Just wanted to add that there are rural areas in snow country that have a need for an american-made 4-wheel drive vehicle. At the moment, the only vehicles that meet this description are trucks and SUVS.
Why American made? In rural areas in the midwest, the mechanics in the nearest town will only look at american made vehicles. If you buy a Subaru or BMW and it breaks down, you have to tow it 70 miles for repair.
Why 4 wheel drive? Snow. You can't use chains due to state law, and the road into town may not be plowed for a day or two. If you need to get to work or buy groceries, and don't have 4 wheel drive, you're screwed.
Why can't the US car industry build an all-wheel drive car? They're too focused on building gas-guzzling SUVs.
The Sun JRE, which virtually ALL Java apps are arbitrarily dependent on is one of the worst apps I've ever seen when it comes to memory utilization.
When was the last time you came across a Java program that required the Sun JRE? I exclusively use the IBM JRE on Linux, and have never had a problem with compatibility.
I live in San Jose, within a few blocks of a Frys and within a 15 minute drive of three more.
I've got to say that the lines are generally not a problem (they're long, but move really fast), unless you go during Christmas or try to return something. The return counter is slow, but they have pretty good return policies, compared with say, Best Buy.
It's true that the customer service is non-existent, at least in the bay area. If you manage to find a customer service rep and ask them a question, expect them to read the tag to you or try to find the information on the box (gee thanks, I hadn't thought of that). In the past I've had dificulty getting a sales rep to sell me an OEM part, even when I had the part number in hand.
From the article. The result of more than five years of experimentation, this mailer transports approximately 1.4 million DVDs a day to Netflix's 4.2 million subscribers. This isn't even theoretically possible. This would require them to ship 3 DVDs per person per day.
By my math, 1.4 million dvds a week to 4.2 million subscribers =.33 dvds per subscriber, per day, or about 10 dvds a month... which really doesn't seem that unreasonable.
Right. But Wine is NOT an implementation directly in the OS. It is middleware, by that definition. Unless there is a version of Wine that is also a stand alone OS that I'm not aware of?
There's no really good definition of "Operating System". Generally it's a kernel plus userland libraries and applications designed to make it easier to run applications and deal with devices. A looser definition also includes any other bundled applications, no matter what the function of those apps. By "directly in the OS", do you mean "directly in the kernel"?
Wine is a system library that makes it easier to run applications, exactly what the implementation of the windows API in OSX would likely be. It's not likely they'll implement the entire Windows API in the kernel (not even Windows does that).
That said, the Windows API implementation would be no more a "part of the OS" than a Linux distribution that ships with Wine.
as well as the problem of productivity being a hard thing to measure when developing software.
Then of course there are home distractions that all managers would worry about.
If managers are worried about where you are and whether or not you're being distracted, that is a problem in itself. An engineer should be producing measurable results. If you cannot show what you accomplished, and can only show how many hours you worked, you should start looking for a new career:)
In the Fortune 500 company I work for, I don't know anyone who telecommutes. I also work for a Fortune 500 company, and about 20% of the people I work with telecommute most of the time. Most everyone else at this company telecommutes at least one day a week. I'm talking about mostly Software Engineers here. Once you have all the tools to get your job done at home and effective ways to communicate, it's not difficult.
I still prefer a face-to-face meeting with a whiteboard, but telecommuting isnt' all bad.
>If you consider that San Francisco consists of millions of people
While the metropolitan San Francisco Bay Area consists of millions of people (exactly how many depends on what you consider the bay area), SF itself houses only 744,230 (give or take). The most populous city in the bay area is San Jose, with 945,000.
But your basic point is right. Oakland (another bay area city, smaller than SF at 412,318) has had over 30 murders so far this year, so 18 laptop thefts isn't exactly a crime wave.
ok. It's possible for people that have faith to also be rational. I'm not denying that, and it's possible for people using pseudoscience and pre-scientific methods to make ridiculous claims. I'll give you that as well... but in my experience in years of having religious dogma crammed down my throat, I will say that it is more the rule than the exception for churches to tell people what to believe, and to ostracize and criticise those that don't believe the same thing. That's why you recite creeds, have sermons, sunday school, and have sacrements, to try to keep everyone believing the same thing. Perhaps that's just my experience, and I'm completely wrong. Perhaps there are "good religions" that let you come to terms with your maker, whatever you percieve that to be, on your own.. but then why would you need a minister and/or church in the first place?
Anyway, I realize we disagree on a few points, but it's been a fun debate.:)
I'm just arguing that those people who believe science can give them certainty are essentially committing the same mistake as those who believe that religion can give them certainty.
I think there are different degrees of certainty. When I observe something experimentally, I have a high degree of confidence/certainty that the same effect will happen again, given the same conditions, but there is always room for improvement in the model based on a new analysis or new data. That's the kind of certainty that Science provides: Hypothesis, experimentation, and theory, in an iterative fashion. There's nothing particularly dogmatic about that. Anyone can use the scientific method and attempt to prove or disprove any hypothesis. It's part of the culture to be skeptical and to question everything.
Religion, on the other hand, offers absolute certainty, without any experimentation, reasoning, or repeatability, and offers little in the way of iterative improvement. You basically have to take it or leave it without any evidence at all. There is no option to be partially certain or skeptical in religion. You either believe or you don't.
So that said, I agree that believing everything you may read in a scientific journal is a bad idea (skepticism is healthy), but I disagree that believing in science (that only ever offers partial certainty) is the same thing as believing in religion (which only offers absolute certainty). A skeptic makes a good scientist, but a really poor priest.
You can only get to #3 (or #1) through either omniscience, or through some logical necessity based on something that is certain. Short of these special conditions everything is uncertain, everything is tentative, and therefore eveything is #2.
OK. I can see that. By that rationale, all religion is basically a waste of time, because it relies on believing something wholeheartedly that's fundamentally unknowable.
1. Believe you are right 2. Not believe that you are right or wrong (and therefore, since aliens are outside my experiential reality, treat it with skepticism) 3. Believe that you are wrong.
I'm saying position #3 is not justified. That doesn't force you back to 1. You can still be happy at #2. That's where I'd be.
Logically, something is either true, or false. Period. But we're not talking about ONLY logic, we're also talking about human action: belief is action. So while there are always 2 possibilities for truth (true/false) there are always THREE for action: belief, non-belief, disbelief.
Ok. Now we're getting somewhere. #2 in your estimation is not religion, (correct?), but both #1 and #3 are?
What if the individual believes #3 not because of "blind faith", but because of the lack of evidence supporting #1 and a mountain of evidence supporting #3? Does making an assertion based on a rational judgement of the evidence require dogma/blind faith (religion) to hold that assertion? I say no.
It IS a positive assertion. It's an assertion in the non-existence of God. The hardest thing to prove is the non-existence of something. For this reason atheism is essentially a religion.
If I don't believe in alien abductors, is that a religion? Do you believe in alien abductors? Why not? Who has proven that they don't exist? By your logic, this proof of non-existence must exist, or you must believe in them. It's a logical fallacy. You're reversing the burden of proof.
The lack of belief in something is absoultely NOT a positive assertion. One can chose to not believe in the existence of something without being dogmatic, especially when there's no concrete evidence. Atheism is not a religion. It is the LACK of religion.
>Why not just build a word processor into a Firefox extension if you're going to require it? Why not just write the word processor using Java and remove the requirement to be online at all?
Actually, building this as a Firefox extension is a very good idea. That would presumably offer offline capability as well as online... as long as the extension is easy to install and update, it should work. I like it! Presumably there's a business reason for not doing that however. Maybe they need revenue from banner ads?
>Apparently IE is not supported at all, any version of it. Doesn't that strike people as an unnecessary limitation?
Not really. All reasonably complex software has a pre-requisite of some sort. Having a freely available, cross-platform, open source prerequisite (that is arguably the best product inits niche) is the best kind of prerequisite IMO.
OK, I was a bit strong in my condemnation of all MLMs. It's possible that some supervise the activities of their recruiters, and do what they can to enforce ethics. If the new recruit is made completely aware of what's going on and how the system works before they are asked to buy in, and no promises are made of vast riches, I suppose that's not unethical. I've yet to see that, however. IMO it's unethical to try to get people to buy in to one of these without explaining how the system works, and that it's totally unlike a traditional job. The specific MLM I was referring to is supposedly legal, and yet clearly attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of new recruits. It's called "Primerica".
While MLMs have a negative reputation because of their proselytizing ways, they are not in themselves illegal, unethical or immoral.
They may not be illegal, but they are often involved in behavior that I would call "unethical". I know of one such MLM that offered one of my relatives a "Job", and had them show up for a series of "interviews" that were really sales presentations. They make the "interviewee" give all their personal information and many references in order to get this "job". Then they turn around ask the "interviewee" for money in order to pay for "training". Meanwhile before the "interviewee" is trained, they're calling all the "references" and trying to get them to join the scheme as well, and if they won't join, they try to sell them products. All this is done under the pretext of offering a legitimate job, when really they're trying to sell someone on joining in on the scheme. The interviewee then has to perform the same con job on a few other unsuspecting "applicants" in order to get them into it. The money flows upwards in an MLM, so you can't make any appreciable money without doing significant recruiting. That's where the problem is- The average sales agent, finding themselves in the company of friends that are not interested in joining, is quite likely to turn to unethical recruiting practices in order to support their cash flow.
So while these schemes are technically not illegal, they often do breed unethical behavior in practice, much more than a traditional business model. They're only profitable because they're able to dupe enough people into becoming sales agents, who then have to dupe other people into also becoming agents, and so forth. Illegal or not, ethics is more subjective, and I'd place them squarely in the "unethical" category.
The key problem is teaching children to question conventional wisdom.
I think there are two facets of this:
1) In science class, students ought to learn the scientific method and how it can be used to prove or disprove a given hypothesis. This should not be done as part of the discussion on evolution, but as part of every science class. Students should be welcomed to try to prove or disprove any hypothesis using the scientific method. However, it's unlikely that any student will be well enough versed in science to be able to disprove any well-established theory like evolution, gravity, or general relativity. They need to start with baby steps, proving and disproving simple hypotheses so they can become well versed in the study of science, eventually moving on to grander things. It's unfair to them to say that Evolution is the one theory which may not be right, wereas in fact it is as well established as many other theories. It also gives them the wrong impression of what a theory is.
2) Yes, children should be taught to question conventional wisdom, perhaps in a philosophy class. We do need people that think outside the box in the world, but we aren't going to start that by introducing religion into science class. The questioning of conventional wisdom needs to be applied to everything: English, history, science, religion, math, phy ed, etc...
What, so you mean, we all expected Apple to break the cycle from the dawn of the gramophone? Soon enough, iTunes AACs will be superceded with something worthy of a switch, and we'll all buy our libraries again.
OK, maybe I'm missing a few formats, but there haven't been that many * wax cylinders * LPs * 8-Track * Cassette * CD * MP3 * DRM AAC
And in the future:
* DRM AAC V2
Of these, only wax cylinders and 8-track are dead. Cassette is on its last leg, and LP will probably never really die. You can still play all of these formats if you want, and some are easy to shift from one to another.
The point is that the switch from DRM AAC to DRM AAC V2 may be more difficult because it's based on closed-source software, and closed-source software is notoriously bad at backward compatibility. You're not going to be able to go to the local second hand store and buy an old copy of iTunes. I suppose you could keep an old computer around, just for iTunes.
I think the problem is that Fox is a small network that wants to be a big network (or is a big network with the history of a small netwkork).
A big network wants banal crap that 80% of people will watch just to get them back into their tv-induced stupor. These shows are designed to be OK for everyone, and get big ratings from a wide demographic. There's no room in a big network for anything challenging or different.
A small network, on the other hand, succeeds best on niche shows. A small, but loyal fanbase will watch these shows and provide the network with steady, targeted, ad revenue.
FOX seems to have program directors with a small network mentality, but executives with the big network mentality. This results in niche shows getting greenlit, but later cut because they don't have the "big network" ratings.
But do not think this is purely religious; if gay marriage comes about as a legal standard it's going to cost industries and the state big dollars in the way of taxation, benefits and pensions. I think you're going to find a more serious business threat to this type of legislation as time goes on and the church gives up it's struggle.
I doubt it. Treating people equally is good business. Many major corporations already give domestic partners the same benefits as married spouses. The reason? There are a lot of talented gay people out there, and having them as employees can boost the company's bottom line. Why exclude good talent?
Perhaps not science but it should be taught in school as a popular ideology. The separation of church and state should not leave us blind to various religious mythologies and their effects on society including the creationist point of view as many people believe it, it's not like we're teaching about cargo cults, this is a major religion and one of it's key beliefs. That alone makes it noteworthy.
Provided that the class is on "world religions" and is an elective, I have no problem with that. What most people have an issue with is when we start teaching religious doctrine in science class, which is what the kansas school board wants.
Has anyone out there ever used a usb drive this small, and was it effective?
It's convenient, but the bits are so small.
I concur. I used it to store a Word document (a research paper). When I read it off the disk, the average font size had gone from 12 to 6. That's some serious bit shrinkage. The shrinkage seems to occur in all the critical places.
I used one to store my bank account information, and found that my money was convered from dollars to cents.
However, that doesn't compare to the horrors that will befall the user that attempts to use this drive to store their pr0n collection, and views the result.
Human beings are logical. Whether we were designed this way or evolved into it, we are a species that possesses a great capacity for logic and rationality.
True, humans do have the capacity for logic, but I don't think we should fool ourselves into thinking that logic is a major factor in our decisions. People reason more often by analogy than by logic. Given any situation, we ask ouselves "what is this situation most like", and based on our experience with that like situation, we act in that way. We are not bilogical computers.. we're more like well trained monkies.
Don't you mean "Intelligent Design whackos or Evolutionist whackos"?...or maybe we could (gasp!) be courteous and try "Intelligent Design proponents or Evolutionists"?
How about: religious zealots and scientists. Just calling them as I see them... show me someone who believes "Intelligent Design" should be taught in schools, and I'll show you a religious zealot. Zealots aren't necessarily whackos, but they absoultely DO have an agenda, and that agenda is to get THEIR religion into public schools. Whether they masquerade religious precepts as science or just directly demand the indoctrination of students is largely irrelevant. It's still nothing but religious zealotry.
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Just wanted to add that there are rural areas in snow country that have a need for an american-made 4-wheel drive vehicle. At the moment, the only vehicles that meet this description are trucks and SUVS.
Why American made? In rural areas in the midwest, the mechanics in the nearest town will only look at american made vehicles. If you buy a Subaru or BMW and it breaks down, you have to tow it 70 miles for repair.
Why 4 wheel drive? Snow. You can't use chains due to state law, and the road into town may not be plowed for a day or two. If you need to get to work or buy groceries, and don't have 4 wheel drive, you're screwed.
Why can't the US car industry build an all-wheel drive car? They're too focused on building gas-guzzling SUVs.
The Sun JRE, which virtually ALL Java apps are arbitrarily dependent on is one of the worst apps I've ever seen when it comes to memory utilization.
When was the last time you came across a Java program that required the Sun JRE? I exclusively use the IBM JRE on Linux, and have never had a problem with compatibility.
I live in San Jose, within a few blocks of a Frys and within a 15 minute drive of three more.
I've got to say that the lines are generally not a problem (they're long, but move really fast), unless you go during Christmas or try to return something. The return counter is slow, but they have pretty good return policies, compared with say, Best Buy.
It's true that the customer service is non-existent, at least in the bay area. If you manage to find a customer service rep and ask them a question, expect them to read the tag to you or try to find the information on the box (gee thanks, I hadn't thought of that). In the past I've had dificulty getting a sales rep to sell me an OEM part, even when I had the part number in hand.
From the article. The result of more than five years of experimentation, this mailer transports approximately 1.4 million DVDs a day to Netflix's 4.2 million subscribers. This isn't even theoretically possible. This would require them to ship 3 DVDs per person per day.
.33 dvds per subscriber, per day, or about 10 dvds a month... which really doesn't seem that unreasonable.
By my math, 1.4 million dvds a week to 4.2 million subscribers =
Right. But Wine is NOT an implementation directly in the OS. It is middleware, by that definition. Unless there is a version of Wine that is also a stand alone OS that I'm not aware of?
There's no really good definition of "Operating System". Generally it's a kernel plus userland libraries and applications designed to make it easier to run applications and deal with devices. A looser definition also includes any other bundled applications, no matter what the function of those apps. By "directly in the OS", do you mean "directly in the kernel"?
Wine is a system library that makes it easier to run applications, exactly what the implementation of the windows API in OSX would likely be. It's not likely they'll implement the entire Windows API in the kernel (not even Windows does that).
That said, the Windows API implementation would be no more a "part of the OS" than a Linux distribution that ships with Wine.
as well as the problem of productivity being a hard thing to measure when developing software.
:)
Then of course there are home distractions that all managers would worry about.
If managers are worried about where you are and whether or not you're being distracted, that is a problem in itself. An engineer should be producing measurable results. If you cannot show what you accomplished, and can only show how many hours you worked, you should start looking for a new career
In the Fortune 500 company I work for, I don't know anyone who telecommutes.
I also work for a Fortune 500 company, and about 20% of the people I work with telecommute most of the time. Most everyone else at this company telecommutes at least one day a week. I'm talking about mostly Software Engineers here. Once you have all the tools to get your job done at home and effective ways to communicate, it's not difficult.
I still prefer a face-to-face meeting with a whiteboard, but telecommuting isnt' all bad.
>If you consider that San Francisco consists of millions of people
While the metropolitan San Francisco Bay Area consists of millions of people (exactly how many depends on what you consider the bay area), SF itself houses only 744,230 (give or take). The most populous city in the bay area is San Jose, with 945,000.
But your basic point is right. Oakland (another bay area city, smaller than SF at 412,318) has had over 30 murders so far this year, so 18 laptop thefts isn't exactly a crime wave.
ok. It's possible for people that have faith to also be rational. I'm not denying that, and it's possible for people using pseudoscience and pre-scientific methods to make ridiculous claims. I'll give you that as well... but in my experience in years of having religious dogma crammed down my throat, I will say that it is more the rule than the exception for churches to tell people what to believe, and to ostracize and criticise those that don't believe the same thing. That's why you recite creeds, have sermons, sunday school, and have sacrements, to try to keep everyone believing the same thing. Perhaps that's just my experience, and I'm completely wrong. Perhaps there are "good religions" that let you come to terms with your maker, whatever you percieve that to be, on your own.. but then why would you need a minister and/or church in the first place?
:)
Anyway, I realize we disagree on a few points, but it's been a fun debate.
I'm just arguing that those people who believe science can give them certainty are essentially committing the same mistake as those who believe that religion can give them certainty.
I think there are different degrees of certainty. When I observe something experimentally, I have a high degree of confidence/certainty that the same effect will happen again, given the same conditions, but there is always room for improvement in the model based on a new analysis or new data. That's the kind of certainty that Science provides: Hypothesis, experimentation, and theory, in an iterative fashion. There's nothing particularly dogmatic about that. Anyone can use the scientific method and attempt to prove or disprove any hypothesis. It's part of the culture to be skeptical and to question everything.
Religion, on the other hand, offers absolute certainty, without any experimentation, reasoning, or repeatability, and offers little in the way of iterative improvement. You basically have to take it or leave it without any evidence at all. There is no option to be partially certain or skeptical in religion. You either believe or you don't.
So that said, I agree that believing everything you may read in a scientific journal is a bad idea (skepticism is healthy), but I disagree that believing in science (that only ever offers partial certainty) is the same thing as believing in religion (which only offers absolute certainty). A skeptic makes a good scientist, but a really poor priest.
You can only get to #3 (or #1) through either omniscience, or through some logical necessity based on something that is certain. Short of these special conditions everything is uncertain, everything is tentative, and therefore eveything is #2.
OK. I can see that. By that rationale, all religion is basically a waste of time, because it relies on believing something wholeheartedly that's fundamentally unknowable.
1. Believe you are right
2. Not believe that you are right or wrong (and therefore, since aliens are outside my experiential reality, treat it with skepticism)
3. Believe that you are wrong.
I'm saying position #3 is not justified. That doesn't force you back to 1. You can still be happy at #2. That's where I'd be.
Logically, something is either true, or false. Period. But we're not talking about ONLY logic, we're also talking about human action: belief is action. So while there are always 2 possibilities for truth (true/false) there are always THREE for action: belief, non-belief, disbelief.
Ok. Now we're getting somewhere. #2 in your estimation is not religion, (correct?), but both #1 and #3 are?
What if the individual believes #3 not because of "blind faith", but because of the lack of evidence supporting #1 and a mountain of evidence supporting #3? Does making an assertion based on a rational judgement of the evidence require dogma/blind faith (religion) to hold that assertion? I say no.
It IS a positive assertion. It's an assertion in the non-existence of God. The hardest thing to prove is the non-existence of something. For this reason atheism is essentially a religion.
If I don't believe in alien abductors, is that a religion? Do you believe in alien abductors? Why not? Who has proven that they don't exist? By your logic, this proof of non-existence must exist, or you must believe in them. It's a logical fallacy. You're reversing the burden of proof.
The lack of belief in something is absoultely NOT a positive assertion. One can chose to not believe in the existence of something without being dogmatic, especially when there's no concrete evidence. Atheism is not a religion. It is the LACK of religion.
>Why not just build a word processor into a Firefox extension if you're going to require it? Why not just write the word processor using Java and remove the requirement to be online at all?
Actually, building this as a Firefox extension is a very good idea. That would presumably offer offline capability as well as online... as long as the extension is easy to install and update, it should work. I like it! Presumably there's a business reason for not doing that however. Maybe they need revenue from banner ads?
>Apparently IE is not supported at all, any version of it. Doesn't that strike people as an unnecessary limitation?
Not really. All reasonably complex software has a pre-requisite of some sort. Having a freely available, cross-platform, open source prerequisite (that is arguably the best product inits niche) is the best kind of prerequisite IMO.
Why not just download FireFox?
OK, I was a bit strong in my condemnation of all MLMs. It's possible that some supervise the activities of their recruiters, and do what they can to enforce ethics. If the new recruit is made completely aware of what's going on and how the system works before they are asked to buy in, and no promises are made of vast riches, I suppose that's not unethical. I've yet to see that, however. IMO it's unethical to try to get people to buy in to one of these without explaining how the system works, and that it's totally unlike a traditional job. The specific MLM I was referring to is supposedly legal, and yet clearly attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of new recruits. It's called "Primerica".
While MLMs have a negative reputation because of their proselytizing ways, they are not in themselves illegal, unethical or immoral.
They may not be illegal, but they are often involved in behavior that I would call "unethical". I know of one such MLM that offered one of my relatives a "Job", and had them show up for a series of "interviews" that were really sales presentations. They make the "interviewee" give all their personal information and many references in order to get this "job". Then they turn around ask the "interviewee" for money in order to pay for "training". Meanwhile before the "interviewee" is trained, they're calling all the "references" and trying to get them to join the scheme as well, and if they won't join, they try to sell them products. All this is done under the pretext of offering a legitimate job, when really they're trying to sell someone on joining in on the scheme. The interviewee then has to perform the same con job on a few other unsuspecting "applicants" in order to get them into it. The money flows upwards in an MLM, so you can't make any appreciable money without doing significant recruiting. That's where the problem is- The average sales agent, finding themselves in the company of friends that are not interested in joining, is quite likely to turn to unethical recruiting practices in order to support their cash flow.
So while these schemes are technically not illegal, they often do breed unethical behavior in practice, much more than a traditional business model. They're only profitable because they're able to dupe enough people into becoming sales agents, who then have to dupe other people into also becoming agents, and so forth. Illegal or not, ethics is more subjective, and I'd place them squarely in the "unethical" category.
The key problem is teaching children to question conventional wisdom.
I think there are two facets of this:
1) In science class, students ought to learn the scientific method and how it can be used to prove or disprove a given hypothesis. This should not be done as part of the discussion on evolution, but as part of every science class. Students should be welcomed to try to prove or disprove any hypothesis using the scientific method. However, it's unlikely that any student will be well enough versed in science to be able to disprove any well-established theory like evolution, gravity, or general relativity. They need to start with baby steps, proving and disproving simple hypotheses so they can become well versed in the study of science, eventually moving on to grander things. It's unfair to them to say that Evolution is the one theory which may not be right, wereas in fact it is as well established as many other theories. It also gives them the wrong impression of what a theory is.
2) Yes, children should be taught to question conventional wisdom, perhaps in a philosophy class. We do need people that think outside the box in the world, but we aren't going to start that by introducing religion into science class. The questioning of conventional wisdom needs to be applied to everything: English, history, science, religion, math, phy ed, etc...
What, so you mean, we all expected Apple to break the cycle from the dawn of the gramophone? Soon enough, iTunes AACs will be superceded with something worthy of a switch, and we'll all buy our libraries again.
OK, maybe I'm missing a few formats, but there haven't been that many
* wax cylinders
* LPs
* 8-Track
* Cassette
* CD
* MP3
* DRM AAC
And in the future:
* DRM AAC V2
Of these, only wax cylinders and 8-track are dead. Cassette is on its last leg, and LP will probably never really die. You can still play all of these formats if you want, and some are easy to shift from one to another.
The point is that the switch from DRM AAC to DRM AAC V2 may be more difficult because it's based on closed-source software, and closed-source software is notoriously bad at backward compatibility. You're not going to be able to go to the local second hand store and buy an old copy of iTunes. I suppose you could keep an old computer around, just for iTunes.
Half a decade? Bah.
OS virtualization has been in common use since
1968!
I think the problem is that Fox is a small network that wants to be a big network (or is a big network with the history of a small netwkork).
A big network wants banal crap that 80% of people will watch just to get them back into their tv-induced stupor. These shows are designed to be OK for everyone, and get big ratings from a wide demographic. There's no room in a big network for anything challenging or different.
A small network, on the other hand, succeeds best on niche shows. A small, but loyal fanbase will watch these shows and provide the network with steady, targeted, ad revenue.
FOX seems to have program directors with a small network mentality, but executives with the big network mentality. This results in niche shows getting greenlit, but later cut because they don't have the "big network" ratings.
But do not think this is purely religious; if gay marriage comes about as a legal standard it's going to cost industries and the state big dollars in the way of taxation, benefits and pensions. I think you're going to find a more serious business threat to this type of legislation as time goes on and the church gives up it's struggle.
I doubt it. Treating people equally is good business. Many major corporations already give domestic partners the same benefits as married spouses. The reason? There are a lot of talented gay people out there, and having them as employees can boost the company's bottom line. Why exclude good talent?
Perhaps not science but it should be taught in school as a popular ideology. The separation of church and state should not leave us blind to various religious mythologies and their effects on society including the creationist point of view as many people believe it, it's not like we're teaching about cargo cults, this is a major religion and one of it's key beliefs. That alone makes it noteworthy.
Provided that the class is on "world religions" and is an elective, I have no problem with that. What most people have an issue with is when we start teaching religious doctrine in science class, which is what the kansas school board wants.
Has anyone out there ever used a usb drive this small, and was it effective?
It's convenient, but the bits are so small.
I concur. I used it to store a Word document (a research paper). When I read it off the disk, the average font size had gone from 12 to 6. That's some serious bit shrinkage. The shrinkage seems to occur in all the critical places.
I used one to store my bank account information, and found that my money was convered from dollars to cents.
However, that doesn't compare to the horrors that will befall the user that attempts to use this drive to store their pr0n collection, and views the result.
Human beings are logical. Whether we were designed this way or evolved into it, we are a species that possesses a great capacity for logic and rationality.
True, humans do have the capacity for logic, but I don't think we should fool ourselves into thinking that logic is a major factor in our decisions. People reason more often by analogy than by logic. Given any situation, we ask ouselves "what is this situation most like", and based on our experience with that like situation, we act in that way. We are not bilogical computers.. we're more like well trained monkies.
What about Shatner's "Transformed Man" album? His rendition of "Mr tambourine man" is surely... SOMETHING.
Don't you mean "Intelligent Design whackos or Evolutionist whackos"?
How about: religious zealots and scientists. Just calling them as I see them... show me someone who believes "Intelligent Design" should be taught in schools, and I'll show you a religious zealot. Zealots aren't necessarily whackos, but they absoultely DO have an agenda, and that agenda is to get THEIR religion into public schools. Whether they masquerade religious precepts as science or just directly demand the indoctrination of students is largely irrelevant. It's still nothing but religious zealotry.