!
What the fuck?! Can't this guy work for a living? Oh! He's French! That explains it...
Anyone who wants to legally have a test machine for 99% of the market wants an intel mac. Developers and QA guys want to boot OS X / Windows / Linux / FreeBeerSD.
But, yet again, Steve's megalomania keeps a good product from being a great one. Leaving out the BIOS compatibility layer (or even an option to easily turn it on) is just petty.
Christianity is a mixing of early pagan religion (Mithras, Osiris, Zoroastrianism, Dionysus, etc) and hebrew theology. Therefore, any Christian cannot claim any absolute truth over any other religion, as all religions are by definition a non-falsifiable guess at the meaning and nature of the universe.
When I say non-relativism, I mean that you cannot claim the bible is 100% true, or false, or anything, because it's simply what the Roman authority in 313 believed should be a part of the bible. That is a very simple and straightforward fact, one of many you can find in the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia (which is the most honest work that organization has ever produced). The fact the literature contains hyperbole is quite beside the point. All literature is subject to interpretation, so anyone claims that they have divined the absolute truth from any written document is a liar.
My argument was probably far too lowbrow for your "Googling skills," so please forgive my obvious ignorance. I guess a more learned person would just consider the bible as fact before considering the source of it. Or would that just better suit your argument?
Those are where YOU believe the absolutes are. I'm just saying that the entire bible is subject to interpretation, so it is impossible for anyone to claim that the bible is 100% anything.
People who claim to be Christian like to pretend that they have "the truth" and everyone else has nothing, but it's easy for anyone outside of their psychosis to see that Christianity is just a guess, just as all other cults and religions are. This is perfectly illustrated by the wholesale plagiarism of pagan religions by Roman Christians to keep things a little more orderly.
You sound reasonable. Some of the others who "follow Christ" are far far worse than any terrorist, because they act like animals despite their good education and luxurious living conditions. The kill'em all, let God sort'em out mentality is the most ridiculous and horrifying thought since fascism.
Can a man live inside of a fish for three days? Was Eve fashioned out of Adam's rib?
If you say something to yourself similar to, "Obviously that part was allegory," then you have no leg to stand on. Either every single thing in it is literal (and the earth has four corners) or everything must be interpreted. Once everything must be interpreted, you cannot claim any sort of non-relativism.
Now, ask yourself these questions: Which bible do you read, and why? Do you think the Romans (who cannonized the Bible with their selected bishops in 313) were answering the call of God or politics? Why do you go to church on Sunday instead of the Sabbath, or Saturday? Why do most of the Christian holidays coincide exactly with pagan holidays that are centuries older?
If you're a Trinitarian, are non-trinitarians going to hell? What if you aren't baptised? Why do you think there are so many sects of Christianity if the bible is so crystal clear?
A majority of Christian beliefs are pagan, and the early church even had a theory to explain the similarities called "diabolical mimicry." They claim that the devil knew what the life of Christ would be like, so he "pre-created" mythical ideals that would be extraordinarily similar, such as the son of god dying for man's sins and the immaculate conception. More recently, that same church did away with the theory of limbo in order to make Catholicism more palatable to Asians and Africans, where infant mortality rates remain high.
I have mentioned all this to explain why spending time pouring over documents in ancient languages which have nearly no value to modern life is not something at the top of my list. While you squabble about who won't learn entire languages to better understand the obvious truth, people are being killed. The lie of divine justice placates the majority of Americans about our role in the slaughter of tens of thousands of "others," and I find it morally reprehensible. If there is a God, he stopped interfering with our world a long time ago. Amazingly, every single supernatural event ever reported has been little more than hearsay. I think I'm not the only one who, in a world chock full of devices that seem to accurately record our reality, sees the obvious reason for that.
Please provide specific scriptural references from the New Testament of everything you just claimed. (Yes, I know the Ten Commandments are Old Testament.) Also, include the version of the bible you're reading, and information on the non-Christian Hebrew scholar's paper on the context and obvious meaning, which God conveniently let his "true" followers leave out of the bible.
Don't worry. I'll wait. And respond with lots of Hebrew scholars who believe, among other things, that Mary wasn't a virgin after all.
We can go round and round, but while we're doing that, someone is claiming that THEIR interpretation is correct, and killing people with any moral qualms. I find it hard to believe that a cult with well over 1600 sects has any bead on "one" truth.
Obviously God does not want us to mess with genes or embryos. Even though I have no religous documentation to back this up, it's what I think, so let's just go with it, okay?
PS: That whole "THOU SHALT NOT KILL" thing doesn't apply to fighting for natural resources or the march of freedom. Uh, because that's also what I think. Ain't it amazing how often God agrees with me?
If I could have a dual core machine with a really nice graphics card, and the machine was also cool, quiet, and attractive for $1300, and I could boot any OS I wanted on it (OS X, Linux, XP), I think I don't qualify as perverse. The iMac is a compact and powerful machine, and there's nothing available like it at the moment. Furthermore, give me the choice between carrying around two laptops or one (especially for developers or on-site technicians), can you possibly guess which one would be less expensive?
So, please, just drop this joke. It's been told a million times. If you don't have anything useful to say, just save your breath.
I'm sorry, your story has been rejected because:
|x| No Steve Jobs!
|x| It has a benchmark showing G5s sucking Athlon wind (DEPRECATED)
|x| It has a benchmark showing Duo sucking Athlon wind (NEW)
|x| It's not a dupe about a Mac rumour.
|x| It is an advertisement for a new product that is NOT from Apple.
|x| DRM is bad on Macs? WHAT WHAT WHAT?
Seriously, fuckers! I've seen more relevant and non-Apple related news this past week on hardmac!
(reposted from the Apple story that preceded this one.)
I'm sorry, your story has been rejected because:
|x| No Steve Jobs!
|x| It has a benchmark showing G5s sucking Athlon wind (DEPRECATED)
|x| It has a benchmark showing Duo sucking Athlon wind (NEW)
|x| It's not a dupe about a Mac rumour.
|x| It is an advertisement for a new product that is NOT from Apple.
|x| DRM is bad on Macs? WHAT WHAT WHAT?
Seriously, fuckers! I've seen more relevant and non-Apple related news this past week on hardmac!
Heh.
But really, once Windows XP and Linux are booting on a Mac, I doubt many developers in the world will ever buy anything else. This might be the unseen shift everyone has been waiting for - now you can get a decently performing dual processor machine that runs nearly every OS for less than $1300. With a 500GB internal drive on an iMac, Linux/Windows/Tiger can live comfortably.
Remember, once Mac applications are running natively on Intel, it won't be too hard to port them to windows, and vice versa. If Apple ever releases an XCode that will wrap Windows widgets around Objective-C... kinda close to game over.
The reason they don't get along is not because of this theory.
When it is illegal for me to do whatever I want with my own body or a consenting, adult partner, because someone else can't let go of the nice feelings they get when they imagine an invincible chaperone in the sky -- THAT is when disagreements happen.
They hate science because it is displacing religion. Rainbows aren't God's sweet little promise not to kill us all again. They're just the result of the way light refracts off of water droplets, and if the physics of that magically changed 4,000 years ago, maybe that would explain how you fit millions of animals into a wooden boat.
See, they don't want a competing theory in classrooms. They want prayer before and after meals in school. They want Christ presented as a historical character, and Shiva presented as a myth. They want far more than their painfully pathetic attempt at challenging evolution.
The good Christians I've met are the ones who actually have enough faith in the bible to share it with others intead of trying to get it passed as law. The people trying to shove it down others' throats are the ones to be feared, because they haven't understood the most basic premise that Christ taught: love, no matter what! Love, because NO ONE is without sin. Love because only GOD can pass judgement upon others. I got that out of the book by reading it. I'm afraid most Christians have not.
I don't know... that would make current Powerbooks worth less than $1200 to most people. Who's going to buy an undeniably slower, hotter, and older-looking Powerbook for $2000-2500?
The problem I see is that Mac isn't going to have a way to differentiate their products if everything is intel. The "home" whitebox line will have to be single core, and the "pro" blackbox line will be dual. I guess an argument could be made for dual dual-cores, but I don't see that except for the Powermacs of this summer.
Joel O'Steen! The Bush Family! ENRON! We should start digging immediately.
Perhaps if the people in power were punished when they were caught, we'd all feel bad. But, um, they aren't even punished when they are caught. And they don't feel bad.
So, start locking up the CEOs. Lock up every single white collar criminal who's stolen money from their investors or the government. Let them serve ten minutes for every dollar they've stolen, and apply the rule to petty thieves.
A kid steals an iPod, he gets 50 hours in the tin. Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay gets life. Seems fair to me.
...I'll just call you immature.
You're argument against my point is, apparently, that I'm 12 years old and you've used a Commodore 64. Gee, where have I heard that before? But first, let me address the tepid meat that muscled itself out of your asshole, and into your best try at an argument.
So, IT people just use VI? They all go from turning a computer on into hacking bash scripts and using BitchX? Most programmers I know started out doing their homework on PCs, and said, hey, what do I use to type this shit up? And lo, someone handed them an Office 97 CD, and they typed. Hey, what do I use to paint this shit up? And lo, they were handed Photoshop, and they edited. Hey, how can I make my own web page? Sprang forth Dreamweaver. Now we are possibly younger than you, and still enjoying our youth. If that makes you cranky, well, I'm sort of glad.
The bottom line is, when the barrier of entry to everything is basically $0, why do you settle for anything less than the best? People rarely do. So, while pirating remains trivial, people are going to use the best piece of pirated software they can get their hands on. If pirating becomes exponentially more difficult, people will start considering other options, and if Linux and other OSS are still at $0, they're going to fare very well.
If troll bait, I've bitten hard, and at least earnestly. And if you actually believe people do not pirate software, please keep jumping up and down. Your balls will drop eventually.
What? How are you going to install Linux on hardware that isn't supported? If it's some software controlled modem or wifi card, sure, but that's only while Windows has so much marketshare. And if you have someone who's installed an OS once before, they'll probably notice the lack of network connectivity.
Your entire argument hinges on the fact that people are stupid, which is usually a good argument. However, in the long run, the better solution will always win, especially where software and IT is concerned.
PS: Good business people do not care about promises, they care about results. Having an 800 number that costs you $120 an hour will only feel good until you talk to the guy across the street who had someone set up a linux-based workgroup that hasn't been rebooted in 9 months. If you're thinking "That's impossible!" then you either haven't used Linux, or you don't know how.
At home, between the ages of 13 and 15. And do you think they can afford $800 for Photoshop, or $200-400 for Office? When their Dell is DRMed, and the download doesn't work but one time out of a hundred, they're going to pick up OpenOffice or GIMP.
So, the tide might take time to change, but the tipping point will happen immediately.
Wow! Here's a dual core PC for $1000!
Linux:
$ 0 Operating System
$ 0 Open Office 2.0
$ 0 Evolution Messaging System
$ 0 Virus Protection
$ 0 Required Future Software Upgrades
$??? Downtime
----
$ 0 Total
Microsoft:
$150 XP Pro/Vista Small Business Deluxe Platinum Edition SP0
$200 Office 2003/Asta La Vista Small Business Deluxe Platinum Edition SP0
$ 0 Outlook (included in Office Suite)
$ 50 Virus Protection
$??? Future Required Software Upgrades (to maintain support againt "sunset" policies)
$??? Downtime
$??? Sanity when an instant messaging virus compromises 10,000 computers.
----
$400 Total
I dunno. If OS X stays DRMed to Macs, and DRM arrives for Windows Machines (no more free copies of Photoshop/Office), Linux is going to clean up overnight
This is just an example of why geeks are geeks.
Anyone remember the anti-Soviet propaganda? "Do you want to wear all the same clothes, and eat at the same restaurants, and stand in line just to go to the same store?" Well, there'll be about 50,000 kids tomorrow wearing the same "retro" t-shirts, waiting outside IKEA, venti pumpkin-spice latte in hand.
Emo kids, goths, urban kids, etc., are always looking for someone "cool" to imitate. How many people will you see tomorrow with the same uniform on - trucker cap, faux-vintage t-shirt, belt out of dad's closet, and corduroy or khaki pants with adidas-style sneakers. Being cool is so important, people drink Pabst Blue Ribbon when they could actually have beer.
The mainstream is the mainstream because it's easier to allow a marketing douche to think for you than to have to think for yourself. If you're a geek, than the latest drama on what was Music Television is still a fucking waste of time.
As far as Britney outpacing Concerto sales, far more people hear classical music (on a ratio basis) in the modern world than they did in the 1700s or even 1800s. They simply choose other things because they like them better because of their friends, who like it because of the radio play, who play it because record companies pay them to, because they have a lot "invested" in crap artists like Britney.
.5% at the top get at the expense of killing their own culture.
The problem isn't commercialism, it's the value placed on wealth above all other things. This is a cultural problem, exacerbated by the fact that fools and their money are soon parted, and the more fools we make as a society the richer the
America needs leadership, but most of that seemed to disappear in the 60s. JFK, RFK, MLK, where art thou? I've got hopes for Mbarak Obama and John McCain, but they're both writhing in the bureaucracy of their own political parties.
...that will involve him saying he's never played the game, but Dick Cheney and "intelligence sources" said it was awesome.