Unfortunately, No True Scotsman doesn't really hold up when you're talking about a group who self-identifies. Anyone can call himself a Christian and make a bad name for all Christians. There is no authority for who is or isn't Christian.
No True Scotsman has been getting a lot of play on the Internet lately, but I think it's actually a really horrible rebuttal in most cases. At best, it simply means that the argument is invalid. Of course, my original statement is invalidated in much the same way.
So I'll amend: I've been in multiple churches where hate is taught. It's not that uncommon. I've seen lots and lots of people who effectively ascribe to the same principles. And a whole bunch of these (possibly due to where I live) have been self-identifying Evangelicals.
Sancho, just so you know, the Catholic church of the Middle Ages is NOT contemporary Evangelical Christianity. That you could mistake one for the other shows either a vast ignorance or a lack of ethics in your misrepresentation of the facts.
Can you point out anywhere at all where I referenced Catholicism, in the middle ages or otherwise? I was raised Catholic and rather dislike modern Evangelists (having visited one or two Evangelist churches in recent years.)
Now, I admit there are nutjobs in the current Evangelical crowd that seem to hate everyone who doesn't believe as they do, but they are not the majority nor do they represent mainstream Evangelical thought and beliefs.
Maybe I have only had bad experiences with them. If so, I apologize.
But I'm talking about the kind of people who think that Tiller's murder is justified. There are entire congregations where this is preached.
Not really. There are people out there--probably a lot of them--who think that the ends justify the means. That's the entire premise of contemporary evangelical Christianity and other extremist religions.
And if the ends justify the means, then they'll likely overlook the privacy aspect in order to punish this kid for doing drugs. If that's what the disciplinary action was about, he absolutely must rebut that.
Most corporations will put their own image on their computers, so what it ships with is irrelevant. What on Earth makes a Netbook the wrong tool for a traveler?
My Newton...had to invest in cargo pants to have this with me
My only complaint with the iPhone is that the screen is too small.
So yes, an overgrown PDA might be EXACTLY what is needed.
I don't think cargo pants will work for the iPad. It's about as large as an etch-a-sketch, but thinner. You'll need something roughly the size of a purse to carry it. At that point, I'd personally just as soon carry a netbook. To each his own.
A big difference is the price range. At $1500 the Air was never going to sell big.
And it was more than that at launch ($1800 for the base model iirc.) And it was considered a companion to your normal PC (not much different than calling it a toy.)
At $500 the iPad could easily sell big.
Lower price for a less capable device. But at least it still does most of the things you want a computer for -- consumption of content online.
I can see a multi-tude of roles. I am almost certainly getting one as an e-reader/net surfer. It is perfect for reading comics on the couch, reading a novel in bed, whatever.
I'm with you on the comics, less so on the books. I have no need to carry more than 2 books with me at any given time. When I was a student, sure, I carried a lot of textbooks. Being able to write in the margins was important, though. But when I'm reading for pleasure, I pretty much read one book at a time. There's no need to carry my library with me.
Comics are a little different. They're bite-sized, like music. You can enjoy segments of even large story arcs somewhat independent of the whole. And being bite-sized, I might want to carry a dozen or more with me on a trip.
I can see getting one for my computer phobic Mom...
That's probably the best argument for success that I've heard. That said, I'm still not sure it's going to be that big. There have been many attempts to get luddites interested in the Internet in the past. If anyone can do it, Apple can--I just don't know that it can be done.
sufficiently advanced workaround - such as instantaneous state saves, in many cases - is indistinguishable from multitasking. If you're telling me that's what it has, then fine.
Palm did it this way, and it was fine for years. Then they started making devices with phones and data connections built-in. It quickly became apparent that closing an application's sockets when you needed to check something in your calendar was a terrible thing. TCP keeps going even when you switch away from an application. If the application can't respond in a way that the other side expect, the connection is going to close.
I don't think that apps having an embedded web browser is an acceptably flexible workaround. Just because my example was a word processor and a browser doesn't mean that's the only case.
Indeed. But even if you just cared about the web-browser + any given app, you have problems. Can the in-app web-browser access your Mobile Safari history? Cookies? Bookmarks? What if you need more than one window? Does Webkit do that, or does the app developer have to reinvent another wheel?
If we were on a desktop, the idea that every application should re-implement the web browser (not the rendering engine) would be laughed at. But because we're on an embedded device, that guy thinks it's okay?
3. Battery. I think this is probably the biggest one. You can't make any realistic claims on battery life if you allow 3rd party programs to run in the background.
Except that the iPhone delivered significantly LESS functionality than other phone manufacturers were giving us, and was significantly behind the times (like 4-5 years) compared to actual features in things like Symbian and Windows Mobile.
Ah, but the market that the iPhone really captured was composed of people who had never owned a smartphone before. For them, the iPhone gave more features and did "smart" things better than any other phone they'd ever used.
And a lot of techies liked it for no reason other than because the browser was great. It rendered the majority of websites correctly and similarly to your desktop.
I used Windows Mobile for a long time. When you look at the way those phones worked, it's kinda pitiful. When the iPhone came out, Pocket Internet Explorer was still using a codebase based on IE4. The rendering was absolutely terrible. Pocket Outlook was almost equally awful--a feat for something as simple as a mail reader. Don't get me started on dialing. Or on accidentally triggering a "right click". So while WM might have been capable of a lot more, the iPhone managed to do most of the things it was capable of much better.
Correct, but it could still be a bad product. Windows is a raging success. Most people here consider it a bad product. Anyway, the article clearly states that it's on the list because moving to PowerPC over Intel was a bad business move, which I bet most people would agree with.
20th anniversary Mac: exclusive, high priced item, for collectors..that the author has mistaken for a consumer level product.
There wasn't any criteria set forth for calling these products "bad." I think that the idea of a collectible computer is a terrible idea. The market for them is tiny. If that's really what this computer was meant for, then it should be considered a bad product on that alone.
However, the AppleCare Protection Plan for notebook computers does not cover batteries that have failed or are exhibiting diminished capacity except when the failure or diminished capacity is the result of a manufacturing defect.
These batteries wear out. Asking a computer manufacturer to replace a diminished-capacity battery is like asking a car dealership to refill your gas tank. Apple has the same 1-year warranty on batteries that all of the major manufacturers do.
I think the issue with a lack of screen is twofold: 1) Screens cost a lot. Apple should be able to bring the cost of this down since they don't have a screen. 2) Screens are the most tried-and-true way for sight-enabled people to quickly navigate through a list of items. Such as songs that you might want to play.
If you're chopping wood, sure, you're not going to look at the screen. You might flip to a new playlist and then resume chopping wood. How long will it take to scroll through to a new playlist on a Nano compared to a Shuffle?
I'm betting that it is closer to "flop" than "raging success." But I'm no market analyst, so who knows? And that said, I'm very tempted to buy one. I'll almost certainly buy one if they become jailbroken. Unencumbered, it could be a really neat toy.
The main thing is that Apple hasn't made a compelling case for buying one. With the iPhone, the case was obvious. The smartphone market was already there. They made owning a smartphone cool, expanded the market, and took almost all of the new new marketshare.
What's compelling about the iPad? About as much as was compelling about the Macbook Air. They've created a product which needs to create a market in order to survive. The Air failed to create that market. Will the iPad? I don't know, but like I said, I doubt it.
Though CmdrTaco probably thought it would be a failure, that's not what he said. What he said was "lame." That's an opinion that really can't be right or wrong. Presumably, he still thinks it's lame in comparison to other, similar devices.
That said, in the past decade it's been clear that you can't predict an Apple product's success based solely on features. There's a huge PR and marketing element involved, too. These days, it's hip to have an Apple computer/iPod/phone. Just like a $10 purse from Wal Mart has as much or more utility than a Gucci bag, you can find more utility in Apple's competitors. But you can't underestimate the "cool" factor.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball also thought that the Macbook Air was "going to be a big hit." He proceeded to lay out why that product was going to be the next big thing.
Only it wasn't. While Apple fans bought up the initial supply, sales in general seem to be lagging (though Apple doesn't release sales numbers, they certainly talk about their most popular lines at the keynotes, and you can get general sales information by talking to retail stores.) No one at Apple talks about the Air anymore. They keep it updated--kinda. The updates aren't great. They finally dropped the price of it--and I doubt it's because it was cannibalizing sales of their Macbook Pros. They dropped the price because Macbook Pro sales were cannibalizing the Air.
Everyone gets it wrong sometimes, but people who worship at the altar of Gruber can be more rabid than Apple fanboys. He's wrong, too, sometimes.
With the Kindle, Amazon is just temporary allowing you to read their books on their device
He said:
You can mount Kindle just like the Sony reader or any other USB storage device. Plug it into Linux and go. And then copy over all of the books you want, including (for example) the entire Project Gutenberg, which (unless I am very much mistaken) is not DRM-encumbered.
I'm convinced that he's a very effective troll. Not only is he completely off on the timeframe of the Great Depression, but the government did take steps. Not to prevent businesses from failing, but to prevent them from engaging in the same self-destructing acts in the future and to provide stability to American families.
The authentication is encrypted. This is exactly what "Allow Plaintext Authentication: no" means in the setup instructions.
Are you sure?
Normally, "use plaintext authentication" means that you send your password over the wire (regardless of encryption), compared to authentication mechanisms which do not require that your password ever leave your machine. This is wholly separate from whether or not the authentication is transported over SSL.
GPL violators may not be making money. Pirates may make money. The whole thing is a class of violations called "copyright infringement." While making money off of the infringement may increase its severity, it's all pretty well under the same umbrella.
Within copyright infringement is the idea of the value of a work. That is, the amount that it costs to purchase or otherwise legally acquire the software. Penalties are usually assessed keeping the value of the work in mind. Proprietary software usually has a non-zero cost to acquire. GPL software usually has a zero cost to acquire.
So when you ask
Which is a more serious crime?
the courts would probably answer "Illegally copying non-free software."
It was a love story in 30 seconds told through Google search queries and results. It was absolutely brilliant. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it.
Sure. But then we're probably talking about home computers. I don't ever use IE for personal work. If I have to use it for work, it's on a company computer.
Slashdot Mirror
I was referring specifically to Evangelicals, not Christianity in general.
Unfortunately, No True Scotsman doesn't really hold up when you're talking about a group who self-identifies. Anyone can call himself a Christian and make a bad name for all Christians. There is no authority for who is or isn't Christian.
No True Scotsman has been getting a lot of play on the Internet lately, but I think it's actually a really horrible rebuttal in most cases. At best, it simply means that the argument is invalid. Of course, my original statement is invalidated in much the same way.
So I'll amend: I've been in multiple churches where hate is taught. It's not that uncommon. I've seen lots and lots of people who effectively ascribe to the same principles. And a whole bunch of these (possibly due to where I live) have been self-identifying Evangelicals.
Sancho, just so you know, the Catholic church of the Middle Ages is NOT contemporary Evangelical Christianity. That you could mistake one for the other shows either a vast ignorance or a lack of ethics in your misrepresentation of the facts.
Can you point out anywhere at all where I referenced Catholicism, in the middle ages or otherwise? I was raised Catholic and rather dislike modern Evangelists (having visited one or two Evangelist churches in recent years.)
Now, I admit there are nutjobs in the current Evangelical crowd that seem to hate everyone who doesn't believe as they do, but they are not the majority nor do they represent mainstream Evangelical thought and beliefs.
Maybe I have only had bad experiences with them. If so, I apologize.
But I'm talking about the kind of people who think that Tiller's murder is justified. There are entire congregations where this is preached.
I respectfully disagree.
First, there's Poe's law to consider. I'm sure that beliefs in this line are a corollary somewhere.
Second, a good troll gets lots of responses. I've gotten lots.
So either way, your premise is incorrect.
What is it that I believe again?
Not really. There are people out there--probably a lot of them--who think that the ends justify the means. That's the entire premise of contemporary evangelical Christianity and other extremist religions.
And if the ends justify the means, then they'll likely overlook the privacy aspect in order to punish this kid for doing drugs. If that's what the disciplinary action was about, he absolutely must rebut that.
Most corporations will put their own image on their computers, so what it ships with is irrelevant. What on Earth makes a Netbook the wrong tool for a traveler?
Oh man, you just made me realize that the first person out with a fingerpainting app for the iPad is going to rake it in :)
I like some of your other suggestions. I think they would go way over the heads and needs of most of the people that Apple markets to, though :(
My Newton...had to invest in cargo pants to have this with me
My only complaint with the iPhone is that the screen is too small.
So yes, an overgrown PDA might be EXACTLY what is needed.
I don't think cargo pants will work for the iPad. It's about as large as an etch-a-sketch, but thinner. You'll need something roughly the size of a purse to carry it. At that point, I'd personally just as soon carry a netbook. To each his own.
A big difference is the price range. At $1500 the Air was never going to sell big.
And it was more than that at launch ($1800 for the base model iirc.) And it was considered a companion to your normal PC (not much different than calling it a toy.)
At $500 the iPad could easily sell big.
Lower price for a less capable device. But at least it still does most of the things you want a computer for -- consumption of content online.
I can see a multi-tude of roles. I am almost certainly getting one as an e-reader/net surfer. It is perfect for reading comics on the couch, reading a novel in bed, whatever.
I'm with you on the comics, less so on the books. I have no need to carry more than 2 books with me at any given time. When I was a student, sure, I carried a lot of textbooks. Being able to write in the margins was important, though. But when I'm reading for pleasure, I pretty much read one book at a time. There's no need to carry my library with me.
Comics are a little different. They're bite-sized, like music. You can enjoy segments of even large story arcs somewhat independent of the whole. And being bite-sized, I might want to carry a dozen or more with me on a trip.
I can see getting one for my computer phobic Mom...
That's probably the best argument for success that I've heard. That said, I'm still not sure it's going to be that big. There have been many attempts to get luddites interested in the Internet in the past. If anyone can do it, Apple can--I just don't know that it can be done.
sufficiently advanced workaround - such as instantaneous state saves, in many cases - is indistinguishable from multitasking. If you're telling me that's what it has, then fine.
Palm did it this way, and it was fine for years. Then they started making devices with phones and data connections built-in. It quickly became apparent that closing an application's sockets when you needed to check something in your calendar was a terrible thing. TCP keeps going even when you switch away from an application. If the application can't respond in a way that the other side expect, the connection is going to close.
I don't think that apps having an embedded web browser is an acceptably flexible workaround. Just because my example was a word processor and a browser doesn't mean that's the only case.
Indeed. But even if you just cared about the web-browser + any given app, you have problems. Can the in-app web-browser access your Mobile Safari history? Cookies? Bookmarks? What if you need more than one window? Does Webkit do that, or does the app developer have to reinvent another wheel?
If we were on a desktop, the idea that every application should re-implement the web browser (not the rendering engine) would be laughed at. But because we're on an embedded device, that guy thinks it's okay?
3. Battery. I think this is probably the biggest one. You can't make any realistic claims on battery life if you allow 3rd party programs to run in the background.
Except that the iPhone delivered significantly LESS functionality than other phone manufacturers were giving us, and was significantly behind the times (like 4-5 years) compared to actual features in things like Symbian and Windows Mobile.
Ah, but the market that the iPhone really captured was composed of people who had never owned a smartphone before. For them, the iPhone gave more features and did "smart" things better than any other phone they'd ever used.
And a lot of techies liked it for no reason other than because the browser was great. It rendered the majority of websites correctly and similarly to your desktop.
I used Windows Mobile for a long time. When you look at the way those phones worked, it's kinda pitiful. When the iPhone came out, Pocket Internet Explorer was still using a codebase based on IE4. The rendering was absolutely terrible. Pocket Outlook was almost equally awful--a feat for something as simple as a mail reader. Don't get me started on dialing. Or on accidentally triggering a "right click". So while WM might have been capable of a lot more, the iPhone managed to do most of the things it was capable of much better.
PowerPC was not a failure.
Correct, but it could still be a bad product. Windows is a raging success. Most people here consider it a bad product. Anyway, the article clearly states that it's on the list because moving to PowerPC over Intel was a bad business move, which I bet most people would agree with.
20th anniversary Mac:
exclusive, high priced item, for collectors..that the author has mistaken for a consumer level product.
There wasn't any criteria set forth for calling these products "bad." I think that the idea of a collectible computer is a terrible idea. The market for them is tiny. If that's really what this computer was meant for, then it should be considered a bad product on that alone.
However, the AppleCare Protection Plan for notebook computers does not cover batteries that have failed or are exhibiting diminished capacity except when the failure or diminished capacity is the result of a manufacturing defect.
From http://www.apple.com/batteries/replacements.html
These batteries wear out. Asking a computer manufacturer to replace a diminished-capacity battery is like asking a car dealership to refill your gas tank. Apple has the same 1-year warranty on batteries that all of the major manufacturers do.
I think the issue with a lack of screen is twofold:
1) Screens cost a lot. Apple should be able to bring the cost of this down since they don't have a screen.
2) Screens are the most tried-and-true way for sight-enabled people to quickly navigate through a list of items. Such as songs that you might want to play.
If you're chopping wood, sure, you're not going to look at the screen. You might flip to a new playlist and then resume chopping wood. How long will it take to scroll through to a new playlist on a Nano compared to a Shuffle?
I'm betting that it is closer to "flop" than "raging success." But I'm no market analyst, so who knows? And that said, I'm very tempted to buy one. I'll almost certainly buy one if they become jailbroken. Unencumbered, it could be a really neat toy.
The main thing is that Apple hasn't made a compelling case for buying one. With the iPhone, the case was obvious. The smartphone market was already there. They made owning a smartphone cool, expanded the market, and took almost all of the new new marketshare.
What's compelling about the iPad? About as much as was compelling about the Macbook Air. They've created a product which needs to create a market in order to survive. The Air failed to create that market. Will the iPad? I don't know, but like I said, I doubt it.
Though CmdrTaco probably thought it would be a failure, that's not what he said. What he said was "lame." That's an opinion that really can't be right or wrong. Presumably, he still thinks it's lame in comparison to other, similar devices.
That said, in the past decade it's been clear that you can't predict an Apple product's success based solely on features. There's a huge PR and marketing element involved, too. These days, it's hip to have an Apple computer/iPod/phone. Just like a $10 purse from Wal Mart has as much or more utility than a Gucci bag, you can find more utility in Apple's competitors. But you can't underestimate the "cool" factor.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball also thought that the Macbook Air was "going to be a big hit." He proceeded to lay out why that product was going to be the next big thing.
http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/macbook_air_appeal
Only it wasn't. While Apple fans bought up the initial supply, sales in general seem to be lagging (though Apple doesn't release sales numbers, they certainly talk about their most popular lines at the keynotes, and you can get general sales information by talking to retail stores.) No one at Apple talks about the Air anymore. They keep it updated--kinda. The updates aren't great. They finally dropped the price of it--and I doubt it's because it was cannibalizing sales of their Macbook Pros. They dropped the price because Macbook Pro sales were cannibalizing the Air.
Everyone gets it wrong sometimes, but people who worship at the altar of Gruber can be more rabid than Apple fanboys. He's wrong, too, sometimes.
You said:
With the Kindle, Amazon is just temporary allowing you to read their books on their device
He said:
You can mount Kindle just like the Sony reader or any other USB storage device. Plug it into Linux and go.
And then copy over all of the books you want, including (for example) the entire Project Gutenberg, which (unless I am very much mistaken) is not DRM-encumbered.
I'm convinced that he's a very effective troll. Not only is he completely off on the timeframe of the Great Depression, but the government did take steps. Not to prevent businesses from failing, but to prevent them from engaging in the same self-destructing acts in the future and to provide stability to American families.
The authentication is encrypted. This is exactly what "Allow Plaintext Authentication: no" means in the setup instructions.
Are you sure?
Normally, "use plaintext authentication" means that you send your password over the wire (regardless of encryption), compared to authentication mechanisms which do not require that your password ever leave your machine. This is wholly separate from whether or not the authentication is transported over SSL.
GPL violators may not be making money. Pirates may make money. The whole thing is a class of violations called "copyright infringement." While making money off of the infringement may increase its severity, it's all pretty well under the same umbrella.
Within copyright infringement is the idea of the value of a work. That is, the amount that it costs to purchase or otherwise legally acquire the software. Penalties are usually assessed keeping the value of the work in mind. Proprietary software usually has a non-zero cost to acquire. GPL software usually has a zero cost to acquire.
So when you ask
Which is a more serious crime?
the courts would probably answer "Illegally copying non-free software."
It was a love story in 30 seconds told through Google search queries and results. It was absolutely brilliant. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it.
Sure. But then we're probably talking about home computers. I don't ever use IE for personal work. If I have to use it for work, it's on a company computer.