Yeah, that guy's gotta be unhappy with his situation. Zuck's going to be kicking himself when Dalton Caldwell (who?) is raking in billions with his highly successful business plan.
After reading all this crap about app.net I'm still unsure exactly what they do/plan to do, but taking over the world by taking advantage of idiots doesn't seem to be a part of it, so I doubt Zuckerberg's interested. I mean, they may have the taking advantage of idiots part down, but what good is that if you're not taking over the world?
But that's kind of my point. They don't care to make money on an operating system because they know it's a losing game - the market will continue to drive the cost of an operating system to zero and Apple wants no part in trying to fight an inevitable trend.
If Surface is any indication, someone at Microsoft finally explained this concept to Balmer in a way he could understand. General purpose software is a short term market. There will always be hobbyists and grad students and open source companies to churn out free alternatives.
People don't use desktop Linux for two reasons: 1) Gnome and KDE suck and the alternatives that don't suck are the niche desktops/lack the razzle-dazzle of OS X/Win 7. 2) Microsoft Office.
#2 is nicely being taken care of by LibreOffice and Wine. It can be scratched off the list here in a couple years. #1 is the roadblock (and, getting back to the topic of the original story, a reason De Icaza probably shouldn't be pointing fingers).
People don't have a problem with Linux. If people had a problem with Linux then Android wouldn't be the huge success it is. People just wants something that suits their needs. Desktop Linux will eventually get to that point even if progress has been rather stymied as of late. It'll probably take a long time, but a long time isn't NEVER EVER EVER.
I also don't understand your emphasis on Apple stuff. I agree that they have the right strategy - their strategy strengthens my argument: software isn't a reliable source of income as the price is always driven to zero, so they sell hardware and use software to compliment it. Desktop Linux probably won't affect Apple too much -- it's going to bone MS (their hardware partners would abandon them in a second if they could).
Also, when considering desktop Linux, I think it's important to consider places outside the first-world. I'm willing to bet, in a couple decades, if traditional operating systems are still used, Linux will run on the most computers in the world. Maybe some Unix system, something like Hurd that actually works, but whatever it is it'll be free and based on expired patents.
I think this attitude is pretty silly. We live in a time where things change drastically from decade to decade. Back when/. was a new thing, a popular belief was that Apple was soon to go out of business or, if they were lucky, get bought by Sun.
That example may be a tad extreme considering Apple's success since then was nothing short of miraculous, but to claim that a free technology will never be able to compete with high dollar alternatives is pretty silly to me. I do believe Linux will one day run the vast majority of desktops. I think the main reason that Jobs founded NeXt, and subsequently insisted on using it for OS X, was that he saw the writing on the wall. Some sort of open source *nix was going to come to rule the desktop space the same as the server space even if it's going to take a couple decades. Sell hardware and play nice with *nix. Hardware will never cost $0. Selling an operating system is kind of like schools selling textbooks: You need some kind of racket to force people to buy them, because everything they actually do is available elsewhere for free.
It's too bad Linus never backed one of those horses seriously (well, if he did, I wasn't aware of it). If he would be public and vocal about supporting a certain GUI, I'm sure a vast majority of the community would get behind it.
Why didn't Linux Desktop take off when Vista hit the market? The fact is that there's no big company pushing Linux desktop and running expensive ads for it on American TV. It will never be more than a niche player.
I don't think this is true. An operating system can only do so much for your average consumer. In the long term, all general purpose software will become either FOSS or maintained by the hardware manufacturer, like in Apple's case. Advertising only does so much when you're competing with free. The most important thing for the FOSS community to be concerned about right now is a "Year of LibreOffice becoming the standard word processor." The year of desktop Linux won't happen until MS Office is no longer viewed as a requisite piece of software for most desktop users.
A lot of people tell me this won't happen but I think it will. MS Office can only play the compatibility game for so long and they won't be able to maintain the high licensing fees when their main competitor is free. Over time, all general purpose software will not only approach, but reach the $0 mark. No one's going to by Suzy's lemonade with little umbrellas in the cups for $1 when Sally gives non-umbrellaed lemonade away for free.
I'm pretty sure MS knows this, hence their focus on Surface, Nokia, XBox, and Intellectual Ventures/other patent related crap.
So Microsoft = Beethoven. Beethoven's odd numbered symphonies are good while even ones aren't as good. Just like Windows.
No, because with Beethoven his even numbered symphonies just weren't quite as fantastic as his extremely well known odd numbered ones. With Windows, they alternate between usable and sucking ass.
I don't think this is true at all. Ever since Apple went to x86, Apple's hardware (especially laptops) has become extremely popular among Linux users. At least, that's what I've seen. Furthermore, I've noticed a lot of people who were pure Linux users transitioned to Linux/OS X users and after a while they just stopped booting into Linux.
Before Apple went x86, I remember reading a lot of comments on/. along the lines of, "OS X looks really cool, too bad Apple uses PPC." Sure, there's always been PPC Linux options but they weren't really viable solutions for most things a typical users needs to do. Then Apple went x86 and they really blew up with developers. My guess, as seems to be Miguel's, is that those were mostly Linux developers Apple was syphoning away, not Windows ones. XCode, a *nix terminal, the ability to set OS X up as a (crappy) server, *nix permissions, etc. These were all things that appealed to Linux users but most wouldn't cough up a bunch of dough for PPC hardware unless they were getting a server from IBM. Apple's hardware became a pretty defacto standard for nerds once they went x86 because, not only was it the only hardware that could run anything, it was also the best (I'm talking things like the trackpad, not benchmarks).
This all started much before Windows 7, and even if it didn't, I can't see very many Linux geeks switching to Windows 7 because it was better than Vista. Linux geeks, by and large, use Windows 7 if their boss makes them. Or because it's the third OS on their MacBook.
Calm down before you have a nerdeurysum. Obviously the company you worked for at the time that gave you this 'AirBook' bought a fake Chinese clone. You should have been cued by the whole 'AirBook' thing considering Apple doesn't have a product called that.
Yes, a Macbook runs smoother then Windows
I would hope that Windows runs a lot smoother than a MacBook b/c Windows is software so it weighs a lot less. Neither have legs, so I imagine the competition is a bit of a standstill.
Okay, you probably don't find my little digs funny but here's some serious advice: Smoke a joint. Go to a comedy show. Go drink some beers. Find whatever you need to chill the fuck out and do it (group sex?). I geek out about all sorts of shit on/. but goddamn. Maybe it's just your writing style, but your post really made me envision some guy about to have a heart attack. The OP was flamebait (that got upmodded for insulting Apple and praising Linux).
btw, speed and revs are correlated - for example, on my go-to-work car, 5th gear at 3k RPM will always be 60 mph. So, you actually are depending on the speed to judge which gear to use whether you realize it or not. 5th gear at 10mph = stall (unless you gotta shit ton of torque and a gearbox geared super high).
1. It's safer, especially in crappy conditions. In the snow I can keep my RPMs low so I don't have to worry about the tires spinning. Going into a turn I can downshift BEFORE the turn, which an automatic can't do (same applies for hills).
2. Once it becomes muscle memory it's not so difficult to do it well. The problem is most people learn to do it incorrectly. Perfection isn't really attainable for most, but almost anyone can do it well if they're taught correctly.
3. As you stated, it's fun.
4. Going back to the safer point, it provides more feedback to you, the driver, so you're more aware of what your car is doing.
5. It's cheaper, easier to repair, and lasts longer (if driven correctly).
6. More efficient. Automatics constantly use more fuel than is necessary.
7. Another safer point: The throttle on automatics scares the shit out of me. The idea that any moron can mash it down and smash into something . . . ugh. Drunk people in automatics scare the shit out of me. I'm not too worried about drunk people in sticks - if they're not paying attention they stall out and the car makes them pay attention. While I'm sure there are plenty of drunks who've crashed in sticks (especially hot-rodding about), I still trust them more. In the same vein, if a 12 year old kid steals your car, it's gone. If a 12 year old kid steals one of my cars, he won't get out of the driveway (probably won't even figure out how to get the thing started). Since most criminals are about as intelligent as a 12 year old kid, this applies pretty broadly. I never lock my doors and I have a bad habit of leaving the keys in the ignition/on the driver's seat. I'm pretty sure, considering some of the areas I've parked my car, that had it been an automatic it would have been gone.
8. Less wear and tear on your brakes.
9. Driving my cars is an enjoyable experience. I'll drive just for the sake of driving. Driving an automatic is like driving a go-kart. Only something I do as a designated driver or in some other unusual situation.
It's really not impractical. I think it's more practical because it forces the driver to DRIVE rather than fiddle with a bunch of shit, put on make-up, text message, watch a movie, etc. Until cars drive themselves (not too far off), automatic transmissions are pretty useless. It compromises so much all for the sake of allowing the driver to be more distracted and to know less about driving.
It's not that difficult to switch hands, infact it may be better for you in the long run. Many of the users where I work have switch the mouse from right to left because it's more ergonomic.
Actually, I do this when my wrist cramps up. I'll just alternate back and forth. But I grew up in a family of lefties and I was taught to do all sorts of crap left handed. For some reason they just assumed I was a lefty until I was like two or three and it became obvious that I was not.
Still, I get asked if I'm a lefty a lot. Like when I'm using the mouse left handed, or I'm using silverware, or I pull my wallet out from my back left-hand pocket. I still don't have the same dexterity with a mouse left-handed, but that only really matters for video games and I don't do that anymore.
Another interesting thing is that every lefty guitarist I knows plays right-handed and claims to be incapable of doing it left-handed. Of course, this probably has to do with the fact that left-handed guitars are pretty rare/expensive, but I couldn't imagine playing guitar left-handed. I've tried out a lefty guitar once or twice and it confused the shit out of me (trying to flip the muscle memory just didn't work).
lefties tend to smear it with the heel of their hand as they move across the page
They do but only because they weren't taught to write properly. My mother is a lefty and so was my grandfather. He wouldn't let her write in that screwed up curled wrist method that most lefties adopt. When she became a teacher it was extremely beneficial - the chalkboard would have been a huge challenge had he not been so adement about forcing her to do it using his method (hand not smearing the writing, paper at an angle).
The downside was that she was really strong/fast with cursive yet mediocre/slow with print. As time went on less and less of her students were well versed in cursive. Guess it's good she retired before it became a totally lost art (hell, I can't write legibly in cursive anymore - I just never use it except for my extremely illegible signature).
It always boggled my mind that in the early elementary years handwriting is something that's emphasized but with no special consideration given to lefties. It would behoove elementary schools to have the resident lefty (there's always at least one) to go over handwriting with the lefty kids. Then again, kids these days may look at writing by hand the same way I look at cursive - a thing of the past.
That's not entirely true. It's easy to make a stick shift vehicle make it's way down the road, but it's an entirely different proposition to do it correctly and actually match the RPMs. Then throw in heel-and-toeing, skipping gears, and accelerating quickly (while still smoothly) and it's an art that almost no driver does to perfection except maybe Jackie Stewart. Hell, I doubt most modern F1 drivers can drive a stick to perfection as they all drive semi-autos these days.
Also, it really depends on the car. A diesel with a lot of low-end torque is going to be a cakewalk. A 4-banger Jap car requires an extremely subtle touch.
If you think you learned how to drive a stick with a practice drive or two you really don't know how to drive a stick. Many a driver has asked to drive my cars (I have some fun ones) and they have to prove to me, using a manual other than mine, that they know what they're doing before they get behind the wheel. The #1 cause of transmission failures in manual gearboxes is from people who think they've got it down because the car's moving down the road.
This is an anecdote but it's a fairly convincing one:
I once had a roommate who was a sports fanatic who worked as a server in a sports bar/restaurant at the time. He would listened to sports radio while he slept - usually it was the west coast baseball games (we're in EST) - and he claimed that the broadcasters would basically narrate his dreams of baseball. He knew most the players so if he heard something like, "Bonds hits it to center field, he slides to first and is safe," it's something he could envision realistically.
It's easy to dismiss this as a wild claim he made, but the proof was in the pudding. He could, with confidence, talk about the games the next day before hearing/seeing anything about them. He knew the scores, the big plays, damn near everything as well as if he had watched it on TV. His customers ate it up - they'd love to put him to the test before the highlights would show up on the tube.
I think a lot of people are hurling a lot of vitriole at this foreman based off very little information. You accuse him of prejudice and bias yet you judge him with much less information about him than he had pertaining to the case.
You know what's worse than self-righteous rich and wannabe rich people? A self-righteous, hypocritical/. user.
Also, the 'let jurists be experts in their fields' is a horrible idea: Would you really want Bernie Madoff's case decided by a bunch of investment bankers?
I also thought they might have been editorializing a bit too much in the case, but compared to most US tech news that was drinking the Apple cool-aid, it just seemed like a counter-balance
To me that sounds like MSNBC's insistence that they're merely a counter-balance to Fox News (or Fox's insistence that they're merely a counter-balance to the 'mainstream media'). That doesn't make it right.
I think the biggest difference between this case and SCO is that SCO was clearly in the wrong. They were clearly a puppet company of Microsoft and they were clearly attempting to abuse the patent system. When harsh criticism is obviously due it's hard to call that 'bias.' SCO was both legally and morally in the wrong and no amount of obfuscation could hide that.
With this case, it's pretty unclear as to who was legally in the right and it's definitely unclear as to whether either side had a moral high ground. So when people like PJ reported on it in a way that implied that one side did have both the legal and moral high ground, it screamed bias. Opposing SCO was a pretty objective side to take.
Maybe that's just my own bias talking, but if I was a juror on the SCO case I know exactly how I would rule and I wouldn't think twice about it. With the Apple/Samsung case, I would have a tough time arriving at a conclusion and even then I don't know how comfortable I would be about it. On the one hand it seems pretty obvious that the iPhone was Samsung's prototype. On the other hand, many of Apple's patents are overly broad (I thought Apple had a stronger copyright case than patent case because of the icons).
All those people who like to say, "Microsoft's not so evil anymore. The 80s and 90s are over," are the ones who've never heard of SCO or IV. The ones who have no idea what happened to Nokia or why their.doc files now have an 'x' on the end of them. People who assume that anything with the word 'charity' attached to it is unquestionably good. I'd really like to know how Gates pumping money into his crony's business that aids his own company leverage its monopoly is charity.
Bill Gates is like Darth Sidious: When he commits his most heinous acts of evil people applaud him for trying to save the world. Also, like Sidious, it's completely unclear whether he believes his own bullshit or not.
The problem, as I understand it, is that the witnesses had compelling reasons to make their testimonies whether they were true or not. They themselves had been caught through the drug tests and were offered leniency for testifying against Armstrong.
Faced with threats of perjury, former teammates caved. Tyler Hamilton (who had passed many doping tests before failing one at the end of his career), Floyd Landis and others reportedly testified. They admitted they’d been doping all along. The U.S. attorney ultimately declined to press charges, but USADA took the evidence and issued its own charges. Because the standard in these cases is merely “comfortable satisfaction,” not “beyond reasonable doubt,” there was no reasonable doubt that Armstrong was doomed.
To me, it doesn't matter if they're telling the truth or not. The fact that the investigative process can compel them to lie makes their testimony worthless. A human witness is hardly a reliable thing. Neither are drug tests, but at least they're objective (whether there's a false positive/negative or not). The method of this investigation is all too similar to McCarthy's witch hunt. I'm not saying Armstrong is innocent, but I think he's owed the assumption until there's concrete evidence. I wouldn't call his accusers liars, but I do recognize their obvious conflict of interests.
As a sports fan, it saddens me to say this, but advancements in medical science may ruin sports. It's getting harder and harder to figure out where to draw the line between what type of physical enhancements are legitimate and which one's aren't. Which ones should be and shouldn't be. This is probably why I like collegiate sports so much better than professional ones. With college teams, one gets the sense that they're watching actual people.
Psychology is somewhat objective in the sense that most of its major contributors, from an academic standpoint, would attempt to apply the scientific method. It's important because there are some who do suffer from debilitating mental illnesses that make them incapable of independently functioning in society.
My problem with it, as your Cuckoo's Nest example points out, that all too often to focus is solely on behavior. When this happens they neglect to find out whether the person acts insane because they truly are or because they chose to act that way. Hopefully neurology will eventually overtake the field, relegating it to armchair shrinks who help insecure people deal with their insecurities through discourse.
The flaw in your argument is that he wasn't just "arrested, detained, forced to undergo psychological treatment."
He was arrested, detained, and forced to undergo a psychological evaluation. Psychological treatment is pending the results of the psychological evaluation. It's not like some beat cop or FBI agent is permitted to perform the psychological evaluation. If we permitted law enforcement agents to declare people insane, I would have a serious problem with that. But that's not what's happening. He's being evaluated by a professional, and despite my disdain for psychologists, at least it's someone who has a clear responsibility and training to remain as objective as possible. If the shrink the cops take this guy to claims he needs psychological treatment, then he should probably be forced to undergo it.
Insanity is a tough issue, especially concerning cases where it conflicts with one's liberties, but I'm not cynical enough to think law enforcement acted improperly in this case.
The example of yelling fire in a crowded theatre is an old one that outdates many modern fire codes and inspections. It's sort of like the expression "crying wolf." Who in modern society is afraid of wolves? If you literally 'cried wolf' then most people would just want to check it out. You wouldn't frighten anyone unless involved in some strange circumstances (a bunch of unarmed kids out in the woods? a poorly fenced sheep farm?) The expression makes sense because it's understood that it comes from an old story from a bygone age.
By 'theatre' people aren't talking about your local modern day cinema. They're talking about old structures that were fire hazards and deathtraps in the event of a fire. Many of those buildings still exist, but they have been revamped to comply with modern fire codes. It's pretty fucking sad I had to explain this to you.
Maybe if he had posted his thoughts in song form then it would have been okay.
Seriously, though, the guy sounds like he has some screws loose (just like everyone else who has tried to explain Illuminati conspiracy theories to me) and they threw him in a mental facility. If they sent him off to Guantanamo or some undisclosed location for an indefinite amount of time I would be upset. Instead, they gave him the psychiatric care he seems to need, which is something vets can be thankful for having available to them (most homeless people are mentally ill and have no access to psychiatric care). If he was some bum on the street yelling these things on a corner, he would just be arrested by local police for being disorderly or maybe just ignored completely. This guy's actually pretty lucky.
The problem with your rap analogy is that, like fiction (an analogy other posters tried without much success), there's an understood disconnect from reality. This guy may not have been serious, but it didn't seem like he was joking whether he meant to actually take action or not. He seemed legitimately angry and to legitimately believe in at least some of the mumbo jumbo he spewed. It would have been pretty irresponsible for law enforcement to ignore him once it was brought to their attention. How it was brought to their attention is another issue (which I don't really care about - I doubt much of anything online is 'private' once you throw around words the NSA computers mine for).
Slashdot Mirror
I bet Zuckerberg wishes he'd thought of that.
Yeah, that guy's gotta be unhappy with his situation. Zuck's going to be kicking himself when Dalton Caldwell (who?) is raking in billions with his highly successful business plan.
After reading all this crap about app.net I'm still unsure exactly what they do/plan to do, but taking over the world by taking advantage of idiots doesn't seem to be a part of it, so I doubt Zuckerberg's interested. I mean, they may have the taking advantage of idiots part down, but what good is that if you're not taking over the world?
But that's kind of my point. They don't care to make money on an operating system because they know it's a losing game - the market will continue to drive the cost of an operating system to zero and Apple wants no part in trying to fight an inevitable trend.
If Surface is any indication, someone at Microsoft finally explained this concept to Balmer in a way he could understand. General purpose software is a short term market. There will always be hobbyists and grad students and open source companies to churn out free alternatives.
People don't use desktop Linux for two reasons: 1) Gnome and KDE suck and the alternatives that don't suck are the niche desktops/lack the razzle-dazzle of OS X/Win 7. 2) Microsoft Office.
#2 is nicely being taken care of by LibreOffice and Wine. It can be scratched off the list here in a couple years. #1 is the roadblock (and, getting back to the topic of the original story, a reason De Icaza probably shouldn't be pointing fingers).
People don't have a problem with Linux. If people had a problem with Linux then Android wouldn't be the huge success it is. People just wants something that suits their needs. Desktop Linux will eventually get to that point even if progress has been rather stymied as of late. It'll probably take a long time, but a long time isn't NEVER EVER EVER.
I also don't understand your emphasis on Apple stuff. I agree that they have the right strategy - their strategy strengthens my argument: software isn't a reliable source of income as the price is always driven to zero, so they sell hardware and use software to compliment it. Desktop Linux probably won't affect Apple too much -- it's going to bone MS (their hardware partners would abandon them in a second if they could).
Also, when considering desktop Linux, I think it's important to consider places outside the first-world. I'm willing to bet, in a couple decades, if traditional operating systems are still used, Linux will run on the most computers in the world. Maybe some Unix system, something like Hurd that actually works, but whatever it is it'll be free and based on expired patents.
will NEVER, EVER, EVER own the desktop
I think this attitude is pretty silly. We live in a time where things change drastically from decade to decade. Back when /. was a new thing, a popular belief was that Apple was soon to go out of business or, if they were lucky, get bought by Sun.
That example may be a tad extreme considering Apple's success since then was nothing short of miraculous, but to claim that a free technology will never be able to compete with high dollar alternatives is pretty silly to me. I do believe Linux will one day run the vast majority of desktops. I think the main reason that Jobs founded NeXt, and subsequently insisted on using it for OS X, was that he saw the writing on the wall. Some sort of open source *nix was going to come to rule the desktop space the same as the server space even if it's going to take a couple decades. Sell hardware and play nice with *nix. Hardware will never cost $0. Selling an operating system is kind of like schools selling textbooks: You need some kind of racket to force people to buy them, because everything they actually do is available elsewhere for free.
yEd - runs on them all, and good enough for me
He covered 'good enough.'
It's too bad Linus never backed one of those horses seriously (well, if he did, I wasn't aware of it). If he would be public and vocal about supporting a certain GUI, I'm sure a vast majority of the community would get behind it.
Why didn't Linux Desktop take off when Vista hit the market? The fact is that there's no big company pushing Linux desktop and running expensive ads for it on American TV. It will never be more than a niche player.
I don't think this is true. An operating system can only do so much for your average consumer. In the long term, all general purpose software will become either FOSS or maintained by the hardware manufacturer, like in Apple's case. Advertising only does so much when you're competing with free. The most important thing for the FOSS community to be concerned about right now is a "Year of LibreOffice becoming the standard word processor." The year of desktop Linux won't happen until MS Office is no longer viewed as a requisite piece of software for most desktop users.
A lot of people tell me this won't happen but I think it will. MS Office can only play the compatibility game for so long and they won't be able to maintain the high licensing fees when their main competitor is free. Over time, all general purpose software will not only approach, but reach the $0 mark. No one's going to by Suzy's lemonade with little umbrellas in the cups for $1 when Sally gives non-umbrellaed lemonade away for free.
I'm pretty sure MS knows this, hence their focus on Surface, Nokia, XBox, and Intellectual Ventures/other patent related crap.
So Microsoft = Beethoven. Beethoven's odd numbered symphonies are good while even ones aren't as good. Just like Windows.
No, because with Beethoven his even numbered symphonies just weren't quite as fantastic as his extremely well known odd numbered ones. With Windows, they alternate between usable and sucking ass.
I don't think this is true at all. Ever since Apple went to x86, Apple's hardware (especially laptops) has become extremely popular among Linux users. At least, that's what I've seen. Furthermore, I've noticed a lot of people who were pure Linux users transitioned to Linux/OS X users and after a while they just stopped booting into Linux.
Before Apple went x86, I remember reading a lot of comments on /. along the lines of, "OS X looks really cool, too bad Apple uses PPC." Sure, there's always been PPC Linux options but they weren't really viable solutions for most things a typical users needs to do. Then Apple went x86 and they really blew up with developers. My guess, as seems to be Miguel's, is that those were mostly Linux developers Apple was syphoning away, not Windows ones. XCode, a *nix terminal, the ability to set OS X up as a (crappy) server, *nix permissions, etc. These were all things that appealed to Linux users but most wouldn't cough up a bunch of dough for PPC hardware unless they were getting a server from IBM. Apple's hardware became a pretty defacto standard for nerds once they went x86 because, not only was it the only hardware that could run anything, it was also the best (I'm talking things like the trackpad, not benchmarks).
This all started much before Windows 7, and even if it didn't, I can't see very many Linux geeks switching to Windows 7 because it was better than Vista. Linux geeks, by and large, use Windows 7 if their boss makes them. Or because it's the third OS on their MacBook.
Calm down before you have a nerdeurysum. Obviously the company you worked for at the time that gave you this 'AirBook' bought a fake Chinese clone. You should have been cued by the whole 'AirBook' thing considering Apple doesn't have a product called that.
Yes, a Macbook runs smoother then Windows
I would hope that Windows runs a lot smoother than a MacBook b/c Windows is software so it weighs a lot less. Neither have legs, so I imagine the competition is a bit of a standstill.
Okay, you probably don't find my little digs funny but here's some serious advice: Smoke a joint. Go to a comedy show. Go drink some beers. Find whatever you need to chill the fuck out and do it (group sex?). I geek out about all sorts of shit on /. but goddamn. Maybe it's just your writing style, but your post really made me envision some guy about to have a heart attack. The OP was flamebait (that got upmodded for insulting Apple and praising Linux).
If you weren't an AC I'd explain it to you. Instead, here's one of the first videos YouTube pulled up on the topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcxHi6FlGLo
btw, speed and revs are correlated - for example, on my go-to-work car, 5th gear at 3k RPM will always be 60 mph. So, you actually are depending on the speed to judge which gear to use whether you realize it or not. 5th gear at 10mph = stall (unless you gotta shit ton of torque and a gearbox geared super high).
1. It's safer, especially in crappy conditions. In the snow I can keep my RPMs low so I don't have to worry about the tires spinning. Going into a turn I can downshift BEFORE the turn, which an automatic can't do (same applies for hills).
2. Once it becomes muscle memory it's not so difficult to do it well. The problem is most people learn to do it incorrectly. Perfection isn't really attainable for most, but almost anyone can do it well if they're taught correctly.
3. As you stated, it's fun.
4. Going back to the safer point, it provides more feedback to you, the driver, so you're more aware of what your car is doing.
5. It's cheaper, easier to repair, and lasts longer (if driven correctly).
6. More efficient. Automatics constantly use more fuel than is necessary.
7. Another safer point: The throttle on automatics scares the shit out of me. The idea that any moron can mash it down and smash into something . . . ugh. Drunk people in automatics scare the shit out of me. I'm not too worried about drunk people in sticks - if they're not paying attention they stall out and the car makes them pay attention. While I'm sure there are plenty of drunks who've crashed in sticks (especially hot-rodding about), I still trust them more. In the same vein, if a 12 year old kid steals your car, it's gone. If a 12 year old kid steals one of my cars, he won't get out of the driveway (probably won't even figure out how to get the thing started). Since most criminals are about as intelligent as a 12 year old kid, this applies pretty broadly. I never lock my doors and I have a bad habit of leaving the keys in the ignition/on the driver's seat. I'm pretty sure, considering some of the areas I've parked my car, that had it been an automatic it would have been gone.
8. Less wear and tear on your brakes.
9. Driving my cars is an enjoyable experience. I'll drive just for the sake of driving. Driving an automatic is like driving a go-kart. Only something I do as a designated driver or in some other unusual situation.
It's really not impractical. I think it's more practical because it forces the driver to DRIVE rather than fiddle with a bunch of shit, put on make-up, text message, watch a movie, etc. Until cars drive themselves (not too far off), automatic transmissions are pretty useless. It compromises so much all for the sake of allowing the driver to be more distracted and to know less about driving.
It's not that difficult to switch hands, infact it may be better for you in the long run. Many of the users where I work have switch the mouse from right to left because it's more ergonomic.
Actually, I do this when my wrist cramps up. I'll just alternate back and forth. But I grew up in a family of lefties and I was taught to do all sorts of crap left handed. For some reason they just assumed I was a lefty until I was like two or three and it became obvious that I was not.
Still, I get asked if I'm a lefty a lot. Like when I'm using the mouse left handed, or I'm using silverware, or I pull my wallet out from my back left-hand pocket. I still don't have the same dexterity with a mouse left-handed, but that only really matters for video games and I don't do that anymore.
Another interesting thing is that every lefty guitarist I knows plays right-handed and claims to be incapable of doing it left-handed. Of course, this probably has to do with the fact that left-handed guitars are pretty rare/expensive, but I couldn't imagine playing guitar left-handed. I've tried out a lefty guitar once or twice and it confused the shit out of me (trying to flip the muscle memory just didn't work).
lefties tend to smear it with the heel of their hand as they move across the page
They do but only because they weren't taught to write properly. My mother is a lefty and so was my grandfather. He wouldn't let her write in that screwed up curled wrist method that most lefties adopt. When she became a teacher it was extremely beneficial - the chalkboard would have been a huge challenge had he not been so adement about forcing her to do it using his method (hand not smearing the writing, paper at an angle).
The downside was that she was really strong/fast with cursive yet mediocre/slow with print. As time went on less and less of her students were well versed in cursive. Guess it's good she retired before it became a totally lost art (hell, I can't write legibly in cursive anymore - I just never use it except for my extremely illegible signature).
It always boggled my mind that in the early elementary years handwriting is something that's emphasized but with no special consideration given to lefties. It would behoove elementary schools to have the resident lefty (there's always at least one) to go over handwriting with the lefty kids. Then again, kids these days may look at writing by hand the same way I look at cursive - a thing of the past.
Sticks are actually very easy to learn
That's not entirely true. It's easy to make a stick shift vehicle make it's way down the road, but it's an entirely different proposition to do it correctly and actually match the RPMs. Then throw in heel-and-toeing, skipping gears, and accelerating quickly (while still smoothly) and it's an art that almost no driver does to perfection except maybe Jackie Stewart. Hell, I doubt most modern F1 drivers can drive a stick to perfection as they all drive semi-autos these days.
Also, it really depends on the car. A diesel with a lot of low-end torque is going to be a cakewalk. A 4-banger Jap car requires an extremely subtle touch.
If you think you learned how to drive a stick with a practice drive or two you really don't know how to drive a stick. Many a driver has asked to drive my cars (I have some fun ones) and they have to prove to me, using a manual other than mine, that they know what they're doing before they get behind the wheel. The #1 cause of transmission failures in manual gearboxes is from people who think they've got it down because the car's moving down the road.
This is an anecdote but it's a fairly convincing one:
I once had a roommate who was a sports fanatic who worked as a server in a sports bar/restaurant at the time. He would listened to sports radio while he slept - usually it was the west coast baseball games (we're in EST) - and he claimed that the broadcasters would basically narrate his dreams of baseball. He knew most the players so if he heard something like, "Bonds hits it to center field, he slides to first and is safe," it's something he could envision realistically.
It's easy to dismiss this as a wild claim he made, but the proof was in the pudding. He could, with confidence, talk about the games the next day before hearing/seeing anything about them. He knew the scores, the big plays, damn near everything as well as if he had watched it on TV. His customers ate it up - they'd love to put him to the test before the highlights would show up on the tube.
I think a lot of people are hurling a lot of vitriole at this foreman based off very little information. You accuse him of prejudice and bias yet you judge him with much less information about him than he had pertaining to the case.
You know what's worse than self-righteous rich and wannabe rich people? A self-righteous, hypocritical /. user.
Also, the 'let jurists be experts in their fields' is a horrible idea: Would you really want Bernie Madoff's case decided by a bunch of investment bankers?
I also thought they might have been editorializing a bit too much in the case, but compared to most US tech news that was drinking the Apple cool-aid, it just seemed like a counter-balance
To me that sounds like MSNBC's insistence that they're merely a counter-balance to Fox News (or Fox's insistence that they're merely a counter-balance to the 'mainstream media'). That doesn't make it right.
I think the biggest difference between this case and SCO is that SCO was clearly in the wrong. They were clearly a puppet company of Microsoft and they were clearly attempting to abuse the patent system. When harsh criticism is obviously due it's hard to call that 'bias.' SCO was both legally and morally in the wrong and no amount of obfuscation could hide that.
With this case, it's pretty unclear as to who was legally in the right and it's definitely unclear as to whether either side had a moral high ground. So when people like PJ reported on it in a way that implied that one side did have both the legal and moral high ground, it screamed bias. Opposing SCO was a pretty objective side to take.
Maybe that's just my own bias talking, but if I was a juror on the SCO case I know exactly how I would rule and I wouldn't think twice about it. With the Apple/Samsung case, I would have a tough time arriving at a conclusion and even then I don't know how comfortable I would be about it. On the one hand it seems pretty obvious that the iPhone was Samsung's prototype. On the other hand, many of Apple's patents are overly broad (I thought Apple had a stronger copyright case than patent case because of the icons).
All those people who like to say, "Microsoft's not so evil anymore. The 80s and 90s are over," are the ones who've never heard of SCO or IV. The ones who have no idea what happened to Nokia or why their .doc files now have an 'x' on the end of them. People who assume that anything with the word 'charity' attached to it is unquestionably good. I'd really like to know how Gates pumping money into his crony's business that aids his own company leverage its monopoly is charity.
Bill Gates is like Darth Sidious: When he commits his most heinous acts of evil people applaud him for trying to save the world. Also, like Sidious, it's completely unclear whether he believes his own bullshit or not.
The problem, as I understand it, is that the witnesses had compelling reasons to make their testimonies whether they were true or not. They themselves had been caught through the drug tests and were offered leniency for testifying against Armstrong.
Faced with threats of perjury, former teammates caved. Tyler Hamilton (who had passed many doping tests before failing one at the end of his career), Floyd Landis and others reportedly testified. They admitted they’d been doping all along. The U.S. attorney ultimately declined to press charges, but USADA took the evidence and issued its own charges. Because the standard in these cases is merely “comfortable satisfaction,” not “beyond reasonable doubt,” there was no reasonable doubt that Armstrong was doomed.
http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/08/lance-armstrong-doping-allegations/
To me, it doesn't matter if they're telling the truth or not. The fact that the investigative process can compel them to lie makes their testimony worthless. A human witness is hardly a reliable thing. Neither are drug tests, but at least they're objective (whether there's a false positive/negative or not). The method of this investigation is all too similar to McCarthy's witch hunt. I'm not saying Armstrong is innocent, but I think he's owed the assumption until there's concrete evidence. I wouldn't call his accusers liars, but I do recognize their obvious conflict of interests.
As a sports fan, it saddens me to say this, but advancements in medical science may ruin sports. It's getting harder and harder to figure out where to draw the line between what type of physical enhancements are legitimate and which one's aren't. Which ones should be and shouldn't be. This is probably why I like collegiate sports so much better than professional ones. With college teams, one gets the sense that they're watching actual people.
Psychology is somewhat objective in the sense that most of its major contributors, from an academic standpoint, would attempt to apply the scientific method. It's important because there are some who do suffer from debilitating mental illnesses that make them incapable of independently functioning in society.
My problem with it, as your Cuckoo's Nest example points out, that all too often to focus is solely on behavior. When this happens they neglect to find out whether the person acts insane because they truly are or because they chose to act that way. Hopefully neurology will eventually overtake the field, relegating it to armchair shrinks who help insecure people deal with their insecurities through discourse.
The flaw in your argument is that he wasn't just "arrested, detained, forced to undergo psychological treatment."
He was arrested, detained, and forced to undergo a psychological evaluation. Psychological treatment is pending the results of the psychological evaluation. It's not like some beat cop or FBI agent is permitted to perform the psychological evaluation. If we permitted law enforcement agents to declare people insane, I would have a serious problem with that. But that's not what's happening. He's being evaluated by a professional, and despite my disdain for psychologists, at least it's someone who has a clear responsibility and training to remain as objective as possible. If the shrink the cops take this guy to claims he needs psychological treatment, then he should probably be forced to undergo it.
Insanity is a tough issue, especially concerning cases where it conflicts with one's liberties, but I'm not cynical enough to think law enforcement acted improperly in this case.
1. FIGURATIVE
2. LITERAL
Look them up and you will have a much better understanding of the world.
The example of yelling fire in a crowded theatre is an old one that outdates many modern fire codes and inspections. It's sort of like the expression "crying wolf." Who in modern society is afraid of wolves? If you literally 'cried wolf' then most people would just want to check it out. You wouldn't frighten anyone unless involved in some strange circumstances (a bunch of unarmed kids out in the woods? a poorly fenced sheep farm?) The expression makes sense because it's understood that it comes from an old story from a bygone age.
By 'theatre' people aren't talking about your local modern day cinema. They're talking about old structures that were fire hazards and deathtraps in the event of a fire. Many of those buildings still exist, but they have been revamped to comply with modern fire codes. It's pretty fucking sad I had to explain this to you.
Maybe if he had posted his thoughts in song form then it would have been okay.
Seriously, though, the guy sounds like he has some screws loose (just like everyone else who has tried to explain Illuminati conspiracy theories to me) and they threw him in a mental facility. If they sent him off to Guantanamo or some undisclosed location for an indefinite amount of time I would be upset. Instead, they gave him the psychiatric care he seems to need, which is something vets can be thankful for having available to them (most homeless people are mentally ill and have no access to psychiatric care). If he was some bum on the street yelling these things on a corner, he would just be arrested by local police for being disorderly or maybe just ignored completely. This guy's actually pretty lucky.
The problem with your rap analogy is that, like fiction (an analogy other posters tried without much success), there's an understood disconnect from reality. This guy may not have been serious, but it didn't seem like he was joking whether he meant to actually take action or not. He seemed legitimately angry and to legitimately believe in at least some of the mumbo jumbo he spewed. It would have been pretty irresponsible for law enforcement to ignore him once it was brought to their attention. How it was brought to their attention is another issue (which I don't really care about - I doubt much of anything online is 'private' once you throw around words the NSA computers mine for).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFEahAAGP-A