Like I wrote, I considered the part after the comma a new sentence; the comma as a mistyped period. It's certainly in no way related to the thing before it, unless Wright is both 372 pages covering three parts and 11 chapters and the author of himself. Sorry, I was simply too tired at the time (11:18 PM CET) to consider how to explain the grammar of something that makes no sense. We can of course bicker over how we're supposed to parse the language, but it's certainly not worth the bother: The writing is shit, QED.
Also, trying to give information to an intended reader that most probably does not exist on Slashdot is no excuse for piling on with irrelevant fluff.
I can't speak for the GP, but it's not very well written, for one. The first four paragraphs are about the dangers of speaking out against the CoS, and end up in a -1, off topic point about British libel laws. What is this, self-aggrandisement for daring to write about the CoS? The review lacks focus, and plods randomly from point to point, often without making one:
As 372 pages covering 3 parts and 11 chapters, Wright is a mesmerizing author that creates a non-fiction spellbinding page-turner. The 4 main characters of the book are Hubbard, Miscavige and actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta.
The first sentence doesn't parse (and who the hell cares about number of parts and chapters anyway?), the second (after the comma) is in dire need of justification, and the third is simply irrelevant. That's just one paragraph, of course, but the first half of the essay is structured almost as poorly. The rest, I consider tl;dr material.
One thing this review does give me is more appreciation for the skill and effort needed for writing book reviews. It's difficult to do well, and perhaps not everyone can do it.
Oh wow, you must be a wannabe journalist to feign neutrality like that. "Both sides of the issue." Right. When one side is right and the other side is wrong, you can't expect the right side to stop mentioning facts out of fairness to those who should stop stating falsehoods. Also, your comment is still void of empirical fact. Once again, you obscure the issues you pretend to raise. You may not have declared your position on AGW, but you have proven yourself to be a dishonest prick who will accuse others of doing the things you're doing yourself in the process.
Almost everyone of those who "raise questions" just regurgitate stuff they've sucked up on internet messageboards, frequently debunked falsehoods that are still recirculated ad nauseam just because those people (look, I called them people, not denialists!) don't really care about facts. I notice that you don't mention any one of those "good points" you pretend to refer to, glossing over them yourself while blaming your strawman of the very same.
No, I'm trying to point out that although the East Roman Empire lasted an impressive 1100 years (and more, really), the Roman Empire itself, which it split off from, didn't last quite that long, and that adding them together is disingenuous. If you weren't so busy defending Western civilisation from the Caliphate, you would probably notice that I did in fact not say anything about the Caliphate at all.
Well, your Roman maths really depend on adding West Roman years to East Roman years while pretending they're the same. It's not even the same geographical area. The Romans never really were all that great with numbers.
As a biologist, you surely should know that some of the great paradigm shifts of biology have come after stealing ideas from other fields (Malthus to Darwin is the most obvious example). And narcc is right in that you don't really know much about what you're talking about.
You mean like copy and paste? Oh, I know it exists on tablets, but it's a chore. Hell, iPad users don't even know how to post links to Youtube videos unless it's to Facebook or Twitter via a 'share' icon. The ease of use of tablets is a myth. For even the simplest things: you need an app for that.
The N9 uses a clever low power mode on the AMOLED for the standby clock, which adds about 1 mA to the power drain. It's negligible. iOS could do the same, true, but no current iOS device, as they all use LCDs.
It's not well specced at all, though. It's got a pentile screen and a slow (even at the time of release) CPU, and the 3G speed is quite slow as well. Oh, and wifi and bluetooth share the same antenna and can't be used at the same time. The 1 GB of RAM is nice, and the polarising glass that makes the screen readable in sunlight is fantastically nice, but available on other Nokias as well, even their Windows phones.
It does look pretty, though, and the UI is something of a novelty (but not much better than the competition). It's not the most underrated smartphone in the world, as plenty of people who have never used one think it's awesome, but promising enough. RIM, Ubuntu and Jolla all use QML and Qt in their upcoming operating systems, so it will have offspring of sorts. Too bad that Nokia decided they would be better off as an OEM.
The Macbook Air and the ultrabooks aren't just thinner than the ultraportables of two or three years ago, they're just as small, are more powerful and have fantastic battery life at about half the price. I see no reason to complain about the price tag. The market is flooded with alternatives if you want something cheaper and thicker, but the trade-off is always lower quality parts. No, you can't have that 8 GB quad core i7 at netbook prices. You can, however, have an ultrabookish i3 with 4 GB of RAM for $450. No wonder the netbook is dying.
Google does not have a Macbook Air-like Ultrabook. Asus, Sony, Acer, Samsung and a few more do. Telvin_3d's claim that Apple is the only one is patently untrue, yet he's still at +5, insightful. There's no insight in his comment, it's just fraudulent marketing.
Yeah, except if you want a keyboard (mandatory for actual work: touch screens still suck and always will) it becomes as expensive as a good, cheap Lenovo laptop with much more power and storage, and a much better keyboard and a real OS as well.
Slightly wrong: Advertising has such an effect that the voters don't care. It's a system that makes propaganda mandatory but inaccessible outside the corporate loop, but it also makes it independent of the state, and as such it is yet another example of your great freedom. Of course the voters won't think of it as a big deal. That would be anti-American.
Er, the election is rigged before it gets to the vote. You can't win a U.S. election without tons of money for TV ads, and you won't get that kind of money without corporate support.
Most of the West, the U.S. included, was big on this kind of "experimentation" (i.e. lobotomies as a kind of medical treatment) a few decades ago. No need for Hitler here.
On a positive note, much of our current knowledge of how the human brain works comes from destruction of various kinds, either from intentional and misguided treatment or from strokes. The side effects are often interesting.
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Like I wrote, I considered the part after the comma a new sentence; the comma as a mistyped period. It's certainly in no way related to the thing before it, unless Wright is both 372 pages covering three parts and 11 chapters and the author of himself. Sorry, I was simply too tired at the time (11:18 PM CET) to consider how to explain the grammar of something that makes no sense. We can of course bicker over how we're supposed to parse the language, but it's certainly not worth the bother: The writing is shit, QED.
Also, trying to give information to an intended reader that most probably does not exist on Slashdot is no excuse for piling on with irrelevant fluff.
I can't speak for the GP, but it's not very well written, for one. The first four paragraphs are about the dangers of speaking out against the CoS, and end up in a -1, off topic point about British libel laws. What is this, self-aggrandisement for daring to write about the CoS? The review lacks focus, and plods randomly from point to point, often without making one:
The first sentence doesn't parse (and who the hell cares about number of parts and chapters anyway?), the second (after the comma) is in dire need of justification, and the third is simply irrelevant. That's just one paragraph, of course, but the first half of the essay is structured almost as poorly. The rest, I consider tl;dr material.
One thing this review does give me is more appreciation for the skill and effort needed for writing book reviews. It's difficult to do well, and perhaps not everyone can do it.
Oh wow, you must be a wannabe journalist to feign neutrality like that. "Both sides of the issue." Right. When one side is right and the other side is wrong, you can't expect the right side to stop mentioning facts out of fairness to those who should stop stating falsehoods. Also, your comment is still void of empirical fact. Once again, you obscure the issues you pretend to raise. You may not have declared your position on AGW, but you have proven yourself to be a dishonest prick who will accuse others of doing the things you're doing yourself in the process.
Almost everyone of those who "raise questions" just regurgitate stuff they've sucked up on internet messageboards, frequently debunked falsehoods that are still recirculated ad nauseam just because those people (look, I called them people, not denialists!) don't really care about facts. I notice that you don't mention any one of those "good points" you pretend to refer to, glossing over them yourself while blaming your strawman of the very same.
You want to see the church of scientololgy in boxing matches?
No, I'm trying to point out that although the East Roman Empire lasted an impressive 1100 years (and more, really), the Roman Empire itself, which it split off from, didn't last quite that long, and that adding them together is disingenuous. If you weren't so busy defending Western civilisation from the Caliphate, you would probably notice that I did in fact not say anything about the Caliphate at all.
Well, your Roman maths really depend on adding West Roman years to East Roman years while pretending they're the same. It's not even the same geographical area. The Romans never really were all that great with numbers.
As a biologist, you surely should know that some of the great paradigm shifts of biology have come after stealing ideas from other fields (Malthus to Darwin is the most obvious example). And narcc is right in that you don't really know much about what you're talking about.
Fallacy. You keep using that word.
You mean like copy and paste? Oh, I know it exists on tablets, but it's a chore. Hell, iPad users don't even know how to post links to Youtube videos unless it's to Facebook or Twitter via a 'share' icon. The ease of use of tablets is a myth. For even the simplest things: you need an app for that.
The on-screen keyboards are shit as well.
The N9 uses a clever low power mode on the AMOLED for the standby clock, which adds about 1 mA to the power drain. It's negligible. iOS could do the same, true, but no current iOS device, as they all use LCDs.
It's not well specced at all, though. It's got a pentile screen and a slow (even at the time of release) CPU, and the 3G speed is quite slow as well. Oh, and wifi and bluetooth share the same antenna and can't be used at the same time. The 1 GB of RAM is nice, and the polarising glass that makes the screen readable in sunlight is fantastically nice, but available on other Nokias as well, even their Windows phones.
It does look pretty, though, and the UI is something of a novelty (but not much better than the competition). It's not the most underrated smartphone in the world, as plenty of people who have never used one think it's awesome, but promising enough. RIM, Ubuntu and Jolla all use QML and Qt in their upcoming operating systems, so it will have offspring of sorts. Too bad that Nokia decided they would be better off as an OEM.
The Macbook Air and the ultrabooks aren't just thinner than the ultraportables of two or three years ago, they're just as small, are more powerful and have fantastic battery life at about half the price. I see no reason to complain about the price tag. The market is flooded with alternatives if you want something cheaper and thicker, but the trade-off is always lower quality parts. No, you can't have that 8 GB quad core i7 at netbook prices. You can, however, have an ultrabookish i3 with 4 GB of RAM for $450. No wonder the netbook is dying.
Google does not have a Macbook Air-like Ultrabook. Asus, Sony, Acer, Samsung and a few more do. Telvin_3d's claim that Apple is the only one is patently untrue, yet he's still at +5, insightful. There's no insight in his comment, it's just fraudulent marketing.
My bicycle light weighs a quarter of that and gets even longer battery life, and is more useful. It's still no laptop replacement.
Oh wow. Another Apple shill modded up for no reason. I thought Slashdot was supposed to have an anti-Apple bias.
Yeah, except if you want a keyboard (mandatory for actual work: touch screens still suck and always will) it becomes as expensive as a good, cheap Lenovo laptop with much more power and storage, and a much better keyboard and a real OS as well.
Slightly wrong: Advertising has such an effect that the voters don't care. It's a system that makes propaganda mandatory but inaccessible outside the corporate loop, but it also makes it independent of the state, and as such it is yet another example of your great freedom. Of course the voters won't think of it as a big deal. That would be anti-American.
That might be true, but Obama is just as easy to attack from the left.
Er, the election is rigged before it gets to the vote. You can't win a U.S. election without tons of money for TV ads, and you won't get that kind of money without corporate support.
American satirists must be in a sad state if that's the best they can come up with.
Most of the West, the U.S. included, was big on this kind of "experimentation" (i.e. lobotomies as a kind of medical treatment) a few decades ago. No need for Hitler here.
On a positive note, much of our current knowledge of how the human brain works comes from destruction of various kinds, either from intentional and misguided treatment or from strokes. The side effects are often interesting.
So the major tech gaffes of the year, according to the LA Times, are mainly advertising fiascos.
Er, you just listed how you make an argument and then didn't. That makes me kinda suspicious.
Yeah, why not give the old man the gift of mod points.