If it's not their fault, who's fault is it? If you live in the United States, and are healthy, there is no excuse to be poor. They can get free education any time they want to lift themselves out of poverty.
Come to think of it, I do know who's fault it is -- it's YOURS. People like you who tell them that it's not their fault, that their situation is hopeless because of "the man". Maybe if more people told them the truth -- that the power over their lives is in their hands -- they wouldn't be poor anymore.
You can't "force" someone out of poverty with a battering ram of money. They have to make the choice not to be poor anymore.
I think there's a good argument to be made that it was a superior device to most of the stuff available today.
Yeah, yeah, and the Amiga is still superior to any PC made today. Come on. It was operationally different from what came before. But what did it really do *functionally different* that made it superior to anything that came before? Not much. It's not like it would suddenly shine your shoes for you. It had most of the same functions that everything else had, except maybe in a slicker way. Not that "slicker" doesn't mean better (as the iPod proved, which does absolutely nothing unique), but it doesn't make it groundbreaking.
We're not talking about the standards of 1983. We're talking about the standards of PDAs. Therefore, by virtue of the fact that a TRS-80 wouldn't even fit in a reasonably sized knapsack, it wasn't a very good PDA.
What? It was the size of a sheet of notebook paper. I don't know about your knapsacks, but mine will hold notebooks. A PDA stands for "personal digital assistant", not "pocket computer". The Model 100 fulfilled the duties of a PDA. And it's not like the Newton was exactly pocket sized either.
You're making a completely different argument. Apple did, in fact, coin the term PDA.
I was taking issue with the "Newton was just a rehash of...well...um...er...", implying that the poster thought the Newton wasn't a rehash of what had been seen before. I don't dispute Apple coined PDA, just like IBM coined the term PC. It doesn't mean that IBM created the first personal computer, though.
I'm having some difficulty trying to figure out how your TRS-80 has anything to do with a PDA, whose prime virtue is portability.
Why do you think they sold 6 million units? It was EXTREMELY portable by the standards of 1983. What did it have? Built-in Memo. Address book. Task manager. Calendar. It was made to be a PDA, even if it wasn't pocket-sized.
After all, the Newton was just a rehash of...well...um...er...Oh yeah! Apple actually DEFINED the term PDA.
Jesus H. Christ, what are you babbling about? The Newton came out in 1993, Sharp Wizards go back to 1989 (actually I think it's before that, but that's what the Wikipedia claims). And no, they weren't the first with handwriting recognition. That would be Go corporation (and I think IBM had a prototype Thinkpad lying around), not that the Newton's handwriting recognition actually worked, so we can safely ignore that feature.
Of course, I could make the argument that the TRS-80 Model 100 was the first successful PDA.
But the point is trust -- you can't trust Wikipedia to know what the hell it's talking about with Relativity. It's a complex enough subject that any "informal" explanation in the Wikipedia is going to be a gross oversimplification at best, and at worst totally wrong, and there are too few people who "truly" understand Relativity to know the difference.
Who actually think Wikipedia is going to replace various standard sources of knowledge, and will eventually be the greatest and most accurate repository of knowledge in human existence?
It never will. And that's OK.
Wikipedia can be valuable even in mediocrity. I've used it as a "jumping off" point for knowledge about things that aren't covered in more traditional sources. Want to know the origins of "all your base are belong to us"? Wikipedia is great for that sort of trivia. Want an in-depth explanation of Relativity? You probably don't want to necessarily trust Wikipedia for the last word on it, but you might be able to find a few pointers to some good books.
Wikipedia is what it is. As long as everyone understands what it is, it'll do fine.
I'm sure there's some subset of the population that does ONLY web and e-mail with light word processing, but I have no one in my life that does. Just as an example, my computer illiterate mother-in-law uses Quicken, and she has a computerized sewing machine software. They use the software that came with their digital camera.
As usual, it's all about the applications. People want things to "just work", and they don't care about software politics. That's the reason that Apple is only 3% marketshare -- people don't want to have to think about whether their software is compatible or not.
When prosecuting a case of trespass, the owner must often demarcate their property with signs indicating that it is private property and trespass is not allowed.
Eh, this doesn't sound right to me. I don't have to put signs on my house that says it's illegal for someone to enter it without my permission.
On the other hand, I might believe your point in cases of rural land where there are no clear boundaries. In that case, it might be legal to cross someone's farmland, unless they specifically forbid.
I think a PC is closer to a house than an unmarked piece of land.
There is so much wrong in this, but let's just take it point by point...
Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11
Bad intelligence is not a "war on rational thought", and even if Hussein wasn't directly involved in 9/11, he certainly contributed to terrorism, and thus was indirectly responsible. This is undeniable.
Intelligent Design is a science
ID is stupid, but you'll note that Bush just expressed an opinion about it. There is no formal policy regarding it.
Who is not for us is against us
No, what was said was that whoever is not against terrorism is for terrorism, and that is true. What Bush was saying was that countries can't just be neutral and let terrorists set up camps within their borders.
The war in Iraq was started to liberate the Iraqi people.
It was never said that it was started for that reason. It was certainly said that it was one of the primary motivators, however, and was perfectly true.
We are winning the war in Iraq
We are. Even if you disagree with that, once again, disagreement with you is not a war on rational thought.
God speaks to me
So what? Lots of religious people believe God speaks to them. However, you are deliberately being bigoted by interpreting this as some mental illness where Bush is saying that God literally speaks with a voice.
There is something called an illegal combatant
*sigh* I don't feel like debating this one.
Global warming doesn't occur
The administration never said that. This pattern of misinformation you have should tell you that you are not thinking about things rationally. What they did say was...
In the case global warming does occur humans do not contribute to it
Which is a prefectly legitimate stand. There is NO PROOF that humans contribute to global warming.
In the case humans contribute to global warming, any attempt to remedy the effects will instantly melt down the whole economy
That's your hyperbole. It is undeniable that treaties like Kyoto WILL harm the US economy, because it's basically a cynical cash grab by other countries on the US. It has every little to do with the environment.
United Nations are out to take over US autonomy
Of course they are. Don't be naive. Every political body seeks more power. Do you think the UN is some "kum-ba-yah" chanting body of peace? Please. The UN is filled with fools jealous of the US's power who would love nothing better than to take the US down several pegs, whether it hurts the world or not.
Name one parallel. A REAL parallel, please, not something on the level of "ongoing war on all forms of rational thought", which is obviously foolish flamebait. Someone disagreeing with you is not making war on rational thought.
Take the Nazi out of Amerika and put forward a vision of where this country is going to be in twenty years that doesn't involve killing and torturing innocent people around the world.
You speak like you think you're one of the intelligent ones, but when you say things like that, you've just showed yourself as one of "them". The ones that do no original thinking. You're only parroting things you've heard from others that work to manipulate the masses for their own gain (the Michael Moores of the world, for one example).
Your whole post smacks of intellectual laziness and apathy. You actually think you're living in hard times! Every generation thinks "it's never been worse than this".
Bottom line, you're problem isn't the times we live in, it's the fact that you're spoiled.
When Word 97 was released they claimed it could read/write Word 95 documents. They lied. Their "Word 95" export was really a munged RTF saver and it caused no end of headaches for Word 95 users. It wasn't fixed for months, until SP1 for Office 97 was released.
You do realize that was, like, eight years ago, right? And then they fixed it ("months"? Good lord!). Are there hiccups? I'm sure there are. But in practice, very few people moan about incompatibility issues.
THAT is why open document formats are important. To avoid the necessity of working museums.
That's a different issue. I don't argue that open document formats aren't a good thing, I only argue that no one cares about philosophy when they're trying to send and receive documents with a minimum of hassle.
Open document formats are NOT important right now! I wish they would get a clue on this issue.
What's important is what the standard document format is RIGHT NOW, and right now, it's the binary office format. Until is OpenOffice absolutely, positively 100% compatible with no headaches, it will continue to be a project that people shy away from.
Yes, yes, yes, I know it's relatively undocumented. But that's not an unsolvable problem. If they really want OpenOffice to be adopted, they need to solve this problem. Have a big "bug drive" where everyone sends in MS/Office documents that don't open right in OpenOffice, and vice-versa!
Why is compatibility such a hard concept for people to get that it's the single most critical feature? OK, they're volunteers, and maybe they don't care about people adopting their program. But if they do care, then they need to clue in.
Not being a luddite, I of course used the Shockwave version. If you had tried it also, you would've noted that there was a good reason for it: it includes a cool magnifier to view the pages, as well as some other neat features.
Thank god we have people out there that aren't afraid to use technology to make things better, even if a small number of people whine about it. If people like you ran the world, we'd still be stuck using 80x25 column green screens.
And, as other people have pointed out, there is an alternative link. Nice of them.
(and if they can, then the law that allows them to do so needs changing)
Yeah, try and remember that if you ever live adjacent to an alley and some slimeball is rattling your back door at 2am to see if they can break in. I'm sure you'll just happily roll over in your bed knowing they have the perfect right to test the locks of you and your family.
In any case, I'd say few banks are directly adjacent to public property. It'd be sitting on private property.
Pulling on the front door is the equivalent of bringing up the home page of a web site. Both are expected actions to gain entry into the business.
Rattling the back door of a bank (as the AC gave as an example) might just get the police asking you some questions about what the hell you're doing skulking around on private property.
China is going from backwards empire to economic powerhouse. The other asian tigers were doing the same thing.
Hmm, I dunno. Seriously, people have been predicting the domination of China for literally a thousand years. They certainly *could* do it, but they are a very insulated culture.
As you say, Japan certainly did, but of course that took destroying their national psyche and rebuilding it in Western terms. And even so, they still don't have much of an entrepreneurial culture compared to the US (which is our great strength). I can't see China having any sort of entrepreurism any time soon.
That's like saying that I'm just being "pragmatic" and "putting my own interests first" by breaking into houses and stealing from people.
You may reject the concept of intellectual property, but you don't need the concept of IP written into law to recognize that's it's morally and ethically indefensible to use something that someone else created in a way that they specifically ask you not to.
Just out of curiosity, do you reject the concept of open source software licenses as well?
China still has sound ideas w.r.t. intellectual property, namely that it is largely harmful.
Oh, please. You're not seriously suggesting that China has some well-reasoned philosophy regarding IP, implemented by wise leaders who have given long consideration to moral and ethical concerns?
The philosophy consists of certain people in China saying, "we can steal this, because no one can stop us." And their leaders simply do very little about it.
If I want to ensure the database isn't accessible through an SQL injection attack, then I should (IMO) be allowed to test that, for my own safety.
That's just silly. If I give my money to a bank, does that mean I should be allowed to try and rob it to make sure the money is safe? "Officer, I wasn't really going to rob the bank, I just wanted to see if I could break into the building and access the safe."
There is NEVER an excuse to attack someone else's property. If you have questions about security, then ask the questions, or don't use them. Keep your virtual hands to yourself.
What is it about the Apple koolaid that makes it acceptable for them to lock you into their AND ONLY THEIR service? And then sue anyone who tries to give you choices? You may like iTunes, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't hate Apple for their lock-in practices.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's not their fault, who's fault is it? If you live in the United States, and are healthy, there is no excuse to be poor. They can get free education any time they want to lift themselves out of poverty.
Come to think of it, I do know who's fault it is -- it's YOURS. People like you who tell them that it's not their fault, that their situation is hopeless because of "the man". Maybe if more people told them the truth -- that the power over their lives is in their hands -- they wouldn't be poor anymore.
You can't "force" someone out of poverty with a battering ram of money. They have to make the choice not to be poor anymore.
Yeah, yeah, and the Amiga is still superior to any PC made today. Come on. It was operationally different from what came before. But what did it really do *functionally different* that made it superior to anything that came before? Not much. It's not like it would suddenly shine your shoes for you. It had most of the same functions that everything else had, except maybe in a slicker way. Not that "slicker" doesn't mean better (as the iPod proved, which does absolutely nothing unique), but it doesn't make it groundbreaking.
We're not talking about the standards of 1983. We're talking about the standards of PDAs. Therefore, by virtue of the fact that a TRS-80 wouldn't even fit in a reasonably sized knapsack, it wasn't a very good PDA.
What? It was the size of a sheet of notebook paper. I don't know about your knapsacks, but mine will hold notebooks. A PDA stands for "personal digital assistant", not "pocket computer". The Model 100 fulfilled the duties of a PDA. And it's not like the Newton was exactly pocket sized either.
I was taking issue with the "Newton was just a rehash of...well...um...er...", implying that the poster thought the Newton wasn't a rehash of what had been seen before. I don't dispute Apple coined PDA, just like IBM coined the term PC. It doesn't mean that IBM created the first personal computer, though.
I'm having some difficulty trying to figure out how your TRS-80 has anything to do with a PDA, whose prime virtue is portability.
Why do you think they sold 6 million units? It was EXTREMELY portable by the standards of 1983. What did it have? Built-in Memo. Address book. Task manager. Calendar. It was made to be a PDA, even if it wasn't pocket-sized.
Jesus H. Christ, what are you babbling about? The Newton came out in 1993, Sharp Wizards go back to 1989 (actually I think it's before that, but that's what the Wikipedia claims). And no, they weren't the first with handwriting recognition. That would be Go corporation (and I think IBM had a prototype Thinkpad lying around), not that the Newton's handwriting recognition actually worked, so we can safely ignore that feature.
Of course, I could make the argument that the TRS-80 Model 100 was the first successful PDA.
Yeah, because coal miners certainly never have health problems. And there's certainly no build-up in the lungs from smoking, either.
But the point is trust -- you can't trust Wikipedia to know what the hell it's talking about with Relativity. It's a complex enough subject that any "informal" explanation in the Wikipedia is going to be a gross oversimplification at best, and at worst totally wrong, and there are too few people who "truly" understand Relativity to know the difference.
It never will. And that's OK.
Wikipedia can be valuable even in mediocrity. I've used it as a "jumping off" point for knowledge about things that aren't covered in more traditional sources. Want to know the origins of "all your base are belong to us"? Wikipedia is great for that sort of trivia. Want an in-depth explanation of Relativity? You probably don't want to necessarily trust Wikipedia for the last word on it, but you might be able to find a few pointers to some good books.
Wikipedia is what it is. As long as everyone understands what it is, it'll do fine.
Apple. They have one of the worst track records for treating their customers like crap, and suing anything that moves.
Oh, and you're sort of forgetting the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock options that Steve gets.
As usual, it's all about the applications. People want things to "just work", and they don't care about software politics. That's the reason that Apple is only 3% marketshare -- people don't want to have to think about whether their software is compatible or not.
Eh, this doesn't sound right to me. I don't have to put signs on my house that says it's illegal for someone to enter it without my permission.
On the other hand, I might believe your point in cases of rural land where there are no clear boundaries. In that case, it might be legal to cross someone's farmland, unless they specifically forbid.
I think a PC is closer to a house than an unmarked piece of land.
Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11
Bad intelligence is not a "war on rational thought", and even if Hussein wasn't directly involved in 9/11, he certainly contributed to terrorism, and thus was indirectly responsible. This is undeniable.
Intelligent Design is a science
ID is stupid, but you'll note that Bush just expressed an opinion about it. There is no formal policy regarding it.
Who is not for us is against us
No, what was said was that whoever is not against terrorism is for terrorism, and that is true. What Bush was saying was that countries can't just be neutral and let terrorists set up camps within their borders.
The war in Iraq was started to liberate the Iraqi people.
It was never said that it was started for that reason. It was certainly said that it was one of the primary motivators, however, and was perfectly true.
We are winning the war in Iraq
We are. Even if you disagree with that, once again, disagreement with you is not a war on rational thought.
God speaks to me
So what? Lots of religious people believe God speaks to them. However, you are deliberately being bigoted by interpreting this as some mental illness where Bush is saying that God literally speaks with a voice.
There is something called an illegal combatant
*sigh* I don't feel like debating this one.
Global warming doesn't occur
The administration never said that. This pattern of misinformation you have should tell you that you are not thinking about things rationally. What they did say was...
In the case global warming does occur humans do not contribute to it
Which is a prefectly legitimate stand. There is NO PROOF that humans contribute to global warming.
In the case humans contribute to global warming, any attempt to remedy the effects will instantly melt down the whole economy
That's your hyperbole. It is undeniable that treaties like Kyoto WILL harm the US economy, because it's basically a cynical cash grab by other countries on the US. It has every little to do with the environment.
United Nations are out to take over US autonomy
Of course they are. Don't be naive. Every political body seeks more power. Do you think the UN is some "kum-ba-yah" chanting body of peace? Please. The UN is filled with fools jealous of the US's power who would love nothing better than to take the US down several pegs, whether it hurts the world or not.
Yeah, I'm really chafing under the severe curtailing of my civil liberties... oh wait, I haven't lost any civil liberties.
ID, faith based initiatives etc - National Socialism idea
You lost me on this one.
Name one parallel. A REAL parallel, please, not something on the level of "ongoing war on all forms of rational thought", which is obviously foolish flamebait. Someone disagreeing with you is not making war on rational thought.
You speak like you think you're one of the intelligent ones, but when you say things like that, you've just showed yourself as one of "them". The ones that do no original thinking. You're only parroting things you've heard from others that work to manipulate the masses for their own gain (the Michael Moores of the world, for one example).
Your whole post smacks of intellectual laziness and apathy. You actually think you're living in hard times! Every generation thinks "it's never been worse than this".
Bottom line, you're problem isn't the times we live in, it's the fact that you're spoiled.
*sigh* And some people wonder why in the age of 3GHz processors, they're still only as responsive as 33Mhz processors.
You do realize that was, like, eight years ago, right? And then they fixed it ("months"? Good lord!). Are there hiccups? I'm sure there are. But in practice, very few people moan about incompatibility issues.
THAT is why open document formats are important. To avoid the necessity of working museums.
That's a different issue. I don't argue that open document formats aren't a good thing, I only argue that no one cares about philosophy when they're trying to send and receive documents with a minimum of hassle.
What's important is what the standard document format is RIGHT NOW, and right now, it's the binary office format. Until is OpenOffice absolutely, positively 100% compatible with no headaches, it will continue to be a project that people shy away from.
Yes, yes, yes, I know it's relatively undocumented. But that's not an unsolvable problem. If they really want OpenOffice to be adopted, they need to solve this problem. Have a big "bug drive" where everyone sends in MS/Office documents that don't open right in OpenOffice, and vice-versa!
Why is compatibility such a hard concept for people to get that it's the single most critical feature? OK, they're volunteers, and maybe they don't care about people adopting their program. But if they do care, then they need to clue in.
Thank god we have people out there that aren't afraid to use technology to make things better, even if a small number of people whine about it. If people like you ran the world, we'd still be stuck using 80x25 column green screens.
And, as other people have pointed out, there is an alternative link. Nice of them.
Yeah, try and remember that if you ever live adjacent to an alley and some slimeball is rattling your back door at 2am to see if they can break in. I'm sure you'll just happily roll over in your bed knowing they have the perfect right to test the locks of you and your family.
In any case, I'd say few banks are directly adjacent to public property. It'd be sitting on private property.
Rattling the back door of a bank (as the AC gave as an example) might just get the police asking you some questions about what the hell you're doing skulking around on private property.
Hmm, I dunno. Seriously, people have been predicting the domination of China for literally a thousand years. They certainly *could* do it, but they are a very insulated culture.
As you say, Japan certainly did, but of course that took destroying their national psyche and rebuilding it in Western terms. And even so, they still don't have much of an entrepreneurial culture compared to the US (which is our great strength). I can't see China having any sort of entrepreurism any time soon.
You may reject the concept of intellectual property, but you don't need the concept of IP written into law to recognize that's it's morally and ethically indefensible to use something that someone else created in a way that they specifically ask you not to.
Just out of curiosity, do you reject the concept of open source software licenses as well?
Oh, please. You're not seriously suggesting that China has some well-reasoned philosophy regarding IP, implemented by wise leaders who have given long consideration to moral and ethical concerns?
The philosophy consists of certain people in China saying, "we can steal this, because no one can stop us." And their leaders simply do very little about it.
That's just silly. If I give my money to a bank, does that mean I should be allowed to try and rob it to make sure the money is safe? "Officer, I wasn't really going to rob the bank, I just wanted to see if I could break into the building and access the safe."
There is NEVER an excuse to attack someone else's property. If you have questions about security, then ask the questions, or don't use them. Keep your virtual hands to yourself.
What is it about the Apple koolaid that makes it acceptable for them to lock you into their AND ONLY THEIR service? And then sue anyone who tries to give you choices? You may like iTunes, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't hate Apple for their lock-in practices.