Two failed marriages and a few offspring later, I can say that people have no idea what kind of person they will actually be compatible with
God, I hope he's still reading this.
Having a successful marriage (i.e., one that doesn't fail) is EASY. The drunk who couldn't pass high school can do it. The blonds who give their hair color a bad name can do it. Marriage is not about mythical compatability -- marraige is about CHOOSING to be together.
One failed marriage, then maybe it's her fault. Two? It's your fault. Not that you didn't know who you're compataible with -- just that you think "compatability" means jack or shit past the proposal.
Twitter is naught but the horn by which the crowd hears itself.
AT&T and Iran are being faced with that most awesome and powerful of forces: human beings. Acting in concert. Each of their own free will.:) Democracy rules.
Wind is a result of unevent air pressure. Uneven air pressuure changes due to different rates of expansion and contraction of air. Which, in turn, is caused by uneven temperature.
Second step: Have you purchased new clothing in the last year? If not, buy new clothes... preferably with the help of a woman... one of your friend's girlfriends will do. Just buy what she tells you to buy. No arguments.
Hell no. Don't do that. Then you'll look like some strange woman dressed you. Possibly a woman with no fashion sense.
Go shopping, and buy new clothes -- but buy clothes that YOU want to wear. Bearing and comfort are far, FAR more important than fashion. And if you're looking for a she-geek, wearing the most fashionable clothes might actually drive her away.
Good luck out there. If there is anything else I can add, in big cities its harder to talk to random people because they usually seem irrationally afraid you're going to rob or rape them. its crappy... small town people are really easy to warm up to in any old place.
A note about big cities -- people on the street don't want to talk. People sitting down at a restaurant you also are eating at might. People in a bar or nightclub DO. One of my best friends met her husband in a karaoke bar.
You were looking for #3, so think about #3. There are essentially two kinds of "geek gatheirngs" -- Conventions and LARPs.
Conventions are places where geeks gather about a certain area. Anime, D&D, Star Trek, Star Wars -- pick a part of geek culture, and there's probably a convention around it. Explore your interestes on the net, pick one, and find the nearest convention. There are worse places to meet people, and essentially eveyone you run into will be a geek. The big advantage? Lots and lots of geeks go to conventions. The big disadvantage? They're not all looking to meet people.
LARPs are a whole different ball of wax. These can range from an evening meeting of a vampire LARP, to an excursion to the week-long Pensig Event put on by the SCA. The big advantage of LARPs over conventions is one of purpose -- you WILL meet people at a LARP, due to the basic nature of the game. So long as you have some basic social graces, you can hopefully either find someone compatbible, or find someone who knows someone compatible. (The range of choices is just lower.)
You can also try local RPG games, going to your local library or bookstore, or even picking up on a "user's group" if there are any near you.
You also asked the HOW, and that's something any number of books can be written about. (Go to the library or bookstore, and ask for a "self-help" book on social graces. "Excuse me, can you help me find a self-help book to help me meet people?" is a good line. (Do NOT say "meatspace", or "norms", or "I want to fuck.") ) My short guide:
0: Look at yourself in the mirror first. I'd hope you have this part down, but if not then learn. You don't need to look good enough to have women throw themselves at you -- you just need to look grown-up and sociable enough that your appearance won't turn them away from you.
1: Keep your eyes open. The world is filled with people, most of whom you don't know -- and you can't always tell a geek by appearance. Pay attention to not just how closely people match porn stars, but what they seem to be interested in.
2: When you see someone you want to talk to, smile. To begin a conversation, ask about something local -- talk about the weather, whatever they have in their hands, or wherever you happen to be. (LARPs and Conventions are full of conversation pieces.). Ask a question, and PAY ATTENTION to their answer. An actual answer is an invitation to continue the conversation; a noncommittal answer is a signal that they aren't interested in conversation.
3: During a conversation, again, PAY ATTENTION. Small talk is your first indication of interests, and will be a good indicator if they are interested in you. Listen to what they say, and focus on topics of which both you and they have interest.
4: If the conversation seems like it's worth pursuing, ask if you can buy them something -- or journey with them as you both buy something. (Dinner, movie, RPG games, new dice.). Providing food is an ancient, universal signal for "I'd like you to consider a relationship with me." Some will say "no", some will say "another time." And some will say "yes."
5: Here's the important one. The utmost, forget everything else so long as you remember this rule. You are looking for friends first, and romance second. My best friend is my wife, and hers is mine. If we weren't romantically intangled, we'd likely still be friends all the same. While you can have a successful marriage without a freindship, it won't be happy one.
6: Have paper, pen, and PDA to write down any and all information given by your potential friend. If you have business cards from work, carry some. If not, just pen & paper is fine. (Don't make up cards that say "single guy" or something on them -- it's too easy to look creepy doing that.)
That would imply that what happens online isn't real...
What happens online ISN'T real, in the same way that what happens "in a phone call" or "within a letter" isn't real.
The closest you come is either fiction, or a retelling of actual events. Or a dialog, which is really just two people in real life talking through a computer. Neither one is "in" the internet any more (or less) than a writer is "in" their work.
(Looking online very, very rarely works, mostly because online spaces allow people to be totally dishonest. If there's no honest representation, you cannot find people by presupposing they are being honest.)
Sure you can.
Think about the kind of person you'd want. Then figure out the lie they'd tell about themselves in the personal section. Lie accordingly about yourself, and go from there.
The fact is a free-market economy is the ONLY type of economy on the planet that actually works
I recall a short sci-fi story I read awhile back. A bunch of academics created a computer, that would model real-world situations and allow for the accelerated projection of various laws and programs -- a kind of "super Sim City", if you will. The academics plugged in their free-market model, hit "compute", and let it run for a long-enough virtual time to let the virtual society adjust. The result, voila, was 100% employment! It was grand, and exciting. And then the academics started looking at the specifics, and saw a wide variety of careers such as "prostitute" and "Drug dealer."
The free market works perfectly -- so long as you have no moral compunctions about the type of employment being done, or what the maximum penalty of failure is.
I encourage you to investigate lovely things like "starving to death" and "debtors prisons" if you think a free market will solve all of our ills. What it does, it does perfectly -- but it can't do everything, and can't be trusted to do anything how we'd like it done.
I love how the same people that laugh at government waste ($500 hammers, anyone?) can seriously think government-run healthcare would be anything but a complete disaster with respect to finances and efficiency.
you... well.... DO realize that the $500 hammer was a government contractor purposefully overbilling, right?
Or to put it another way -- it was PRIVATE ENTERPRISE causing the waste and greed.
Of course, they're too busy trying to make ends meet to spend any money on campaign contributions, so they don't matter, do they?
You couldn't afford $5 and one hour of your time over a two-year period?
You, sir, are neglecting your patriotic duty to help choose your leaders. If you'd rather go watch a movie than help influence the government, then you have no right to complain.
Corporate greed is mitigated by SOMEONE ELSE's corporate greed. As a whole, there is no effective check on it.
Sure, K-Mart can decide to mark up socks to $50. And then Wal-Mart can undedrcut them to $10. But that's not consumer demand -- that's Wal-Mart's corporate greed.
15% from me, 15% from my employer and 100% worthless.
Bull Shit.
We save for retirement because social security is likely to be insuffucient to maintain the lifestyle we want -- not because it won't be there. That whole "retirement industry" factors it into your calculations -- in fact, there are even insurance programs you can buy that will help you transition over to a fully medicare paid-for life while letting you give your kids the home they grew up in.
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama
You, ah, DO realize that it's racist even to categorize those Americans of visibly african descent as "African American", don't you?
Yes, racism played a part in Obama's election. But you know what? we're stuck with it. If you want to run on a white-power platform, you can go right ahead and do so -- there is no moral bar, just politics, that keep you from doing so.
Oh, and btw?
Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical
By the time of the actual voting, there had been a half-dozen debates. And in those debates, Obama demonstrated a sense and intellect of a markedly different nature than Clinton. He was, in fact, even mocked for it. When the campaign started, I was going to vote for Clinton; it was only after seeing her performance in the debates that I changed my vote to Obama.
Political Primaries are not a contest of positions -- they are a contest of personality and character. And Obama's was simply a better match for 2007 America than Clinton.
Of course that would necessitate the typical US citizen learning how to be responsible, like we used to be a few decades ago.
no, that would require the average American to become an active consumer of health care -- something most of us simply aren't qualified for. (Quote POTUS: "We just do what you tell us to.")
The economics should align with the descion making power. I pay a set amount to a doctor or medical practice of my choice, and then they have responsibility for my health care. If it's $500 cheaper for me to have one procedure over the other, the doctor gets a goodly amount of that. (All, ideally. I already paid for it when I paid for his overall service.) Doctors would then buy insurance to cover extraordinary cases.
The default position is we assume things do not exist unless we are presented with positive evidence to the contrary
No. No, no, NO.
Science's core position is "The simplest explanation in the most correct one", and "existance is persistent." Science is also a system of disproving statements, not proving them, but that's something else altogether.
The core scientific evidence for a deity's existence is the persistent worldwide belief in one. While this is far from sufficient, it is non-zero, greater than Russell's teapot, and sufficient to render a deity's existence "scientifically plausible but untestable."
Atheism needs to be labeled and treated as a religion for the exact same reason as all other religions do: because it is a personal belief that, when unrecognized, can distort scientific findings and, on a long-enough timeline, undermine the acceptance of science.
That's an interesting question, and now that you mention it, I'm one of those, whatever they are. "Atheism" does actually mean "without gods", NOT "anti-gods".
Atheism has its ROOTS in foreign words that roughly translate as "without gods." But it doesn't mean that any more than "Pagan" means "woodland religion."
Atheism: A religious creed that posits that there are neither God nor Gods, nor any supernatural entity.
Agnosticism: A religious creed that posits the existance or non-existance of the divine is beyond its members knowledge.
Pagan: Any religious creed that posits a belief in a God or Gods other than that described by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions.
Neo-Pagan: A reliigous creed that asserts belief in many gods, supposedly with its basis in pre-Christian Europe.
Aside from "Pagan", all three are relatively modern inventions, each younger as a viable religion than the United States of America.
Look, if you have a firm belief about the nature of the Almighty, as well as a supporting set of lore (lessons, parables, and secondary beliefs), that's a religion.
"Atheism" is "I know that God doesn't exist." Or, rather, "I believe that God doesn't exist."
If your statement is "I do not believe God exists", as in "I don't know that God exists or that He doesn't", then you're properly labeled an "Agnostic." (Which is a word coined by a member of a 19th century atheism society, to distance himself form the anti-Christian zealotry he found there.)
Carl Sagan had a graph of scientific progress - basically very rapid in Ancient Greece and zero in the Dark Ages
Yeah. Articulated armor, steel long-swords, and crop rotation aren't science at all....
And it sure wasn't religion that got all of the Greek city-states to stop fighting every four years and come together for the olympics. Nope. Not that, either.
You're arguing from authority, and "noted atheist says religion is bad" is no more credible than "pope says modernism is bad."
Exaggeration is fine. Plot holes are not. They're bad writing,
No, it's bad reading.
Bad writing is when you're reading the prose, and the plot, and you stop enjoying yourself. If you noticed a plot hole RIGHT THEN, it's bad writing. If you don't notice it until you're done with the book -- it's fine writing. Just a plot hole. Some of the best books ever written have glaring plot holes that are never fully settled.
Life is kinda like that, you know.
(Oh, and the show's a FARCE. It doesn't have to be consistent, any more than the Simpsons has to decide what's in their back yard, or Mad Magazine has to figure out who the Spies are working for.)
The market will tell you what is the correct cost of USING a plane or a train RIGHT NOW. It doesn't reflect any sunk costs whatsoever, nor will it reflect future costs or non-immediate costs not mandated by law.
By way of analogy: the market tells the farmer what crops people will buy. It does not tell him what crops will keep his farmland sustainable unto his children's time.
What in the world makes us think that it would be any easier to communicate with extraterrestrials?
Squids are intelligent tool-users with a high-order language capable of expressing abstract thoughts like "we shouldn't eat all those fish now; doing so will leave us more for tomorrow."?
I doubt we'll be mating with the squids, but most intelligent minds I've met don't need to fuck someone to communicate. (Hell, fucking tends to diminish communication...)
Non-native JavaScript-based apps running in a browser (WebKit)? Good luck with that. Especially with games.
1: Your complaint is "non-compiled", not "non-native." Objective-C ain't machine code, you know.
2: Go look at a random sample of 100 iphone apps that were actually purchased. Find me 25 that aren't essentially web-applications anyway. (Find a local cab? A bird-watcher's aide? Seriously, am I the only one who saw those iPhone commercials and thought "wait, shouldn't that just be a web-site?")
3: A lower-level SDK is doubtless in teh works, but it won't be widely available. The Palm emulator was not made using Javascript, and neither will Documents to Go. (My personal suspicion is that the two companies created a new WebOS component, which then is pulled via WebKit.)
Slashdot Mirror
Two failed marriages and a few offspring later, I can say that people have no idea what kind of person they will actually be compatible with
God, I hope he's still reading this.
Having a successful marriage (i.e., one that doesn't fail) is EASY. The drunk who couldn't pass high school can do it. The blonds who give their hair color a bad name can do it. Marriage is not about mythical compatability -- marraige is about CHOOSING to be together.
One failed marriage, then maybe it's her fault. Two? It's your fault. Not that you didn't know who you're compataible with -- just that you think "compatability" means jack or shit past the proposal.
Twitter is naught but the horn by which the crowd hears itself.
AT&T and Iran are being faced with that most awesome and powerful of forces: human beings. Acting in concert. Each of their own free will. :) Democracy rules.
Heat is no wind
Please tell me you're trolling.
Wind is a result of unevent air pressure. Uneven air pressuure changes due to different rates of expansion and contraction of air. Which, in turn, is caused by uneven temperature.
Or in other words, heat CAUSES wind, dumbass.
Second step: Have you purchased new clothing in the last year? If not, buy new clothes... preferably with the help of a woman... one of your friend's girlfriends will do. Just buy what she tells you to buy. No arguments.
Hell no. Don't do that. Then you'll look like some strange woman dressed you. Possibly a woman with no fashion sense.
Go shopping, and buy new clothes -- but buy clothes that YOU want to wear. Bearing and comfort are far, FAR more important than fashion. And if you're looking for a she-geek, wearing the most fashionable clothes might actually drive her away.
Good luck out there. If there is anything else I can add, in big cities its harder to talk to random people because they usually seem irrationally afraid you're going to rob or rape them. its crappy... small town people are really easy to warm up to in any old place.
A note about big cities -- people on the street don't want to talk. People sitting down at a restaurant you also are eating at might. People in a bar or nightclub DO. One of my best friends met her husband in a karaoke bar.
I meet geeks 3 places.
1: Work.
2: Online (MMO's, RPG chat rooms, PBEM "sim" games, etc.)
3: At geek social events.
You were looking for #3, so think about #3. There are essentially two kinds of "geek gatheirngs" -- Conventions and LARPs.
Conventions are places where geeks gather about a certain area. Anime, D&D, Star Trek, Star Wars -- pick a part of geek culture, and there's probably a convention around it. Explore your interestes on the net, pick one, and find the nearest convention. There are worse places to meet people, and essentially eveyone you run into will be a geek. The big advantage? Lots and lots of geeks go to conventions. The big disadvantage? They're not all looking to meet people.
LARPs are a whole different ball of wax. These can range from an evening meeting of a vampire LARP, to an excursion to the week-long Pensig Event put on by the SCA. The big advantage of LARPs over conventions is one of purpose -- you WILL meet people at a LARP, due to the basic nature of the game. So long as you have some basic social graces, you can hopefully either find someone compatbible, or find someone who knows someone compatible. (The range of choices is just lower.)
You can also try local RPG games, going to your local library or bookstore, or even picking up on a "user's group" if there are any near you.
You also asked the HOW, and that's something any number of books can be written about. (Go to the library or bookstore, and ask for a "self-help" book on social graces. "Excuse me, can you help me find a self-help book to help me meet people?" is a good line. (Do NOT say "meatspace", or "norms", or "I want to fuck.") ) My short guide:
0: Look at yourself in the mirror first. I'd hope you have this part down, but if not then learn. You don't need to look good enough to have women throw themselves at you -- you just need to look grown-up and sociable enough that your appearance won't turn them away from you.
1: Keep your eyes open. The world is filled with people, most of whom you don't know -- and you can't always tell a geek by appearance. Pay attention to not just how closely people match porn stars, but what they seem to be interested in.
2: When you see someone you want to talk to, smile. To begin a conversation, ask about something local -- talk about the weather, whatever they have in their hands, or wherever you happen to be. (LARPs and Conventions are full of conversation pieces.). Ask a question, and PAY ATTENTION to their answer. An actual answer is an invitation to continue the conversation; a noncommittal answer is a signal that they aren't interested in conversation.
3: During a conversation, again, PAY ATTENTION. Small talk is your first indication of interests, and will be a good indicator if they are interested in you. Listen to what they say, and focus on topics of which both you and they have interest.
4: If the conversation seems like it's worth pursuing, ask if you can buy them something -- or journey with them as you both buy something. (Dinner, movie, RPG games, new dice.). Providing food is an ancient, universal signal for "I'd like you to consider a relationship with me." Some will say "no", some will say "another time." And some will say "yes."
5: Here's the important one. The utmost, forget everything else so long as you remember this rule. You are looking for friends first, and romance second. My best friend is my wife, and hers is mine. If we weren't romantically intangled, we'd likely still be friends all the same. While you can have a successful marriage without a freindship, it won't be happy one.
6: Have paper, pen, and PDA to write down any and all information given by your potential friend. If you have business cards from work, carry some. If not, just pen & paper is fine. (Don't make up cards that say "single guy" or something on them -- it's too easy to look creepy doing that.)
Good luck.
That would imply that what happens online isn't real...
What happens online ISN'T real, in the same way that what happens "in a phone call" or "within a letter" isn't real.
The closest you come is either fiction, or a retelling of actual events. Or a dialog, which is really just two people in real life talking through a computer. Neither one is "in" the internet any more (or less) than a writer is "in" their work.
(Looking online very, very rarely works, mostly because online spaces allow people to be totally dishonest. If there's no honest representation, you cannot find people by presupposing they are being honest.)
Sure you can.
Think about the kind of person you'd want. Then figure out the lie they'd tell about themselves in the personal section. Lie accordingly about yourself, and go from there.
The fact is a free-market economy is the ONLY type of economy on the planet that actually works
I recall a short sci-fi story I read awhile back. A bunch of academics created a computer, that would model real-world situations and allow for the accelerated projection of various laws and programs -- a kind of "super Sim City", if you will. The academics plugged in their free-market model, hit "compute", and let it run for a long-enough virtual time to let the virtual society adjust. The result, voila, was 100% employment! It was grand, and exciting. And then the academics started looking at the specifics, and saw a wide variety of careers such as "prostitute" and "Drug dealer."
The free market works perfectly -- so long as you have no moral compunctions about the type of employment being done, or what the maximum penalty of failure is.
I encourage you to investigate lovely things like "starving to death" and "debtors prisons" if you think a free market will solve all of our ills. What it does, it does perfectly -- but it can't do everything, and can't be trusted to do anything how we'd like it done.
I love how the same people that laugh at government waste ($500 hammers, anyone?) can seriously think government-run healthcare would be anything but a complete disaster with respect to finances and efficiency.
you... well.... DO realize that the $500 hammer was a government contractor purposefully overbilling, right?
Or to put it another way -- it was PRIVATE ENTERPRISE causing the waste and greed.
Of course, they're too busy trying to make ends meet to spend any money on campaign contributions, so they don't matter, do they?
You couldn't afford $5 and one hour of your time over a two-year period?
You, sir, are neglecting your patriotic duty to help choose your leaders. If you'd rather go watch a movie than help influence the government, then you have no right to complain.
Corporate greed is mitigated by consumer demands
Sorry, it isn't. It hasn't been for awhile.
Corporate greed is mitigated by SOMEONE ELSE's corporate greed. As a whole, there is no effective check on it.
Sure, K-Mart can decide to mark up socks to $50. And then Wal-Mart can undedrcut them to $10. But that's not consumer demand -- that's Wal-Mart's corporate greed.
15% from me, 15% from my employer and 100% worthless.
Bull Shit.
We save for retirement because social security is likely to be insuffucient to maintain the lifestyle we want -- not because it won't be there. That whole "retirement industry" factors it into your calculations -- in fact, there are even insurance programs you can buy that will help you transition over to a fully medicare paid-for life while letting you give your kids the home they grew up in.
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama
You, ah, DO realize that it's racist even to categorize those Americans of visibly african descent as "African American", don't you?
Yes, racism played a part in Obama's election. But you know what? we're stuck with it. If you want to run on a white-power platform, you can go right ahead and do so -- there is no moral bar, just politics, that keep you from doing so.
Oh, and btw?
Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical
By the time of the actual voting, there had been a half-dozen debates. And in those debates, Obama demonstrated a sense and intellect of a markedly different nature than Clinton. He was, in fact, even mocked for it. When the campaign started, I was going to vote for Clinton; it was only after seeing her performance in the debates that I changed my vote to Obama.
Political Primaries are not a contest of positions -- they are a contest of personality and character. And Obama's was simply a better match for 2007 America than Clinton.
Of course that would necessitate the typical US citizen learning how to be responsible, like we used to be a few decades ago.
no, that would require the average American to become an active consumer of health care -- something most of us simply aren't qualified for. (Quote POTUS: "We just do what you tell us to.")
The economics should align with the descion making power. I pay a set amount to a doctor or medical practice of my choice, and then they have responsibility for my health care. If it's $500 cheaper for me to have one procedure over the other, the doctor gets a goodly amount of that. (All, ideally. I already paid for it when I paid for his overall service.) Doctors would then buy insurance to cover extraordinary cases.
The default position is we assume things do not exist unless we are presented with positive evidence to the contrary
No. No, no, NO.
Science's core position is "The simplest explanation in the most correct one", and "existance is persistent." Science is also a system of disproving statements, not proving them, but that's something else altogether.
The core scientific evidence for a deity's existence is the persistent worldwide belief in one. While this is far from sufficient, it is non-zero, greater than Russell's teapot, and sufficient to render a deity's existence "scientifically plausible but untestable."
Atheism needs to be labeled and treated as a religion for the exact same reason as all other religions do: because it is a personal belief that, when unrecognized, can distort scientific findings and, on a long-enough timeline, undermine the acceptance of science.
That's an interesting question, and now that you mention it, I'm one of those, whatever they are. "Atheism" does actually mean "without gods", NOT "anti-gods".
Atheism has its ROOTS in foreign words that roughly translate as "without gods." But it doesn't mean that any more than "Pagan" means "woodland religion."
Atheism: A religious creed that posits that there are neither God nor Gods, nor any supernatural entity.
Agnosticism: A religious creed that posits the existance or non-existance of the divine is beyond its members knowledge.
Pagan: Any religious creed that posits a belief in a God or Gods other than that described by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions.
Neo-Pagan: A reliigous creed that asserts belief in many gods, supposedly with its basis in pre-Christian Europe.
Aside from "Pagan", all three are relatively modern inventions, each younger as a viable religion than the United States of America.
wrong, on more levels than you are aware.
Look, if you have a firm belief about the nature of the Almighty, as well as a supporting set of lore (lessons, parables, and secondary beliefs), that's a religion.
"Atheism" is "I know that God doesn't exist." Or, rather, "I believe that God doesn't exist."
If your statement is "I do not believe God exists", as in "I don't know that God exists or that He doesn't", then you're properly labeled an "Agnostic." (Which is a word coined by a member of a 19th century atheism society, to distance himself form the anti-Christian zealotry he found there.)
Carl Sagan had a graph of scientific progress - basically very rapid in Ancient Greece and zero in the Dark Ages
Yeah. Articulated armor, steel long-swords, and crop rotation aren't science at all....
And it sure wasn't religion that got all of the Greek city-states to stop fighting every four years and come together for the olympics. Nope. Not that, either.
You're arguing from authority, and "noted atheist says religion is bad" is no more credible than "pope says modernism is bad."
Exaggeration is fine. Plot holes are not. They're bad writing,
No, it's bad reading.
Bad writing is when you're reading the prose, and the plot, and you stop enjoying yourself. If you noticed a plot hole RIGHT THEN, it's bad writing. If you don't notice it until you're done with the book -- it's fine writing. Just a plot hole. Some of the best books ever written have glaring plot holes that are never fully settled.
Life is kinda like that, you know.
(Oh, and the show's a FARCE. It doesn't have to be consistent, any more than the Simpsons has to decide what's in their back yard, or Mad Magazine has to figure out who the Spies are working for.)
No, it's not.
The market will tell you what is the correct cost of USING a plane or a train RIGHT NOW. It doesn't reflect any sunk costs whatsoever, nor will it reflect future costs or non-immediate costs not mandated by law.
By way of analogy: the market tells the farmer what crops people will buy. It does not tell him what crops will keep his farmland sustainable unto his children's time.
What in the world makes us think that it would be any easier to communicate with extraterrestrials?
Squids are intelligent tool-users with a high-order language capable of expressing abstract thoughts like "we shouldn't eat all those fish now; doing so will leave us more for tomorrow."?
I doubt we'll be mating with the squids, but most intelligent minds I've met don't need to fuck someone to communicate. (Hell, fucking tends to diminish communication...)
Go to a sprint store. Call 'em first thing tomorrow morning.
The huge majority of the stock went to sprint-branded retails stores -- not Radio shack, wal-mart, or best buy.
Sprint has more than 6 months. Verizon will be selling a "pre-like" device -- probably, the Palm Eos, if not a third as-yet announced WebOS device.
Non-native JavaScript-based apps running in a browser (WebKit)? Good luck with that.
Especially with games.
1: Your complaint is "non-compiled", not "non-native." Objective-C ain't machine code, you know.
2: Go look at a random sample of 100 iphone apps that were actually purchased. Find me 25 that aren't essentially web-applications anyway. (Find a local cab? A bird-watcher's aide? Seriously, am I the only one who saw those iPhone commercials and thought "wait, shouldn't that just be a web-site?")
3: A lower-level SDK is doubtless in teh works, but it won't be widely available. The Palm emulator was not made using Javascript, and neither will Documents to Go. (My personal suspicion is that the two companies created a new WebOS component, which then is pulled via WebKit.)